xBlog: The original visual thinking weblog

Take a stab at identifying 34 different fonts in this online quiz.

“What;’s your true type? What type do you click best with — and which types spell doom? In five quick questions, we’ll decipher your identity.” (Thanks Design Observer!)

“Happy (belated) birthday Helvetica! The typeface turned 50 last year and feted with the release of an eponymous independent documentary film. While Helvetica has claimed its own place in history, still, it remains only one of myriad options on your Microsoft Word toolbar. Think you can tell one typeface from another?”

“Ascenders, arms, crossbars, counters, spines, shoulders, tails, stems and spurs, altogether there are over 20 components in the anatomy of type. There remains a gap in the vocabularly of this most respected of crafts, however.

In the designing or cutting of stencil letterforms, one is invariably brought to a point wherein the supporting canvas is joined to counter of the letter. Up until now, these supporting areas have gone without definition or label. A gross oversight by the standards of any industry, let alone one with as rich and respected a history as typography.

The purpose of this initiative is to remedy this oversight by introducing a new term and definition into the common vernacular of designers and typographers.” (Thanks Grant!)

“When we asked you, our readers, to tell us whom you would like us to interview for Creative Characters, one name that kept coming up was Christian Schwartz’s. Although he’s not even 30, Christian Schwartz is among the most prolific type designers in the USA, having published fonts with about half a dozen foundries. He has also created successful corporate type systems, such as the superfamily made for the German railways, for which he and Erik Spiekerman received the Federal German Design Prize 2007. And that’s not his only award this year…”