Three Great Typography Tutorials From Veer

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you’ll notice I am a big fan of the stock photo/illustration/font site Veer. They have great resources for all designers. They also have produced some outstanding videos. For today’s Typography Tuesday I’d like to share 3 great tutorials they have produced for working with fonts.

Veer Fonts Tutorials: How to adjust fonts

Veer Fonts Tutorials: How to install fonts

  Veer Fonts Tutorials: OpenType introduction

Typography Tuesday: “Go Wild With OpenType”

For this installment of Typography Tuesday I had to share Veer Presents: “Go Wild With Open Type.” This clever ad mixes some of my favorite things, fonts, mid-century modern esthetic and clever production. Fantastic!

“Go Wild With OpenType” is the third in a series of retro science films about fonts, from Veer. In this installment, the narrator explains OpenType technology, the man benefits of OpenType fonts, and how to access their special features and expanded character sets.

Typography Tuesday: “Ready, Typeset, Go!”

For this installment of Typography Tuesday I had to share Veer Presents: “Ready, Typeset, Go!” This clever ad mixes some of my favorite things, fonts, mid-century modern esthetic and clever production. Fantastic!

 ”Ready, Typeset, Go!” is the second in a series of retro science films about fonts, from Veer. In this installment, the narrator explains how simple adjustments like font size and technical tricks like kerning can make great fonts look even better.

Typography Tuesday “Our Fonts, Our Friends”

For this installment of Typography Tuesday I had to share Veer Presents: “Our Fonts, Our Friends.” This clever ad mixes some of my favorite things, fonts, mid-century modern esthetic and clever production. Fantastic!

“Our Fonts, Our Friends” is the first in a series of retro science films about fonts, from Veer. In this installment, the narrator discusses font styles, how to choose your font, and where to find an endless supply of affordable fonts.

Know Your Type Designers: William Caslon II

This week’s Typog­ra­phy Tues­day: Know You Type Design­ers: William Caslon I.

William Caslon II

Born 1720
Died: 1778

Most famous for being the son of William Caslon I, he nonetheless had a big role in continuing the success of the foundry created by his father. He took over the business and began managing it in 1766. He kept the foundry as a major player in the English type setting business. Upon his death he, left the foundry to his son William Caslon III (1754-1833) who continued the family business into the 19th Century.

Know Your Type Designers: William Caslon I

This week’s Typography Tuesday: Know You Type Designers: William Caslon I.

William Caslon I

Born 1692 in Worcestershire, England
Died: 1766
Typefaces: Caslon, Pica Roman, Small Pica No. 1, Long Primer No. 2, Great Primer Roman

It’s an old printer’s maxim that “when in doubt use Caslon.” It is impressive that for almost 200 years his typeface has been used as the default font for printers in the English speaking world.

Originally trained as a gunsmith and engraver, William Caslon I opened his own type foundry in 1722; where he developed Hebrew, Arabic and Roman typefaces. The production of his Roman fonts ended the English dependence on Dutch made type. Though  not considered an innovator (since his style of fonts were common) his execution and consummate skill as a craftsman are unparalleled. His typefaces were also very popular in America and was used by Mary Katherine Goddard for the printing of the American Declaration of Independence.

For more information:

• William Caslon Biography
• William Caslon on Wikipedia
• Caslon Font
• Adobe Caslon Font

Typography Tuesday: Typeface the Movie

I just watched an amazing documentary, Typeface. As an unabashed typophile I must highly recommend this film. It is the true tale of a The Hamilton Wooden Type Museum and it’s role in trying to document and trying to keep alive the art of hand typesetting.  If you are interested in any way in history, printing, design or art, do yourself a favor and check it out!

In rural Wisconsin, a lone employee waits in a cavernous old museum for visitors to come. A few individuals straggle in every few days and then, come Friday, the museum fills with life. Machines hum, presses print, artists buzz about. One weekend each month, the quiet of Two Rivers is interrupted as carloads of artisans drive in from across the Midwest. The place comes alive as printmaking workshops led by, and filled with, some of the nation’s top design talent descend on the sleepy enclave. – from the official film site.

Typeface Trailer 1

Typeface Trailer 2

For more information:

• Hamilton Wooden Type Musuem
• The Official Typeface Movie Page
• Hamilton Wooden Type Museum on Twitter
• Hamilton Wooden Type Museum on Flickr
• Hamilton Wooden Type Museum on Facebook

Random Design Quote

A random quotes from famous graphic designers on design, culture and art.

As a craft, typography shares a long common boundary and many common concerns with writing and editing on the one side and with graphic design on the other; yet typography itself belongs to neither.

-Robert Binghurst, The Elements of Typographic Style

Typography Tuesday: 5 Awesome Web Based ASCII Generators

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Ah, it’s Tues­day and that means it is typog­ra­phy time! This I’d like to share five awesome web based ASCII art generators. ASCII Art is one of the finest of the geek arts, plus it’s a fun little trick to add to your HTML code, a sort of Easter Egg like on a DVD. I have found a lot of software you can download to create ASCII art, but maybe I’m just paranoid about downloading unknown software to my system. With that disclosure, I prefer these web based generators. Some do text, some do images and some do both.

A major tip for generating images make sure that your images have lots of contrast, that will aid these tools quite a bit.

• patorjk.com/software/taag/
  My personal favorite for text, an online web application that allows you to type in large ASCII Art text in real time.
• degraeve.com/img2txt.php
  My favorite for converts images to ASCII.
• glassgiant.com/ascii/
  This one converts pictures to ASCII text art
• network-science.de/ascii/
  Generate a ASCII graphic from a word or text.
• ascii-art-generator.org/
  This one is very good at creating images, though they are rather large. I created the self portrait below with this tool.

10 Fun and Challenging Font and Typography Quizzes

Ah, it’s Tues­day and that means it is typog­ra­phy time! This week ten frightfully fun font and typography challenges. Think you know your type? Time to find out!

• Cheese or Font?
  Which is it, can you tell?
• Kern Me
  Can you guess what the proper kerning should be in this fun and challenging kerning game.
• Shape of Type
  See if you are a black belt in Bézier curves.
• Guess That Type
  Can you guess this type in less than 3 characters?
• Arial or Helvetica?
  Hint, look at the “o”s!
• What font are you?
  A font personality test.
• Name That Font
  Another font identification game.
  
• Mental Floss Font Quiz
  Yes, yet another font quiz game, but it’s from the folks at the cool magazine Mental Floss, so at least it’s witty.
• Desk Top Publishing Font Questions
  A quiz on some of the elements that make up fonts.
•  Typography Assessment
  A fairly simple quiz on elements of typography.