I’ve had this link stored for a little while now, waiting for me to explore further and write about it. I was initially taken by the use of arabic script to form directional signs (at right) and downloaded the beautifully designed and illustrated thesis by Luigi Farrauto. It’s well worth a look, even if you don’t read Italian. There’s a Q&A in English too:

Which are the main differences between the typography of arabic countries using arabic script and the one of non arabic country using arabic script?
I find that there is more typographic freedom within the Arab world that outside of it. There is a perception, or maybe that’s just how I see it, that Westerners are more focused on fully calligraphic styles for Arabic typefaces, and so they are unaware that we need other typefaces to suit our daily life. Calligraphic styles are great but you can’t set a dictionary in 5 pts size with that.

That’s what I noticed about the sign in the first place - clean, sans-serif (as it were) arabic type. OK, anyone who watched a news broadcast in 2003 would most likely have seen motorway signs written in arabic, but the films crews were hardly focusing on the finer details of the typography.

Lam-Alef ligatures

How has been faced the problem of vertical ligatures in typography?
Opentype provides us with GSUB (glyph substitution) lookups that can exchange a string of characters by a pre-designed ligature. That means that there is a large number of ligatures to be designed, and I’m not a fan of that. In my Naskh style typeface, I kept only horizontal stacking and so I have no ligatures except the Lam-Alef. I find that simpler to read and clearer.

This is also interesting. There are fonts that have been designed with loads of ligatures, but I guess sometimes, less is more.

This is interesting, the Bunch design agency got a whole bunch (geddit?) of designers and illustrators they admired to ‘respond’ to their identity. As a result they got a whole load of variations on their logo which they’re now using as part of their identity. Very clever indeed, as commissioning all that work conventionally would be very expensive indeed.

A few of the results are shown on the CR blog page, but I picked my two favourites here. The blackletter style one is very interesting, as the negative spaces aren’t simply a reversed image of the implied continuation of the stroke, but an additional shape on the outer edge of that stroke. Very nice.

I came across a site this morning offering a 9Mb RAR file offering fonts for free download. It’s quite a list:

Agency Bold, Alternate Gothic No. Two, Arial Rounded Bold and Bell Gothic Black, Avenir (Book, Medium, Heavy), Avernus, Base 9 Regular SC, Catull (the Google font), Digital Sans Medium, FF Cocon Bold, FF DIN Medium, FF Dot Matrix Two Regular, FF Meta Bold and Book, Frankfurter Medium or Bryant Bold Alt, Frutiger Black, Frutiger Bold, Handel Gothic Bold, Helvetica (complete set), Hoefler Text, Interstate Black, Interstate Regular, ITC Bauhaus Medium, ITC Officina Bold, ITC Ronda, Klavika, Lisboa Sans, Myriad Pro (complete set), Neo Sans Medium, Pixel Fonts, Proxima Nova, Syntax Bold, Trade Gothic Bold, VAG Round (Round, Rounded BT, Rounded Lt-Normal, VAGRundschriftD)

From the language used on the site, I’m not sure that the person involved actually knows that fonts are licensed software products, that you have to pay for with actual money:

By the way i would like to share 9mb file contained with web 2.0 font type files archived in *.rar format in order to fulfill some of my loyal reader request.

Whether he does or not, ignorance is no defence, so I did my civic duty and shopped him to ITC, FontFont and Linotype. I’ll be interested to see what happens (if anything). The thing I notice on the three companies’ sites is that there is only a general contact email, but nothing specifically to report piracy of their products. Very strange. David suggested a good way to encourage reporting of piracy would be to give the first person to report an instance of theft a bounty of those fonts being used illegally.

UPDATE: The author of the site removed the link. I got replies from Linotype and FontFont too.

I was just reading “Why Bembo Sucks” over on I Love Typography, and I was led to wondering why Opentype doesn’t allow for alternate glyphs based on size, at least, that’s how I understand this. After all, as Kris Sowersby points out, fonts were cut for a specific size, with variations in the glyph forms created as a result of aesthetics and practicality. Looking at the Opentype font I have with the most optical weights (Arno Pro) and what options Photoshop offers for Opentype, there isn’t anything in the OT menu or the application itself to set the optical weight based on size.

So why not? Of course, if it does and I’m misreading the spec, do let me know. Mind, I’ll then have to ask why no-one is doing it yet.

And, for comparison, Arno Pro Caption (left) and Arno Pro Display (centre) scaled to the same point size and overlaid on each other (right). Wouldn’t it be nice if the software could switch between the weights automatically?

Digging around in my files this afternoon, I found this PDF. I’ve had it since early June 2007 after being sent it by David, who noted that they’d developed a branding remarkably similar to the far more important Ministry of Type, something I still find amusing. Hey, I was here first - just. The combination of white, black and chartreuse must be quite the current fashion for ministries - though I notice that the website carries the oh-so-accessible-but-dull Standard Public Sector branding. Shame that, as the branding of the PDF is rather pleasant.

I was trying to identify the typefaces used. It’s unlikely to be a custom job since the time between the announcement of the MoJ and the publication of this document was only a couple of months. I doubt they’d have been able to create a whole new typeface in that time. Also, the branding was included in the costs of “capital, hardware, accessibility, branding, templates, desktop” - £700,000 in all, and after the costs of IT that doesn’t leave much. So yes, I think it’s a modified version of Bliss - the y is not quite exactly the same, so perhaps some tweaking was done (if I’m right). As for the serif, that’s Perpetua. Quite a nice combination really.

The logo and some sample pages:

Here’s a good collection of photos of Graphis Magazine from between 1965 and 1982 which might be useful for inspiration. I’ve moaned about Flickr before, but I still wish that people would take the opportunity to write something about the pictures they dump there. Still, I shouldn’t complain too much, as I’d rather people put them there at least than not share them at all! I’ve assembled a few of my favourites, and at right is a particularly nice logo - I’ve played around with fitting a J into a round letter (an ‘O’ I recall), and it can be hard to get it just right.

This one’s a bit of a “Fancy that!” post. I came across this interesting post on Kit-Blog about the remarkable typographic consistency of Woody Allen’s film titles. For pretty much all his films, the titles are set in Windsor-EF Elongated, by Elsner+Flake. Not having seen a great deal of his films, I’d not noticed, but looking at these images, they just say “Woody Allen film”. How about that for brand identity?

Go and read the full article for more info and images.

This made me smile.

(H&FJ, via Swissmiss)

I came across this article and my immediate thought was, “The logo was designed?” I thought it was typed. Add a soft bevel and some colours and hey presto, a logo! But no. They got someone else to design it by typing it into Photoshop, add a soft bevel and some colours and hey presto, a logo! Now, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, or a bad logo really, but the justification makes me chuckle. How many times as a designer have you been asked to post-justify a piece of work when really you were using your instincts and your eye to produce something that fit the requirements? I’ve lost count.

It was playful and deceptively simple. The design subtle as to look almost non-designed, the reading effortless. The colors evoke memories of child play, but deftly stray from the color wheel strictures so as to hint to the inherent element of serendipity creeping into any search results page and the irreverance and boldness of the “I am feeling lucky” link. The texture and shading of each letter is done in an unobtrusive way resulting in lifting it from the page while giving it both weight and lightness. It is solid but there is also an ethereal quality to it.

Yes. Indeed. Quite. Fortunately for Google, just typing the company name in Catull works just fine too, ethereal quality or no.

If you fancy ogling some beautifully presented numbers, graphs and maps, Nicholas Felton has published his annual report for 2007 and it’s quite the visual treat. I’m boggling a bit at the idea of keeping track of so much data over such a long period - I remember seeing his 2006 and 2005 reports and being impressed then. I barely keep track of anything. Maybe I should start.

Oh, and check out the workspace on his about page, it’s worthy of Unclutterer’s Workspace of the Week.

(Via kottke)