SteveMacKley design

The incomparable Gerrit Noordzij visited TypeMedia last March 25, 2010 and talked about type and drawing.  The video is well worth the watch.

http://new.typemedia.org/blog/2010/mar/29/noordzij-on-drawing/

More pictures in the TypeMedia flickr group. (via Erik van Blokland and the TypeMedia Blog)

I Love Typography has posted a woderful article by Gerry Leonidas (Senior Lecturer in Typography at the University of Reading—UK and Programme Director of the MA in Typeface Design).  Entitled A few things I’ve learned about typeface design Mr. Leonidas covers his observations about typeface design (and its pedagogy). Some of the pertinent topics include: 1. Design has memory (even if many designers don’t), 2. Design is iterative, and improved by dialogue, 3. Scale effects are not intuitive, 4. Tools are concepts, 5. The Latin script is the odd one out, and 6.A teaching formal environment can teach the functional aspects of design, but can only help them at a distance to develop the aesthetic qualities of their typefaces.

The article in highly astute.  As someone who has been thrust into the “creative hermit” model of type design, I feel his insights are poignant. Of particular note for me was this passage:

A common example of problems connected to scale effects arises whenever a student follows a writing tool too closely as a guide for designing typeforms: whereas the ductus (the movement of the stroke) and and the modulation can be preserved across scales without much difficulty, the details of stroke endings and joints cannot; typographic scales demand a sensitivity to optical effects that simply do not apply at writing scales.

House Industries has released its Eames Century Modern collection.  Designed by Erik van Blokland the collection contains an amazing amount of mid-century type-love:

• 26 Fonts
• 18-Style text family with italics
• 9 Figure Styles
• Advanced Text Handling
• 4 Numeral Fonts
• 3 Frame Fonts
• Smart Ornaments Font

My undying admiration and fascination with all things Eames is only heightened by this collection, and hope to have my order in time to get the limited packaging.

TDC2, the annual type design competition organised by the Type Directors Club of New York is about to announce its winners.  Prior to this Yves Peters from the FontFeed examines the TDC2 in a post entitled,TDC2, The Oscars Of Type Design. While Mr. Peters is generally positive about the competition, he does outline some of TDC2′s shortcomings.  Namely:

1. a slight emphasis on display faces,
2. entry fees limit the ability to get as wide a range of submissions,
3. the anonymity of submissions makes it  impossible to make out if a submitted typeface is a new creation by a certain designer, or someone emulating his/her signature style,
4. there is no standard entry form for the type designs,
5. showy display type tends to get awarded more often than text faces, because the text face rely on subtly and  detail,
6. jury composition.

I know this may sound like a lot, but these were not overly harsh critiques—and don’t believe were intended to be. As someone engaged in type design, I would like to see a standard entry form. Plus, I’d like to see verification that a design is a new creation. On balance the TDC, to me at least, is a great thing, and one I would intend to submit entries to.

Update: Mr Peters has included an overview of the winners.

As I learn the vagaries of Hindi form my wife and her family, I am always considering the opportunities for developing Indian fonts.  Of course I ‘ve been beaten to the punch. The Indian Type Foundry—whose earlier  Devanagari companion to Fedra Sans typeface, Fedra Hindi looks great—has posted some updates on its facebook page.  Kohinoor Latin and Multiscript (including Tamil, Gujarati, and more) looks impressive, especially given the range of weights shown for Tamil.

Following on the hugely successful Unimark book signing event last December—sponsored the STA, designer Kevin Rau is offering the Unimark poster, art directed by his teacher, mentor and Unimark principal, John Rieben. In addition Kevin has designed a Helvetica poster that honors the ubiquitous typeface. Both are available for purchase on his website: www.rauhaus.biz.

Massimo Vignelli Signing Copies of the Unimark Book

I suppose I’m known to be a bit of a type junkie.I admit it is a bit of a problem. Nonetheless, I must confess I am not a steeped in the vagaries of blackletter as I could be. Given this, I am more than pleased to see Dan Reynolds latest piece for I Love Typography (ILT) entitled The library of the Gutenberg Museum. Mr Reynolds provides that following classifications for blackletter faces:

The basic blackletter styles—Textura, Rotunda, Bastarda, Fraktur, and “Experimental.” While many contemporary designs fall under the lattermost category, classical revivals are still being undertaken across the blackletter spectrum. Understanding classification schemes can be the key to choosing the right typeface. For example, a German Fraktur would be a poor choice for an English Pub, while almost any style could look right on a certificate, depending on its overall design. Old English, & Gotisch designs are further evolutions of the Textura idea. Gotisch (gothic) alone has several styles… from the Romanticist Fette Gotisch (pictured) to the so-called “jackboot grotesques” of the 1930s (not pictured). Schwabacher is a style of Bastarda that has been traditionally used in Germany. Indeed, Fraktur itself could even be classified as another Bastarda, but I have given it its own category, because it became the most-widely used blackletter text style in German typography. Evolving out of late medieval and early renaissance handwriting, the various blackletter styles also influenced each other over time. Another Bastarda gené, Civilité, was common in late 16th century printing in France & the Low Countries—not areas one would call “German.”

I appreciate the conciseness of this primer.  This blackletter primer is only a small part of the excellent article.  He also covers the library of the Gutenberg Museum (which I have to visit the next time I make it to Mainz).  All told, and excellent read.

Came across this this morning. www.csstextwrap.com.

The CSS Text Wrapper allows you to easily make HTML text wrap in shapes other than just a rectangle. You can make text wrap around curves, zig-zags, or whatever you want. All you have to do is draw the left and right edges below and then copy the generated code to your website.  The text shape can be applied to you site as either : 1) Inline CSS/XHTML, 2) XHTML w/ Classes, 3) or Javascript.