Category Archives: Typography

Legibility

This blog has been skinned with a number of themes over the last year. Thus far, none have focused on that which I value most: legibility. I think its time to do something.
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A Thing of Beauty

ilt, from Ale Paul's Feel Script

(ilt.end, from Feel Script by Ale Paul/​Sudtipos.)

There is always a bit of a voyeuris­tic thrill when look­ing at a thing of beauty such as this. I hold a great deal of respect and admi­ra­tion for the work of Ale­jan­dro Paul and Sudti­pos, and am look­ing for­ward to the launch of Adiós Script, which I hope to be able to write about in depth once I get my hands on it.

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Variations on a Theme

Paperfont

Paper­font for Neo2 mag­a­zine. Cus­tom type for every issue by Ipsum Planet.
Folded Paper

Folded Paper by Daniella Spinat.
Folded-Font

Folded-​​Font in stan­dard A4 paper by Vienna’s BUSK, via Let­ter­Cult.
Fold Font

Fold Font, by James Machin.
The Folded

The Folded, by Anton Studer for Neo2 magazine.

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Hello, Mister Kafka

(FF Mis­ter K spec­i­men, from Font­Font on Behance.)

Sadly, infor­ma­tion online regard­ing Julia Sys­mäläi­nen‘s FF Mis­ter K—beyond regur­gi­tat­ing the orig­i­nal press release—appears sparse, save for an excel­lent post on the Font Feed. The abridged ver­sion: Ms. Sys­mäläi­nen, of eden­spiek­er­mann, struck by the grace of Franz Kafka’s hand­writ­ing has dig­i­tized the script for our enjoy­ment. The fam­ily con­sists of three faces, Reg­u­lar, Onstage and Crossout, each with exten­sive lig­a­tures and alternates.

Please take this as fur­ther evi­dence of my grow­ing love affair with Open­Type hand­writ­ing faces.

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Job Security? Become a Pressman

Print­ing as a voca­tion attracts many young and women, because it offers real oppor­tu­ni­ties for steady work, good pay and advancement.

Job secu­rity, sta­ble earn­ings. Sounds good. Per­haps you’d like to cross-​​train on a Lino­type machine.

For the record, I think about this line of edu­ca­tion every day.

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No Letter Is An Island

Type sample by Luciano Perondi.

Type sample by Luciano Perondi.

Regard­ing the design of char­ac­ters, I believe it is espe­cially essen­tial to do so by hand, where one can observe the cal­li­graphic char­ac­ter. […Work­ing dig­i­tally] lim­its of the very vision of the designer. In any case I believe that the design of char­ac­ters is a com­plex issue and should be [evo­lu­tion­ary, so as] not to over-​​design. In design­ing courses I choose a spe­cific topic, but very wide and with just a mod­er­ate amount of restric­tions and para­me­ters to be met, because vio­lat­ing the rules is eas­ier than cre­at­ing alone, and the most orig­i­nal fol­low the oppo­site path. [–Trans­la­tion via Google, with some cleanup. Orig­i­nal.]

I’ve spent the evening search­ing and turned up very lit­tle English-​​language infor­ma­tion on this face, much less exam­ples in use. Com­mis­sioned by the Uni­ver­sità Iuav di Venezia, and designed by Luciano Per­ondi in 2004 for use in Venice’s wayfind­ing sys­tems, it’s not read­ily appar­ent to me if this face was ever actively used for way­far­ing in the pub­lic realm. That said, I’m awfully enam­oured with Min­io­type‘s char­ac­ter at large sizes, and sur­pris­ingly del­i­cate grace when set small.

We think of signs–the task is to bring a per­son from one place to another but can be [visu­ally] very strong, even evoca­tive. Per­haps we need to reas­sure the user of a dan­ger, or sim­ply make them feel com­fort­able in an ele­gant place. [These are] mes­sages that are not attrib­ut­able solely to writ­ing, but also to a form of rhetoric of another type; a

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