“Dead Celebrities are always a fascinating subject to many, and this celebrity art created using actual fonts deserves praise. These four posters of Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Marlon Brando and James Dean in some of their most famous poses is nothing short of spectacular. They provide another tribute to the dead actors (and actress) in a way we do not pass by often. Besides small facial drawings, the entire figure of these celebrities is created using actual fonts.”
Helvetica and Alternatives to Helvetica
“Helvetica is a classic. Helvetica is played out. Each of these statements is true to an extent. The world’s most recognizable typeface will soon star in a new film that documents both its omnipresence and its timelessness.
There are many reasons why Helvetica is so widespread. The most obvious being that a few weights have been bundled with the Mac OS for years. It is arguably the most respectable of the “default” fonts. But it’s also used because it’s a safe, neutral choice. For many purposes, typography is more about content than style. Fans of Beatrice Warde will tell you that typographers should communicate without distraction. Helvetica, with its simple, unadorned forms, is the perfect crystal goblet. Even its ubiquity contributes to its neutrality — letters so common they become invisible.
But invisibility isn’t always appropriate, particularly in advertising or branding where individuality is key. Here we recommend our favorite fonts from the grotesque genre that offer something different from Helvetica (or Arial) — whether it’s style, warmth, or extra features like small caps, figure alternates, and additional widths.” (Thanks On Paper Wings!)
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Typechart
“Typechart lets you flip through, preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS.
- Browse typographic styles. (See “anatomy of a style” below)
- Download CSS
- Compare Windows (ClearType) rendering with Apple font rendering
- Each style corresponds with a “style ID”, which allows you to annotate prototypes and retrieve the css while coding.”
Our Middle Name (Hoefler & Frere-Jones on the ampersand)
“Last month’s posts about the ¶ and the ß prompted a flurry of e-mail inquiring about other special favorites in the character set. Matt McInerney guessed correctly that the ampersand is one for which we have special affection, and asked if there was anything else we could say about it. How could we not? Ampersand, after all, is H&FJ’s middle name.”
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Vernacular Typography Polaroids
From Douglas Wilson: “Polaroids taken of mostly hand-painted signs over the past four years all across the United States.”
SparkFonts: Sparklines as TrueType Fonts
“A key characteristic of the SparkMaker add-in for Microsoft Office is the typographical creation of sparklines by means of specifically crafted TrueType Fonts (TTF), the Bissantz SparkFonts.
The crux of SparkMaker is that each value of the input data is represented by one character which is formatted with an appropriate SparkFont. The SparkFonts embody bars, line segments, pies and other fractions of statistical diagrams. The concatenation of formatted characters results in a “textual image” of the sparkline. This way, you can work with the sparkline just like with normal text. For example, you can put it into table cells or insert it directly into your writings. Another quality is that the sparklines can continuously be scaled with the surrounding text, and printouts are razor-sharp.”
Studio Lettering at House Industries
“The first 200 Studio Lettering buyers will receive a free 64-page hardbound book! Add a refreshing dash of hand lettered flavor to your design with the Studio Lettering fonts, a collection of three charming script faces and a useful ornament font. These genuinely ‘smart’ fonts feature sophisticated OpenType engineering, robust character sets and extensive language support!”
Note from Ben Kiel, a former XPLANE intern currently clicking away at House:
Each of the fonts has thirteen different character sets based on the different ways cultures write (or on the different ways a lettering artist would write in a country). Easiest example is Europeans crossing the downstroke on a seven.
Thanks Ben!
Luxury Type
“I’d like to encourage designers to open their mind and consider using some of the other typefaces that are often pre-installed on computers these days. There really are some great choices that are being completely ignored. Granted, not every user is going to have them, but those who do will get an enhanced experience, and those who don’t will be just fine, so long as you specify appropriate alternates (as in MOSe).
Let us compile a list of useable typefaces that we can count on being installed at least some of the time — as well as good alternates for them that are more reliable. Here’s a few I came up with. I think you’ll notice that there are not only some great faces here, but even some that are considered classics or essentials.”
The Art of the Title Sequence
A blog dedicated to quality, not quantity… …oh, and title sequences and their respective designers. And maybe some other stuff.
Someday.
