MetaFilter posts tagged with design and fonts

Comic book grammatical and aesthetic traditions

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:31:38 -0800

Comic book lettering has some grammatical and aesthetic traditions that are quite unique. What follows is a list that every letterer eventually commits to his/her own mental reference file.

In case your system's fonts don't support the snowman.

TheOnlyCoolTim — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:15:23 -0800

Decodeunicode.org has a useful and full-featured search for the names and glyphs for those Unicode characters that display as a plain box full of despair. It is presented by the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. Roll the dice ⚅⚄ and try it out. I hear if you know the secret hexadecimal number you can find an Obama glyph. Comment with the funniest candidate wins the internet.

Belles Lettres

youarenothere — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:19:52 -0800

Israeli designer Oded Ezer produces stunning works of experimental typography. He has been lauded for creating [PDF link]"...Hebrew characters that melt," but it is his more unconventional work that is truly breathtaking - made up of letters with vivacity and personality. He calls his gorgeously abstracted work "typo art," existing wholly neither in the space of art or typography, with hope that it might transcend language altogether. See his flickr stream for more sketches, works, and arresting typescapes.

A Website about Corporate Identity.

JBennett — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:16:12 -0800

A Website about Corporate Identity. A large archive of corporation logos with design credits, typeface identification (or, at least the typographic roots of the ID's.) and Pantone color information. Not at all complete, but it's a very nice start. Hopefully it will continue to expand. via: Grain Edit (design blog)

Lines and splines

tepidmonkey — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:45:08 -0800

So You Want to Create a Font (Part 1, Part 2). For something with a less presumptive title, there’s this, this, this, this, this, or even this, Eric Gill’s An Essay on Typography.

"He saw the type designer as a kind of public servant"

tepidmonkey — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:27:25 -0800

It’s easy to talk about Adrian Frutiger in the past tense, since his most influential fonts – Univers, Egyptienne, and the eponymous Frutiger – are all at least thirty years old. But he is still alive, and in the summer of 2006, as he was presented with the Society for Typographic Aficionados’ annual Typography Award, type designer Mark Simonson gave a presentation on how Frutiger [pdf, 18 MB] affected, and continues to affect, him and all others who benefit from good typography.

TypoWiki

amberglow — Tue, 29 May 2007 08:46:31 -0800

Fontfilter -- ever wondered what font a logo uses? Wonder no more. (site's in German but the chart is simple--there's also a reversed one, by font instead of by company)

Gems of 19th and early 20th century penmanship

mediareport — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:40:43 -0800

Gems of Penmanship, Penman's Leisure Hour, Ninety-five Lessons in Ornamental Penmanship, The Champion Method of Practical Business Writing and other Rare Books on Calligraphy and Penmanship from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Lots of neat tidbits. [via mlarson.org]

Misprinted Type

hama7 — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:04:04 -0800

Misprinted Type.

An open letter to John Warnock

DrJohnEvans — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 22:11:33 -0800

An open letter to John Warnock. "Please consider releasing eight to twelve core fonts into the public domain. The amount of revenue lost from a small core set of fonts surely can’t have a significant impact on Adobe’s bottom line."

The unstoppable Herr Reichel

flapjax at midnite — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 07:32:24 -0800

Hans Rei chel (previously) is a man of many talents. His own site (flash/sound) is fun (often funny) and chock full of agreeably wacky sounds, but can take some time to navigate. Reichel hasn't made it easy for you if you happen to be in a hurry. You may well get stuck somewhere and just give up. That'd be a shame, though, cause you'd miss getting acquainted with the guitars he makes and plays. Or how he designs fonts. The mixing board shenanigans are not to be missed (once you get past those curious little fellows in the brown hats), plus you can sorta kinda play his daxophone yourself. And of course conduct your own little ensemble of meercats when one of them finally comes out of hiding and says "Hallo! Play with me".

Cheap Pixel Fonts

dobbs — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:18:22 -0800

The Pixel Plant offers 150 Pixel Fonts for between Free and 45 cents each.

The Scourge of Arial

Robot Johnny — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 12:35:38 -0800

The Scourge of Arial. It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft's influence in the world. Arial, however, has a rather dubious history and not much character. In fact, Arial is little more than a shameless impostor...

Free fonts that don't suck = oxymoron?

DrJohnEvans — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 19:02:35 -0800

FontLeech: The Free Font Blog. Searching for free fonts (that don't suck) so you don't have to. Just launched the other day; might be worth watching for us broke designers.