Tag Archives: type design

Font Design Webinar, tomorrow June 10 Noon Eastern

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I’ll be sharing tips and techniques on letterspacing. This important task is relatively easy in FontLab and I’ll show you how. Here’s FontLab’s invite: Advanced Font Creation Tips, Made Accessible David Bergsland’s first webinar on troubleshooting font creation got a standing ovation from the attendees! David’s no-nonsense designer-friendly approach is accessible to all. Now he is following it up with “Advanced Font Creation” in FontLab Studio Tuesday June 10 at 9:00 am Pacific / noon Eastern / 18:00 CEST. Register … Continue reading →

Aldine: the intellectuals begin their assault on font design

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Aldine: Bembo These fonts are also from Northern Italy. Bembo is a revival of the work of another printer, Aldus Manutius in the 1500s. Manutius was a major influence on type design as we know it. This continued the trend toward a more intellectual development of type away from its calligraphic roots. Aldine characteristics Narrower caps: But not by much Larger x-height: This tends to make these fonts look a bit more contemporary to our eyes. Ascenders … Continue reading →

Some glyph or character shape terminology in font design

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Some glyph terminology First we better define glyph. To be honest, I’ve never gotten this straight. To me it is just another term for a character or letter. Technically, it is typespeak for variations of a character. An A, an A with a swash, A small cap A might be considered three glyphs of the letter A. In my font design books, a glyph has a separate design window for a character in a font. Before we … Continue reading →

How your readers see your letters: legibility

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8. No ALL CAPS As mentioned in the underline section, setting letters in all caps is the other way to emphasize words on a typewriter. Typesetting has many more options like italic, bold, bold italic, small caps. Plus we can use a larger size, a different font, a different color, and more. In fact, we must be careful we do not get carried away in our enthusiasm for all the options at our disposal. ALL CAPS IS … Continue reading →

Margins are more important than many think: Make the margins bigger

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Make the margins bigger | I love typography, the typography and fonts blog. The I Love Typography blog is often over the top. Even as a typographer who has focused his career on type—both font design and page layout (the two parts of typography)— this blog is always fun, often beautiful, but commonly irrelevant to my daily work. On the other hand, the item discussed in the posting this morning is critical to excellence in typography. Margins … Continue reading →

Fonts are not typography, fonts are used to create typography

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Before we can get into this, though, we have to start with terminology. Typography requires a new language. Much of this is based on historical printing usage and the font design process. Without at least a few of these terms you will be lost. This has been complicated now that all of the digital terms have been added to the mix. So, we really need to start with a little of font design. Not only the different … Continue reading →

Self-publishers need excellent typography

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Things have changed so much in book publishing, that you must understand the new paradigm and why this means you must understand typography. Self-published authors must learn the art of communication with type. This is an excerpt from Writing In InDesign 2nd Edition which will be released as soon as possible. Here’s a link to the 1st edition _________________________________________ Writing within InDesign Here I am again recommending a road less traveled by—not unusual in my life and work. … Continue reading →

Fontographer: Practical Font Design for Graphic Designers

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    Why do you want to use Fontographer? For the fun of it! When I received the opportunity to go back to my roots, and see what the new Fontographer was like, I was a little concerned. I had just spent nine years painfully teaching myself to letterspace by hand, to write OpenType features, and to become accustomed to the tool set of FontLab. Don’t get me wrong, FontLab is a great program and I am … Continue reading →

Fontographer 5.1 book: proofing release extended

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I’ve decided to extend the proofing release for at least another month until I decide what to do with letterspacing in Fontographer. I want to develop an easy way for font designers (who do it for fun) to letterspace their work. I no longer believe that Fontographer will auto space well enough for pro releases of fonts for sale. Please take a look at the proof and let me know what you believe. http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/practical-font-design-for-graphic-designers-fontographer/17144172 The PDF download … Continue reading →

1st public release: Practical Font Design For Graphic Designers: Fontographer 5.1

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This is a special limited time offer until October 1, 2011 It is a low-priced, comb-bound 6×9 proofing release. I am selling the downloadable PDF for only $2.99 and the printed book for only $11.95. My hope is that you will read it and give me comments and feedback (and even typos) so I can make the full release for $9.99 and $19.95 in October. here’s the back cover copy: Why do you want to use Fontographer? … Continue reading →