typography

For the Love of Letters

‘For The Love of Letters’ is the newest show at Big Table Studio and opens this Friday evening (Sept. 7, 2012) at 7:00 pm. It will feature the work of a dozen artists including Andy Powell, Annie Donegan, Bill Ferenc, Bill Moran, Chank Diesel, Jamie Paul, Jesse Lindhorts, Jon Forss, Kelly Perlick, Namdev HardistyNick Zdon and Todd Zerger. You should totally go! RSVP via Facebook if that’s your thing. Either way, hope to see you there. Below is the show poster designed by Evie Moran. Our poster is here.

For Interactive Types

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If you’ve seen enough Arial, Times and Verdana to last a lifetime I’m happy to report that more progress is being made on improving the typographic experience online. Google has joined the open source type crusade with the launch of Google Font Directory. While still in beta part of Google’s effort includes standardizing the experience of type across browsers which means not only readers will benefit but developers have something to fall in love with as well. For more on this topic also see post: The League of Movable Type.

& Another Thing…

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The word “and” is the equivalent of verbal synergy. Granted I am guilty of being long winded at times and of lovingly constructing many a run on sentence. But, I love the word and for the way it smoothly links two ideas together in some sort of interesting relationship that just seems to go beyond what each of those thoughts could have accomplished on their own. Strange then that I rarely use an ampersand. If you’re like me and feel a need to redeem yourself to the typography gods or if you’re already a true believer in the mighty ampersand then you’ll want to take a virtual stroll over to the website 300&65. As you can already guess this site presents a different ampersand for each and everyday of the year… even on bank holidays.

The League of Moveable Type

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I have nothing against the traditional type foundries (I’ll feature some of them soon so everyone gets equal time) but The League of Moveable Type has jumped on the open source movement in an exciting fashion. They have a nice manifesto worth taking a moment to read. Unquestioningly good type can be quite expensive and questionable type can often be had for free so it is exciting to see someone fill a niche in the middle. It’s a smart move because most design project budgets live in that same middle niche – that’s why microstock like istockphoto has found success. For many smaller clients the cost of higher quality resources like photography and type are often out of reach and as a result end up not being addressed or worse used illegally. The idea is that with access to lower cost yet good quality resources clients and designers alike get hooked, build respect for the tools and move up as soon as they can afford to do so.

I do a lot of work in that middle niche. Well meaning clients who want good design that helps their business succeed. What is exciting about The League of Moveable Type is that they are interested in expanding our ability to spec type online instead of being limited to Arial, Times or whatever else the visitor’s computer has. Instead the designer could host the type which would be transmitted with the design (sort of like pdf files do) so I’m interested to see the landscape change in this regard without over-abusing the talented people behind professional, rights managed resources – but change can be tricky.

The desktop publishing revolution that many of us lived through did not kill off high quality design. On the contrary it became more valuable and recognizable in a market place awash in the cheep software generated lost dog flyers of the early days. But look at the situation now. The web is full of really great creativity – generated cottage industry style by talented creatives with something to share who may not have the kind of fancy agency gig that was once required to access the tools needed. Similarly I don’t believe microstock or open source type will kill off the high quality type foundries. Helvetica isn’t going the way of the dinosaurs. Probably quite the contrary but like all revolutions things will change.