John Nack on Adobe

June 13, 2008

Type as illustrations & more

Letters as shapes:

• Cameron Moll talks about techniques for designing with type characters--creating shapes and illustrations using just letterforms.  "Don’t attempt this in one sitting. I take it back--this is the most important tip. Not only is type character designing extremely time consuming, it’s also monotonous work that requires a constant zoom in, zoom out dance to get things right."
• He points out some cool examples of these techniques in action, including the all-type design for the Seed Conference.  (I know I'm betraying my age & lack of CSS currency, but I'm surprised by the typographic fidelity that's possible in modern Web browsers.)
• He also points to Veer's Flash-based Type City, an interactive journey through buildings made from letterforms.  (Lovely letterpress prints of the pieces are available.)
• Related bits from the archives: Bembo's Zoo is a fun bestiary from Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich & Matteo Bologna's; click any letter to see it turn into an animal made from letters.  If that's up your alley, peep their follow-up in the type-based portraiture in Words at Play.

On other fronts:

• Bembo: First Blood is just one of dozens of typographically inspired movie titles. [Via]
• Ever wanted to see the typographic love child of Garamond and Zebrawood? [Via]

• I haven't tried it myself, but Macworld reviews & recommends Path Styler Pro for creating stylized type & logos.
  

May 21, 2008

Viva frilly bits

Who doesn't like the occasional dingbat & swash?

• Cameron Moll demonstrates great attention to detail with the little embellishments on his site.  In response to reader questions, he offers 25 resources for ornaments, fleurons, and "frilly bits."
• On a related note, Illene Strizver answers questions about typographic dingbats on CreativePro.com.
  

April 23, 2008

Beards, Big B's, and other type bits

• Build fonts right in your browser via the very cool FontStruct. [Via Chris Kantarjiev]
• My friend Bryan sometimes grows what's known as The Beard, a semi-autonomous entity with its own wants and needs (e.g. "I'm not quite ready to go, but The Beard is getting antsy"; "The Beard will speak now...").  This font would be perfect for him--er, them. [Via]
• The Sulzbacher Eszett celebrates forms of what I'll always think of as "that German Big B thing."
• Say it with me, say it with your chest: I {Heart} Transitive Pictographic Verbalizations!
• One of my favorite artists, Jenny Holzer, projects the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska. [Via]
• Receding Hairline features Ten typographic mistakes everyone makes.  (C'mon, you know you're curious.)
• Piranha Bar has fun mixing fun 3D-ish text with illustration in a pair of spots for Failte Ireland.  Background is in this article.

March 29, 2008

Saturday Type

• I'm not quite sure what it has to do with bags, but I like the offbeat letter animations at Crumpler ABC. [Via]
• Making things from type:
  • London Kerning: check out a map of London constructed entirely out of type. [Via]
  • I came across this nice portrait in the Flickr Typography Friday pool.
• Historic:
  • BibliOdyssey surveys pretty lace typography.
  • Zeva Oelbaum photographs hidden Biblical marginalia. [Via]
• Design Meltdown presents a selection of sites featuring Giant Type.  I like Citrus7 in particular.
• Check out "Big Cyrillic pixels" from Fiodor Sumkin.

March 26, 2008

Fire, ketchup & Aquafresh = typography; more

• 7 hours + a lot of gasoline = Fire Poi typography. [Via]
• The crew at Autobahn has created fonts by squeezing out what looks like ketchup & Aquafresh, then digitizing the results in Illustrator.
• I Love Typography wants you to feel the love with their iPhone wallpapers.
• For more love try Times Square and this collection of 15 love banners.
• "Liam Ealone": Give people a type-savvy brush-off with None Of Your Business Cards. [Via]
• My mom learned to type years ago and still uses the numeral 1 in place of lowercase L's (which evidently weren't on her generation of keyboards).  Mabye she wi11 enjoy a whole blog devoted to signs written in all caps, except for the l's. [Via]
• Father and son (?) team paint the alphabet together in 4 minutes. (Maybe it's because I've been up since 2am due to fatherhood, but somehow the result is cooler than it may sound.)
• Argentina's Sudtipos foundry creates a swatch-rich environment.
  

March 24, 2008

3D text goodness

• Marion Bataille's ABC3D popup book looks terrific; here's a video of cruising through the pages. [Via]
• You The Designer features 25 Tasty 3D Graphic Design Treats, all centered around lettering.

Side note: I keep trying to tell developers that I think there's an opportunity to knock together a very simple 3D extrusion/adjustment environment as a Photoshop plug-in, leveraging PS CS3 Extended's ability to manipulate 3D layers.  No one has yet seized the opportunity, but I'll keep trying.

March 21, 2008

Type In Motion

• Motion graphics firm National Television lays on the delightful treatments in these two spots for British Airways. [Via]
• Pixar artists put more love into the margins than most folks do into the main subject.  If you like their work, check out Thunder Chunky's interview with Pixar title designer Susan Bradley. [Via]
• Typeflash lets you whip up animated text, then share the results.
• Retro fabulosity:
  • The video for Justice's DVNO is loaded with old-skool action. [Via]
  • Design firm Laundry lays down some splashy type stylings around their site.  Click the Virgin Mobile (which is not, as I first read it, "Virginmobile") link to see some diggable animations. [Via]
• Always hilarious: Tenacious D's Inward Singing (loaded with profanity, just so you know before clicking).
• Designers Leroy & Clarkson put type in motion for Bio, the biography channel. [Via]
  

March 05, 2008

Recent Typographic Tastiness

• The Uppercase Journal features a collection of great-looking vintage typewriter tins.
• Flickr features a "Folk Typography Pool," consisting of lettering found all over the place.  I especially like the now-requisite Obama imagery.  The whole thing reminds me of how notoriously bad auto body shops' signs are--a phenomenon honored in Brian Stuparyk's free MC Auto font.
• Speaking of bad:
  • What results from bad kerning? Keming. Love it. :-)
  • Apostrophe Atrophy is a photographic collection of bad typography. [Via]
  • That's gonna leave a mark: Wrong Font Chosen For Gravestone.  (At least it wasn't Comic Sans.)
• How excellently simple are these Oil of Olay ads?
• Design Week honors the top film title designs of 2007.  Pity that we can't see them in motion here.
• Peep Craig Ward's illustrative typography and typographic portraits. [Via]
  

February 02, 2008

Saturday Type: Lip tats to Woody Allen

New alphabets have emerged:

• With his Twenty-Six Types of Animals, Jeremy Pettis uses type for "channelling the essence of the beast." [Via]
• The Daily Mail has amassed a rather amazing butterfly wing alphabet--each letter found in nature. [Via]
• Ow, ow, ow: if you're not too squeamish, check out Thijs Verbeek's Clothespin & skin alphabet. [Via]  (In a similarly painful vein (no pun intended), how about a little Mozzer on your lips? [Via Bryan O'Neil Hughes])
• The Politically Incorrect Alphabet is more cute than offensive. [Via]

Elsewhere in the world of type...

• Fun with cultural detritus:
  • I dig Symen “Enkeling” Veenstra's lovingly crafted Spam Series. [Via]
  • The Surrealist riffs on the visual language of England's gossip rags with this tabloid text generator.  (I'm waiting to see a Swedish version.)
• Also hailing from Jolly Ol' is this rotting London grocery store sign.
• You'll want to don safety glasses before inspecting these flair typefaces from the 70's (scroll down til you hit the motherlode).  My wife will always refer to Bookman as "that yacht club font."  [Via]
• Staying on the them of puke induction, what's up with the font used for The History of Visual Communication?  Type is a little like wine with me, in that I never feel confident in my tastes.  In both cases I'm kind of reassured when I hit something and can say, "Okay, that's just foul."
• Type goes beautifully, organically creepy in this ad for The Spiderwick Chronicles.
• BibliOdyssey features a terrific collection of historic ornamental typography.
• Cristian Kit Paul chronicles Woody Allen's typographic repetitions.  Apparently the choice of Windsor goes back to asking designer Ed Benguiat for advice over breakfast. [Via]

January 29, 2008

State of the Typographic Union

The frontrunners: Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain.  So says the Boston Globe, analyzing the type treatments of the US presidential candidates.  Of Obama: "Clean pen strokes evoke a well-pressed Armani suit."  Of McCain: "Everything about this logo says you can buy a car from this man."  [Via reader Tim]

Elsewhere in the world of type:

• 3Dishness:
  • Nik Ainley (previous) discusses his 3D typographic techniques on Digital Arts. [Via]
  • Nelson Balaban goes in a similar direction with Xtrabold. [Via]
  • John Caserta's "Dimensional Forms" are 3D foam blocks that can assume the appearance of different letters when seen from different angles.  Check out the video on the left. [Via]
• FontShop has revealed their picks for Top Ten Typefaces of 2007.
• Tania Mouraud goes enormous with How Can You Sleep.
• Were these guys trying to be ironic? [Via]
• The Musalman, operating since 1927, is the only handwritten newspaper in Asia.  The Last Calligraphers tells its story. [Via]
  

January 12, 2008

Urban typography & more

• Years ago, the design group at AGENCY.COM (of which I was part) was treated to a fun and informative talk from typographer Jonathan Hoefler.  He showed & discussed snapshots of type found just in our area around NYU, and in 2000 his partner Tobias Frere-Jones undertook a study of building lettering in New York (see samples).  Now their company (Hoefler & Frere-Jones) offers Gotham, a typeface inspired by the city's visual vernacular.  The site offers a cool way to test drive typefaces, Gotham included.
• Post Typography makes all kinds of visual goodness, typographic & otherwise.  Dig their Daydream Nation in particular, plus the subtlety of Home.  And though it's not type per se, I like the look on this little dude's face.
• OCD yeah you know me: Non-profit Broadcloth fills in letters like there's no tomorrow. [Via]
• Mark Simonson's Mostra offers Art Deco tastiness. [Via]
• Oded Ezer's Typosperma project, designed "to create some sort of new transgenic creatures," is... well, it's real different.
• The Atlantic features a video interview with Michael Bierut about typography and design. [Via]
• Want to bump up the grade on your term paper?  Use a serif font like Georgia & leave the sans serif strugglaz in the dust.  (Hmm--I wonder how this applies to what people think of the blog.) [Via]
  

January 03, 2008

CSS weasels rip my flesh

Having just stumbled across the crazy-handsome I Love Typography, and having just talked about The Elements of Typographic Style being applied to the web, I have to slap my forehead--again--at my inability to get this blog to look consistent across browsers.  You might think that after 14 years of development, Web browsers would have made all this a non-issue.  You'd be wrong.

I'm specifically irked that I can't get Firefox to display the titles of posts at anything approximating the correct size.  Check out how they look in Firefox vs. in Safari & Internet Explorer.  Typically it's IE that gets taken to the woodshed for its standards-compliance, but in this case Firefox is the odd man out.  (Tell me, though, that both Windows browsers' failure in 2008 to anti-alias the text is just an artifact of my running Vista on a Mac.  Please...?)

I've been using Cultured Code's beautiful little Xylescope app to inspect my pages & tweak the CSS values.  Safari & IE respond obediently when I tweak the size of h3.title; Firefox, eh, no response.  And it's obviously possible to get Firefox to honor font sizes; the author name on this page, for example, renders the same in Safari & Firefox.

I also failed to understand why the appearance of the comments area would differ between Safari and Firefox (the latter showing the text much larger).  Now that I've updated to Safari 3, though, I see that it displays the text as Firefox does.

I spent the early part of my career wrestling with browser incompatibilities, so I know this kind of thing shouldn't surprise me.  I guess I just figured that, all these years later, something so simple should be a no-brainer.

Tangentially related: Man Against Weasel.

[Update: Thanks to Mark and Fredrik and their super quick & accurate suggestions, I've been able to nix the FF rendering problem. Viva the wisdom of crowds.]

Type, from the Bible to the Beatles to Browsers

• Calligrapher Donald Jackson approached the Benedictine monks of Saint John’s University and Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, with his life-long dream: to create the first handwritten, illuminated bible commissioned since the invention of the printing press.  You can see numerous samples & read more about the process in this Library of Congress exhibition.  The Adobe type guys have been screening a BBC documentary on the work here at the office.
• Experimental Jetset created the "John & Paul & Ringo & George" shirt, only to be "sincerely flattered" by dozens of imitators--many of whom they've cataloged on their site . I dig "Juan y Pablo y Jorge y Gringo" especially. [Via]
• In The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web, Richard Rutter attempts to apply the principles of rhythm, proportion, harmony, and more in a Web context.  [Via]
• Campbell's Soup has created an excellent--and functional--anti-hunger display that uses soup cans to construct (and deconstruct) a word. [Via]
• Sharon Mount's Tiny Buildings blog is all about her beautiful little creations--tiny buildings created from type-clad bits of paper. [Via]
• The March of Dimes renders babies with type to answer parents' questions. [Via]
• If you're looking for retro inspiration, check out Roadsidepictures's Flickr set of 60's supermarket signage. [Via]  See also his set of 60's Polaroids of signs in Washington.
  

December 19, 2007

Trajan: The hack designer's friend

"Trajan Trajan Trajan..."--it's the Marsha Brady of fonts, at least when it comes to movie titles & posters.  Kirby Ferguson rips hack designers a new one in this very funny video.  Mark Hamburg quips, "If we want 'cinematic' UIs, then we obviously need to revise our typography..."

In other typography news:

• A new tutorial promises to teach everything about text in Photoshop. [Via]  I haven't probed & can't vouch for its quality.  For more tips, see my 12 Tips for Photoshop Text, which Russell Brown demos & expands upon in this video.
• Jenny Beorkrem makes very cool typographical posters of cities. [Via]
• Rob Rohan talks about Nciku, a tool that enables you to look up Chinese characters by drawing them. [Via]
• Eric Gill: great typographer, reeeal sketchy dude.  I think I'm going to be raising an eyebrow at BBC posters for a while. [Via]
• Jon Tan has put together the Web Fonts Test Suite, useful for seeing the core Web fonts set with varying sizes/styles.   (Baskerville sure has a pretty italic ampersand.)
• Depending on your political leaning, you might enjoy this little bit of typesetting.  (Well, you might just enjoy the clever design treatment in any case.)
  

December 07, 2007

Flash/Amazon-powered typography & more

• Yugo Nakamura & Keita Kitamura's Amazetype uses Amazon Web services to spell out artists' names using pieces of their work.  Here's an example done for "the Beatles".  [Via Miguel Marcos]
• Marian Bantjes has drawn up a lovely influence map, cataloging the contributors to her style.
• Pentagram's offering a neat-looking wall calendar.  If calendars are up your alley, see also Massimo Vignelli's inexplicably beloved (?) Stendig calendar. (Beware the pompous accompanying copy.)  [Via]
• I love the simplicity of The Italic Poster. [Via]
• I feel like pouring one out in mourning for Zapfino, the latest once-lovely typeface to get pummeled by every hack within range of a computer.  (Did it get bundled into CorelDRAW or something? >;-))  In its place, I quietly suggest Alejandro Paul’s Affair typeface (the same one seen in that Swash belt buckle).
• BMW uses a thousand words to describe everything but the driving experience.
• Paula Scher's beautifully type-heavy paintings are on display in NYC. [Via]
• Flickr hosts a set of images showing spelling via body parts (nothing NSFW, mind you).   [Via Miguel Marcos]
• I don't speak Japanese, but that doesn't dilute the impact of this text-centric poster on global warming. [Via]

November 30, 2007

Friday Typography: Killer belt buckles & more

• Swash, meet buckle: Veer offers a kickass belt fastener.  If that's up your alley, see also their type-spattered umbrella.
• Terri Stone of CreativePro.com has uncovered a number of fun, time-wasting type tools:
  • TYPEflake* lets you create snowflakes using letters, then email the results.
  • The Cake Writing Generator lays down your words in icing.
  • DanceWriter spells things out using bodies in motion.
• Speaking of bodies-as-type, peep Hijack Your Life's Hand typography. [Via]
• Interested in cool hand-drawn type?  Check out WMMNA's Hand Job review, with samples.
• Dig the old-school broadsheet sensibility of this White Mischief poster, and the hacked-up negative space on the Howl cover.
• Creative Techs talk about dealing with issues related to Helvetica in OS X Leopard.  [Via Lynn Grillo]
• The Type Directors Club has put out a call for entries for new goodness.
• The latest edition of Type Talk covers proofreaders' marks and other tweaky but potentially interesting bits.
• Mentioned earlier in the week, the Adobe Design Center featuers an article on typographic design with Photoshop
  

October 26, 2007

Friday typography: Leopards, Ketels, & more

• Veerle's got a tutorial on replicating OS X Leopard's "inset text" effect via Photoshop & Illustrator. [Via]
• Typographica talks about embedded Web fonts . "The fonts you’re allowed to embed legally aren't worth using; the fonts that are worth using aren't embeddable." [Via]
• Thorsten Wulff's posted a video interview with Gary Hustwit, director of "Helvetica." Speaking of that famous face, check out the Helvetica Mug.  See also Douglas Coupland's thoughts on Helvetica.
• The Washington Post comments on those text-only Ketel One ads. "My dad started crying, I started crying, my brother started crying," says Carl Nolet Jr., who sounds on the phone like he's not kidding. "It was exactly what we wanted to say. It was simple, it was black and white, it was genuine."
• Shotgun Magazine features a tutorial on creating a cool slow shutter text effect in Photoshop. [Via]
• On CreativePro.com, Ilene Strizver's posted a variety of good tips for working with text in InDesign and Quark.
• Michael Perry loves hand-drawn type & has given his collection a salty name.

October 08, 2007

Thug fonts, Queequeg, Elvish, & more

Amidst this whole non-stop Flash fest, let's clear the palette with a little typography:

• Call him Quinnqueg: Justin Quinn's typographic art (more here) is inspired by the doomed obsessiveness found in Moby-Dick: "By repeating a spiraling, swirling labyrinthian structure, Quinn places himself in the role of Ahab who continually redraws his charts which travel nowhere and only to go into themselves."  Oh, and he uses only the letter E. [Via]
• It's a typographic neutron bomb: Nike France zaps the person, leaving only artifacts & letters.
• The clean, curvaceous strokes of Marian Bantjes swirl through a whole campaign for Saks. [Via Maria Brenny]
• Dig the striking type & art direction in The Economist's latest campaign.
• In Dr. Copperplate & Mr. Gothic, Armin Vit ponders good uses of the often-abused Copperplate Gothic. [Via]
• LL Tipografia offers some tasty wares; love the little running man in LL SanSiro.
• To create Ballers Delight, Mr. Chank Diesel led 50 workshop participants through some old-fashioned arts & crafts: "Each individual letter was constructed out of beads and gems on small canvas boards measuring 5"x7". Letters were then photographed and the resulting pics were used for making a thuggish new grunge font with a big hip-hop influence."
• Speaking of grunge fonts, check out StereoType's "Bagpack." [Via]
• If you've been needing Elvish fonts (it's okay--you know who you are), DaFont's got your back. [Via]
  

September 23, 2007

*Bahw-tchika-WAhow* typography

"When I hear 'The 70's', I reach for my gun..."

I picked up a 1974 Car & Driver at a vintage goods store a few years ago, and after thumbing through the pages, I wanted to put my head in an oven.  Honestly, I have to thank my parents for letting me miss most of that godforsaken decade, beset as it was by Bookman Swash, brownness, and gas shortages.

Ah, but maybe things weren't quite that bad.  Gene Gable presents a tour of 70's typography*, showing the ways that evolving technology enabled new type treatments.  Check out part 2 for more horrific excellence.

In the vein of type treatments that cry out for a greasy bass line (or maybe an acid rock riff), peep these others I've stumbled across:

• Oscar Wilson; more here.
• Eduardo Recife [Via]
• The Tagtool blog ("Una noche de raw beats!")
• Wu-Tang Clan, as rendered for Scion

September 20, 2007

Typography: Of Highways & Hell

Time for another typographic gathering:

• The NYT includes a really interesting piece about the development of Clearview, a new typeface for road signs.  Typographica.org has a bit more.  (Tangentially related at best, but fun: Something Awful features a Photoshop contest for creating offbeat road signs.  Viva the Invincible Moose! [Via])
• Adobe has announced Font Folio 11, offering more than 2,300 fonts from the Adobe Type Library in OpenType format, includes 176 new fonts.  Here's more info.
• CreativePro.com's got tips on importing text into various Adobe apps.
• The past:
  • Sam Potts points out cool antique trunk labels. [Via]
  • Jon Hicks notes a vintage Typography photo set on Flickr.[Via]
  • John Downer, creator of the great Brothers typeface, has produced the similarly sturdy Iowan.
• The future:
  • Wired's Geekdad section talks about how to help kids make their own fonts.
  • The subtly curvaceous Subtil has won the Type Directors Club 2007 competition. [Via]
  • Comic Sans is not your friend; thus spake John Stossel on graphic design [Via Anne-Marie Concepcion]
• The quick:
  • Dave Shea has gathered nice examples of type in motion.  Dig the Ocean's 11 one in particular. [Via]
• The dead:
  • Skull-a-day blog has posted a groovy (and not so hellish) free skull font. [Via]
    

August 31, 2007

Superheroic typography

• Sam Potts sets cool type ("All projects 100% Times Roman-free," he promises).  Check out his designs for pal John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise; the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.; and more.  Sam was kind enough to let me pick his brain at his studio in NY last week.  While we were talking, a shipment of Gmund paper (made in Germany from recycled beer bottle labels) arrived. "I'll sleep with this paper," he said, "if it'll have me..." [Via Maria Brenny]
• Giant typography as high school prank: The students of Davidson punk rivals Darby via sabotaged flip cards. The stunt echoes the Great Rose Bowl Hoax of 1961.
• Take care when you rotate type, or you might end up with something like the WTF Mac Store. [Via].  Elsewhere in the Dept. of Signs Begging to be Misread, my wife remembers two signs in stairwell in Seattle right next to one another: one for "Gary's Den" (the words stacked) and the other for "Rage" (some sort of boutique). With no distinction in background color it read as "Gary's Rage Den". "Every single time I stood in line at the Neptune," she says, "I replayed the same line of questioning in my head about angry, angry Gary and his need for a Rage Den."
• A bit of historical fun: the NYT features an image of the Women's Typographical Union aboard a float in 1908.
• FontShop's magazine devoted to all things typographic has a new issue, Font 006, cruising through the snail mail system.  Previous issues are online on the site. [Via]
• Steve Patterson has produced a nice, approachable tutorial on creating faux 3D text in Photoshop.  The cheese factor is refreshingly low.
• Typographica list their Favorite Fonts of 2006. [Via]
  

August 01, 2007

More gigantic typography

• 6,272 Post-It notes form a giant, editable "TO DO" on windows in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood.  Passersby are invited to jot their own to-do lists on the notes.  I love it.  (Consider this "Solve Gordian knot of ever-increasing power & complexity in Photoshop; also buy new shoelaces," written in absentia.)   More photos of the work are on Flickr.
• In her Type the Sky project, Lisa Reinermann captures buildings that form letters against the sky, creating a photographic font.  [Via]
• For more big letters, see previous type entries filed under Enormousness.
  

July 25, 2007

New typographical goodness

• In Words Are Pictures, Craig Ward creates beautiful type treatments.  I especially like his A-Z ligatures and Lucha Libre. [Via]
• The Photoshop Roadmap blog pulls together tutorials for The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web.  "This guide includes 78 Photoshop tutorials and 2 impressive collections of Photoshop Actions, plus 3 books on the subject." [Via]
• Digital Arts features a tutorial on making 3D type using Photoshop plus a 3D app.  I continue to look forward to a developer packaging simple 3D creation tools (extrusion, lighting, warping, etc.) as a plug-in for Photoshop Extended, so that all this stuff can be done in one place while staying re-editable. [Via]
• Type purists might squirm a bit, but Macworld offers advice on bulking up your font collection quickly & affordably.

July 10, 2007

This font goes to 10,116pt.

• The designers at Pentagram talk about how they created a giant NY Times logo (10,116-point Fraktur) for the publisher's new headquarters.  Interestingly, each letter is comprised of numerous small, three-dimensional "beaks" that enhance the sign's visibility from the street.  [Via]
• How about lettering via "military-like technology for criminal mischief"?  We Make Money Not Art hosts an interview with the Institute for Applied Autonomy.  Their Streetwriter is a giant printer disguised as a cargo van, while GraffitiWriter offers radio-controlled pranking:
  

  "Studies have shown that in nearly 100% of the cases, a given agent of the public will willing participate in high profile acts of vandalism, given the opportunity to do so via mediated tele-robotic technology."

• From the Ministry of Silly Type Tricks: Flip text using Unicode. [Via]
• Graffiti artist "Eine" has painted a set of very cool East End Shopfront Letters. They can be assembled into words via this little app. [Via]

[Update: In response to Ramón Castañeda's comment below, Thomas Phinney replies, "Ramón is right. Fraktur typefaces usually have a forked top to the ascenders (h, k, etc.), more curves in the lowercase (less rigidly hexagonal shapes than Textura), and all (not just some) of the caps will have curvy or squiggly shapes replacing vertical lines.  This page even shows the NYT logo among the Textura samples, an unexpected bonus).  Not that I think this is a big deal, by the way. If the worst typographic errors we have to worry about were people confusing different styles of blackletter, we'd be in pretty good shape. :)"]

July 01, 2007

Sunday typography

• Cartype is "a comprehensive collection of reviews and study of typographical applications of emblems, car company logos and car logos."  I love the richness of visual & historical detail (e.g. check out the Alfa Romeo page).  Semi-related/previous: Logotypes.ru, which offers downloadable vector logos (perfect for tattoo-making ;-)).
• Russell Brown has created a "Dancing with Type" tutorial, showing how to wring some good stuff out of Photoshop's type-on-a-path features.  (Forgot about those, did you?  Everyone does!)  Previously: Russell's 16 Tips for Photoshop Type.
• This "Claire/Dave" ambigram is really nicely executed.
• The Yazigi Language School promotes itself through drawings made from text.
• With Blaktur you can almost taste the blood sausage. [Via]
• Type foundry Tiro (featured in the latest Adobe Magazine) offers a beautiful specimen sheet of their lovely Plantagenet face.
• For hot T's-on-tee's action, check out Skreened's shirts. [Via]
  

June 15, 2007

Friday Design: Booze, kids, and cutlery

• Urging responsible driving, Saab illustrates the effects of alcohol on one's attentiveness.  Working towards the same objective, Guiness tries blurred beverages & scrambled type.
• Check out Jamie Wieck's "Decisions, Decisions" flowchart, derived from his hatred of restaurant rules. [Via]  Jamie has also made a super-cool business card that blooms.  Jung von Matt has created something similar, a b-card for a landscape architecture firm that blooms into a little garden. [Via]
• Chronically short on utensils?  Consider carrying punch-out cutlery as a business card. [Via]  See also lockpicks as business card.
• Speaking of business cards, Creative Bits hosts very cool examples; see also this collection on Flickr.  I dig Scott Ott's creation, and I'm glad to see the Chopping Block get a nod.  (Their collateral includes "Chop Sticks," stickers useful for adding a nicely chopped notch to just about any surface.) [Via]
• Cookiemag features options for commissioning interesting portraits of kids. [Via]
• Photoshop user researcher Julie Baher spoke in an AIGA conference in Nashville a couple of weeks ago & says a highlight of the trip was Hatch Show Prints gallery.  These guys have been kicking out the letterpress jams since 1879.

June 03, 2007

Typography: Tats, comics, & more

• On Slate, famous authors discuss their favorite fonts.  As expected, they can wax entertainly rhapsodic about typefaces.  But Courier?  Yes, well, I guess it's not distracting anyone with its raw beauty.
• Thomas Phinney has posted tons of info from the recent TypoTechnica conference, including Adobe's presentations at the show.
• Body Type catalogs "intimate messages etched in flesh." [Via]
• The latest installment of TypeTalk offers useful tips on word spacing, unit differences between Quark & InDesign, and more.
• Kerrang! Dig a whole site's worth of Comic Book Fonts. [Via]
• Ever wonder what typeface a particular company uses?  Here's a handy list.  One addition from personal experience: British Airways uses Mylius.  (Of course, the list being a Wiki, I should probably just add that...) [Via]
  

May 15, 2007

Web type that doesn't suck, Historic typography, & more

• Beautiful type specimen books from the 1920's appear in this Flickr photo set. [Via]
• Tiny type--from cuneiform tablets to spies' microdots--is on display in Cabinet Magazine's A Minor History of Miniature Writing [Via]
• Michael Bierut offers Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface, naming various ways to choose the right font. [Via]
• Aiming to make Web typography suck less, Jon Hicks (designer of the Firefox logo, among other things) has created a quick, useful primer on Web type. He's provided related links as well.

May 09, 2007

Type as image, color workflows, & more in Design Center

The Adobe Design Center shakes the bottle & lets some new content spray:

New Dialog Box:

• Type is image by Paula Scher

• Color workflows for Adobe Creative Suite 3 by Adobe
• Transparency in Adobe Applications by Adobe
• A Designer's Guide to Transparency for Print Output by Adobe
• Remove spots from an image in Photoshop Lightroom by Matt Kloskowski
• Organizing a local site in Dreamweaver by David Karlins
• Building a video player with Flash by R Blank
• Creating nested sequences with Premiere Pro by Terry Nauheim
  

And as always, don't forget to check out the Adobe links on del.icio.us. Info on how to contribute links is here.  [Via]

May 03, 2007

Type bits: What fonts come with CS3; Why Web type sucks; more

Time for another round up of interesting typographical bits:

• Creative Suite 3 ships with quite a few fonts.  Thomas Phinney lists 'em here.
• The type designers at Vier5 are adamant that "you cannot work with modern pictures and at the same time use the typefaces of the last 50 years. The time for these typefaces is gone," and that only their new designs will suffice. The commentariat at Design Observer promptly takes 'em to the woodshed.
• I came across a short & interesting video on letterpress printing--worth a look despite the terribly mannered speaking style. [Via]
• A panel discussion at SXSW is captured in this podcast on why "Web typography sucks" [Via] . [Update: the presentation slides are here (thanks, Thomas).]
• Hoping to counter the suckage, CSS Zen Garden presents Tips for Timeless Type . It's funny: we've come so far from when I started on the Web (tsk tsking at print designers who asked me to change the leading of body copy), and yet I still can't get the point sizes on this blog to look consistent in Firefox vs. Safari & IE.
• CreativePro features a piece about opening up to OpenType--leveraging the power of this very rich format.  Scroll to the bottom for a quick visual demo of the power of alternate characters in punching up a type treatment--something I put to good (hopefully not gratuitous) use on the programs for our wedding.
• Ever wonder what comic book onomatopoeia would look like in Arabic?  (Who hasn't, I know.) Wonder no more. [Via]
  
• The edict not to "risk sounding ridiculous" in various languages is illustrated through word balloons.  Hopefully when me talk German one day, I sounded a bit better than this. [Via Dirk Meyer]
• Think setting type on a computer can be a drag? Your ancestors faced tuberculosis & lead poisoning, not to mention death by Grape-Nuts.

March 24, 2007

Fruity typographic goodness

In the wake of those great nautical posters, check out this collection of historic fruit crate art. It's tough to name faves, though I really like Dynamo Apples and these double A's & arrow.  I suppose Gay Johnny would resonate a little differently nowdays, though. [Via]

On an unrelated typographic note, if you're having trouble identifying a font, you might find this Flickr group useful. [Via] Oh, and see also What The Font.  (Me, I just cheat and bug Tom Phinney ("I'll trade you a Glyphs palette for six correct font ID's...").)

March 18, 2007

Font of the Ancient Mariner; more

//na// Savory type bits:

• Flickr is hosting a collection of 19th-century shipping posters, decked out in beautiful typography.  I wonder whether the Kingfisher (most thrilling billed?) knows this "15ft penguin." [Via]
• The AdGoodness blog spied a neat ambiform DND sign.  (More on ambigrams is here).
• "Akzidenz Grotesk, you've got me possessed..."  Eh, clearly, to the point of someone making a video complete with custom sountrack.  Personally, I'm holding out for an ode to Officina. [Via] (See also the Helvetica Movie.)
• Update: Those math-y Google nerds aren't the only ones who can geek out hard with a recruiting ad: the folks at Lunar BBDO took a chance by typesetting posters in a dingbat font.  Check out the story for more examples of their work, and scroll to the end for a little challenge.
  

February 27, 2007

What does Marcellus Wallace look like?

That's the question on Sam Jackson's mind in this little (and profane) typographic study.  See also a second, apparently independent take on the same idea. [Via]  On other typographic notes:

• Julien Vallee does distressed letters in this little stop-motion piece. [Via]
• Should you ever need to get your M*A*S*H on, here's a useful collection of free stencil fonts. [Via]
• By the way, some folks have been meaning to ask: what kind of font are you?
• The latest CreativePro.com type column covers some good basics (widows & orphans, InDesign's composition options, making Open Type fonts, etc.).
• See the typography category here for many more bits.
  

January 25, 2007

Mo' betta tips for Photoshop type

Author & Photoshop TV personality Dave Cross shares a wealth of tips for working with text in Photoshop in a 10-page PDF on CreativePro.com.   The chapter (excerpted from Dave's book) gives succinct answers to a variety of questions (how to fill type with a texture, how to insert a copyright symbol, when to update type layers, etc.) and should be worth printing out for future reference.

For more tips, see my 12 Tips for Photoshop Text, which Russell Brown demos & expands upon in this video.  For more type bits, see the Typography category of this blog.  And while I've got your ear:

• Veer says, "Next time you have to explain kerning to a layman, you’ll have a live demo just a zip away"--and with the sweater they're offering, they're right.   Nice. :-)
• CreativePro has also launched TypeTalk, a monthly Q&A on typography.  If you wonder things like which direction the apostrophe should face before "'70's," for example--and yes, I do--the column should be a good read.

January 03, 2007

Typography laid bare

• PingMag discusses the origins, history, and state of Iranian typography & provides numerous beautiful examples.  I dig these two in particular.
• Taylor Lane has created a series of typographic pinups (fair warning: there's some glyph-heavy nekkidness). [Via Marc Pawliger]
• In an inverse vein (not pictures made from letters, but letters from pictures), Giornale Nuovo offers a brief history of figurative alphabets. [Via]
• Joshua Smith has posted a gallery of cool type treatments (including his own logotype) on Hydro74.  The rest of his site is worth a visit for dynamite illustrations & more. [Via]
• Type for you is a new typography blog, containing links to useful resources like Typies' 15 tips to choose a good text type. [Via]

November 18, 2006

Biggest. Typography. Ever.

• geoGreeting leverages Google Maps, letting you assemble animated greetings by using satellite photos of letter-shaped buildings.  Ridiculous!  Check it out! [Via]
• Along vaguely similar lines, FireHorse Studio has fun with lettering in a 15 second teaser trailer for Toyota. [Via]
  

October 10, 2006

Fresh typographic action

• The Urban Typography Project features limited edition letterpress prints depicting some of Salt Lake City's vintage signs.
• The Tiffin Directory looks fresh and contemporary--not bad for a catalog from 1922.
• Fiodor Sumkin is back with more good action.
• Buffet Script is just lovely (and a guy can't use Zapfino all the time). [Via]
• James Clar makes 3D Display Cubes that each use 1000 LEDs to create 3D forms and animations. Each one runs a cool $3,000, but they sure are pretty, and the site offers a tutorial for designing 3D content in Photoshop. [Via]
• LOST is a typographical triptych, moving letterforms meant to be played across three adjacent monitors. [Via]

August 21, 2006

Letters del Fuego; Catch Me If You Can

August 15, 2006

Mo' fresh type

• I love the old-school poster art quality of these new Toyota ads. (And if you like that style & have a bun in the oven, pay a visit to Rattle-n-Roll.)
• Who would commit the lyrics of LL Cool J to gouache & watercolor? Ray Fenwick would, among many other things. See also his great Flickr collection. [Via]
• BibliOdyssey displays some gorgeous Arabic zoomorphic calligraphy. The entry links to numerous related resources & examples.
• Misprinted Type offers a variety of free & commercial distressed type. (I might have to crack the wallet for Great Circus). [Via]
• If the graffiti thing is up your alley (or under your graffiti bridge), check out the work of Hand Selecta.
• Launched in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the typeface, Helvetica is "a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture." I think I'd sneak into this one wearing a trenchcoat and shades, lest my true design-dorkishness show through. [Via]
• On Daily Type, a group of Russian type designers post sketches of their latest works-in-progress. I like the kind of hand-drawn, back-of-Trapper-Keeper "Van Halen Rulez!!" quality of many of the pieces.

July 17, 2006

The Joy of Text

Being kind of textually fixated these days, I thought I'd share some good type-related resources I've encountered lately:

• Russell Brown has created a video that demonstrates the 12 Photoshop text tips I posted earlier (plus four more).
  
• Veerle shows off how to create some handsome lettering effects using Illustrator art brushes & the dark, mysterious Appearance palette.
  
• The Playground showcases various artists creating complete, downloadable letter sets using everything from banana peels to world leaders to... well, you'll see. [Via]
  
• Erik Spiekermann, author (among many other things) of the classic handbook Stop Stealing Sheep, gives PingMag an interesting interview, covering everything from the creation of corporate typefaces to the development of a new screen font for Nokia. Erik has also started his own blog.
  
• Design Melt Down surveys cool typography on the Web, while IHT charts the creation and rise of Georgia.
  
• CreativePro.com offers for a variety of tips for finding & previewing fonts online, converting fonts to OpenType, previewing Web fonts, and more.
  
• Emigre's Typetease lets you set whatever characters you'd like using their online catalog--everything from the chunky O Brother, Where Art Thou face to the piratical Sabbath Black.
  
• Chank Diesel makes all kinds of good fonts, including numerous cool free ones. (Dig Newcastle!)
  
• DAIRY is a font of sorts--just one that spells out your text using milk crates.
  
• Is there really a Cyrillic "Ж" in the Declaration of Independence? Apparently so. (Why doesn't English a character half so badass?)
  
• In For All Seasons, Andreas Müller sets type in beautiful motion. (Don't let the need to download the file put you off; the full-screen effect works nicely.)
  
• House Industries makes a font comprised of trendy silhouettes. (See also silhouettes from Tech Vector.)
  
• [Updates: Colin Smith demonstrates how to make Superman-ly text in Photoshop, and Todd Dominey points out the very cool Cargo stencil font.]
  

Great lettering & happy accidents, inside Illustrator & out

Not long ago I came across the excellent hand lettering of Fiodor Sumkin. I love the intricacy with which he fits characters and shading to various shapes. [Via]

In particular, his drawing of these hands got me thinking about the enveloping functions in Illustrator. Click this image for a quick overview of how to fit type to shapes:

Using these techniques, I set out to emulate Sumkin's work. First I traced the outline of one of his hands in Illustrator, then blocked out a number of regions. The Pencil tool works well for this, as does a Wacom tablet. The result was a skeleton for the next steps:

Then, needing to turn each region into a solid object, I copied and pasted all the paths into Flash, broke things apart, and then used the paint bucket to block them in. I probably could have used the Illustrator Pathfinder tools and/or the new Live Paint features, but old habits die hard, and I knew I could get what I needed from Flash:

At that point I copied and pasted everything back into Illustrator, then picked a font that seemed likely to fill the shapes nicely--in this case Adobe's 60's-style Mojo. Using the text "Word Hypnotize" and the enveloping technique described above, I got... this (click for a larger version):

Hmmph--it's nothing like Sumkin's lettering, and were I to try harder to emulate it, I think I'd fit each chunk of text to an envelope mesh, then use the various mesh, path, and warp tools to deform it as necessary. But you know, I kind of like the sinuous, abstract quality that resulted--a bit as if Slim Goodbody dipped his hand in an inkwell.

So, there's my little happy accident o' the day. Software generally makes it pretty easy to repeat the same steps over and over, so I'm glad to experience a little serendipity & creative destruction now and then.

By the way, Sumkin's lettering reminds me a touch of Marta Monteiro's, and for more cool lettering, you might check out Rodney White (overview/gallery). Oh, and tangentially related (at best): the look of the hand I made slightly reminds me of WWI-era Cubist ship camouflage. [Via]

June 21, 2006

12 Tips for Photoshop Text

This is one of those blog entries that start innocently enough, but which quickly become War and Peace in length. But take a second to scan it quickly if you find yourself setting text in Photoshop. Some of the tips will be familiar, but I'll bet that others will strike you as new.

[Update: Photoshop Grand Master Russell Brown has now created a video to show off these tips--plus four more, just to outdo me!]

1. Photoshop CS2 added a WYSIWYG font menu, so that you can preview fonts before applying them. But what if you want to cycle through fonts on the document itself? Select the name of the current typeface in the Options Bar, then hit the Up and Down arrow keys. That'll cycle through the available fonts on your system.^*
   
2. If you find that you're setting the same style of text repeatedly (e.g. Times New Roman 12pt underlined, no anti-aliasing), create a Type tool preset. Click the tool preset icon (you know, that thing no one clicks in the upper-left corner), click the New Preset button, and you'll record all your current font parameters. (This works with nearly all tools, by the way.)
   
3. It's now much easier to change the settings for multiple text layers at once in CS2. Select the layers you want (Shift-click in the Layers menu to select a range, or Cmd (Mac)/Ctrl (Win)-click to select non-adjacent layers. Any changes you make to the font settings will apply to all selected layers. If you're working with CS1 or earlier, this still works, but it's a little more hidden: link together the layers you want to change, then hold Shift before changing the text properties.
   
4. If you want to curse less, hit Cmd-Return (Mac)/Ctrl-Return (Win) when you're done setting a line of text. That way, instead of adding a line break (Return), Photoshop will commit the text edit.
   
5. If you're setting paragraphs of text in Photoshop (e.g. comping up Web pages), and if the process consists of "type type type RETURN, type type type RETURN"--please, for the sake of your sanity, stop! You can simply click with the Type tool, then drag to create a text box (like this). This way, if you need to modify the dimensions of the text box, you don't end up deleting & reseting tons of hard returns.
   
6. Okay, that's cool, but what if you want to fill not just a box, but some irregular shape? Draw your shape with the Pen tool (making sure to have it set to draw paths), then hover near the inside of it with the Type tool. The cursor will change & you'll be able to type inside the path, like this. What's particularly nice is that the path & text stay editable, meaning that if you adjust the path, the text will reflow automatically.
   
7. Similarly, you can set text along a path. Draw the path, then use the Type tool to click near the outside of the path. Et voilá--text on a path in Photoshop.
   
8. Starting in Photoshop 6, it's been possible to warp text by clicking the warp button on the Options Bar. Clicking it presents a range of options for warping type while keeping it editable. But did you know...
   
   • You can animate text warps. After creating a warp, create a second frame, change the warp, and hit the Tween button on the Animation palette. Boom--you've got something like this (but hopefully way less cheesy).
     
   • For more warping control of text, first convert the text into to a Smart Object (choose Layer->Smart Objects->Group Into New Smart Object). This provides two main advantages: you can apply a custom warp (pushing and pulling it freely, like this), and you can warp multiple text layers as a single unit. (Downside: you can't animate a warp applied to a Smart Object.)
9. Illustrator CS2 has added a bunch of kickass typography tools--a good deal richer than what Photoshop offers. But because Illustrator now shares a type engine with Photoshop, you can set text in Illustrator using features like the Glyphs & Open Type palettes, then copy the text, paste it in Photoshop, and keep it fully editable. (Just make sure you select the letters in Illustrator, rather than the whole text object, before copying, and that you've clicked with the Type tool in Photoshop before pasting.) Or, if you have a lot of text in Illustrator, try exporting a PSD file (via File->Export). The amount that can be preserved--including text on a path & text in a shape--is pretty amazing.
   
10. Don't blindly trust any program's letter spacing. Take a minute to make sure your text looks decent, and adjust the kerning when letters pairs are too tight or loose. (Click between the letters, then Opt (Mac)/Alt (Win) + left/right arrow to adjust the kerning.) You may also want to see Geoff Stearns' tips on setting good Web-res type. (The default settings for print-res work may not deliver the best results at 72dpi, and vice versa.)
    
11. Hold down the Cmd (Mac)/Ctrl (Win) key while you're working on a line of text. This will let you reposition the text on the layer, without first having to commit your edit.
    
12. To select an entire string of text (everything on a layer), double click the layer's thumbnail in the Layers palette.

Whew--hopefully some of that will prove useful to you. I'm sure I've forgotten some tips, so I may come back and update the entry later. If you've found tricks you find useful, please add them via the comments.

^* If you plan to do this often, you might want to go into Photoshop preferences and raise the number of undos, since each change of font counts as an undoable step.)

January 22, 2006

Words at Play

Typography + animation come together beautifully in Words At Play, the companion site to Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich & Matteo Bologna's book of the same name. The project, a "many-splendored, multi-layered typographic tour d'amour," showcases de Vicq's typographic portraits of 21 renowned writers (plus Al Capone and Napoleon Bonaparte). After snagging a pair of Webby awards, the site is up for the People's Choice award at next month's Flashforward. It's got my vote.

Words at Play was built by animating type in After Effects, then exporting keyframes to Adobe LiveMotion as XML (.amx). As it happens, I've seen speculation recently about Adobe resurrecting LiveMotion. That strikes me as quite unlikely, but there were some cool concepts (e.g. data exchange via XML, animation applied via styles) that I'd love to see revisited.

If you like Words At Play, check out Roberto's earlier Bembo Zoo, an abecedary featuring animals drawn in letters [Via]. These guys also did a terrific portrait of Adobe co-founder John Warnock, using the Warnock Pro font created in his honor. (Random aside: I also found a portrait of Dr. Warnock rendered in PostScript, the language he invented.)

Tangentially related:

• I'm captivated by the typographic paintings of Paula Scher [Via]. She discusses her work in the video Adobe commissioned from Hillman Curtis.
• TYPEDRAWiNG uses Flash to enable drawing with letters.