font
Latest
Bic boils down the world's handwriting into one average typeface
As time marches on and the world grows smaller, we're left with the understanding that we - you, me, and folks across the globe - are more alike than we realize. Except, you know, when it comes to handwriting. To commemorate selling billions of pens you've seen countless times in your life, Bic has set out to create what it calls the Universal Typeface: a series of characters created by basically averaging thousands of writing samples from people across the world.
Twitter abandons one of humanity's most widely used fonts
The next time you visit Twitter.com things may look a little different, now that the site is rolling out a new font. After years of using Helvetica Neue, it's switching to the Gotham typeface. Already, design and typography fans are expressing dismay at the switch, although if you're still reading Tweets mostly through apps, it could be a while before you notice any difference at all. Check after the break to see the new style in action (and some of the responses to it.) [Image credit: AP Photo/Kathy Willens]
Google Fonts now lets you experiment with typefaces in a free app
Google has a lot of free fonts on offer, but it's hard to know how they'll look on a website without putting them into HTML code or buying a preview tool. It's now much easier to experiment with typefaces, however, as Google Fonts has just integrated a typography app. Designers can click a link to test a given font in a free, lightweight version of Monotype's Typecast; from there, they can try out new color combos, effects, sizes and weights. Those happy with their work can export code and save images, and they can subscribe to Typecast's $29 per month premium service if they need to create style guides or offer live web previews. Page creators only need to visit Google Fonts to start tinkering with their text.
Font created with an iPhone in a dark room
What do you get when you take a motion graphics designer, an iPhone and a dark room, and put them together with a Canon 5D DSLR? You get a new font named "Phone Streak," created by Marcus Byrne. To create the font, Byrne set up the camera to take time exposures as he "light painted" the air with an iPhone. He painted not only uppercase and lowercase versions of the 26 letters of the English alphabet, but also numerals and punctuation marks. The short video below demonstrates how different versions of some letters were captured, and also how once Byrne had settled on the shape of each letter, he actually 3D-printed the "Z" (his favorite) as art. Phone Streak is available for free download on Dafont.com.
Mac font designer awarded AIGA Medal
Many Mac users probably don't give a second thought to the fonts on the screen, but they make up a critical part of the user experience in any GUI-based operating system. Fonts are so important that Steve Jobs even called them out during his famous Stanford commencement speech. Now Jonathan Hoefler, the designer of Hoefler Text (a font that has been part of every Mac OS since version 7.5) has been awarded the prestigious AIGA Medal, with his design/business partner Tobias Frere-Jones. The award is for contributions to "the typographic landscape through impeccable craftsmanship, skilled historical reference and insightful vernacular considerations." Hoefler designed the font exclusively for Apple back in 1991. H&FJ's site calls the font "a modern classic" and says: Hoefler Text resuscitated a number of other traditions that had once been central to fine printing: extended ligature sets, the engraved capitals of the early twentieth century and the arabesques of the renaissance. Hoefler Text even invented a few traditions of its own, such as case-specific punctuation and italic small caps, and worked to expand the reach of digital typography beyond the United States by including a wealth of foreign symbols and accents. To get an idea of what goes into creating a font, watch the video interview with the two AIGA honorees below. [via Daring Fireball]
Adobe Edge swells to include Tools & Services, streamlines the designer web
Adobe really wants web designers to kick things up a notch. Not satisfied with where Edge has gone so far, it just released a full-fledged Edge Tools & Services suite to cover the bases for polished desktop and mobile pages on most any modern platform. Motion tool Edge Animate (formerly Edge Preview), automated previewing tool Edge Inspect (formerly Shadow) and mobile app packager PhoneGap Build have all arrived in the suite as version 1.0 releases, and come with both Edge Web Fonts as well as TypeKit to spruce up text. A pair of pre-release utilities, Edge Code (Brackets) and Edge Reflow, are also joining the group to tackle the nitty-gritty of editing web code and layouts. Any of the apps will readily cooperate with third-party software, although they won't always be cheap: while most of the Edge suite is free to use in at least a basic form as long as you have a Creative Cloud membership at any level, Edge Animate is only free during its initial run and should eventually cost either $15 per month or $499 in a one-time sale. For pros that want to burnish their corner of the web to a shine, the result just might be worth the expense.
Google Docs adds 450 fonts and 60 templates, sadly includes Comic Sans
Google Docs has lagged behind offline apps in the number of fonts and pre-made layouts to choose from, but that's just changed with a much larger catalog for both. More than 60 new templates and 450 fonts are now on tap to use in your presentations and reports. This comes on top of a handful of other recent improvements, such as Google Drive support, searching the Life Photo archive and boosts to accessibility and spreadsheet layouts. Apps Script gets both a Google Drive tie-in and new publishing control, too. Be forewarned: Comic Sans is one of the new font options, and it's clearly not an April Fools' gag.
Zelda lexicon expands, Gerudo language translated and fontified
The Hyrule Historia continues to divulge dark, long forgotten secrets of the Legend of Zelda mythos. Well, mostly timelines and fonts, but that's still pretty neat for everyone in the Joystiq chapter of the Hyrulian Historical Society. The latest gem to be unearthed (insert appropriate sound effect here) from the Historia's gushing fount of knowledge is a translation of the written language used by Ganondorf's people, the Gerudo, and a font to go with it. Decoded by Sarinilli, the same topographical alchemist responsible for creating the Skyward Sword font, the Gerudo language is also an alternate representation of the 26 characters of the English language. Strangely, the only numerals in the Gerudo alphabet are 1 and 5, which can be used as an effective (if inefficient) alternative for the Roman numerals I and V. Hypothetically, this new knowledge could be used to translate Gerudo texts found in Ocarina of Time, but that sounds like way too much work to us. To be honest, we only joined the Hyrulian Historical Society for the political connections. The Gerudo Typography font is available for free, non-commercial use at Sarinilli's DeviantArt profile.
Skyward Sword's language deciphered, turned into font
Did you ever wonder what all the writing found throughout The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword translated to? Neither have we, but fan "Sarinilli" did, and discovered that it's just our alphabet represented by new characters. A few of the Hylian characters represent multiple letters, but it's a simple substitution regardless. With this knowledge, Sarinilli then created a font out of the Hylian characters, which you can download here. Now you can write secret messages meant only for Link! We think he'd be very surprised to find out how concerned people are about the Zelda timeline.
Friday Favorite: WhatFont, a website font analysis tool
If you're the type of person who looks at the design of a webpage, you'll want to download and install WhatFont. WhatFont is a straightforward tool, designed by college student Chengyin Liu, that apparently parses the CSS of a website and pulls out the font used in a section of text. It also tries to figure out the font in an image, but the tool warns you that it's not accurate. From what I've seen, WhatFont uses the CSS font tags of the surrounding text to guess the text on the image. The tool probably assumes websites will keep the font uniform across a page and not mix Helvetica text with Lucida Grande in an image. WhatFont is one of those basic tools that's nice to have around when you need it. Sure you could do it be hand by looking at the source code, but WhatFont takes the tedious part of parsing code and does it for you. It's available for free from Chengyin Liu's website.
EVE Online: Crucible forges a new game today
Crucible is an apt name for EVE Online's 15th expansion, considering that the game, its developers, and its players have gone through a severe testing this year in many respects. CCP is hoping that Crucible will be better received than its previous expansion, Incarna, and is hyping it as "EVE reforged." Today Crucible is coming to the game as a free expansion following a period of extended downtime. It's very much a "kitchen sink" update, with major improvements and reworkings of game systems. These include items as big as improved space visuals and dilating time to allow for large fleet battles to touches as small as contrails, an improved font, and new Captains Quarters. New ships in the expansion are a given, but ground-bound pilots might be attracted to opening up their very own customs offices to tax planetary businesses. There are so many additions and changes, in fact, that it's almost futile to try to crush them into a couple paragraphs, so while you're waiting for the game to come back up, make sure to check out the patch notes, the EVE Online: Crucible website, and our own Brendan Drain's thoughts for more info.
Nokia N9 user previews PR1.2 update, full of camera and imaging refinements
Many N9 users are still waiting to receive the PR1.1 update from Nokia, which officially began rolling out last week, but one lucky individual is already dabbling with what's next from Espoo. After viewing the handful of screenshots, it's obvious that PR1.2 will provide a number of enhancements for photo enthusiasts. For instance, the camera application sports a refined interface with all flash options visible at once. There's also facial recognition in the gallery, along with support for color profiles in the display options. Additionally, users can now manage apps from the application menu, and keen-eyed observers will likely notice the re-styled buttons. We've also been told to expect changes to the N9's default font, Nokia Pure Text, which we can only assume will make its arrival with PR1.2. Take a peek after the break to satiate your typeface urges.
CCP talks EVE UI scaling
Font size isn't the sexiest topic when it comes to MMO design, but when you're CCP and your flagship title has the most complicated and hard-to-read user interface in the genre, it's an issue worth talking about. The latest EVE Online dev blog does just that, and CCP Punkturis says that while a full-scale UI revamp is quite difficult and time-consuming due to the original design, the dev team is nonetheless hard at work on the next best thing: UI scaling. The feature is currently in testing and while there's no official date for its deployment to the live Tranquility server, Punkturis does provide a few nifty screenshots if you're curious to see how it looks.
Roboto font and the new design philosophy of Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich
When it came time to talk Ice Cream Sandwich, Matias Duarte started the conversation (or is it lecture?) with a bit about Roboto. At its most basic, Roboto is a font -- the new face of Android in a post Honeycomb world where tablets and phones share the same software space. Sure, it may seem like just another rounded, clean sans serif typeface, but it's really an entire aesthetic that Duarte says has guided the design philosophy of Android 4.0. It's "modern, yet approachable" and "emotional," in PR speak at least. But the clean, geometric design extends to the rest of the OS, which now sports more clean lines, subtle animations and ditches UI elements that have been deemed "unnecessary." Sure, Roboto may seem like "just a font" to you, but for the folks behind ICS, it's a mindset.
EVE Evolved: Looking forward to the winter expansion
Since EVE Online's release in 2003, CCP Games has been the center of one of the most interesting success stories in the games industry. Produced by a tiny indie development studio on a frozen volcanic rock, EVE was the perfect example of how to do things right. The game's publishing deal with Simon & Schuster allowed CCP to buy back the rights to the game several months after its initial release. With no publisher taking a cut of the profits, CCP ploughed subscriptions back into the game's development and grew the development team organically. As a one-game company, CCP worked closely with players to make EVE the best game possible for its loyal playerbase. In a recent letter to the players, CCP CEO Hilmar laments that somewhere along the line, things changed for the worse. The CCP of today bears little resemblance to the "little indie studio that could" of 2003, not just housing over 600 employees in offices around the world but also developing upcoming MMOs DUST 514 and World of Darkness. Resources are spread thin, and EVE Online has suffered for it. Last month I looked back at the blockbuster Apocrypha expansion and asked why every expansion since then has cut down on the in-space development players want. Hilmar's letter and its accompanying devblog answered that question this week with a solid plan for iteration on flying in space features during the winter development period. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look forward to the winter expansion and explain why each of the issues being tackled in the coming expansion is a big deal to players.
Microsoft closes the book on MS Reader app
We're wishing a heartfelt farewell to Microsoft Reader today, because the folks at Redmond have decided to pull the plug on their e-book application, more than a decade after it first launched. Pre-dating the rise of the e-ink medium, the forward-looking MS Reader was originally designed to display digitzed books on an LCD screen, using the company's ClearType font display. Over the past few years, however, the app has slowly faded into obscurity, with the latest desktop version dated from 2007 and its last update rendering it compatible with Windows Mobile 6.1. The concept was clearly ahead of its time, but it ultimately fell behind what would become a swelling trend, ushered in by the Kindle, Nook and other e-reading hardware. No word yet on whether Microsoft plans to introduce a similar tool for Windows 8, though the timing of Reader's demise certainly leaves ample room for speculation.
April Fools' Day roundup: Google overload edition
Ah, April 1st. It's that time of the year again when the internet is rife with odd news and pranks. As before, news sites like us end up with a healthy stream of tips throughout April Fools' Day (thanks, by the way), so let us round up some of the best findings for your comedic appetite. Contenders include the usual suspects like Google and ThinkGeek, the former of which dominating the gigglesphere this year with some new "features." We also have some interesting submissions from Hulu, a font company, and probably plenty more to come as the day progresses, so keep watching this space as we add new entries to this post. Right, let the fun commence after the break.
Nokia continues reinvention, details new fonts and branding
Nokia's current typeface -- Nokia Sans -- feels like one of the great constants in the consumer electronics industry, a design that instantly screams "Nokia" the moment you see it (for better or worse). That kind of strong, tight brand recognition from something as basic and simple as a character on a screen really isn't something that you can buy -- it needs to be built and cultivated over many, many years -- so we're sure that Espoo's decision to chuck it and start fresh wasn't taken lightly. In fact, we're sure it wasn't taken lightly because the company has published an 800-plus word explanation and defense of its decision to kill off Nokia Sans and replace it with Nokia Pure, a font it describes as the embodiment of "beauty in supreme usability." Of course, it's no coincidence that the font change comes just as Nokia's trying to go back to the drawing board, both with its hiring of outsider Stephen Elop and its decision to phase out Symbian and add Windows Phone into the mix; sure enough, the company says that it plans to use Pure on its devices and that "it has been designed specially for mobile and digital environments." What do you think? [Thanks, Esko] %Poll-62187%
Princeton study shows that easy fonts make things harder to remember
Clicking your way through Ulysses and having a hard time remembering just what it is Bloom ate for breakfast or, indeed, just what he did on the beach? Don't blame James Joyce, blame your Kindle! A Princeton study entitled "Fortune favors the bold (and the Italicized)" (their emphasis) has shown that readers retain information more reliably when they are challenged with so-called "disfluent" fonts (like the top one above). This flies in the face of the belief that easy to read text is easier to remember and should give typographical titans something else to ponder when placing text upon a page character by character. Now, what does this have to do with e-readers? Most are stuck with standard fonts that cannot be changed and fall squarely in the "fluent" category -- they're so easy to read your brain spins down. The solution is, of course, to add more and broader font support to the devices, something we'd love to see regardless of scientific merit. Until that comes to pass try holding your Kindle at odd angles or squinting. Maybe that'll help. Or, you could just put down the Proust and pick up some Clancy.
The Lawbringer: Fonts and why you cannot sue Deathwing
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Thanksgiving is here and, as a citizen of the United States of America, I must do my legal (I think?) duty and eat a ton of food and bake a pie. The pie baking happened last night, actually. Delicious, delicious pumpkin pie. You seriously have no idea how hungry I am ... Anyway, as it is time to celebrate and be joyous and thankful and all that jazz, The Lawbringer this week is light and fun. I've assembled two little anecdotes from the past week to share with you guys, provide a little food for thought (since the holiday is about eating ... right? Get it? Whatever ...) and give you something fun to read while you're in the car back from whatever embarrassing family gathering you're currently heading far away from.
