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…
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…
Helvetica is the world’s most popular typeface. Not everyone likes it, often precisely because of this, but it’s everywhere you look: shop signs, clothing labels, corporate logos, packaging of all kinds, the iOS interface – and now of course Mac OS X itself. One of Yosemite’s many changes was the booting out of Lucida Grande…
One of the first projects I used to give my Magazine Publishing students involved creating an eight-page graphic novel, done in teams of two. They could use any story they like, anything from a re-imagining of the Jonathan Livingston Seagull story to their bus journey to college. The main focus of the assignment was production…
In which Keith explores the answers to a question and finds confirmation in a particular typeface design… I was asked an interesting question the other day. “Do you believe that creative briefs hinder the artistic mind?” This had the feel of a set question, and it turned out that this was the case; it was…
Typefaces dress our words and tell the reader what kind of thing to expect. Like clothes, the typefaces we choose help say things about the words before anyone even begins reading. The thing is, while we all have our favourite bits of clothing, things we feel particularly comfortable or confident in, we don’t wear the…
Graffiti is… what? “Graffiti is a creative art form.” “Graffiti is destructive vandalism.” “Graffiti is gang-related.” “Graffiti is about individual expression.” Which of these statements is true? The reality is one, some, all or none, depending on which particular graffiti you’re talking about. Yes, there’s a lot that’s just territory marking, but there’s also work…
Designing the character behind the face. Of all the design discipline specialities, typeface design is probably the most monastic. Creating a new font takes skill, serious attention to detail, and a perseverance that a medieval monk would respect. Not only do you have to consider the aesthetics of stroke weight, overall form, and the effect…
