Ralf Herrmann: Wayfinding & Typography » Typography

Canapé—a cosy typeface

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:02:42 +0000

Canapé by Sebastian Nagel is the latest release at fonts.info. It is based on the idea of letters with a subtly curved and slightly modulated line. Through this, the typefaces has a warm and friendly, almost haptical appearance which brings some kind of cosiness to your communication with type. Canapé Serif with its 4 fonts [...]

The Capital Sharp S in Use

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:03:58 +0000

A while ago I announced on Twitter, that it is now 5 years since the Capital Sharp S was added to the Unicode. I was asked, if it has actually been used somewhere in real world situations. A valid question! A new character shouldn’t just be made to look good in type specimen brochures. So [...]

Skyfall—Urban Calligraphy by Simon Silaidis

Ralf Herrmann — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:20:48 +0000

Simon Silaidis applied his life’s love of calligraphy in the rural, urban and suburban surroundings of Asia and Europe. You will spot his work in abandoned places, in the streets and in his studio using ink and bamboo pens. His style is a mix of Western, Asian and Arabian calligraphy and his vision of a [...]

“The Geometry of Type”, 100 typefaces explained by typographer Stephen Coles

Ralf Herrmann — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 07:01:10 +0000

If you enter the field of typography today, you are very likely overwhelmed by the diversity of the available typeface. You can choose from over 20.000 type families at MyFonts alone. How should one ever get to understand the differences in style and quality and learn how to chose the right typefaces for a certain [...]

Introducing the pictogram font Wayfinding Sans Symbols

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:37:04 +0000

Ever since I publicly announced my signage typeface Wayfinding Sans Pro, people kept asking me about pictograms for this type family. So finally, here they are. A full-fledged symbol font family in 4 styles, over 400 symbols and a little bit of clever “OpenType magic” to access and combine the pictograms as easy as possible. [...]

Let’s Meet Typomapp 2.0 — The Typography Knowledge Map

Ralf Herrmann — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:56:31 +0000

A lot of typographic knowledge is available in printed books and online in Wikipedia, web forums and the like. But you can usually just access it using a certain hierarchy based on topic, history or maybe just the alphabetic order of typographic terms. But what if you are interested in typographic information about a certain [...]

Sketches by Jan Tschichold

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:16:26 +0000

The German typographic society Forum Typografie arranged a visit to the type & book art archive of the National Library in Leizpig, where most of the work-related sketches and materials of Jan Tschichold are currently stored. With some other type enthusiast I had the chance to browse through this amazing collection. Here are some pictures [...]

A “modern” Print Shop

Ralf Herrmann — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:15:47 +0000

Scans from a brochure of an old German print shop in Mainz. Enjoy! Doppelmagazin-Linotype-Satzmaschinen für Spezialsatz: Abteilung für Handsatz: Abteilung für Handsatz: Maschinensaal mit verschiedenen Schnellpressen: Maschinensaal mit Schnellpressen: Offset-Schnellpresse: Koh-i-noor-Pressen und Tiegeldruckpressen: Umdruckerei: Umdruckerei: Flach-Bronziermaschine: Moderne Hilfsmaschinen der Steindruck- und Offset-Abteilung: Schleif- und Körnungsmaschine für Zinkplatten: Stein-Schleifmaschine: Stahlstich-Schnellpresse: Lithographisches Atelier: Buchbinderei: Buchbinderei: Buchbinderei mit [...]

Typographic Myth Busting: What’s a Ligature, Anyway?

Ralf Herrmann — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:30:28 +0000

If your work deals with typography in any way, you are very likely familiar with the term ligature. But the definition of this term is often unclear. There seems to be one problem in particular: We usually use the term when we want to talk about a certain kind of ligature, to which cases like [...]

Font Piracy at Universities

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 08:41:50 +0000

This documentary by Danielle Hall explores why font piracy among graphic design students is so common and what could possibly be done against it. Through interviews with type designers, a copyright lawyer, university administration, type professors, and graphic design students, this documentary sheds light on all angles of this issue. Tweet

Keyboard with Capital Sharp S now in mass production

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:57:20 +0000

One of the weaker arguments against a Capital Sharp S (ẞ) has always been, that such a new character cannot become widely accepted, because there is no easy input method for it on a regular German keyboard. But this point has now started to become moot. The keyboard maker Cherry has starter mass production of a [...]

The Work of Emil Rudolf Weiß

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 07:07:09 +0000

Emil Rudolf Weiß (1875–1942) was a German type designer, graphic designer and painter. The scope of his work is nicely displayed in a book from 1931 called “Der Schrift und Buchkünstler Emil Rudolph Weiß” from the series “Monographien künstlerischer Schrift”. I’d like to share this with you and photographed most of the pages from this [...]

Erik Spiekermann at Creative Morning: Type on Screen

Ralf Herrmann — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:27:35 +0000

At the 13th Creative Morning in Berlin Erik Spiekermann gives a 20 minute introduction to Type On Screen. Tweet

Hardly any Support for the Character Capital Sharp S (ẞ) on Mobile Devices

Ralf Herrmann — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:16:57 +0000

The support for the German Capital Sharp S character (ẞ) on desktop operating systems is already quite good, considering the fact that the Unicode 1E9E was assigned just four years ago and that the need for this character is a pretty local and still controversial subject. On Windows all major system fonts like Arial, Times [...]

Graublau Slab Pro released

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 12:42:19 +0000

Graublau Slab is the latest addition to the popular Graublau type family designed by the Berlin-based type designer Georg Seifert. Since its release in 2008, the Graublau Sans Pro typeface has been a popular choice for corporate designs, books, magazines, websites and much more. With Graublau Slab Pro, the type family becomes even more versatile. With [...]