I've previously left you with some thoughts on analog memories and records,
from having just started my Polaroid project. Since then, I've also ditched
my digital note-taking (I still love you, IA Writer) and committed to
a very physical, sturdy, notebook.
I mention this because looking back at previous entries, I can't help but
notice my handwriting, and how much it tells about where and how
they were written. It's easy to tell at a glance what the writing conditions
were like for each entry: sloppy and squiggly? — probably writing
on a bumpy bus or taxi; slanted and misaligned? — probably wrote it
on the subway journeys; clean and straight? — most likely at my desk
at home, with a cup of coffee on hand (and the coffee cup stains... oh, how I've
grown to like them. Celebrating the imperfections).
I remember reading
The Missing Ink, by
Philip Hensher, and thinking about how we don't, in fact, know what our best friends' handwriting looks like. Do you? It makes me wonder about what a mood/environment adaptive digital typeface would look like. We'd call them Moody Variable Fonts.
In actual type news, check out subfont if you're looking to subset Google Fonts glyphs into webpages. And do not miss Typekit's new visual search, which works fantastically well! Kudos, Typekit. Also, someone made a font out of piss, and it looks... interesting. 🍁
IN OTHER NEWS, I left the gorgeous and raw Berlin life to the (surprisingly warm as I write this) North American life of Montreal, Canada. So if you're around, please do say hello! Also, I'll soon be switching my newsletter delivery system from TinyLetter to Revue. Hopefully the contacts' transition will be a smooth one, but keep an eye out on your Spam folder in 3 or 4 week's time just in case something goes wrong.
Enjoy this week's selection ♥️ ☕️
— Ricardo M.
TYPEFACES | BOOKS
Paul McNeil, author of
The Visual History of Type(which, by the way, looks like a fantastic book
with more than 300 typeface reviews), writes for It's Nice That a
condensed version of his favourite typefaces' reviews. In this article, he
writes about:
The Aldine Italic (1501), Block (1908), Bremer Antiqua (1922), Patrona Grotesk (1931), Found Fount (1989)
and Lÿno (2010). As you can see, Paul really went through a
lot of trouble to encompass the history of typefaces through 5 centuries. Here's
his full review of a favourite of mine, Block, since it had a significant
impact in Berlin's graphic design:
Although geometric sans serifs are commonly thought to have originated in the
1920s with groundbreaking designs like Jakob Erbar’s eponymous typeface from
1922, there is no denying the brutal geometry that underlies the uneven edges of
Block’s monolithic letterforms from 1908. It was created for the Berthold
Type Foundry by Hermann Hoffmann, a German type designer with a background in newspaper
work.
Block’s origins can be seen in contemporary advertising from Berlin, in
particular the lettering of Lucian Bernhard. His exceptional hand-painted posters
for commercial clients such as Bosch and Manoli are precisely replicated in Block’s
distinctively thickset characters, wonky contours, colossal x-height and stunted
descenders. Like the lettering it references, Block achieves maximum impact with
minimum means.
In-between starting this entry and finishing it, Paul's book somehow sneaked
into the wish list. Keep reading for the other Paul's reviews and journey through
typographical time.
Keep reading →
INTERVIEW | PEOPLE
On a recent interview for TypeThursday, Marina Joyce (author of
Designing for Print) shares her journey into and through the world of typography,
and specifically, the world of print design. In the process, she curates a few
very thoughtful tips for anyone wanting to dive into that world.
Even if you're not looking for a print dive-in, you'll find plenty of
motivation and inspiration to give and share. When asked about how the whole thing
started, Marina says:
"I thought to myself; I like printing. I know how to run a company. So… sure! And so I bought a print shop."
Passion doesn't always have to be the driver. But in Marina's case, it
was also the fuel. For those of you (I should say us, because, well...) often stopped
in the tracks with impostor syndrome, or not going any further because "we
don't know how", Marina has some great advice:
"In the beginning, I just had to take fake it until I made it.
Customers and prospects would call and I would go pick up a sample and say “Sure,
we can print this”. Then bring it back to the shop and my Pressman would
say “No we can’t”. Then scramble to find a solution. I would
call binderies and describe the sample. Literally going “It is 8.5 x 11.
It has two staples but not through the spine. Through the front to the back”
and the bindery person would say “okay, it is side-stitched.” That’s
how I learned."
As for the printing tips, I'll just leave you with the last one, which also
serves for those of us in the digital design world where the Web is the medium:
And this one is important. Your monitor is not a proofing device.
When you are designing for web, you hit preview and see the error immediately.
When you are in InDesign and hit preview… that is not a proof. Proofing
systems vary from printer to printer so get with your printer when you are between
projects and learn about what they can and cannot do proof-wise. Find out what
their proofs represent. Are they G7 or Gracol certified? That can make a difference!
Variable fonts carry with them a broad range of possibilities and can open up
entire design spaces of creative options to type, graphic and web designers. These
aren’t human readable at first—they exist as mathematical representations.
However, there are proposed approaches to help us visualize and manipulate variable
fonts. By exploring user interface patterns, we can better understand how to illuminate
the exciting spaces within a variable font. At its foundation, this involves making
variable fonts aware of their context.
A fantastic and inspirational read in its entirety, so please keep reading and
say hello to Marina.
Keep reading →
VIDEOS | EDUCATION
ATypI, or Association Typographique Internationale, just wrapped up here
in Montreal (sadly I didn't arrive in time to attend it), and some of the talks
are already online for viewing. At the moment of writing, there's already a
lot of talks online,
which you can check here. Full disclaimer: I haven't had time to watch
any of them yet, as my life is still utter chaos, but this is my selection for
my next few evenings:
— Why I Love Designing for Public Spaces (Paula
Scher)
—
How Not to Draw Accents
(David Jonathan Ross)
— From stroke to screen, The future of hand-lettering in a digital world (Christopher
Rouleau)
— User Interfaces in Type Design, opportunities in Variable Fonts (Santiago
Orozco)
— Britain Into Europe! 50 Years of Typographic Persuasion (Paul
Luna)
—
Is harmony possible between East Asian and Western glyphs?
(Taro Yamamoto)
And the list goes on. I'm absolutely sure that the quality of each one is
top notch, as it's usually the case with ATypI. Let's just
say I'm quite happy I'm still unemployed for the next 10 days, as I go
through this list.
Read on →
HISTORY | EDUCATION
I'm honestly surprised how this 3-part story by FontBureau didn't
make a bang in the online world, or maybe I missed it. This is a fantastic essay
by David Berlow on the history, influence and cultural mechanics
of the Mergenthaler's machine, as well as how things changed
with the arrival of Linotype.
What makes this essay so interesting is its focus on the metal revolution, and
how it changed the virtualisation of type setting in the early days:
Not much about letterpress may strike us as “virtual” today, but Gutenberg’s
innovation of separating the formation of letters from the document they were formed
on marked a step toward abstraction. Four hundred years later, it was still going
strong, because, among other things, you could tie the text up and store it.
There's a lot to make a note of in such a short first essay, though. Mergenthaler’s revolution was in text type, which was the hardest to set and wore out the fastest.
Not having to get the type from the case, print, and then put it back in the case,
in fact stopping it from coming in the door altogether, was the virtual advance.
The type appeared and disappeared in and out of a melting pot.
Also remarkably interesting is how different cultures played a
role in this revolution, often with its own peculiar needs:
A different split of technologies might take place in other markets and other
publishing cultures. The Ottoman Empire, which used the Arabic script for publishing
in both Arabic and Turkish, got native Muslim ownership of Gutenberg’s invention
by the early eighteenth century, and part of the initial compromise between Arabic-script
publishers and letterpress was the separation of secular and religious publishing:
secular texts might be printed, but religious texts would be handwritten by calligraphers,
until the mid-nineteenth century.
[...]
And although machine parts are fine for some designs, languages, and scripts,
they are hopeless for others, or at least they were until the arrival of photographic
or digital type. So while a struggle ensued for the right balance between writing,
hand-setting, and mechanical typesetting in cultures around the world, the Latin
script, especially in use for English, hit the sweet spot, both technically and
culturally.
This essay is not without David's personal remarks from his time at Linotype
in the early days, which gives us insight we wouldn't really get from a history
book. Keep reading, and bear in mind there's also Part II and Part III.
Keep reading →
And now for something completely different: making books. So maybe
not that different after all, as hardly anything else goes better with typography
than books (and coffee, but you know that already).
The amazing British Library has published a short little guide
about what goes into making a Medieval Manuscript, so let's pretend it's
not the 21st century for a little bit:
Tonight, when you pick up your book, observe the legacy of sewn gatherings in
the fixings of the pages. Discern, in your fountain pen, the memory of the hollow
feather. What follows is a general, Wiki-How-style overview of how a medieval manuscript
would have been fashioned. The craft flourished for over 1,000 years and dominates
the material foundation of Western literary culture.
You'd start with finding your parchment, which is a remarkably time consuming
process and one that has suffered alterations through many centuries, as Keith
Houston has shown us in his fantastic book, The Book.
Next, you'd prepare your gatherings:
Cut sheets from your parchment. You may need more than one skin for each gathering
of sheets. If you’re making a deluxe Bible, you may need thousands.
Fold your sheets into bifolia (Latin for two leaves, or pages).
Prick your sheets as a guide for ruling, using a knife or other metal point.
By the time you actually set to write your text, you're not quite done with
preparations just yet:
"Prepare your quill, which may be a goose feather and can be sourced from
the bank of a lake in late summer when they moult. The wing your feather comes
from will be the opposite from the hand you write with. In Latin, penna (wing)
is the root of our word ‘pen’. Incidentally, it’s also the root
of ‘penne’ pasta which, like a quill, is a hollow cylinder!"
Keep reading for more details on all the different processes that went into making
a single manuscript, with plenty of images to admire. The book binding process
alone could easily fill up a dozen pages, especially as it evolved through time
quite a few times; the books you hold today in your hands are a result of centuries
of trial and error.
(Also, if you're curious, the BBC has a very short documentary about making parchment, available on Youtube.)
Continue reading →
Typeface of the week
Erato is a gorgeous serif typeface designed by Dieter Hofrichter,
and I'm very surprised it's not seen in the wild more often. It's as
elegant as it is balanced, and with plenty of OpenType features offered, it's
a serious contender for solid body text displays.
What's even more fantastic is that it's Light weight is completely free
of charge, both for Desktop and Web, so give it a spin. Erato is offered by
Hoftype.
Get it now →
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