The Reason I Like This Hawthorne Address

4057

This is charming, no?

It's the transom of The Meadow, a shop next to Powell's and The Fresh Pot that sells chocolate, gourmet salts, bitters, and other trendy comestible impedimenta, and even though the font and the treatment wears its designedness with a smug pride, I love it.

I live the way the abbreviation "No." is in front of the address. That elevates it for me at the same time I kind of resent the way it knows it will charm me. 

You might say it has my number. 

[SF, Design] Penguin Galaxy SF Classics Cover Design A Challenge To The Eye

3396.

(via IO9) Penguin Books have just released a series of five undoubted classics of science/speculative fiction in a package designed to have your SF collector go straight to avarice mode.

They've called the Galaxy series, and it comprises six classic novels: Frank Herbert's Dune, William Gibson's Neuromancer, T.H. White's The Once And Future King, Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land, and, saving possibly the best mention for last, Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand Of Darkness. The range is undeniably significant (the inclusion of LeGuin legitimizes this collection on so many levels for me, personally) and the packaging, in an orange-tinted plastic box, including a series introduction by none other than Neil Gaiman, indicates that Penguin is taking the subject matter very seriously and driving hard about being stylish about it at the same time. This is cool SF; this is collectors-item stuff.

The designs on the covers may leave your eyes crossing and you on a slow burn, however. The style point is hit hard here and carries the echo of chances taken and creativity at work; the letters, made of lines and rendered in various styles mostly parallel lines, seem to seek to merge a classic feel found in Art Deco with the subjective atmosphere of speculative fiction and a sly graphic visual pun on the themes in the story. This works best with the cover for Neuromancer: shimmering silver-green on green evokes retro computer displays while the visual static hints at similarly-retro visual ideas of displays breaking down, becoming something other than they are and the disharmony represented by Gibsonian dystopiae.

The cover for The Left Hand of Darkness puns similarly, by evoking the theme of gender ambiguity and changeability upon which the novel rests into a double-visioned title that seems to have to live on the cover with an alternative vision of itself in the same space, being both and neither at the same time as it suits.

The most conventional cover is the one for The Once and Future King, an abstraction of a visual cliche on illuminated type; the weakest one, Dune, in which the four letters of the title, two of which almost resemble what a hieghliner might have looked like through an Art Deco lens as held by Dino de Laurentiis, are banished to the four corners of the dark orange title. While this does evoke the emptiness and dryness of Arrakis quite well, it renders the title unreadable as a word.

This series is a true adventure in design, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be the title of an SF work beyond the 'appropriate cover art' ghetto most SF and Fantasy tends to find itself in and elevates it to the level of a more universal literature. However, the reader might find themselves torn between the daringness of the cover design and the simple truth that, in challenging the eye by going heavy on design, some readability … and, hence, communicative ability … might be lost, leaving the viewer with what they may regard as an indulgent exercise in overdesign.

Quoting Brenda Balin, a friend who was at one time an art director, "Form must follow function. These don't function." And, David Gerrold who, on Facebook, blandly stated "They're great design … but they're lousy covers."
.
I myself feel simultaneously drawn to them and WTF'd away from them.

The Penguin Galaxy series can be more fully peeped at http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/PGX/penguin-galaxy.

[type] Google/Monotype's Noto project: A Half-Gig of Free OTF Fonts To Get The Tofu Off Your Screen

3391.

Add to the list of logisms about the type tofu. Any time a computer displays web text, and the fonts on your system don't carry the glyph that the content requests or (worse) doesn't have the font at all, you get small boxes (most of the time) as place holders for the letter from the computer would draw if only it knew how.

For your device, it's a teachable moment. You learn it up by downloading a font, installing, and refreshing the font cache, usually by closing and relaunching the app. To he right of this Latin text you'll see a illustration from Wikipedia's article on the Deseret Alphabet before installing a font that has those glyphs defined.

That's tofu, intermountain-West style.

This is an issue that has developed as more information that didn't come from a core early compuiting constituency … Latinate-script using Westerners … came under the unblinking gaze of the Earth's developing, evolving technological consciousness. A lot of things, like the Deseret Alphabet or the Shavian script, were invented, not evolved and extant at the time computers began developing, and a lot of encodings weren't thought of at first. So, you'll go to the Wikipedia page on Shavian without the proper font file installed and come up with a case of tofu, all nicely arranged in boxes:

Yummy tofu, Shavian style

Which fill in quite nicely once a font file, such as andagii_.ttf is installed and recognized:

Fully cooked, Shavian in all its odd glory

It's a problem that you'd think that Google, with its Borg-like focus on assimilating information and returning it in a usable format, would be thinking about, and you'd be right about this.

Just announced and made available, the collaboration between Google and font foundry Monotype has goal that is simple if huge; eliminating tofu from your screen.  From the Google Developers' Blog:

Five years ago we set out to address this problem via the Noto—aka “No more tofu”—font project. Today, Google’s open-source Noto font family provides a beautiful and consistent digital type for every symbol in the Unicode standard, covering more than 800 languages and 110,000 characters.

There are, at this writing, 114 Noto fonts including Devangari, Cuneiform, CJK, Osmanya and, yes, Deseret and Shavian. Installing the extant Noto fonts should cover you in a variety of situations so wide that the average user stands more of a chance seeing tofu in their stir-fry, where it belongs, rather on their screens.

The biggest news for the font-avaricious is, perhaps, that the entire Noto family is free to download and use as thou wilt, and is licensed under the SIL Open Font License. That means they're free to download and use in any way you deem necessary; not only free as in Open Source, but free-as-in-free-beer-free. The whole zip archive is close to a half-gig of free fonts; the design, as seen in the illustration a the right, isn't out to be flashy or game-changing; the basic Noto Serif and Noto Sans are good, basic book-hands, meant to be pleasing to the eye but not to be the star of the piece. It's meant to harmonize, not to dominate.

The Noto Project's website is https://www.google.com/get/noto/ : this'll take you directly to a download page where you can download any number of the available font files or the whole thing at a go (about 473 MB worth). It's totally and wholly up to you, font explorer.

[type] The Royal Futura 800 Manual Typewriter

3069.

I do, in fact, have a manual typewriter.

It, as near as I can ID, is a Royal Futura 800. Here it is:

It's a lovely machine, stylish, and with the sorts of lines you'd expect something that exulted in the model name Futura to look like if it came out in the late 50s … streamlined corners, a cool wedge-shaped cross section, with the lid section sitting on top like a plugin.

The best feature there is the ROYAL logo … it's clear plastic and if you press on it, it turns out it's the latch that opens the top, which is spring loaded, which is a bit of a plus.

Ribbons being what they are, it's fortunate for us that we have an old-school office-supply store a fifteen-minute walk away from us. They'll sell us a ribbon whose spools will work in this machine, however, you have to install brads at each end of the ribbon or it won't trip the mechanical link that reverses the travel of the ribbon.

Annoying, but fixable. DIY, y'all!

The biggest niftiness about this? The font. Peep:

[type] LOL: You're Doing It Wrong.

2738.This photo (found at the URL http://www.picsthatdontsuck.com/web/Lol_Drowning.html) demonstrates exactly what what can happen in the modern world when simplification goes just a bit too far:

If it weren't for the Internet, this would be a totally-clever way of depicting a drowning man reaching for air … which it is.

Totally clever, I mean.

But with the Internet culture we all find ourselves immersed in (designers perhaps a little more than most), I defy you, depending on your age cohort, to see this as anything more than a procedure to laugh out loud, then call 911.

Pays to be cognizant of these things.

[type] Pilcrow, Ampersand, Section Mark and Hedera, LLC

2732.The four marks alluded to in the title are more popularly known as "The Paragraph Sign"; "The And Sign", "That Funny Double-S", and "The Fleuron".

The article at Retinart, "Marks Unknown", (http://retinart.net/typography/marksunknown/), should smart you up a little … or at least get you to appreciate them.

[typography] Because the SarcMark™ Worked So Well …

2730.Now someone's come up with a "sarcasm font" which is … wait for it … just regular typed obliqued leftwards instead of rightwards.

Yeah, that'll work. Like the SarcMark™, that went over so just so very well.

It's the Sarcastic 'Font', and you can find it at http://glennmcanally.com/sarcastic/index.htm.

Yeah. This'll go over well, too.

The nifty thing about that answer is it'll hold true whether that is especially dry satire … or not.

[type] It's A Wood Type Revival!

2690.Via the HOW Blog: Wood Type Revival is an attempt (so far, succeeding) at bringing wood type into the digital age as OpenType fonts.

The way they're doing it is to print sheets on a Vandercook proof press (probably not too much different from this one) and scanning the result, then digitizing it.

So far, they have four sumptuous faces done, including a very delightful Roycroft:

Each so far will set you back $15.00.

The address to know is http://www.woodtyperevival.com.

[type] 1927: When The Pen Tool Actually Had Ink In It

2673.Gene Gable, in one of his usually-excellent columns for CreativePro.com, lets us look and leaf through his copy of the 1927 edition of the Speedball Textbook (to use a latter-day title).

… this seems a good general ethic, even if you don't use the pen.

The Speedball pen grew out of a letterer's frustration with the tools at had. The original Speedball nibs, produced by the Hunt Pen Company in 1915, had reservoirs built in and were reputedly named for the swiftness their design brought to the enterprise.

Everyone who's ever even flirted with type either has held a copy of this book in their hands or still has a copy. I, come to that, have a copy of the 20th Edition of the Speedball Textbook on my shelf. Good memories obtain.

Learn some nice handwriting, peoples, however you can do it. 

[type] Grizzly Bear: A Font That's An Art Supply

2664.Caught this in the great news stream today: HOW magazine's blog shows off the font Grizzly Bear, by Alex Sheldon. This is a font designed for quick and visually-delightful titling, and is unique because you can take different glyphs and layer them for different effects.

This is a pretty playful and delightful thing. Read all about it at HOW's design blog here: http://blog.howdesign.com/typography/tuesday-type-treat-11/

[design] Words As Emphatic Punctuation

2553.

The Wife™ spotted this lovely ad latterly:

Look at the title and squint a little.

Squinting is a very useful tool in your visual arsenal, by the by. If you're seeing what I'm trying to get you to see, you'll understand exactly why.

The designer, in a very deft touch, has pressed the words THE MUSICAL into double-service. not only is it tucked in very efficiently, it makes the impression that it's an exclaimation point. It's not merely BILLY ELLIOT!, nor is it merely BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL, it's jointly and severally BILLY ELLIOT! THE MUSICAL, and this is done without using an actual exclamation point at all.

You register this even if you don't see it. You, yourself, might not be much a designer, but your subconscious eye catches all, and deep down inside you register that maybe this is something energetic and exciting.

This is called painting with type, mah peoples. This is what the man meant when he said that.

Technorati Tags: ad design, typography, type design, painting with type

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] In Case You Ever Wondered How To Say "Tschischold"?

2546.

Well, even if you haven't wondered, you'll find this bit of stuff interesting. It's a short list of how to pronounce various names of fonts and famous font artists, many of which are from Europe - typography is a global art, after all.

I was a little surprised. Though I had been correctly pronouncing Lubalin and Hermann Zapf for years, I had been mispronouncing Licko (Zusana Licko, the great co-founder of the Emigre house, is from eastern Europe) and Neutraface (pronounced litch-o and neu-TRA-face, respectively).

The rest of the list (Tschischold? Gesundheit!) yon hier (http://typophile.com/node/28051), wanderer.

H/T: Twitter friend @Sternooo (Mark Stern, designer and cartoonist)
Technorati Tags: typography, typographers, orthography

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] In Calligraphic Meditiation

2531.

Thank you, Chad Welch (http://twitter.com/chadwelch) for the following bit of calligraphic Zen:

(the image links to the video page on vimeo. The URL is http://vimeo.com/12733075. Me and vimeo have ... issues, let's say).

Doing calligraphy ... as I've been called upon to betimes provide ... does create a sort of sacred head-space in which some very positive inner contemplation can happen. You get close by watching Luca do it here. Just watch the letters form.

It's no wonder, to me anyway, that the best calligraphy from the middle ages came from Irish monks. That's the job I'd of gone for.

Technorati Tags: Calligraphy, Legacy of Letters, Luca Barcellona, typography, artist at work

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] The Dying Art Of Handwriting?

2530.

Handwriting makes the news again.

According to the story in The Oregonian (at http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2010/10/most_college_students_print_as.html), fewer and fewer students are writing in cursive or cursive-style handwriting, most preferring to "print", or use a manuscript style. Citing a PSU professor, of a recent assignment which 17 essays were turned in, only two were written cursively.

I'm of a certain mind about why it's important to have some sort of handwriting style, or at least be unafraid to do so. The professor mentioned above, Richard Christen, has an interesting slant (so to speak) on it:

What most concerns Christen, who has studied the history of handwriting, is the loss of the aesthetic qualities of handwriting with its descent into cold print. Cursive writing in its flourishes and graceful strokes expresses an artistic beauty that goes beyond its utility and gives artistic experience to those who use it, he says. Students today "are not doing this kind of craftsmanship activity that they used to do on a daily basis," he says.

This is something that puts into words whatever I feel when I do do handwriting, which is something I attempt to do at least once a day in my diaries. I only partly do it to capture my days - I also do it because in these days when drawing inspiration is hard to come by, there's something ineffable about putting pen to paper and drawing letters - writing - that I just crave. It feels good. It's productive creation.

The next graf, if the previous graf did nothing to convince why handwriting is a good thing to do, should break through on practical considerations:

They also may be losing an edge in their learning. Researchers using magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity say handwriting, whether print or cursive, engages more of the brain in learning and forming ideas.

So if you like having brain, if for no other reason, a good artistic handwriting style will commend itself to you.

All the rest is just aesthetic preference. I adore italic, such as the type promoted by the highly-underappreciated Fred Eager and the similar-but-subtly-different style promoted by Dubay and Getty. I don't much care for the cursive styles such as D'Nealian and Zaner-Bloser (these look very much like the schoolroom-cursive your teacher probably gave up on teaching you by about seventh-grade) but that doesn't mean they can't be made beautifully (and, as I said, it's strictly an aesthetic consideration after a certain point anyway).

But I would advocate that, whoever you are, it's never too late - or unnecessary - to learn cursive writing. It's a kind of art that is open to all, and all you have to do is get out a piece of paper and try it.

And if you do it well enough - trust me on this - people will admire you and compliment you. And when's the last time you got a compliment these days? Especially on art you've produced, hmmm? And you don't have to learn how to even draw stick figures for this, and who knows? Maybe you'll be the next Samuel Pepys.

Although the way they're talking about handwriting "going extinct" makes me feel like I'm one of those aboriginal tribes who have a dying language that only two or three elders speak.

So get out a piece of paper, find a handwriting style you can enjoy (there are many graphics on the intarweb that you can download and print) and just try something! It's good for you.

Though if you get Fred Eager's book, you'll get example and exercise sheets to copy. And that's invaluable.

Technorati Tags: writing, handwriting, d'nealian, zaner-bloser, Fred Eager, Dubay-Getty

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] Made In Oregon - The Lower Case, From A to Z

2524.

My baby is really taking shape now, peoples. It's coming together as a TrueType font.

We're really cookin' now. Upper-case and numerals should fly by.

That little "X" is lookin' a little weak, but it'll do for now.

Technorati Tags: Made In Oregon Font, OregonMade, Samuel John Klein, ZehnKatzen

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] I Can Haz Z Naow - Made In Oregon

2523.

The lower case version of that last letter of the alfabet:

Zee. Zed. Omega by any other name. Puts the "Z" in "A to Z", as well as ZehnKatzen. Looks kind of like a "yogh" but isn't; looks like a fruity 3, but definitely is not that.

Z!

Technorati Tags: Made In Oregon Font, OregonMade, Samuel John Klein, Zehnkatzen.

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] the quick brown fo jump over the la dog - Made In Oregon

2522.

Work in progress continuing:

The iconic phrase, nearly in lace. Sounds like pidgin tho.

I love the way the Tweetdeck notifications keep showing up while I do screenshots. This is authentic, people!

Technorati Tags: Made In Oregon Font, OregonMade, Samuel John Klein, ZehnKatzen

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] dap! - Made In Oregon

2521.

Onomatopoea just is so much more fun when you design the type yourself.



Dap!

Technorati Tags: Made In Oregon Font, OregonMade, Samuel John Klein, Zehnkatzen

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] U, V, And W - Made In Oregon

2519.

Three great letters that look great together.

The U was inspired by the N. The V and W were inspired by the overall feeling of the curves and lines I was working with throughout the font set; you might say they were influenced by the work that's come before.

More letters! More letters!

Technorati Tags: Made In Oregon Font, OregonMade, type design, font design, Samuel John Klein, ZehnKatzen

Powered by ScribeFire.

[type] Just What Is "Hamburgevons"?

2518.

I feel like a magician about to reveal an epochal illusion, but a very slightly-asked question hereabouts is, just what is a hamburgevons anyway?

It is, and I kid you somewhat, a highly-charged typographer's WORD OF POWER.

The implications of hamburgevons cannot be underestimated. But just saying it isn't enough; actually, there's a trick of the tongue in which you make the moves to say hamburgevons but it comes out sounding like you're saying Eric Gill and you can do amazing typographical things, like eliminate Comic Sans and bestow serifs on deserving people. These tricks are taught at a libertine weekend retreat that's the typographers' equivalent of the famous Bohemian Grove and held at a secret place each year (because if I told you, then everyone would go there).

But that's all I can say. If I told you any more, I have it on very good imaginary authority that staff from Extensis would lead an assault on my person with elements from Emigré, ITC, and P22 making up the bulk of the strike team, with a special forces detachment from ATypI if I got a little too uppity.

They might take away my serifs, who knows?

Technorati Tags: hamburgevons, type design, type humor

Powered by ScribeFire.