Salon.com > Typography

Inside the branding process

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:30:00 +0000

Design enthusiasts from around the world gathered in San Francisco on Sept. 16 for the 2nd annual Brand New Conference – the logo and identity event hatched from Bryony Gomez-Palacio’s and Armin Vit’s wildly popular Brand New blog. Eager to peek into the brand-making process by industry trailblazers and pocket juicy creative nuggets, the well-turned-out set received an ear- and eye-ful of inspiration from: Vince Frost of Frost Design; Christopher Simmons of MINE™, Paddy Harrington of Bruce Mau, Marina Willer of Wolff Olins, Jonathan Notaro of Brand New School, Claudia Boggio and Alfredo Burga of Infinito, Ben Barry and Everett Katigbak of Facebook, and Matteo Bologna of Mucca Design.

How to self-publish a typography book

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:20:00 +0000

If you ask any graphic design student at San Francisco's Academy of Art University to name his or her most-faved teachers, Typography 2 instructor Carolina de Bartolo will no doubt pop up in the mix. In fact, it was her students' encouragement (and their resulting wow-worthy portfolios) that finally convinced de Bartolo to bring her 10-years-in-the-making book idea to fruition. Two more years and a steep learning curve later, de Bartolo can now add author/entrepreneur to her title. "Explorations in Typography: Mastering the Art of Fine Typesetting" is de Bartolo's first venture into the world of self-publishing -- and a beautiful, instructive piece to boot.

"Explorations in Typography" by Carolina de Bartolo

The hidden power of typography

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 01:01:00 +0000

"Widows and orphans give us sleepless nights." In any other sense, that phrase might conjure up images of black spiders or a certain little redhead named Annie. But when you realize the words were spoken by partner and typographer-extraordinaire Caz Hildebrand of London-based graphic design firm Here Design, the picture changes mighty fast. She adds, "All of us in the Here studio are unhealthily obsessed with the finer aspects of typesetting." And man -- does it show.

Image courtesy Here Design

The font that took over the world

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:01:00 +0000

Loud, complicated, sprawling: The New York City subway is a national landmark as much as it is a transit system. From its 1904 inception, the New York City subway has grown into the largest unified transportation system in the Western Hemisphere -- one that includes more than 423 stations and 660 miles of track. But its breathtaking, and frequently overlooked, collection of signage -- from colorful mosaics to colored circles -- also offers fascinating insight into the popular conception of public transportation and the world in which we live.

Today, the modern subway is dominated by the Helvetica typeface: A clean, simple, unfussy font became a favorite of municipal planners and corporations in the postwar period. Prior to this redesign, however, the New York subway was a chaotic collection of signs and placards in various typefaces that more closely resembled the world of Dr. Seuss than the modern system we know today. In his new book, "Helvetica and the New York City Subway System," New School adjunct professor Paul Shaw explains how the efforts of designers -- including iconic graphic designers (and co-founders of the influential Unimark design firm) Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda -- as well as politicians and the public helped engineer that change, and what that overhaul says about urban infrastructure and ourselves.

Hideous fonts may boost reading comprehension

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:30:00 +0000

On the subject of fonts (or, typefaces, to use the more technically accurate term), feelings often run high. People have their favorites, for reasons both practical and sentimental. The story of how Helvetica became the preeminent typeface of our times has inspired a documentary film, while loathing of Comic Sans has prompted what can only be called a typographical jihad. A surprising number of older authors name Courier as the font they prefer to write in because it resembles the characters of a typewriter and therefore kindly suggests that the current draft is still available for improvement. But surely everyone can agree that a good typeface is easy to read, right?

Not so. A recent study out of Princeton, and brought to wider attention by Jonah Lehrer at Wired.com, suggests that ugly, irregular fonts can boost the amount of information readers retain from a text, while easy-to-read type is more likely to just sort of slide out of their minds. The study, titled "Fortune Favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of Disfluency on Educational Outcomes," found that people remembered more from worksheets and PowerPoint presentations when they were composed in a hot mess of hated fonts like Monotype Corsiva, Haettenshweiler and the dreaded Comic Sans Italic.

All I want for Christmas is … an e-mail program that works

Wed, 20 Dec 2000 20:30:00 +0000

This holiday season the technology industry is navigating some awkward and perilous transitions as it negotiates the first major financial downturn in nearly a decade and tries to figure out where the next fortunes will be made.

Is the wireless Web the future? Will broadband finally give birth to interactive television? Will peer-to-peer programs like Napster prove to be a fad or a fixture?

Anyone who claims to know sure answers to these questions is a fraud; experience counsels skepticism, if not cynicism. While the big money waits to see which future pans out, though, I have some more modest suggestions for products and technologies the industry could be providing today -- innovations that might not change the world but would certainly make life easier for those of us who depend on computers for our here-and-now work.

Industrial-strength e-mail software that never lets you down

Long ago the world realized that e-mail was the "killer app" not only of the Internet itself but of the entire "new economy." Fast, cheap and out of control, e-mail now dominates the high-tech workplace and is its one essential tool, surpassing even the Web itself on the can't-live-without-it meter. My own daily e-mail volume -- like that of many of you reading this, I don't doubt -- long ago crossed the line into four figures.