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August 25, 2015
Last November, I decided on a whim to spend a whole weekend dedicated to designing a full, new, Arabic typeface. All I knew was that I wanted to design a fat, display, Naskh typeface. Because of the speed required, I relied almost entirely on intuition and produced something I wouldn’t have been able to design […]
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interview make a font
August 7, 2015
Welcome to this month’s roundup of type-related info and entertainment. Today, we remember typography legend Hermann Zapf, hear from Nadine Chahine (who worked with Zapf), talk about dyslexia, discuss the future of typography on the Web, peruse famous bookplates, visit the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, watch the beauty of engraving in […]
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monthly font news video
July 12, 2015
My graphic design students love to design posters using the classic eye chart composition, and they frequently ask “What typeface should I use for this?” Not having a definitive answer has always been frustrating, so I decided to investigate to find out what typeface is used on eye charts.
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legibility lorrie frear popular
July 1, 2015
Nowadays, with tens of thousands of fonts available, we are accustomed to a great variety of letterforms. But, of the approximately 1,000 cataloged fifteenth-century roman fonts, very few stand out as unusual. Most share the same fundamental attributes. Almost all roman typefaces of the period are, what we now call humanist: of low contrast, lowercase […]
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Incunabula type history
June 29, 2015
Way back in 2007, while living in rural Japan, I created ILT. I remember its birth with supreme clarity. It began simply as a way to share what I found typographically interesting, and I never foresaw its popularity. Almost eight years on, more than 500 posts, eight moves, and four cats later, and ILT’s design […]
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June 27, 2015
Perhaps this article should have ended at the question mark in its title. And by the end of it, you may well concur. However, in the meantime, and before I get started — and I promise this won’t take long — let me be clear, I am not, I repeat, not (in bold for emphasis) a Helvetica hater.
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ask ILT feature Helvetica popular
June 17, 2015
Basically, two things came together. First: I am fascinated by the mesmerizing richness of detail in medieval initials. And I admire the patience and drawing skills those medieval monks possessed – perhaps because I actually lack both. In the Middle Ages the more detailed and elaborate the decoration was, the higher the value and appreciation […]
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make a font type design
June 12, 2015
Like a tiny seed growing into a giant tree or a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis — type design isn’t! Forward steps, missteps, steps retraced — that is type design. Sometimes the development is natural and organic; at others it is perhaps more akin to working for a typographic Dr. Moreau. During the long process, […]
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Didone make a font type design
June 1, 2015
Welcome to this month’s roundup of type-related info and entertainment. Today, we dust off our LPs for typographic inspiration, listen to wise words from Milton Glaser, congratulate several award winners, hear from a bunch of type designers, discuss the gender gap in type design, examine the epistemology of typefaces, write a dissertation without punctuation, celebrate […]
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monthly font news new fonts video
May 22, 2015
A Review by David Wolske In his foreword to the 2010 Liber Apertus Press reissue of Rob Roy Kelly’s American Wood Type 1828–1900, David Shields wrote:
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book review wood type