the portfolio of steve mackley
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.
For you Fontlab junkies, Tim Ahrens just released version 1.6 of his font-remix tools. New to the mix is the RMX Harmonizer which allows you to harmonize glyph shapes. These tools are invaluable for the serious font designer.
Last night FontFont announce that more than 30 of the most successful FontFont families are now available as Web FontFonts®, including FF DIN®, FF Meta®, FF Dax®, andFF Kievit®.
Finally we are getting to the point where the fonts used for print branding can be utilized on the web, thereby allowing for consistent branding across all media.
FontFont provides the following points for why Web FontFonts:
More info available at Fontshop’s Blog. Technical info on what you get is here.
Don’t be too surprised if this blog is update to FF DIN or FF Milo sometime in the future.
In the typophile forums their is a livlely debate about Cyrus Highsmith’s Glyph Space blog entry for Font Bureau.
I think the deabte about attachment of spacing to glyphs as a distinctions between typography and writing is interesting. Faces like legato by Evert Bloemsma have tried to address reworking the stroke/ counter relationship. Given this discussion over at typhophile is quite compelling: http://typophile.com/node/66574
Typotheque has just announced Plan Groteseque by Nikola Djurek. From their press release:
Plan Grotesque is a sturdy, unpretentious typeface for text of any kind; it is a functional workhorse, but has enough character to be distinctive at larger sizes. Plan Grotesque has distinguishing closing terminals, and unlike Grotesque typefaces of the previous century it comes with a true italic. Plan Grotesque comes in a comprehensive range of weights, widths and display versions (Normal, Condensed, Stencil,Stencil Condensed). It has friendly, subtly-modulated strokes and is more refined and economic than traditional grotesques.
More info can be found at: http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/plan_grotesque
Plan Grotesque also include a staggering range of numerals across all weights—seven in all. The typeface includes: ranging, or OsF (Old-style proportional Figures) for use in running text. Lining figures for use with capitals letters, because their proportions match the height of caps. Tabular (both Lining and OsF), Superior and Inferior figures, and special numerator figures for usin in fractions.
James Puckett of the Dunwich Type Founders has written and article for I Love Typography about the design process for his typepface Armitage. The link to the full article is here: Designing Armitage.
I am always fascinated by these glimpses into the font design process. To be able to see the inspiration for a typeface, as well as the choices made by the designer are always appreciated.
Armitage is available from FontSpring and MyFonts.
http://www.fontspring.com/fonts/dunwich-type-founders/armitage
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/dunwich/armitage/
Hoefler & Frere-Jones has posted links to all of its old email circulars. Topics covered include — how to choose fonts for information-heavy projects like annual reports being an especially hot topic; though he also encourages his students to dig deeply in the character sets of their fonts; and to look for value when building their own font libraries.
Ian Moore for Typographica has written an excellent primer on designing type. It is specifically intended for the beginner looking to create geometric faces. While a lot of this info is available from other sources, the article is a wonderfully concise overview of the topic.
Adjusting Stroke Wdths
My name’s Steve MacKley, and I’m a creative director & designer with leadership experience in graphic, type and interactive design—plus a solid grounding in IA, strategy and research. My industry experience includes online retail, consumer electronics, as well as pharma / healthcare. I also have a strong interest in fonts and type design. Oh and I shouldn't forget to mention my bike infatuation.
