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Continue reading »]]> As someone who works with typography and design every day, I have a few books I turn to when I need to clear my mind of clutter. One of my favorites is Robert Bringhurst’s “The Elements of Typographic Style”, which includes this rumination on the sanctity of the title page: “Think of the blank page as alpine meadow, or as the purity of undifferentiated being. The typographer enters this space and must change it. The reader will enter it later, to see what the typographer has done.” Lines like this refresh my understanding of the task at hand and clarify my sense of purpose.

Carolina de Bartolo’s new book “Explorations in Typography” has a similar effect, albeit via entirely different means.

“Explorations in Typography” is arranged as a series of twenty-four chapters — the “explorations”. Using a short excerpt from Erik Spiekermann’s classic text, “Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works”, as a mantra, the book guides the reader through a kind of typographical meditation.

In 24 explorations spanning 188 pages, the Spiekermann text is repeatedly typeset, using a variety of techniques to indicate paragraphs and hierarchy. Each exploration shows several examples of a different method of indicating paragraphs in text (and a few later chapters explore different alignments and hierarchies). A new pair of typefaces is used for each example. A colophon and additional side notes about the typesetting and the history of the typefaces are included with each setting.

The explorations are thorough, covering typesetting techniques from the most basic (using indents, for example) to the unusual (using varying directions of text to indicate paragraphs). Typeface choices also range from classic to cheerfully odd. Throughout, the typesetting and page design remain austere and exemplary. As the author explains, the book is meant to further typographical education through an “extended visual taxonomy”, and the broad palette of techniques and typefaces is true to that spirit.

The book is primarily a teaching device, which de Bartolo created “specifically for more advanced typographic study”. She is serious about the book’s potential as a textbook, including advice for both teachers and students on how best to use the book. The depth to which the explorations go is beyond the interest of the non-designer and probably most neophyte designers. This is a book for people who care deeply about text design and typesetting — and for those who are required to care about it, in the case of students. For those of us who fit at least one of those descriptions, “Explorations in Typography” is a valuable resource, and a reminder of the extensive possibilities of digital typesetting. It’s also pleasing, and motivating, to page through the book and study the evolving settings of the text.

The book itself is a lovely thing. At 9.25″ × 12″, it’s large enough to house a letter-size page of typography plus annotations in the margins. The volume is casebound with thin boards and a sewn binding, so it’s sturdy but lightweight. The page design is clean and spare, with a transparent modular grid that provides a flexible canvas for the multitude of typographical settings. The text of the authorial voice is designed to guide the reader through the myriad design samples within. It’s a squeaky-clean, high-contrast treatment that presents a cool yet quirky sophistication.

My one complaint about “Explorations in Typography” is in its free-wheeling use of typefaces. No less than 171 different typefaces are used in the book — at least two for every setting. The type pairings are often interesting, but too often they distract from the typography itself. This is, after all, a book about fine typesetting, not a font catalog. I appreciate that the author included an appendix with a page of advice about choosing typefaces and a complete list of fonts used. But I often wondered whether the book would be improved by simplifying the type. To go to the opposite extreme, what if the exercises were all set in the same serif text face, with one sans face chosen for the headlines? Or choose five or six pairings. In either case, the particular typefaces chosen would be less important than the restraint itself — a book such as this, which seeks to show a variety of typographical tools through demonstration, would be well served by a solid, unchanging typeface selection. The typesetting would then be seen clearly as typesetting, free of the distractions provided by a new pair of fonts on every page. Additionally, the fonts, nearly all of which are drawn from the FontShop catalog, are mostly of the modern, late-20th-Century variety, a choice that will give the book a dated appearance in short order. Exercising some restraint on typeface usage would not only serve the book’s purpose, it would serve its continuing relevance.

The book’s companion website is as well designed as the book, in form as well as function. The site provides information and examples from the book, and includes a terrific and easy to use interactive page that allows the casual user to try out some typographical explorations of her own.

“Explorations in Typography” is a well-conceived, well-designed book that fulfills its goal. It is a unique and valuable catalyst of typographical contemplation. In addition, it’s a solid teaching tool, and a worthy addition to the libraries of design studios, type enthusiasts, and design instructors.

Patrick Barber is a graphic designer, photographer, style maven, and community food activist living in Portland, Oregon.

Continue reading »]]> The rendering issue, at least at text sizes, is not going to go away anytime soon. As it’s been pointed out, the naivety of some designers, coupled with the marketing motivations of webfont services and distributors, does not bode well for the readership. The bandwagon has left, with everyone on board, but not realizing it’s missing a wheel.

[Editor’s note: Ross initially posted this text as a comment but I felt it required the space and prominence of a new post. — SC]

Some of the following simply reiterates what Stephen has already observed, but I think it is worth reinforcing from a slightly different perspective.

Firstly, let me address the statement:

Font buyers rely on providers more than ever before. Those who provide quality and transparency will lead this new market and medium.

I certainly hope this will be the case soon. Currently, providers use a few approaches to address the quality issue. One approach is to leave the optimization up to the foundry or licensing designer. This is obviously the least expensive and most profitable approach in the short term — profitable for the third party provider, that is, probably not for the smaller foundry. Another approach is to develop some sort of “autohinting”. From what I’ve seen this is at best a stopgap that provides somewhat adequate results some of the time, and would be what I consider only a first step, perhaps suitable for fonts that you knew were only being used at larger sizes, or as a basis for manual improvements. If I could generalize, the main point of weakness is that most automated routines only recognize obvious features of glyph anatomy (eg. stems, and to a lesser degree vertical alignments) but are mostly incapable of recognizing relationships, which is a core principal of TrueType hinting; the rasterizer has to be explicitly instructed that the counter of an ‘e’ shouldn’t collapse and should have white inside of it, unless told otherwise using Delta instructions. Autohinting can only say there is a top stroke, a middle stroke, and a bottom stroke, and that the top and bottom are in alignment zones. In fact, it doesn’t really know that the middle stroke is in the “middle”, it just knows its a stroke, and it doesn’t know anything about the relationship between the top and bottom. And so on.

I see some mention of rendering quality — how one provider’s approach bests their competition — but I see little actual sensitivity to the quality. For the provider’s own websites, where they can chose the best option (one would hope they would, at least), they chose fonts which are not optimized and have obvious, easily remedied issues. Not the best advertising, but at least its truthful, I suppose.

Even with those who really do know better, you see rather odd examples. Stephen pointed out Monotype’s FontsLive site, which doesn’t show examples below 24px (ppms?).

Webfont at FontsLive.com with ClearType rendering.

On this page they are promoting the quality of their webfonts, but if you look at the first ClearType example, it very much looks like it is not even hinted (vis. 36px and below). It doesn’t surprise me that it isn’t hinted, but that they are using it as an exemplar of their webfonts. This illustrates a couple of the issues I already mentioned: the “provider” is pushing a service without adequately addressing quality issues, which in turn aren’t seen as affordable to the original foundry because the original foundry’s/designer’s slice of the pie doesn’t warrant the expense. So the complaint that they are only showing larger samples is a valid one. It’s a bit of a snow job, but in this case they can’t even pull that off because the problems manifest themselves even at display/headline sizes. (The second Copperplate example has the same problems.) Fortunately, their collection of fonts for text are well chosen because they are well hinted, but the distinction can be blurred, especially in cases where something that could be a “text” font is categorized as “headline” because its unhinted.

So now we have webfonts, and they’re spilling out into the wild faster than they really should. Well, actually, they aren’t really all webfonts, they’re just marketed as such. What are the discussions about quality taking place in foundries, distributors, and third party providers? What steps are they taking towards addressing the quality issues? Do they care? The one positive thing with webfont services is that the fonts are served, rather then installed, and so when a better quality version becomes available there isn’t some onerous install and upgrade procedure to deal with.

It also doesn’t help to skirt the issue by placing blame, or making excuses or predictions that are not demonstrably accurate. Saying its Microsoft’s fault because their rendering is “crappy” is specious. The (TrueType) rendering is fine, as long as the (TrueType) font has a suitable level of instructions. There are more fundamental reasons why MS have chosen to retain this relationship between the rasterizer and the font, some of which has to do with the global nature of their market. Whether or not Windows rendering is better then OSX rendering can be debated subjectively. This debate has no affect on the existing and near-future market that the font and design industries have to serve, where actual OS proportions should rule the decision-making process. Windows XP may well be anachronistic, but it so happens over 50% of users happen also to be anachronistic, and an additional 40% of people are using other flavors of “crappy” rendering systems. That’s approximately 90+% of users out there using “crappy” “anachronistic” software, and as suppliers of content to those systems we have to do the best we can.

The same goes for the argument that in a couple of years we will all have 300ppi screens. Well, maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it. We will have more high resolution devices (mostly mobile devices), but again we are looking at the bigger picture when producing content for the web. I won’t go into it in great detail, but it is considerably more difficult to manufacture say, a screen that is 70 square inches (such as a laptop) then it is to manufacture a screen that is 5 square inches (such as the iPhone). Manufacturers have to be able to produce volumes of screens at an attrition rate that does not impact efficiency (ie. if you have to chuck half the panels because they have dead pixels, it doesn’t make financial sense). This end of the industry doesn’t seem to move nearly as fast as the other components. Screen resolution has been nearly fixed for the last decade, with most devices hovering around the 100ppi mark (+/-10ppi). So this argument is fine, if you don’t mind not releasing any webfonts for the next 10 years (or however long it will take for high-res screens to be the norm) — otherwise you’re not really doing any good to our end customer’s experience.

Which brings us to the solution end of things.

I don’t think foundries realize yet the “damage” they’ve done by saturating the market with libraries full of fonts not-yet-ready-for-screen. [...] But nonetheless, type-designers, get busy with it! — Angus Shamal

Right. Easier said than done. There are only a handful of people on the planet who do TrueType hinting professionally. FontLab certainly has the basic tools available, if you know how to use them or are willing to learn. So that’s one hurdle. The other is time and/or money. Hiring a third party to do your hinting is an option if you can find someone with the time and if you can afford it. It is highly specialized and is priced accordingly. But the more basic issue — regardless of the form of the investment in hinting — is whether that investment translates to a reasonable return for the originating foundry or designer after all the distributors and “providers” have taken their cut. It seems to me a more coordinated effort may be a better option and that all parties involved carefully consider the quality of the product being released, and collectively find a solution to deal with the issue.

Ross Mills is a type designer and co-founder of Tiro Typeworks. He has been involved in the design and production of multilingual and specialist typefaces for Microsoft Corp., Linotype Library, Apple Computer, the Government of Nunavut and others.

Continue reading »]]> Being one of the rare type designers who happen to be female, I occasionally get this question from other (mostly male) designers. It’s difficult to find other female designers with whom to exchange experiences and share knowledge.

The most common explanation is that type design is a “technical” profession. This is rubbish. Yes, font production does involve some programming, but, as a whole, doesn’t type design have much more to do with the patience required by classic female handcrafts, like needlework and knitting?

My guess is that the real answer is found in gender-specific socialization, both in general society and in the type design scene itself.

In Germany, women and men are still not treated equally. Young boys are rewarded much earlier in life, and for much less, than most young girls. Being born as a boy — and therefore a son and heir — is for many parents an achievement in itself. They project this sense of worth on their son. Everybody is already proud of him, by default.

As a daughter, you have to prove that you deserve being rewarded. Yet even a concerted effort may not lead to a positive reaction from adults. The girl also isn’t worthy of the same support because she won’t carry the family’s name.

Looking at type design as a working process, you must eventually decide when the typeface is finished. For most designers it’s difficult to find an end and be satisfied with the result. Then you add the expectations of others, amplified by the gender gap. Women constantly think they could do better. It’s never enough, they could get judged, they have to please, etc.

There are many of women who have great type designs tucked away in their drawers. They don’t dare to show them to the public.

The same is with women on the stages of type conferences. For most guys, public speaking is less of a problem. They are used to show off with every little bit they produced, knowing they will get rewarded — and if not, well, it’s no big deal.

I have the impression that this imbalance in our upbringing is stronger in Germany than elsewhere in the Western world. It could be one reason why some great female designers with German or Swiss roots had to get out and become successful abroad.

Another aspect is networking, which is still a male thing, and which women typically aren’t taught. They tend to be solitary fighters, which of course has a negative effect on their careers.

Later, if that career does progress, our social structure simply makes it very difficult for women to combine the time working on a typeface with having a family, given the mother’s traditional role as primary caregiver. You find a lot of over-qualified female designers doing production for type foundries, which gives them a financial security in their beloved profession.

One more sad truth: as a lesser known woman, the (male) type scene just doesn’t take you seriously. You are just a “student” who fancies the cool “boys”. You can sit down and listen to them, but you won’t be asked to give your opinion on “serious” type issues. This attitude may seem prehistoric, but honestly, I’ve heard it often.

The solution? Women should be aware of self-censorship, be less hard on themselves, and continue to maintain a high standard of quality without hiding in their chambers. (And some guys shouldn’t jump on stage at the drop of a hat. These changes alone would enhance the quality of some type events.)

I had to do this too. I pushed myself to give lectures and presentations and face the reaction of other type designers. And now, I like it a lot.

Verena Gerlach was born in Berlin and studied Visual Communication at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee. Shortly after finishing art school in 1998, she founded her own studio (fraugerlach) for graphic design, type design and typography. Gerlach has lectured in type design and typography at designakademie berlin from 2003–2009 and gives lectures and workshops about type- and graphic design all over the globe.

Continue reading »]]> Last week, I joined Frank Chimero, Tiffany Wardle, and Jason Santa Maria for a panel at the SXSW conference.

Now that web designers suddenly face the challenge (and delight) of choosing fonts from an ever-growing selection, we thought it’s a good time to recommend some basic principles for making wise type choices.

The slides from each of our four quick presentations are below, as well as audio generously provided by SXSW. If you’re short on time and feel like you know the fundamentals, skip ahead to the second half of the session — I think the Q&A is as useful as our prepared stuff.

Of course, an hour is hardly enough time to deliver what one can get from the first day in a good Type 1 course, and as I listen to the audio I cringe at all the crap I missed or said poorly, but I think we did a decent job of introducing some concepts that will launch young designers more confidently into the new typographic web.

If you attended the panel and have any questions that you didn’t get answered or simply need help finding the right font, feel free to contact me here or on Twitter: @typographica or @font_id.

Slides

Audio

Or view the slides at full screen to autoplay the audio.

Resources

Related Links

• Typedia: Type News, Webfont Alternatives
• Practical Examples: Typekit, Fonts in Use
• Helvetica in U.S. Retail
• Frutiger in Airports, Heathrow
• Hoefler & Frere-Jones webfonts?
• Hinting: Peter Biľak, Tim Ahrens, Microsoft, Beat Stamm
• Test webfonts before you buy
• Serving Typekit font weights and styles to Internet Explorer
• Readability
• Recommended typefaces here at Typographica
• FontFonter
• Combining typefaces: four techniques from H&FJ, with Helvetica, sans/serif
• Kerning, the game
• WebFont Loader (announcement)
• Font vs. Typeface
• Font identification resources
• Type Camp!

Recommended Books

• “The Elements of Typographic Style” (Bringhurst), Applied to the Web
• “Thinking With Type” (Lupton)
• “Detail in Typography” (Hochuli)
• “Stop Stealing Sheep” (Spiekermann, Ginger)
• more

Webfont Providers

• Typotheque
• Typekit
• Webtype
• A comparison of Typekit and Webtype
• FontShop
• Fontdeck
• Fontspring
• MyFonts
• Fonts.com Web Fonts
• Google Web Fonts (free)
• Font Squirrel (free)

Typefaces Used and Mentioned

• FF Meta Serif (Typekit)
• FF Tisa (Typekit)
• National
• Trade Gothic
• DIN Next Rounded (alt: FF DIN Round)
• Adobe Garamond (Typekit)
• Skolar (Skolar)
• Proxima Nova (Typekit)
• Chaparral (Typekit)
• Hellenic Wide (Typekit)
• Georgia
• Lucida Sans/Grande
• Titling Gothic
• League Gothic (Typekit)
• Founders Grotesk
• CamingDos (Typekit
• Bauer Bodoni
• Myriad (Typekit)
• Bello (Typekit)
• Le Monde Journal (Typekit)
• Facit
• Mrs Eaves
• Verdana
• FF Milo Serif
• Futura (alternatives)
• Times New Roman (alternatives)
• Gill Sans (alternatives)
• Trade Gothic (alternatives)
• Helvetica (alternatives)
• Museo Sans (Typekit)
• Benton Modern RE
• Minion (Typekit)
• Frutiger

Our Favorite Typefaces of the Moment

• Tiffany: Founders Grotesk, Tiempos
• Jason: Chaparral, Titling Gothic
• Frank: National, Minion
• Stephen: anything from Commercial Type

Continue reading »]]> Jan Tschichold embraced extremes. His work, most notably “Die Neue Typographie”, embraced and defined modernist typographic ideas. At his most provocative Tschichold only condoned the use of sans serif type. Later in his life he condemned his own pro-modernist stances as too militaristic, comparing them to the thinking of the Nazis which compelled Tschichold to leave Germany.

Regardless of his dichotomous views and styles, Tschichold’s work showcases attention to detail and an emphasis on communication that has proven to be lasting. Because of his strong ideological stances Tschichold is one of the most defining voices in 20th century typography.

“Jan Tschichold: Master Typographer: His Life, Work & Legacy”, takes on a daunting task. To characterize Tshcichold’s varied career, designs, and life requires the unification of extremes. As a result, the book is forced to take the long view. But it does so in a way that allows for some scrutiny of details. The collection of essays focuses on Tschichold’s early training, modernist writings, modern poster designs, classic designs at Penguin, and the rethinking of his Sabon into Sabon Next. The focus on specific facets of Tschichold’s career yields some interesting insights.

Unfortunately, the multiple author format also produces some redundancies. Almost all of the essays begins with an explanation of Tschichold’s upbringing, and mentions his need to flee Germany under Nazi regime. While important to any Tschichold history, reading the same details gets tiresome. Furthermore, Tschichold condeming all serifed type is mentioned at least three times in the book. While not surprising — its a striking quote — it showcases the drawbacks of multi-essay compilations like this one.

Regardless of these shortcomings “Master Typographer” works. Doubleday’s essay on Tschichold’s work for Penguin, during which Tschichold designed today’s Penguin logo and unified their cover designs, introducing the iconic Penguin Paperbacks, is particularly interesting. Possibly because of Penguin Paperbacks recent resurgence in popularity, but more likely because of the intimate details of the essay. Original notes, sketches, and a detailed chronology give stunning insight into the remaking of the Penguin Paperback. A discussion on Tschichold and poster design succeeds on the same fronts. A detailed chronology of Tschichold’s poster designs brings us hidden gems of modern poster design. Sadly, the broad analysis of the posters leaves something to be desired. By highlighting these two essays I don’t mean to discount the others in “Master Typographer”. With the exception of the section on Sabon Next, which is mainly a feast for the eyes, each section is an insightful examination of Tschichold’s character and works.

For all of the successes of “Master Typographer”, I think it’s fair to note that it would be difficult to write a book on Tschichold that wasn’t at least a bit compelling. Tschichold was an opinionated man who led an amazing life. At one point changing his name to Iwan as a sign of support for the Russian Revolution; writing and exploring with the likes of Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitsky, and Renner; fleeing Nazi Germany; and taking part in Post-War reestablishment of printing in England. Tschichold’s life is amazing.

I see this volume as an enticing introduction to Tschichold, and a insightful companion to the Tschichold follower. Tschichold remains a largely unrecognized figure in modern design outside of type circles. I’m hopeful that compilations like “Master Typographer” work to strengthen his legacy.

Lastly, the designers of Master Typographer, Corine Teuben and Cees W. de Jong, deserve praise. The layout and composition in Master Typographer are top-notch.

Chris Hamamoto is a visual designer in San Francisco. He co-designed Typographica.org.

Continue reading »]]> It feels like this war has been raging for ages, but we’re still in the very early years of type on the web. When we look back on this moment — from the day the first webfont service launched to the imminent standardization of WOFF as a webfont file format — it will be but an em dash in the long history of screen typography.

Like Simon Daniels said so prophetically over a year ago, the war (over formats and security and delivery) is over. It’s time to win the peace. Now we’ve got to build some fonts.

Building the fonts is the part of this story that so few anticipated or dared to face. It’s the hard part. So hard, in fact, that some font manufacturers skipped the process altogether, simply releasing their print-optimized fonts as “webfonts” without the significant changes required to make them read well on screen. To me, this is akin to shipping software that is bug-ridden at best. Still, the tech media touts the “thousands” of new fonts now available for web use. Most of what consumers read is about how many fonts you can get and how they are served, but not so much about how they look and read.

Now that the painful reality of poorly hinted fonts is sinking in, web designers are realizing that there is little value in choice alone. In fact, having the choice between thousands of fonts that work only at certain sizes on certain screens isn’t much of a choice at all.

Things will get better. Display pixel density will improve. Windows users will upgrade, replacing GDI with DirectWrite. But this evolution will be slow, and we can’t do much to speed it up.

What we can do is push the evolution of font makers and services. Next time you’re shopping for type, don’t just look for your favorite face as a webfont. Ask for more:

1. Demand fonts that render well for the bulk of all web users, not just those on Mac OS X or Windows 7, but also the poor saps on Windows XP who still represent more than half of the browsing population. High quality releases like Web FontFonts, Fedra Sans Screen, and FacitWeb demonstrate that this can be done.

2. Demand comprehensive previews that show fonts in multiple sizes in all the most common rendering environments: Core Text (OS X), DirectWrite, GDI ClearType, and GDI Standard. Typekit and MyFonts have made valiant efforts here, but the experiences fall a bit short.

3. Demand transparency from webfont providers about the limits of their products. Fonts should be clearly marked when they don’t perform well at certain sizes or in certain operating systems. Webtype and Typekit lead buyers to fonts that work especially well for text. It’s a good first step. FontsLive offers a “minimium recommended size” which would be laudable if it wasn’t so suspect (you can’t even sample their fonts below 20px).

Choosing typefaces for print is fairly clear: you see what you’ll get. Webfont quality, on the other hand, is hidden behind a veil of browsers, operating systems, and end user settings. Yes, there are good webfonts out there, but finding and testing them is a struggle. Font buyers rely on providers more than ever before. Those who provide quality and transparency will lead this new market and medium.

Update: David Březina points out that IE7 switches ClearType on by default. So while there are many Windows XP users out there, most of them have upgraded to IE7 and aren’t seeing non-ClearType rendering in their browser. In this case, ClearType in Win XP would then be the harshest common render mode to test against.