Ralf Herrmann’s Typography Weblog

10 carefully crafted display ampersands

Posted on 02. Feb, 2010 by Ralf Herrmann.

“The year was 1887. Dierk Einhard Haäfe Master Typographer and Johan VanEngelbert Haph Suspected Wizard were inventing a typography machine to compete with Mergenthaler’s newly unveiled Linotype. With Haäfe’s typography experience and Haph’s scientific and technical know-how, they were sure to revolutionize the design industry. Misjudging the combined radioactive effects of (then unknown) plutonium and liberal use of Dr. Kurl’s Moustache Wax ™, Johan inadvertently sparked a quantum flux ripping space-time wide open and transporting the designers to the 21st Century. With no hope of return, they set about re-establishing themselves as prominent designers, quickly adapting to new technology with old-world flair.”

http://www.haafe.com/

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Play the font game

Posted on 23. Mrz, 2009 by Ralf Herrmann.

Do you know your VAG from your Bembo? Play the font game …

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The Periodic Table of Typefaces

Posted on 10. Mrz, 2009 by Ralf Herrmann.

The Periodic Table of Typefaces presents 100 of the most popular, influential and notorious typefaces today. 

The selection is based on several font rankings including our Top 100 fonts from FontShop Germany where I was part of the jury. 

via L’Aureola

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Dutch government introduces corporate typeface

Posted on 16. Nov, 2008 by Ralf Herrmann.

As part of the new brand identity of the Dutch government Peter Verheul designed a custom typeface for all forms of visual communications. Read about it in Sander Baumann’s weblog.

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Interview with Frantisek Storm

Posted on 15. Nov, 2008 by Ralf Herrmann.

An interview with František Štorm, type designer and founder of the Storm Type Foundry in Prague:

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Iwan Reschniev – a typeface by Jan Tschichold

Posted on 29. Okt, 2008 by Ralf Herrmann.

In 1930 Jan Tschichold describes a new typeface in the publication “Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandels”, that “can be drawn by everyone without typographic knowledge”.

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Handmade fonts

Posted on 10. Okt, 2008 by Ralf Herrmann.

You can’t get an OpenType version of those fonts. They don’t have kerning and the character set is very limited. HandMadeFonts from Estonia are something special.

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10 Great Free Fonts for @font-face embedding

Posted on 05. Aug, 2008 by Ralf Herrmann.

Safari and Internet Explorer already support it*. Firefox and Opera will get it soon: Downloadable webfonts. Here is a collection of 10 great headline fonts you can embed in you website free of charge …

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Join the LTypI now!

Posted on 05. Jun, 2008 by Ralf Herrmann.

Which typeface could I use for the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Maybe Emigre’s Brothers?
Designing a logo for the “Hotel Broadway”? Let’s try the font Broadway!

Yes, that’s certainly a “Lack of typographic Imagination”! Stephen Coles (typographica.org) and Ivo Gabrowitsch (fontwerk.com) created the Flickr group LTypI to collect these hilarious font choices.

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Exploring webfont possibilities

Posted on 14. Mai, 2008 by Ralf Herrmann.

Embeddable webfonts (as introduced with Safari 3.1) are not just about using fancy fonts on web pages. It also opens new possibilities for using glyphs that are simply not available in the standard system fonts. Let’s say you are a linguist or archeologist and wan’t to set an ancient text and you need characters that are not available in Arial or Lucida Grande. Putting little images inside the text was the only way to do it – so far. But the images wouln’t scale and copy & paste of such a text wouldn’t work properly. But with webfonts you could do those things smoothly – and much more. Here are two examples …

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