font
Latest
The Console Font sits at the crossroads of your typographic and gaming passions
Sometimes a story is best told with images -- and that's certainly the case with the Console Font. Put simply, designer Varun Vachhar has created a font based on the shapes of classic and current gaming gear, including but not limited to the PlayStation Move, the classic Atari 2600 controller, and yes, there's even a Nokia N-gage device in there. It's striking, for certain, but don't take our word for it -- hit the source link and see how it came to life.
iPhone font created out of 540 apps and a love for the arcane (video)
No, we can't give you a clear reason why this particular chap did this particular thing, but good gravy, look at the pretty pictures! We've come across an iPhone-inspired font that looks to have been created by collating and color coding a vast collection of apps in order to properly represent the English alphabet. There's not much info given beyond the app count and the fact it required an architect with "too much free time" on his hands, but we're not going to begrudge a visual attraction when we can get one. You might be able to get the typography for yourself by contacting the author at the source link, or you can skip past the break to see it on video -- if you're careful enough you should be able to spot the world's greatest mobile app making a guest appearance.
Macworld 2010: TypeDNA
On the last day of Macworld, I caught up with the guys from TypeDNA to take a look at what I soon realized was going to be a revolutionary bit of software magic for designers of any ilk. TypeDNA is a series of plugins for Adobe CS4 applications (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) which makes finding the right font a simple matter. It has several methods for navigating font collections, starting with a search by name, which is handy on its own. The functionality expands from there, doing such things as automatically offering suggestions for similar fonts and font harmonies. The harmonies feature is especially interesting, and the suggestions it offered while they were demoing it were very good. You can pick a font from the suggestions and search for similar fonts to find exactly the right typeface for your project. TypeDNA always offers a variety of suggestions, and recognizes that font choice is entirely subjective ... you make all the decisions, it just helps you navigate a large font collection quickly and intuitively. I'll be doing a more in-depth review as soon as the demo version comes out (soon). The full version will be available in March, and will run $59US per plugin, or $89US for a full set (3 plugins) and two licenses so you can use them on two separate machines.
TUAW giveaway: Typewar for 10 lucky winners
If you read our little review of Typewar yesterday, you already know that it's an elegant and fun game for iPhone and iPod touch. Now you have a chance to win one of ten copies of Typewar in a TUAW giveaway. All you need to do is leave us a comment telling us what your favorite typeface is. The details of the giveaway are as follows: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older. To enter, leave a comment telling us what your favorite typeface is. The comment must be left before Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time. You may enter only once. Ten winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: One promo code for a copy of Typewar (Value: US$1.99) Click Here for complete Official Rules. Remember, if you're not a winner, you can still purchase the game from the App Store or play the online version. Good luck, and start studying the Font Book app to get higher scores.
Dialogue font in Clover PC no longer 'a hideous affront to humans with eyes'
Sometimes, all it takes to sully a good gaming experience is the implementation of an unattractive font. The merit of your game's well-written dialogue is lost when delivered in italicized, all-caps, 16-point Tahoma Impact -- a lesson recently learned by Binary Tweed, developer of the Xbox Live Indie Game darling Clover. Though the title was chock-full of charm, its dialogue was gruesome enough to sear the eyes right out of your head. Fortunately, Tweed has learned its lesson, and plans on adding a touch of polish to the dialogue in the game's upcoming PC iteration, Clover: A Curious Tale. Not only will the script be fully voice acted, and the dialogue paired with animated character portraits, but the font used in the game has been significantly gussied up. According to the developer's blog, it's no longer "a hideous affront to humans with eyes." We're guessing that means your cats will still find it fairly repugnant.
Xcode 3.2 Daily Tip: Restoring Monaco
It's a Menlo world in the new Snow Leopard Xcode. 10.6's Xcode uses the Menlo Regular-11 font for the standard Xcode template. If you miss Monaco (and I know I did), it isn't hard to restore the look and feel of Xcode 10.5's defaults. That's not to say there's anything wrong with Menlo. Menlo is a lovely font. It's just not a familar font and some strange part of my brain keeps freaking out every time I look at the screen. I'll probably force myself to adapt to Menlo at some point but for the moment, I'd rather just stick with Monaco. So to do that, here are some quick instructions. As you'll see you'll need to create a new theme based on the Xcode default theme and update its font settings. To start, open Xcode > Xcode Preferences (Command-,). Choose Fonts & Colors. Select the Xcode Default theme and click Duplicate. Enter a name for the new theme (e.g. Normal Xcode Theme) and click OK. Select the new theme, and then select all categories within the theme. To do that, click on any item and then choose Edit > Select All (Command-A). With the categories all selected, double-click in the font column. A font panel appears. Select Monaco 10 in the font panel and then close the panel. Click OK in the preferences pane and boom. You have returned to a font comfort zone. Got any Xcode font preferences? Can you recommend a font that's better than Menlo, Monaco, or the good old standby Courier? Let us know in the comments.
Font Bureau takes credit for Palm's custom 'Prelude' fonts; our hearts melt
Normally we're just happy to be able to read a bit of legible text on a mobile device -- maybe with a bit of anti-aliasing tossed in -- but we really have to hand it to Palm for the truly stunning and readable set of fonts in webOS. Apparently we have Boston-based Font Bureau to thank, who developed the all-new "Prelude" sans serif font family for the device, along with a related "Apres" set for print and marketing. The project was lead by Font Bureau co-founder David Berlow, who has also developed fonts for Microsoft and Apple in the past.
The forums have been RP'd
Blizzard has made a nice cinematic tweak to the forums today -- as you can see in this impassioned Engineering QQ thread, they've added a little bit of font flavor and some roleplaying text to everyone's posts. Instead of just whining about Engineers, "Aurainsoph's brow furrowed in concentration" before speaking, and after every paragraph, we get a much clearer picture of what our characters are doing, whether that be "putting on her robe and wizard's hat" (yuk yuk yuk) or "liberally applied his custom fragrance, which was made with bits of real nightsaber." Wait -- eww.And every post ends with a nice RP finish as well, most of them more silly than dramatic. All in all, it's very well done -- not only are there lots of different combinations, but the syntax works, and each post really does read like some bad fanfiction. Players seem to really enjoy it, even though their hair was a bird, and they found their point to be invalid. Whatever that means.I like this one more than the Pimp Your Mount joke, actually. Well done Blizzard.Update: Apparently the RP forums have gotten a special change of their own lol. I lol'ed IRL. Does Blizzard really think the rest of the forums talks like that? lulz.
ID that font on the go with WhatTheFont for iPhone
If you're a graphic designer, hopefully you're familiar with WhatTheFont, the essential service from myfonts.com that helps identify a font from a photo or other bitmap image. Now, MyFonts is bringing that power to the iPhone. With WhatTheFont for iPhone, you can take a picture using the iPhone's camera, and use the WhatTheFont to identify the font in the image. No more guessing -- or even waiting until you get back to the computer. WhatTheFont is even useful to iPod touch users -- the software identifies fonts in images saved from Safari, screenshots, or other images in your photo library. WhatTheFont requires internet access to work, since it connects with myfonts.com to perform the image analysis. It's free, and available in the App Store. [Via Swissmiss.] %Gallery-44418%
TypeDNA to pick up where other font management software leaves off
TypeDNA is previewing its advanced font management software at Macworld booth 4037, and gave TUAW a sneak peek. TypeDNA (also the name of the product) is cross-platform, standalone font management software that also includes some advanced features to help you select fonts based on similarity and type features. Along with standard activation and grouping features, TypeDNA includes Font Harmony and Similar Fonts tools to help you select aesthetically-compatible fonts for your projects. TypeDNA will begin a public beta program soon, with an eye to releasing the software in March. If you want to sign up for TypeDNA's public beta, you can.
KTF's "Font of Your Own" service makes sending ransom notes a breeze
Gone are the days of meticulously hand-cutting and pasting letters onto sheets of spiral bound lined notepad paper. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, criminals of all skill levels should be able to boil their carefully crafted ransom notes down to an SMS, which can be received and read by the victim at their convenience. We kid, we kid -- KTF's new "Font of Your Own" service isn't actually designed to support anonymous demands for cash as far as we can tell, but will allow any user of the free service to take pictures of 33 characters with their phone to create a custom font for use in messaging. A PC-based font editor app will also be available for those hardcore font connoisseurs looking to create that perfect typeface for their next mobile communique. And no, if you're outside South Korea, you can't have this, so don't even ask.[Via Unwired View]
Wii Warm Up: The font
We like the Wii logo. It's iconic and friendly. But any time the Wii typeface (the Continuum family) is used for something other than the Wii logo, we find it vaguely awkward-looking, with the possible exception of lowercase Continuum Light (as seen in a certain website header). Sorry, Wii fansite operators. We know this is going to come off as insulting. But it's just a personal quirk, not some pronouncement of font law. What we want to know is if anyone else shares this feeling. Does the Wii font just not look right most of the time?
Meek FM "typographic synthesizer" gets demoed on video
Rob Meek and Frank Miller's not-so-humbly-named Meek FM "typographic synthesizer" has been making the rounds for a little while now, but in case you weren't able to check out one of the few live "performances" of it, the pair have now thankfully let loose a video that shows just what the device is capable of. As you can see for yourself after the break, the one of a kind rig lets you take a distinctively Moog-like approach to designing fonts, with a slew of good old fashioned knobs provided to let you tweak things to your heart's content. Needless to say, the pair apparently have no plans to produce any more to sell, and this is one project where we're guessing a DIY guide would be of little help to anyone other than a very select few font-loving synthesizer aficionados.[Via technabob]
Safari for Windows: Mac vs. PC Font smoothing
One of the first things users noticed about the new Safari for Windows beta is that Apple is using their own font smoothing technology (found in OS X) instead of the Windows standard ClearType. Joel Spolsky has an interesting discussion of the different approaches Apple and Microsoft use with respect to sub-pixel font smoothing. Basically his conclusion is that Apple, coming from a desktop publishing background, "believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible" even if that means some onscreen blurriness, whereas Microsoft sacrifices letter shape "to prevent blur and improve readability." Joel notes that it's not entirely obvious which is the superior way of doing things, though predictably Mac users prefer the Apple way and Windows users the prefer the Microsoft way. In the end, however, this is likely as much a result of familiarity as anything else. For my part, I've always thought the Mac way of doing text just looked right. Thanks to Joel I now understand why; definitely worth a read.[via Red Sweater Blog]
Time to get your label makers at the ready, PS3 font for you!
Ever since its debut, worldwide people have taken note of that awesome PlayStation 3 font -- the Spider-Man font. It turns out everybody was just jealous that their computer didn't have the font available. Well, someone who really loved the font has tossed it up for downloadsies on the internet. We would have typed this post up using it, but you know. Protocol, rules, whatever. We don't really have much else to say about this except to go ahead and download the font, somehow connect a label maker to your computer and slap up PS3-fonts on all of your goodies. If you actually do that and send us a picture, we'll gladly use them on our posts.
Ken Kutaragi insisted on Spider-Man font for PS3
File this under "Trivia": did you know that since Sony owns the rights to the Spider-Man font, it might have shaped the look and feel of the PlayStation 3? According to CVG, Kutaragi insisted on the use of the font, and it was one of the first design elements chosen for the console.According to Sony's Teiyu Goto, "If you really look at the PS3 contour carefully, it is rounded when viewing the console in profile. Rather than creating a typography with all the risks that entails, it was wiser to use the one from Spider-Man, for which Sony has the rights." Er, call us confused, but what are all the risks that creating a new font entails? Death and destruction raining down? Sharp edges? Cats and dogs living together? Thankfully, Kutaragi wasn't a hardcore Comic Sans fan, or who knows what the PS3 would have ended up looking like.
Save penguins, fight aliens & change fonts in new 2.80 homebrew
We've been reporting on new homebrew on a nearly daily basis ever since the libtiff exploit was discovered. There are two more games to report about today. First is Penguin Scramble, which has you saving penguins Al Gore style. As with all of these TIFF games, it should be fairly simple to play. Another addition to the ever-growing collection of TIFF games is Space Invaders. This classic arcade game has you fighting off an incoming alien invasion, and as an episode of Futurama has shown us: the skills you learn from this game can be life-saving. Finally, we have an application to present to you: Font Hack Installer, which lets you change the fonts used on the XMB screen [screenshot]. While not revolutionary, it's nice to see more inventive ideas coming for users with 2.80 firmware. As always, save the appropriate files to your PSP's PHOTO folder to launch these applications. See also:TetrisPongSnake [Thanks steve!]
The Little Things: anti-aliased fonts help Mac OS X shine
Continuing our new The Little Things series that highlights the often-overlooked polish and underrated features that make Mac OS X such a joy to use, I thought I'd highlight one of those 'guy behind the guy' features that makes Apple's OS so gorgeous: font anti-aliasing. Nerdy, I know, but check out the screenshot: Windows, even XP, doesn't support this feature system-wide like Mac OS X does, and it shows. Type looks like garbage in everything from desktop icons to most applications and their menus on Windows. Mac OS X, on the other hand, supports anti-aliased fonts from the ground up (to my knowledge), so everything from System Preferences to desktop icons, text editors to iLife and more are incredibly legible and lickable.Some call it a minor detail, but given the undeniably pleasant usability this brings to the OS, I would argue it's one of those trademark additions that Apple's engineers don't receive enough credit for.Update: As many people pointed out Windows does, in fact, have a similar feature called 'ClearType,' which some consider superior to OS X's (though it is a matter of taste). The key difference is that ClearType is disabled by default, which in effect means that most Windows users have no idea that it is even an option. Another case of Apple paying attention to the little details, though Vista will have this feature enabled by default.
TUAW Tip: make friends with Mac OS X's Font and Color palettes
One of the things I'm sure we all love about Mac OS X is how integrated so many of the apps and services are with each other, but did you know that integration can stem all the way down to the fonts and colors you use amongst your apps? In almost any input-based, Cocoa-written app you're running (Firefox, for example, is not written in Cocoa), you can press cmd + t to open a simple, unassuming fonts palette that you've probably seen at one time or another. But if you chose a particular font and size that you like in one program, you can click on the gear in the bottom left of that panel and chose 'Add to Favorites' which places it in a category aptly named Favorites on the left side of that panel. The beauty of this is that any other program that has access to that system-wide fonts palette can also make use of the fonts you mark as favorites. For bonus points, click and drag the dot at the top of that panel to reveal a preview area (pictured) where you can see what your font is going to look like before running with it. Next up is the Color palette, accessible with the cmd + shift + c shortcut. This palette employs the same basic concept: you can use it to find a color you like, and then drag a swatch of that color to the white squares at the bottom of the panel to save a version and share it amongst your other Cocoa-based apps. These little built-in tools can be really handy when working across many apps in Mac OS X. You can set a favorite font in Yojimbo (or your choice of other junk drawer apps), and then use it when chatting with a friend in Adium or iChat. Use a favorite color for highlighting in OmniOutliner? Why not save it for the next Mail message you have to send, or those Final Cut Pro and Motion projects coming down the pipeline?By no means are these a revolution feature of Mac OS X that'll rake in the switchers, but they might just make your daily activities go a little bit smoother.
Widget Watch: Type Cast font preview and info
This is one of those widgets that makes me wonder why Apple hasn't already made one. Type Cast is pretty simple and straight-forward: it's a font preview widget from Code Line Communications, makers of Art Director's Toolkit (amongst other things). This widget isn't short on capabilities either; you can navigate font families, styles and sizes with merely your keyboard, and you can even be taken directly to the font file in the Finder.The Type Cast widget is free and available from Code Line Communications here.
