I was asked this after I first wrote about rebuilding the Espy Sans pixel typeface family. It’s a tough question, how long have you got? So, my favourite? To be honest I’m not sure I actually have one – or rather, not just one favourite, although I do have a shortlist. What I’m also sometimes…
Hands up who uses Microsoft Word? Hands up who *likes* Microsoft Word? I asked those two questions in a talk I gave at The Future Of Text symposium in October. Almost the entire audience raised their hands at the first question, but hardly anyone did at the second. I wasn’t at all surprised. In fact,…
Producing images by assembling many different shots can create eye-catching results, and can be done in many different programs. It also draws on concepts and techniques that originated with the Cubists over a century ago. Kit required: Adobe InDesign (or any DTP, graphic layout or bitmap editing application), multiple photographs of a scene Goal: To…
Colour photography is all about reproducing the colours that were in the original scene… except when it isn’t. It may seem a little perverse if you spend your time trying to capture sharp, detailed, accurate photos, but flaws hold an intense fascination for many people. The rise of Instagram turned an interest in funked-up photos…
Olympic host city logos come in various forms, not all to everyone’s taste. Note: this was written in the summer of 2011, a full year before the London 2012 Olympics happened. Other than minor editorial adjustments this is the article as it appeared in MacUser magazine at the time. Got Olympic fever yet? No, me…
First things first: I’m going to talk about copyright. But not copyright law – or at least I’ll try to avoid it. On this occasion it’s the copyright symbol that interests me more than the whole legal shenanigans; I’m curious about the ‘c in a circle’ thing. The copyright symbol has been around for a…
When people are left to go where they like, they tend to do just that. This simple fact is what the concept of ‘desire paths’ or ‘desire lines’ is all about; the natural path that evolves from the desire to take a certain route. This comes from architecture and planning, and it normally means ignoring…
WYSIWYG: What You See Isn’t What You Get! One of the great advances in the Renaissance was the understanding of perspective. Not the experiential kind that helps us learn from our mistakes, but rather the ‘converging parallel lines’ kind that helps us replicate our perception of depth, the third dimension, in a two-dimensional image. This…
Back in pre-Mac OS X times, in 1992, Apple created a bitmap font called Espy Sans and used it in its Apple Help application, in its mis-timed eWorld service, and as the system font in the Newton. Espy Sans was the last bitmap-only font Apple would produce. It was crafted for use at specific pixel…
The peculiar art of making faces with type. Lol, ;–) If you’ve never used either of the above in an email or text, you’ve either avoided the Internet altogether or you really are a bit of curmudgeon. A text-only medium blocks the non-verbal, unspoken emotional indicators that give a richer context to our communication. The…
