[font] Comic Neue … The Aesthete's Comic Sans

3049.

So. MS Comic Sans.

Insert Whitmanesque YAWP here.

I firmly believe that Comic Sans isn't bad; it's just drawn that way. Vincent Connaré had no idea that when he composed that font for use in Microsoft BOB that it would become the most levelling influence in the visual arts since Helvetica.

No insult meant to either, there.

But since then the world seems betimes swimming in inappropriate uses of Comic Sans. I'm sure, on some nuclear reactor nearing EOL somewhere, there's a sign reading EMERGENCY REACTOR SCRAM written in Comic Sans - either through irony or simply lack-of-awareness, who can say … and really, does it matter?

No. No, it does not.

Anywho, in the occasional quixotic drive to create a cultural counterpoint to CS, the Japan-based designer Craig Rozynski has hammered out the weird and visually-discordant bendy bits, engineered some kerning and other things, and created Comic Neue*. Here's what it looks like, with screenshots from its site:

The designer tried to draw the line between the casual 'honesty' of Comic Sans and the lack of good design. He's pretty much succeeded; it's like CS only not terrible, and doesn't feel like daggers of evil piercing your eyes. So, in as much as addressing the flaws of CS, it's a success.

The deeper philosophical question of necessity is an exercise I leave to the sojourner. And, as far as Mr Connaré hisself?

should be more casual RT @craigrozynski:you inspired my first typographical project, http://t.co/Z9UopJrwsu.love to get ur opinion,
— Vincent Connare (@VincentConnare) April 7, 2014

I guess there's just no pleasing some people.

The designer, in a gesture of generosity to the greater good, has released the font as public domain. Get your copy here, if you must: http://comicneue.com/

[type] Adorable Typeface Uses A Cat’s Tail To Form Letters

2913.(Via DesignTaxi) You love kittehs. You love type. What's a type addict to do?

Helveticat, that's what.

We typically don't use the word adorbs unless it's something like this, because it is. We found this at Design Taxi (Adorable Typeface Uses A Cat’s Tail To Form Letters) and we are, of course, in love. The little guys are cute, and kind of remind us of Pusheen. And there can never be enough Pusheen, as everyone who's warmhearted will tell you.

By Bethany Lesko; get a print from Etsy here.

[web_design] OregonLive Redesign: Say Hello To My Prelo-Slab Friend

2847.In case you've somehow, during the past day, not dialled-up OregonLive, the The Oregonian-ish website run by Advance Publications, The Big O's parent, you're in for a surprise, boy-o.

If you've sworn off OLive (as some I know have), here's what you're missing:

A cleaner, leaner design. A big, meaty guts-column of real-time-updated stories, theme selectable by a drop-down (Top Stories/News/Sports/Entertainment/Opinion). A buff-colored, spacious header that extrudes into the page as you scroll down.

Departments? They got'em:

Each one of those blue buttons open a dialog that allows you to select criteria, you click a search-button, and it's off to the races. This is all below the "fold" in the right-side column. Below this, you'll find a most read/most commented block, and at the footer, direct links to direct sections.

One of the biggest complaints about OLive over the years it's existed is its clutteredness. It was not the most useful of interfaces, and unless you knew what you were looking for, you could indeed get lost while looking for what you were (or weren't finding). The most irritating thing to me was the center, where sports stories were thrown together in a mixed-hierarchy goulash. While the sections were laid out across the top, it was a matter of guessing to see to it that you picked the right one to drill down into.

This is, indeed a better design. Although the menus that would explode into the screen when you merely moused over the section titles along the top were a little tough to get use to … well, all interfaces have a learning curve. This one's mercifully short. I already, after just a few minutes, know where I want to go to get what I want to know. The clean, clear, and organized look of the site is a refreshing change from the gallimaufry chaos of the original OLive.

The most striking feature of the redesign, and the one that leaps right out (and almost grabs you by the throat), is that heavy, authoritative font. It's called Prelo-slab, you can find some here, and boy is it an aggressive look in the application. It almost dares you not to click it. Actually, in the ways it's being used, it comes off as a little too heavy; I note, at the vendors page, there's maybe another weight I'd use for those headlines.

But you know what? I like the redesign.

Although, biggest flaw? For a few minutes I thought I'd stumbled into some big ol' Reddit.

[fonts] 9 Free Display Fonts from TheNextWeb

2745.The actual reason the internet was created wasn't to share free porn; it was to share free typefaces. And here's 9 free* display typefaces mounted by the Design & Dev blog:

Blanch mixes the traditional and the contemporary. Kind of art-decoish, if you ask me.

Ribbon is sharp edges and interesting lines.

Vevey is a very classy font, at home on haute-style printed matter and design.

Folk looks warm and friendly, like you cut it out of potato-stamps.

League Gothic is very serious, square-shoulders, and all-American, to me.

Ostrich Sans gots itself a looong neck.

Oh Mai Mai, the favorite font of ghosts everywhere.

Quicksand, an utterly geometrical font that makes me think of Futura.

Color Lines, a experimental font that's actually a vector file made for your Illustrator and Photoshop and such things of that nature.

They're all at: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/01/09/9-awesome-free-display-typefaces-you-can-download-right-now/.

* we must append our standard advisory that free fonts aren't always free; they may be free to obtain and install but carry conditions upon use. READ YOUR FONT LICENSES THOROUGHLY!

[type] NewType Mono ... More Gorgeous Monospaced Type

2419.Monospaced type is hard to make beautiful. Each glyph has to be engaging to the eye per se, and be designed - if it's to look good as well as merely functional - with an awareness of how it's going to look amongst others of its face.

People don't usually waste time kerning or tracking monospace type.

So, when a monospaced typeface grabs my attention, I tend to fall in sloppy love with it. As I did with Everson Mono (which is a free download but shareware license), I've done so with NewType Mono, of which some can be seen here:

I also love the fact that in the Newtype family there's a Newtype Mono as well as a Newtype Stereo, whose differences should be apparent.

One look should be enough to deduce what I mean here. Each glyph uses its mono-space very well, very effectively, and relates and respects the other glyphs nomatter what they are. Through clever use of angle, curve, and corner, they all seem "of a piece", and you might not feel like kerning them ... because they don't look like they need to be. It's available in a lot of weights and some beefy meaty bolds that are an exquisite combination of slab and curve.

And you can get it from Fontfarm: http://www.fontfarm.de/themes/fonts/newtype/index.php

Technorati Tags: type, typography, monospaced fonts, Newtype, Fontfarm

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Two Free Fonts: Days And Pico (The One Twitter Uses In Its Logotype)

2081.Twitter is really paying off in terms of win. Found two new highly fun fonts, one of which answered a question that I didn't know I had.

First is the font called "Days". It's a nifty design that rather reminds me of what a production designer doing one of those bubble-gummy dystopian flicks back in the 80s might have a Cyrillic font ca. 2007 might have looked like. Here's the specimen card from Behance:

I haven't read the license yet but, as you can see in the graphic above, it's billed as "free for use". Richard Darell, who Tweets as user "Minervity", linked to it, reviewing it thus:

Days is another neat and free typeface, again found on Behance, a real treasure trove of delights. This is so clean, modern and stylish. Love the curves, the rounded edges, the compact ’squared’ feel. I can see this being perfect for certain styles of logo designs.

Minervity's post about it is here at I'mJustCreative; Download it from Behance here.

The other one answers the question "was the Twitter logotype (the distinctive style of the letters you usually see the word "Twitter" in at the top of the page) designed or fonted?" Turns out it was fonted, and that font is called "Pico", a design that calls to mind Japanese child's cartoons and a Nintendo-ized Mario world:

Those responible for the design are the charmingly-named foundry Maniackers Design (a name which sounds like it leapt from the pages of Shonen Jump), and can be downloaded here. Minervity also broke this one, and espouses upon it here.

Two gifts for y'alls! Don't let me hear you say I never got you nuthin!

Technorati Tags: type design, free fonts, typography, minervity, Richard Darell, Behance, twitter

[info_design, street_blades] Street Signs from the Heartland

1141. We return to the street blade beat with a couple more from the Heartland, courtesy of our Mid-Continent Bureau Chief, Stan Kost.

This following image should have some resonancy with you if names of jazz like Count Basie and Charlie Parker mean anything to you:

What we have here is a couple of blades out of the heart of the 18th & Vine National Historic district in Kansas City, MO. As it happens, 18th & Vine had a hot jazz scene back in the day, and some of America's more famous jazz musicians came from or passed through there; it's credited with being one of the cradles of jazz in America. It's said that the KC flavor of jazz has its own spice to it; I'm no jazz fan, so I'll have to take Wikipedia's word for it (for what it's worth, the entry on 18th & Vine seems written by a fan, but there's Wikipedia for you). It is known as the historic center of KC's African-American community.

Technically speaking, the street signs are very simply informative. The location in a historic district is merely indicated by a brown square on the blade's left end–the eye naturally starts reading there, so nobody misses the fact of the esteemed area of town that one is in; the banner tells the story of what happened there. As far as the blades' structure, it's notable that the sheet-steel sign is supported by a bracket which is itself mated to the sign. While not uncommon, it's unusual here in Oregon (we certainly can't think of any examples of this construction here about), and we can make the observation that such a construction not only allows for the support of sheet blades that could be quite large, but also probably makes replacement and repair comparatively simple.

Next, we go to Leavenworth Kansas:

This is a view of the corner of 4th and Shawnee, presumably in downtown Leavenworth. This street blade is not one of the "Car-level" blades, but of the class that sticks to the overheads above the traffic by the street lights (this is our clue to its elevated purpose). These are designed to inform the driver whilst still allowing them to keep thier eyes on the road in front–very simple level of information, all that one needs to know in transit at a glance.

The color and the font are what are of note here. From the banner on the right we can assume the historical importance to the state of Kansas of Leavenworth, and the design of the blade echoes this, with the brown tone of the sign suggesting sepia-toned daguerrotypes and the serifed font seeming to speak to a classical, old-fashioned vibe. I'd be interested to find what the small letters on the right end of the blade say, but the resolution of the photo resists this analysis.

We still have some more blades from Stan, which we'll post in a further discourse. If anyone out there has been following this, I want to see what your hometown street blades look like–they can by ordinary ones or special or funny, whatever, Let me share them with the world.

Send any of your street blade picture submssions hither for commentary, display, critique, and general fun.

Technorati Tags: street blades,Street Blade Gallery,Vancouver WA,info design,information design,typoography

[font_design] Free Font from DGV–Basic Light

1034. A highly-coolly-named publishing company, Die Gestalten Verlag, has this habit they can't control-they give out free limited versions of thier fonts, which are from some of the more artistic typefounders.

This go-round's offering: Basic Light Ltd.

Technorati Tags: free font,die gestalten verlag

[design, fonts] How To Let FontExplorer X Manage Your Mac OS X Fonts

926. Many people out there on the Mac OS X platform are using the free FontExplorer X utility from Linotype to manage fonts on thier machines. I myself have dipped my toes in the water but have not turned over complete control of my Mac's fonts to it.

I may have reason to do so now. MacFixIt, that dependable reference for what's current in what might go wrong with your Mac, has, for the public good, posted a nifty short article on just how to do it in OS X.

You'll find it here.

It has some good insights. Font geeks, at least the amateur ones, just can't get enough fonts, and tend to have ginormous font libraries on line. Eventually they have enough to tax thier programs at startup; many programs, such as Word (and probably InDesign and QuarkXPress, but I don't know for sure on those) build font menus at startup. The more fonts you have, the longer it will take. Also cluttered font caches can reduce overall system peformance noticeably.

The MacFixIt article speaks sooth when it saith:

A sound, basic approach to fonts is to keep your font list lean and mean. Confine your installed fonts to just the fonts that come with a clean installation of Mac OS X, and no more. If you want to use any other fonts, enable them only when you want to use them, and disable them the rest of the time

And this approach works for designers as well as the civilian public. After all, while it's nice to have NeoGothicSanskrit on your system for the design work, how often do you actually use it? Not often, I'll bet.

All those not-often-used fonts take a toll on system performance and app peformance, so we think that MacFixIt's advice is indeed sound and basic. Have 'em on line...just keep 'em deactivated unless you need it.

Apps like FontExplorer X, which have plugins which sense and activate fonts as you need them (and can even have customized font sets) are just the thing.

Technorati Tags: Fonts,Font Management,FontExplorer X,Mac OS X