Recent articles

All blog posts ordered by date Older entries

The Capital Sharp S of the German Government

2012/03/29

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 [...]
fontli — the Instagram for type lovers

2012/03/12

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 [...]
Why I switched from FontLab to Glyphs

2012/02/18

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 [...]
Signage of the new Berlin Airport

2012/02/06

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 [...]
More amazing Type Specimen and Printing Books/Brochures

2012/01/31

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 [...]
Info graphic: Development of the Major Outline Font Formats

2012/01/23

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 [...]
Using webfonts to insert characters or symbols in a website

2012/01/09

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 [...]
Tricycle Calligraphy

2012/01/02

Media Artist Nicholas Hanna built a tricycle that can also paint Chinese characters on the ground as it moves. Water Calligraphy has a long history in China, normally characterized by older Chinese men painting characters on the ground of parks with long brushes and water. But Nicholas’ version is a wee bit more complicated … [...]
99 do’s and don’ts of Wayfinding

2011/12/28

The Dutch wayfinding experts from Mijksenaar released an app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, that collects best practices around signage and wayfinding design. The app contains a set of rules-of-thumb and the content of the app is meant to engage in discussion and understanding for wayfinding amongst professionals, designers and novices. Wayfinding and architecture have more [...]
Cities and their typographic associations

2011/12/27

In this series of videos for the EF International Language Centers the director Gustav Johansson captures the stories of three different students who travel abroad to study a new language. Everywhere they go they communicate in the local language and pick up new vocabulary, illustrated with gorgeous artifact-style typography by Albin Holmqvist. The first four “Live the language” films shot [...]
Hooptie Script—Two Typefaces inspired by the Motor City

2011/10/16

Detroit—a city of extremes. A third of the city lies derelict, and many buildings have been or are about to be torn down. But at the beginning of the 20th century Detroit was one of the boomtowns of North America, representing the birthplace and the center of the American car industry. The city’s wealth was reflected in [...]
Dusty signs

2011/10/03

Traditional hand-lettering by Dan Madsen. → more from him at dustysigns.com
Capital Sharp S explained to Typographers (screencast)

2011/09/21

In my talk together with Nadine Roßa at the ATypI conference 2011 in Reykjavík I explained why Germany and Austria need a capital Eszett character today. For those who couldn’t be there, I made a screencast of my talk, which can be seen and commented here. Keep in mind, that this talk was made for [...]
Empirical study about the legibility of typefaces used on signs in public space

2011/09/20

At the University of Applied Sciences Berlin an empirical study was conducted by Sven Neumann to test the legibility of nine typefaces, including my own Wayfinding Sans typeface. The use of type in this study was based on the recommendations of the German legibility norm DIN 1450. This ensured that the study reflected a real-world [...]
The 10 best fonts from the Google Webfonts Directory

2011/09/04

The idea of the Google Webfonts Directory is great: offering everyone free webfonts, which you can include in your website with just one line of code and without worrying about the multiple webfont formats, subsetting, file size, download speed and so on. When the service started in 2010 it offered just a couple of fonts. [...]
Wayfinding observations: Color Coding and Cardinal Directions

2011/09/02

In an older post I already talked about the lack of proper information about cardinal directions in modern signage systems. Instead of using the actual words North, East, South and West or showing a compass rose, color coding can also be an easy and effective way to aid orientation. This can be seen in the [...]
New MSc course Traffic & Transport Information Design

2011/08/24

I always disliked the fact, that information design was understood and treated as a tiny part of graphic design. So I was happy to hear, that there is now a MSc course specifically for traffic & transport information design. I fact, I was so happy that I had to join the team of expert lecturers [...]
Font Dragr – drag and drop webfont testing

2011/08/14

Font Dragr is a great tool by Ryan Seddon to test freeware and Open Source fonts as webfonts without the hassle to create and implement webfont packages in your site first. As the name suggests: you can just drag and drop the font from your computer to a website.