Author Archives | Ralf Herrmann

About Ralf Herrmann

The Capital Sharp S of the German Government

2012/03/29

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The Capital Sharp S of the German Government

Next week, it will be exactly four years since the Capital Sharp S was added to the Unicode specification. Within that rather short period of time, it … has been added to over 170 new type families included in the main typefaces of the world’s most used PC operating system Windows and office suite recommended [...]

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fontli — the Instagram for type lovers

2012/03/12

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fontli — the Instagram for type lovers

If you have an iPhone you probably use and love Instagram. But if you also love type and typography, you need to check out fontli. It provides basically the same functionality as Instagram and is supposed to be used the same way—just that it only focuses on type and typography. Just like on Instagram you [...]

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Why I switched from FontLab to Glyphs

2012/02/18

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Why I switched from FontLab to Glyphs

First there was Fontographer, then FontLab Studio, and now we have Glyphs and RoboFont—two new Mac font editors developed by individual designers/developers. After over 10 years of working with FontLab (Studio) I now switched entirely to Glyphs by Georg Seifert. If you browse the Glyphs website you will find a lot of innovative features—like the combined [...]

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Signage of the new Berlin Airport

2012/02/06

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Signage of the new Berlin Airport

A while ago I posted a video about the design of the signage system of the new Berlin Airport. I was instantly flooded with emails, stating that the video was filled with wrong claims about who design which part of this complex design system. So I finally took it down at the same day. But [...]

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More amazing Type Specimen and Printing Books/Brochures

2012/01/31

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More amazing Type Specimen and Printing Books/Brochures

Just some days ago, I updated my article Rare Type Specimens at the Open Library. In a comment, a user suggested another great resource: The Silver Buckle Press Collection. Silver Buckle Press is a working museum of letterpress printing dedicated to preserving the craft of fine printing through educational programming, publications, exhibitions and tours. The [...]

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Info graphic: Development of the Major Outline Font Formats

2012/01/23

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Info graphic: Development of the Major Outline Font Formats

For years I try to explain to people, what OpenType really means and in which way it differs from TrueType and in which way it doesn’t. And I explain to people that it is safe to use a Windows TrueType font on the Mac in the year 2012 … (See my older article OpenType myths [...]

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Using webfonts to insert characters or symbols in a website

2012/01/09

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Using webfonts to insert characters or symbols in a website

Using webfonts to insert characters or symbols in a website—Or why is Opera screwing up my font stacks? Back in 2008, shortly after Apple started the new webfont revolution with the release of Safari 3.1, I wrote an article about how the webfont technology could be used to insert certain glyphs or vector objects like logos [...]

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