ericellenberg

I urge anyone who calls themselves a fan or lover of typography to watch this 49 minute film.

(Source: coudal.com)

Creative Review - The Helvetica killer:

PB: Do you always need those idiosyncracies in typefaces?

BM: You do, otherwise what’s the point? Why use this or that? When people choose a typeface it’s not a rational decision, it’s completely emotional. They home in on details and say ‘I love that, that’s why I’m going to use it’. But then they want a rational explanation to tell their client.

I like Aktiv, but to my eyes it looks like a quirky mix between Helvetica and Univers. As Maag admits, Helvetica was successful because it’s neutral—it has no soul, hence it’s universal utility.

Revised Font Stack | A Way Back - A thorough assessment of font stacks around the web with suggestions for improvement. Fantastic article. Beautiful website, too.

IEBlog : An Early Look At IE9 for Developers - What’s Direct2D, you ask? Well, from the looks of it, the salvation of type on Windows. Truly remarkable improvements. Can’t wait for all Windows browsers to start supporting this API.

Via Thomas Phinney.

Correction, 3/1/2010: It’s not actually Direct2D that enables beautiful text on Windows. Rather, it’s a different, but related API new to Windows 7: DirectWrite. Direct2D provides hardware acceleration, but it’s DirectWrite that provides the improved text drawing system. My bad.

ISO50 - The Blog of Scott Hansen  » Perky Bros. LLC - I, too, am a sucker for letterpress. Especially when it’s as gorgeous as this.

THE MAKING OF KANDAL — LetterCult : A short history of the development of a typeface. Most interesting are Simonson’s comments on traditional versus digital font production:

“I would never go back,” Simonson says. “You do get a certain sense of accomplishment mastering things like French curves and technical pens, but the process is just so unforgiving and inflexible and slow. Unless you are trying to give a typeface a handmade look, it’s just not worth it. Plus, with the efficiency of working digitally, you can do so much more than just draw the letters. You can work out the spacing at the same time, play ‘what if’ scenarios with different design ideas, see how a partially designed font looks set in a paragraph, things that would be impractical or impossible working with traditional tools.”

Reading this article gave me a newfound appreciation for the accomplishment of pre-digital type designers. It’s also an inspiration. We take so much for granted in today’s digital society that we often overlook (or forget) what drove us to use the computer in the first place. Our tools will never define us: only what we do with them will.