Archive for the ‘Graphic Design’ category

The Making of Vesper | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog

February 8th, 2010
Vesper's two phases (from ilovetypography.com)

Vesper's two phases (from ilovetypography.com)

How are fonts designed? What are the steps and decisions a font designer must make to create a really vibrant and successful font? As someone who recently started enjoying fonts, I’ve never really considered these questions, until now. On the i love typography website (one of my favorite blogs and websites), Rob Keller, of Mota Italic, describes The Making of Vesper, broken down into two phases of his design process as he created a new font, Vesper: The first phase, comprising the Regular, Devanagari, Heavy, and Italic, was completed during his stint at the Masters in Arts, Typographic Design, at the University of Reading. After completing the MA, Rob completed the font’s remaining weights and revised the existing weights.

He provided some interesting details about the process and how he made some design decisions throughout, all of which have a real bearing on the final result.

» Read more: The Making of Vesper | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog

With Copyright Protectors Like These, who Needs Enemies? – Brand New

February 5th, 2010
Hadopi Logo (via underconsideration.com)

Hadopi Logo (via underconsideration.com)

One of my favorite blogs is Brand New. Each post is informative and enjoyable. Recently, they posted an incredible story displaying the dangers of protectors failing to live up to their own standards. Hadopi, the French agency responsible for policing copyright violations and protecting creators from intellectual property theft is guilty of the same. Here’s the short story:

  1. The government hires an agency to design the logo
  2. The agency (Plan Créatif) mocks up a logo
  3. The logo was found to include 2 unlicensed fonts (Bienvenue, which was designed by Jean François Porchez exclusively for France Télécom and only available via websites hosting illegal materials, and Bliss, designed by Jeremy Tankard)
  4. The agency quickly licenses Bliss and replaces Bienvenue with FS Lola (designed for FontSmith by Phil Garnham)
  5. A new, properly licensed logo is released (though the fonts were licensed on the day the logo was released to the public!)

Pretty amazing. For the first post exposing the problem, written by Jean-Baptiste Levée, read his post on graphism.fr. See Le Point’s post (1/11/2010) for a French perspective, or Font Feed’s post. BoingBoing and Torrentfreak also have coverage. It even garnered TV coverage (LCI; in french).

Compact Calendar 2010 by David Seah

January 24th, 2010
David Seah's Compact=

David Seah's 2010 Compact Calendar

David Seah has updated his Compact Calendar for 2010 and posted it for download (both XLS and PDF versions) on his website: Compact Calendar 2010. At that link you’ll also find numerous international versions and last year’s version, too. [Note: If you feel compelled to spend $50 on a more typographically pleasing calendar, visit aisleone and slap your dough down on the table. I'll stick with Mr. Seah's solution. Thanks to him for making it available gratis.]

What’s The Best Font For Code Editing?

August 6th, 2009

Choose for yourself. the hamstu » The Typography of Code has a number of free options which were designed for smaller fonts, such as those in code editors. There’s nothing worse than working in 12 point Times New Roman font when editing code. Thankfully, this article lists a number of excellent alternatives. Pick one for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.

User Interface Patterns

May 26th, 2009

ui-patterns.com

Since first reading the Gang-of-four’s book, I have thought patterns were a great idea. Now that I’m getting into design and data visualization more, I’m intrigued by the possibility of merging interface design with software patterns. Makes sense, don’t you think?

So, when I found UI-patterns.com, I thought “yes! here’s the merging of the two disciplines/approaches. Great. Now if I can just merge these patterns with Tufte-based principles and OVID-based development, I should be able to come up with a potent app in any environment.

Data.gov open for business (and OECD seminar plug)

May 23rd, 2009



So, Data.gov is finally open and serving up links to data. I haven’t had a chance to dig in, yet, but since 3 of my favorite blogs (FlowingData, ProgrammableWeb, and DataVisualization) covered it, I thought I should at least mention it here.

P.S. Although not explicitly tied to data.gov, keep in mind the upcoming OECD Seminar on Innovative Approaches to Turn Statistics into Knowledge in DC July 15th and 16th. Amanda Cox from NYT is scheduled to attend. See accolades from Tufte himself. Woohoo.

Webby Nominees: 911

May 15th, 2009

Porsche won the People’s Voice Webby award in the Automotive category due to their breathtaking app. Makes me want to go buy one already! (Well, that was true before I saw the app!)