Don’t forget your Underware

First, a big thank you to all who read and commented on On Choosing Type. I’m in search of contributing authors who can write case studies on type choice for, say, a redesign. For example, Creative Review magazine recently redesigned and chose to use Farnham throughout; an article on why a certain type was chosen and how it compliments other elements – that’s the kind of thing I’m after. If you’re interested, then simply email me at johno@ this domain.

Let’s begin our Sunday Type with Smoothing Out the Creases with Web Fonts, from Jon Tan. I mentioned the importance of checking your type across different systems, and Jon’s article considers the rendering of fonts in OSX and Windows. Great article.

Free Fonts

A great little—with emphasis on the little—font from those talented people at Underware. A number of people have emailed to ask which typeface I use to set the the captions for illustrations. In fact, I stole the idea from Kris Sowersby after he used it for his article Newzald: From Moleskine to Market. It’s only designed to be used at one size, 8pt; but I guess there’s nothing stopping you using it at larger sizes too—might be fun.

You can download it for free from Underware (as always, remember to read the license).

And on the topic of free fonts, Pointy has been updated. You can download the updated version here (free for non-commercial use).

Gentium, the Open Source font is now in its final release. You can download Gentium here.

Our fourth free font is the sans serif Graublau Web (regular and bold). It has been released with web-font embedding in mind. Pity it doesn’t at least include an italic.

One of the concerns I have with so-called web fonts, is that we may well see a whole raft of copy-cats—good type tweaked and re-licensed. Let’s hope not.

Bake your own

FontStruct is a brilliant new type-creation tool from FontShop. It’s very well conceived and excellently executed. It’s incredibly easy to use. If you do create something, be sure to tell me about it. Perhaps we could feature some of the Fontstruct fonts right here.

All of the designs come under a Creative Commons license, so you can share and download freely. I really like the dingbats font Kawaii, Schema Basic Bold, Blockhead, and dotSquared Arena.

Next is an interesting take on the anatomy of type posted on typomil:

Created by David Březina and; Martin Pecina. Thanks Mac for the link.

Saving your screen with type

This must be the best screen-saver ever:

It’s called DropClock and can be downloaded for both Mac and Win. Thanks to Eliot Jay Stocks.

The FontFeed has two excellent interviews with Martin Majoor (designer of one of my favourite typefaces, Scala) and with the enormously talented (why don’t we hear more about him?) Xavier Dupré (Vista Sans, Megano, et al.).

The interviews are available as PDFs to download for free. Be sure to read them!

Fun type

Want a typeface that brings a smile to your face? Look no further than LOVOLO:

Via whywerock.com.

Christian Schwartz does Tokyo

The talented Mr Schwartz is in Tokyo on Tuesday to speak at Tab Talks 4. I was hoping to get there, though it’s unlikely now. Tokyo is a long way from me (and domestic travel in Japan is insanely expensive). If you are closer to Tokyo than me, then why not head over to Shinagawa and see him in the flesh. Be sure to take some photos for iLT. The talk will be in English with a Japanese interpreter (not the other way round).

Smashing Lettering

Some stunning and inspirational lettering in Smashing Magazine’s Beautiful Handwriting, Lettering and Calligraphy post:

Enjoy.

Sunday links

Now go out and buy FF Utility—TypeOff
My favourite April Fool—typotheque
Type quiz 6—Unzipped
Baseline grids in Indesign—CreativeCurio
Hand-painted signs—ableparris
Numerous Numerals explained—FontFeed
Get the Helvetica off our money—via Daring Fireball
Bernard Levin—Ace Jet 170
Dutch Type Library—(if like me, you’re a fan of Dutch type)
We don’t serve your type here—inspirationbit
Friday Font Fond: Omnes—How Blog
Estupido Espezial–H&FJ
Styling text links—Andy Rutledge (yes, I promise to fix mine soon)
Font flags—Jacob Cass
Type Talk: your questions answered—Ilene Strizver
New typeface: Enotmik—aisleone Typo Hunt Across America—via ATypI

Expressive Words update

Karly certainly started something when she posted about her own type exercise. Mauel from Æstheticrew has also had a go. Anyone else?

Today’s types

First up is Marat, selected by the Type Directors Club of New York to receive the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design in the Text / Type Family category. And excellent she is:

and Miss Fitzpatrick from Umbrella Type. Gotta love that capital M.

And be sure to check out ILT’s April Fonts in the sidebar (right, and up a bit). So much more to come, so subscribe to ensure you don’t miss out. Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday.

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