Monday, March 27, 2006

Windows Backdrop du Jour

Just fooling around in PhotoShop & made this.

Monday, March 20, 2006

See what Flash can really do!

http://incomplet.gskinner.com/

Particle effects, real-time interaction with live inputs. Really amazing stuff.

Where did that font come from?

Sometimes I'll look at a font and wonder where it came from- Did a piece of software install it? Did someone send it to me?

Here is a list of fonts installed with Microsoft Office. And another good page on MS's website about fonts included with other products and typography in general.

Adobe has an extensive type library. Many of the best original font desings are theirs, but you can find knock-offs. The other great source is Monotype Corp. Sure there are lots of free fonts out there, but you get what you pay for.

Years ago I helped design a font for a user interface. It's a fun but tedious process. You have to hand-tweak every letter and make sure that all possible combinations of text look natural. Here's a company, Ascender Corporation who has done similar work.

Bad Fonts

Alot of people use Arial. Simply because it comes with Windows. It's not too bad, but there are much better sans-serifs out there.

The worst font when over-used is Comic Sans. There is even a Ban Comic Sans website.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Good Fonts

CreativePro has another good article on Fonts.

Here's what they suggest as good typestyles to start with:

Serif typefaces

  • Minion
  • Sabon
  • Adobe Caslon
  • Georgia
  • Stone Serif

San serif typefaces

  • Meta
  • Frutiger
  • Myriad
  • Verdana
  • Stone Sans

Frog Design

Frog Design is a very prominent and influential design company. They've designed logos and adverts as well as products.

You can see their projects on the Frog Timeline.

Clearview

Frutiger is a font designed for signage. It was invented specifically for the Charles de Gaulle Airport in France.

Now there's Clearview. Here's an article about on CreativePro.

Inspiration

A few sites I go to for inspiration:

Style vs Design

Adobe has a nice article about Style vs Design. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. :-)