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Projected type

The Week in Type

Welcome to this week’s the week in type. Thanks to all those who commented on David’s great On diacritics article. Upon seeing Greg Meadows’ photos from the boneyard in last week‘s the week in type, Matthew sent me some of his own:

boneyard lettering

Note: I’ve started using ThickBox for some of the images. Where you see [+] in the top-left corner, just click the image to see a larger version.

boneyard

the boneyard

I’m off to find a boneyard.

A useful grid designer for the Web. First, select columns and gutters,

grid designer: grid

then select typography,

grid designer: typography

then export. Nice.

Tobias Battenberg took a projector and Akzidenz Grotesk out onto the streets, and came back with these fantastic images.

akzidenz grotesk

projector-type

These and many others will soon be available as desktop & iPhone wallpapers. Many thanks to Tobias. Inspired by Tobias (and Batman), I plan to take my own projector out, and experiment. I’ll post the results here.

Nice spread from Non-Format:

non-format

Font of the week

Fidel Black by Chilean Luciano Vergara, and available through Latinotype. Inspirada en el compañero de Cuba:

font: fidel black

Fidel Black PDF specimen. There’s also an iphone wallpaper designed by Luciano, and set in Fidel Black, here. Also used to set this article’s masthead.

Free fonts

lavoisier free, open source font

Not only is it free to download, but it’s distributed under the SIL Open Font License. You can even download the FontLab file.

lavoisier free, open source font

Featured faces

Capricorn, a compact, modern sans from Jens Gehlhaar:

capricorn

Hannah is a playful type that would work really well for certain poster designs:

hannah

New fonts

From Jeremy Dooley of Insigne, Kasuga Brush:

fonts: kasuga brush

Type links

50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography
Josef Müller-Brockmann Flickr Group
TypeTalk: Top Fonts of 2008
The abbreviated typographer
InDesign Inspiration — Nick Sherman
The Journal of Urban Typography
Evaluating fonts: kerning
26 Years, 85 Notebooks
Design Observer: Archives — typography
FontShuffle gets 50 new fonts
iPhone emoticons
Font Lorry
Polish diactrics in signage
Open Baskerville
How not to space headlines
World-Ready Composer in Adobe CS4
jQuery sIFR plugin
An interview with Mark Simonson:

mark simonson

Kinescope is my favourite Simonson script. And Proxima Nova is a pretty special sans (comprising 42 fonts).

Great article on the first Arabic script printing press, by Pascal Zoghbi. Al Zakher founded the press in 1734, and it continued operating until 1899:

The First Arabic Script Printing Press in Lebanon

It’s not metal, it’s not wood; it’s wool. Meet Thread Red from handmadefont:

thread red by handmadefont.com

Thomas Silkjær contacted me about a project he’s working on: an 840-page book about Bible design & production. Hope to get my hands on a copy when it’s published:

bible design and production

Inspiration

Typographic inspiration can be found in numerous places. I found this beautiful engraving from master engraver Sam Alfano:

sam alfano

It’s not typography, but it could certainly inspire some beautifully crafted typographic ornaments. And remember that all images on Sam Alfano’s site are copyrighted; so, look, marvel, and be inspired to create designs of your own. Be sure to check out Sam’s other site, the MasterEngraver.com.

Video

Paula Scher looks back at a life in design:

paula scher

Recommended reading

I mentioned this book a couple of weeks ago. If you’re looking for a tome to inspire, then this is for you. I often take this one to bed with me (not sure whether that says more about me or the book). Here’s a spread from Typography 29 to whet your appetites:

tdc 29 spread

300 pages, hard bound.

Events

SVA Summer Program in Italy 2009 (feel free to buy me a ticket).

The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica & the New York City Subway (Thursday, 5 February, 2009) with typographer and calligrapher, Paul Shaw.

airport alphabet by Matthew Carter

And if you haven’t read Paul Shaw’s article on the subject, then head on over to AIGA.

TDC Salon: What I See (Thursday, 19 February, 2009), featuring Kevin Smith, former partner of Giampietro+Smith.

Giampietro+Smith

The TDC Salons are held at the Type Directors Club Center at 6 pm every third Thursday (unless otherwise noted ). 347 West 36th Street, Suite 603, New York, NY 10018.

Name that typeface

I still receive quite a number of emails asking me to identify typefaces. Would love to help (and sometimes I do), but owing to the volume of emails I receive, I just can’t reply to them all. So, even you need to ID a typeface, then click through to the wonderful Typophile Type ID Board:

typophile type id board

Also, take a look at my post on identifying type — lots of additional resources.

Type blogs RSS

I’ve added a several more type-related blogs to the OPML file. You can download here, and then import into your feed reader. If you think I’ve missed some good ones, then let me know.

One you really must subscribe to is Thomas Phinney’s new blog, Phinney on fonts:

phinney on fonts

It’s included in the above OPML file.

Win a book

To celebrate … (I don’t know what), I’m going to give away a type book. This week, I will choose, at random, one of my followers on Twitter. The chosen one gets one of these books: The elements of typographic style, The complete manual of typography, Thinking with type, or The secret history of letters. The winner gets to choose one.

And finally …

In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be adding new features to ILT, including a comprehensive recommended reading section. Thanks for subscribing, reading, and commenting. And thanks to everyone who sent in links. Perhaps the easiest way to send me links is via twitter; and, if you use the hash tag #ilt or #ilovetype then it’s even easier for me to track them. Have a great weekend.

previous: On diacritics

next: Chelsea, darling

Typeface Categories

learn greek type desgin
font deals of the week
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