Two years ago I wrote an article with suggestions on how to design a Capital Sharp S (ẞ). Now that over 400 new type families with support for this new character have been released, I thought it would be a good time to review, how the typedesigners have drawn their Capital Sharp S. At first, […]
Pictures from the Lettergieterij Amsterdam
The above images are from the 1916 type specimen book “Letterproef der Lettergieterij Amsterdam, vorheen N. Tetterode”
Legibility Research: Type Design for Children with Low Vision
In the last years, Ann Bessemans from Belgium researched how people, especially children with low vision, read type and how this is affected by the design of typefaces. In this guest article she explains her research and findings, and introduces her typeface Matilda, that was developed as a result of the research. My PhD research […]
A Tour through the Haas Type Foundry in 1950
The Haas Type Foundry in Switzerland brought us famous typefaces such as Helvetica (originally called Neue Haas Grotesk). Here are some pictures of the type foundry from around 1950. Enjoy!
The Pronunciation of European Typefaces
So you’re an expert in typography? But do you pronounce Frutiger’s typeface Univers like the English word “universe”? Then you got it wrong. Here are some popular European typefaces and their proper pronunciation in German, French and Italian. Eurostile: Univers: Neue Helvetica: Frutiger: Futura: Akzidenz Grotesk: Bauhaus: Bodoni: Fleischmann: Officina: Kabel: Neue Haas Grotesk: Palatino: […]
From Paper to Screen
I regularly check Vimeo for new type-related videos, but it’s rare to find something interesting. Thousands of variations of “movie scenes turned into kinetic typography” and “yet another letterpress shop documentation”, but all those videos just imitate what others have done before. But here is one I enjoyed. The evolution from print typography to screen typography […]
Color Emoji in Windows 8.1—The Future of Color Fonts?
Color fonts are by no means a new idea. When Adobe invented PostScript their Type 3 font standard allowed to specify colors within a font and Fontlab’s bitmap-based Photofont technology is also around for years. But the makers of operating systems and apps never really cared about these technologies—until the major success of the Emoji character […]
