Steve MacKley design » Blog

Type Design in Illustrator CS5

Steve MacKley — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:30:12 +0000

Interested in learning to draw type? Jessica Hische style has a screencast of one of the new Illustrator CS5 features that can help you with those tricky script faces. (let’s hope this doesn’t portend a ton of hastily-made nuptial scripts.)

Which Typekit webfonts to use?

Steve MacKley — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:42:53 +0000

Are you thinking of using Typekit for you webfont needs but are unsure which fonts offer various features? The good people at Sleepover have compiled a list of the webfonts offered by Typekit. The table is geared more heavily towered those looking to typeset body copy rather than just headers. Still very useful.

http://www.sleepoversf.com/the-great-typekit-table/

Via Tim Ahrens

Silverback-Bolder weight coming along

Steve MacKley — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:07:46 +0000

Work on the Heavy/ Extra Bold weight of Silverback is progressing nicely (if not frantically). First pass at the Glyphs is done, with a ton of tweaks ahead. No spacing or kerning is really done yet, but that will come in time. This weight along with the regular will be used to interpolate the rest of the family. I am also curious to try Tim Ahren’s Font ReMix Tools to develop the condensed and expanded weights. Hopefully I can get far enough along to make the submission deadline for FontFont’s spring meeting.

FontFeed: What the iPad is Missing

Steve MacKley — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:47:51 +0000

Stephen Coles of Typographica and The Mid-Century Modernist has posted an interseting critique of the iPad and typography. In short, is disappoints.

What the iPad is Missing (No, it’s not a Camera)

Great Color Tool for Designers

Steve MacKley — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:20:55 +0000

I know there a ton of color tools for designers on the web, but I have to give a shout-out for Color Scheme Designer. Titled towards Web design (no CMYK), it still is one of the most intuitive tools for quickly developing color schemes. Plus it can show you what the scheme will look like for those with various forms of color-blindness.

http://colorschemedesigner.com/

Gerrit Noordzij on Drawing

Steve MacKley — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:44:21 +0000

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)

ILT: A few things I’ve learned about typeface design

Steve MacKley — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:52:43 +0000

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 Releases Eames Century Modern

Steve MacKley — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:40:38 +0000

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 Oscars Of Type Design

Steve MacKley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:24:24 +0000

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:

a slight emphasis on display faces,
entry fees limit the ability to get as wide a range of submissions,
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,
there is no standard entry form for the type designs,
showy display type tends to get awarded more often than text faces, because the text face rely on subtly and detail,
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.

Indian Type Foundry—What’s Coming Up Next

Steve MacKley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:50:50 +0000

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.