Numerals (or fig­ures) can take var­i­ous forms. The figure style you choose ought to be appro­pri­ate to the project you are work­ing on. Read­abil­ity is key. But which style is best for which pur­pose? There are two main forms, old­style fig­ures (OSF) and lining fig­ures (LF). Each can come in tab­u­lar and pro­por­tional widths. See […]

The Open­Type format offers typog­ra­phers more glyphs, and (some­times) more con­fu­sion. As the Font­Font library is con­verted to Open­Type, pre­mium fonts are con­tin­u­ally released with advanced typo­graphic fea­tures and lan­guage sup­port built-​in. With so many new releases we don’t expect you to keep up on which Font­Fonts can speak which lan­guages. Just keep an eye […]

Sometimes, flat just doesn’t cut it, and we need to find other, more attrac­tive ways to present designs to our cus­tomers. One tech­nique I’ve been using recently works remark­ably well for text, logos and other vector art­work. It con­sists of taking a vir­tual pho­to­graph of the work by com­bin­ing Adobe Illus­tra­tor and Pho­to­shop fil­ters. The […]

FF Headz is the first type­face by designer and illus­tra­tor Flo­rian Zietz. The con­cept for FF Headz is sim­i­lar to the effect found in some children’s books, where pages are split into sec­tions that can be grouped in unusual and humor­ous com­bi­na­tions. For exam­ple, a croc­o­dile head from one page might be paired with an […]

Fred Smei­jers, the award-​winning designer of FF Quadraat and fonts for Our­Type, and author of “Coun­ter­punch,” describes the trou­ble with “leg­i­bil­ity” — not just in achiev­ing it as a goal, but describ­ing it as a concept.

Robert Bringhurst’s “The Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style” is the undis­puted bible of typog­ra­phy, but its instruc­tions are lim­ited to print design. Richard Rutter is fill­ing that need with “The Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style Applied to the Web”. The new site will present Bringhurt’s prin­ci­ples one nugget at a time in a manner rel­e­vant to web […]

With the inven­tion of “desk­top pub­lish­ing”, design­ers found them­selves set­ting type on their com­put­ers for the first time. Until then, they had made type spec­i­fi­ca­tions for type­set­ters and left the job up to the pro­fes­sion­als. As a result, you can still see clas­sic inac­cu­ra­cies in type­set­ting, even in top-​quality printed matter. Here you will find […]

There are quite a few qual­ity stamped or dis­tressed fonts avail­able — Frankie and Frankie Dos, Road­kill, Bat­tery Park, Hawksmoor, Chase, Cold­har­bour, Despatx­ada, FF Stamp Gothic, FF Con­fi­den­tial, FF Bull, Ele­phant­men to name but a few. Unfor­tu­nately ready-​made stamp fonts present a number of draw­backs: repeat­ing char­ac­ters are iden­ti­cal (unless you have alter­nate glyphs), and the amount […]