December 27th, 2009
Less Impact. More Garamond.
There are many choices we make each day that appear to be benign. In truth, though, many have negative impacts on our global environment. Take for instance, your choice of typeface. When printing a regular office document do you consider the ink consumption of the your chosen typeface? And have you considered the impact of choosing a blatant ink-hog font like an Ultra-Bold Extended will have on the environment our childrens’ children inherit? I haven’t. And I bet you haven’t either. Why would you? The impact happens at such a small scale that it is invisible to us.
Someone has thought about this though—Matt Robinson. And he created a startlingly simple way of amplifying our everyday font choices so that we can clearly see the impact they make.
Take a look at Matt’s project Measuring Type on his site www.matthewrobinson.co.uk
November 24th, 2009
Lessons From A Type Geek: Part I
Before I had my first typography class in college, I was totally oblivious to anything relating to the subject. I remember skeptically thinking, “Really? A whole semester-long class on fonts?” (for the record, I would never refer to them as fonts now, they are typefaces). To my surprise, I found the class fascinating and became intrigued with typography. I was lucky enough to have a professor who was extremely knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and expected us to know an absurd amount of information for our exams. After my initial typography course, I went on to take Typography II, do an independent study, and was the Typography I TA my senior year. Then, during my first few months (and I literally mean, it took me months) at Hero, I was tasked with reorganized the font library into classifications
to make searching through the thousands of typefaces easier for everyone in the studio. Oddly enough,
I actually enjoyed this task. I’m a type geek.
As much as I enjoy typography, every once in a while as I drive by a storefront with awful kerning (the space between two letters) in their signage, I like to daydream about what it would be like to be type-naive again. Along with a knowledge of typography comes the ability to notice the little mistakes that the untrained eye wouldn’t look twice at, like bad kerning or a match-up of two unflattering typefaces or a font that historically doesn’t fit with the design it’s being used in. Typography is a lot more than just letters and words and something that looks pretty. It has history and meaning and when used correctly, can add something wonderful to a business card or direct mail piece or company signage. That’s why, while I like daydreaming about being naive again, I know that there is something much more powerful to knowing. Understanding typography gives you the ability to use it correctly and effectively.
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November 19th, 2009
Hand Done Type-tastic Thursday
This week I’ve been really into Nate Williams’ Letter Playground website. Users upload funky hand done or non traditional letter forms. The website is a celebration of type as illustration and there is a lot of funky goodness and inspiration to be found while poking around. Letter Playground has nifty features allowing users to upload their own found or drawn letters, the ability to “favorite” letters, sort by letter and to comment on other’s letters. Some of my favorites include this robot-tastic set by the user Banu:
and also this angry looking stegosaurs ‘D’ by Heath:
Letter Playground…
