Type Is Art

I have a designer's love affair with typography. I find fonts beautiful. Well, maybe nor comic sans, but in general. The thing is, type is really just specific shapes that we recognize and you can form those beautiful shapes into art that has nothing to do with words. Take, for example, the mixed media work from one of my favorite college professors. (She taught a class called Reconstruction, Recognition and the Found.) Her work uses letterforms to create something new.

There's an interesting site called Type Is Art that let's you play around with the 20 different identifiable pieces of letters and use them to create art. Here are two little pieces I put together. Visit typeisart.com to see more work or to create your own!

SPECIAL FEATURE: Interview with FontStruct - Part II

Interview with FontStruct - Part II

CC: Do you expect FontStruct to expand beyond modular fonts?

RM: Probably not. FontStruct is a modular font building application, and it's limited nature is closely linked to its success. There's already a faction within the community who complain when we add new bricks (building blocks) to the system. So some people want less, even when admittedly most are screaming for more.


CC: Is FontStruct working to drive people to FontShop?

SC: It certainly is. The little commercial type teasers on each page are just a small part of how FontStruct is working for FontShop. We have found that creating creative tools like this does wonders for our company's image, which has always been rooted in our dedication to the creative community. FontStruct is a confirmation of FontShop's place as a leader in the design world, not just another font seller.


CC: What is your all-time favorite font? Favorite FontStruct font?

RM: I am truly and constantly amazed when I see what people are creating with FontStruct—at how much time they invest in it and their ingenuity and skill. A couple of personal favorites are Queen Mab by Bent Hamm (http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/queen_mab) and Origamistic by deshzx (http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/origamistic).

SC: My favorite typeface changes every week, but currently it's the recently launched FF Tisa by our house brand FontFont. http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/downloads/fontfont/ff_tisa_ot/

My favorite FontStruction is also constantly changing as new, great stuff is created almost daily. I am really impressed with Gene Buban's (geneus1) work which is always very complex and often takes on the theme of a current movie release:
http://bit.ly/4huMcr

I am also impressed with the FontStructions by Anton Terekhov who has managed to create some very functional, legible typefaces despite FontStruct's modular format. The latest of which is his Skipper series:
http://bit.ly/2sGfUx

SPECIAL FEATURE: Interview with FontStruct - Part I

Without further ado, Creative Cooler brings you an exclusive interview with online font creator FontStruct. We'd like to extend our most gracious thanks to Lead Developer Rob Meek
and Type Director Stephen Coles for taking the time to answer our questions.


Watch for the second and final part of our interview tomorrow.
______________________________________________

Interview with FontStruct - Part I

Creative Cooler: How did the concept of FontStruct come about?

Rob Meek: I've been creating online typographic toys since 2000, and the idea for something like FontStruct had been on my mind for several years without ever really going anywhere. I couldn't find the time or money to do it. At the same time I was working as a contractor for FontShop and realised one day that they would be the perfect partner. They were looking to develop more innovative online services for the typographic community and saw the potential in FontStruct straight away.


CC: How does FontStruct fit into the Web 2.0 world?

RM: In many ways FontStruct is a typical Web 2.0 application. One thing which I think sets it apart from many other existing, online, creative applications is that it's really about creating artwork from scratch rather than remixing , editing or sharing artworks which are created offline. Fonts with their relatively small file sizes and clear structure really lend themselves to the online editing environment. FontStruct also provides tools which are not really available in an offline application. Many, many designers, professionals and laypeople, have made their first font with FontStruct. It may be limited but it is much simpler than offline font editing programmes, and of course it's free.


CC: Can fonts created in FontStruct be used successfully for commercial purposes or online? Have you seen any examples of this yet?

RM: FontStructions are most certainly being used in commercial work. We only recently added a feature to allow people to upload their artworks to the site so we're looking forward to see what comes of that.


CC: What are your future plans for FontStruct? How are you updating/enhancing the program?

RM: An initial priority has been to ensure the stability and reliability of the service. We certainly didn't expect to have so many registered users in such a short time, so we've had to to do work to make sure the system can reliably support this high level of use. There are many, many ideas being discussed by the FontStruct team, including suggestions from the user community. At the moment we are working on improvements to the community aspects of the website including homepages for users which will allow users to promote themselves a little more directly if they wish. The highest priority enhancement for the FontStructor editing program is to add some support for control over letter spacing (horizontal metrics). We will also be improving the font generating module, to ensure the highest possible quality for the downloaded fonts.

Stephen Coles: We also just launched a revision of the Gallery section which makes it easier to see recently added FontStructions with the addition of a "What's New" tab.

Coming Soon! Interview with FontStruct

Within the next week or so we're going to publish an exclusive interview with FontStruct's Lead Developer, Rob Meek, and Type Director, Stephen Coles. They'll give us insight into how FontStruct came to be, its role in the Web 2.0 world and what plans they have for the program.

Check back soon for the full interview!

FontStruct: Make Your Own Fonts Online

There's a new website out called FontStruct that allows you create your own font online for free. The font creation abilities are limited, but it's an interesting extension of Web 2.0 into the design world. After you design your font, you can keep it private or choose to share it with a Creative Commons license. According an article in Slate, this site is popular with all kinds of font enthusiasts, not just designers.

My personal opinion is FontStruct is it's pretty fun to play around with, but incapable of creating any fonts that I might actually use. You are limited to pretty blocky, tech-y and ultimately gimmicky designs due to how the program is set up and the shapes available to build with. I was really excited about the site at first, but as I tried to design a font, I just got frustrated and annoyed that I was unable to make any of the designs that I wanted to. Call me a font snob, but I really hate gimmicky fonts and was overall, unimpressed by the gallery of fonts generated by users. The Slate article suggested that this site is so overwhelmingly popular it's been crashing. That scares me a bit. There are already many horrendous fonts out there, do we really need more? I think I'd be on board with this site if it had more capabilities to produce a wider range of designs because right now they're all too obviously made by building block shapes.

The Slate article quotes a user stating, "all of us are going to be little Adrian Frutiger[s]!" Sorry, but this program is nowhere near capable of producing a font like Univers. Not even close...

Applebee's updates its logo

Last October, Applebee's started a new campaign with the Wanda Sykes talking apple. I noticed the commercials, but wasn't overly impressed. Then, about a month ago, I realized Applebee's was morphing its old logo into a new one at the end of the spots. Had this been going the whole duration of this campaign? I have no idea—maybe one of you out there can enlighten me. I thought the morphing logo was a nice way to introduce a brand redesign, even with my slow realization of it.


That isn't the point of this post, however. I more or less wanted to comment on the new logo vs. the old logo. The old logo had its problems, it was a clunky and I never liked that storybookish font, but the mark and font had equity in them and the logo was distinctive. That awful font made Applebee's, Appleebee's. Unfortunately, in this launch campaign, that I've read was intended to set Applebee's apart from its Friday's and Chili's competitors, Applebee's chose a pretty blah new logo. I'm the queen of keeping it clean, but the new logo is such a disconnect from the old one it's doesn't say Applebee's to me.

First off the new font is nice and I like it in general, just not for this. After such a distictive font holding their brand for so long, the new one just doesn't feel like Applebee's. It seems more corporate, which I don't think is what they were going for. I like the swooping A, but that's about the only defining feature. Add that to the terrible type treatment of the tag and you have two vastly different serifs battling it out with the tag overpowering the restaurant name. The tag's thick rounded type seems an attempt to make the overall logo friendlier, but it's ugly just plain doesn't fit.

The apple, without that lighter offset outline, would be a nice improvement over the less stylized one of the past, but with that outline it just reminds me of clip art and 1980's illustration. It feels as trendy as the comeback of 80's leggings.

I love Applebee's, just not this new logo. And no doubt Applebee's was due for a brand redesign, but this execution missed the mark.

Mmmm, I could really go for an Oriental Chicken Salad right now... Anyone free for lunch?

Typography Rap

Back in college, I had this fantastic typography professor who also taught the History of Graphic Design to all junior Vis Comm majors. To help us keep our historical typographers straight he created a typography rap and performed a verse of it at the end of each history class for the first part of the semester. Memorizing it came in pretty handy on the midterm. A conversation at work recently reminded me of it and I managed to find a hand written copy of in my old notebook. I'm sorry to say that I don't have the mp3 version one of my classmates helped him record our senior year, but here's the written script. Any designer will get a kick out of it!

Typography Rap

In 1455 and this ain’t no hype
Gutenberg was gettin’ jiggy with movable type

He was printing in Germany in a city called Mainz,
And his first printed Bible had 42 lines

Two Germans went to Rome ‘cuz the food was better
And printed their books in the Subiaco letter

Jenson was a Frenchman, but in Venice he was cool
His type was called Venetian and will always rule

Aldus and Griffo worked in Venice for awhile
And the type they designed we call Old Style

Aldus was wild, he was phat he was free
With Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

The Frenchman cut punches of which he was fond
And cast the family we call Garamond

Baskerville was a man with a mission
He began the typographic transition

Bodoni was no phony, he was keepin’ it real
He made modern the ideas of John Baskerville

Serifs, who needs ‘em, we all got plans
Strip ‘em all away and we’ll call the type sans

A mnemonic device for your memory,
So you can download typography

Cool Blog Alert

A friend of a friend (of a friend) found a cool blog called indexed. It's one person posting deep life insights using simple diagrams on index cards. Here's one of our favorite posts about the font Comic Sans. Check it out.

It's a sad, sad day

When after publishing the header for this blog, two separate copywriters could name the font used. Is it a rut I'm in? Or is it acceptable to use Filosofia Unicase, my absolute favorite font, anywhere and everywhere I can? Perhaps I need to branch out.