typography
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Instagram inexplicably adds a Comic Sans-like font to Stories
Instagram couldn't even get the real Comic Sans for Stories.
Facebook has a new logo, but the differences are subtle
Facebook's last logo update came in 2005, but this year, the folks in Menlo Park felt it was time for a change. While the iconic white "f" and blue square will remain, places where the full name is used will see this new wordmark. Working with Eric Olson of Process Type Foundry, Facebook's in-house designers created custom lettering to make the logo "feel more friendly and approachable," according to creative director Josh Higgins. Olson's Klavika typeface was used in the current mark, and collaborating with him makes sense given the changes. "While we explored many directions, ultimately we decided that we only needed an update, and not a full redesign," Higgins explained. That decision seems like a good move, since the current logo is so recognizable after 10 years of use.
Love Comic Sans? Then this is the typewriter for you
Hey, sometimes actions speak louder than words fonts. And if you really, really like Comic Sans, then you're going to love this. In the name of art, a gentleman named Jesse England has designed the "Sincerity Machine," a Comic Sans typewriter. England says he altered the machine to write in the internet's favorite typeface because, well, there was nothing stopping him from doing so. But he does want everyone to know that, while creating it, he realized the font doesn't deserve all the negative flack it gets. At any rate, England was kind enough to detail how he built the Sincerity Machine, in case anyone else is interested in making one for themselves. Don't worry, we won't judge you.
inStatus is a photo editor that concentrates on text
inStatus (free for a limited time) has all the usual photo-editing bells and whistles like saturation, sharpness, cropping and almost everything you need to fix up or modify a photo. That includes an array of filters and frames. But inStatus specializes in text. The app contains templates for designer text layouts, more than a hundred fonts, various design icons, shapes, quotes and stickers to make your photos really unique. As a result, your photos are more like attractive presentations with moody visual elements. I would liken some of the results to a really nice album cover or poster. You can use different layers, and once your text is inserted, you can change the size, color, font and rotation. An autosave function means you won't lose anything. The app includes extensive multi-page help, which is good as the app isn't always intuitive. There is also a complete undo feature. Your finished image can be saved to your camera roll, or shared via Facebook, Twiiter, Instagram or email. The free app leaves a rather prominent watermark on your image, which I found obtrusive. Of course that's an encouragement to buy the Pro version at US$0.99. There are also some background sets that go beyond what's included, although the included effects, frames, fonts and icons are generous in quality and quantity. I like inStatus because it concentrates on typography, something most photo editors offer only basic controls for. If you think this is the app for you, try the free version, then part with the $0.99 to remove the watermark. If you can live with the watermark, the free version is well-equipped and will certainly enhance your photos in ways other apps can't. You can browse many example photos here. inStatus is not a universal app. It requires iOS 5.1 or later, and it is optimized for the iPhone 5.
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.
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.
32 GB versus 32GB: Almost everyone is writing it wrong
Fair warning, dear reader: this may be the most pedantic post in the history of TUAW. Maybe in history, period. But I can't help it: someone is wrong on the internet. Here's a fun trick. Go to the Apple menu on your Mac and select "About This Mac." A little window will come up listing your processor and RAM specs. Mine describes a 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM. If I click "More Info" to open System Profiler, I'll also learn that I have a 250 GB hard drive. Now go to Apple's product page for the MacBook Pro and click on "Buy Now" to see descriptions of tech specs. The 17-inch model is currently listed with a 2.53GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. Other than the obvious differences in specs, did you notice anything different? All the spaces disappeared. 2.53GHz instead of 2.6 GHz. 4GB and 500GB instead of 4 GB or 250 GB. Almost everyone in the computer industry is writing tech specs this way on their product pages, and they're all doing it wrong. Click "Read More" to find out why.
Great moments in reality distortion: the iPhone 4's Retina Display and Winnie the Pooh
Apple's making some big noise about the iPhone 4's new Retina Display and its ability to render print-like text quality, but apparently the iBooks team didn't get the memo: as New York Times design director Khoi Vinh noticed, there's a sad little moment in the iPhone 4 promo video when Scott Forstall says "the text is just perfect" just as a poorly laid out page of Winnie the Pooh flashes on the screen. Of course, almost every e-reader and e-reader app is capable of mutilating a layout, but it's crazy to think that this is what Apple actually chose to put up while hyping their new display -- and it's crazy to think that the same fastidious minds that created the iPhone would approve of iBooks doing this to Winnie the Pooh. Khoi's entire post is pretty interesting, so hit the source link to check it out -- and skip to about 3:02 after the break to see the RDF in effect for yourself.
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.
WWDC Live: Ross Carter and Pagehand, typography-aware word processor
Ross Carter of Cocomot has a pretty cool new word processor, Pagehand, in the works. It reads and writes in PDF format, so you don't have to think twice about sending a document to anyone; they may not be able to edit it -- depending on the software they're running -- but you're pretty much guaranteed they'll be able to see it exactly the way you did on your screen. That's important because Pagehand's features are heavily geared towards making correct and beautiful typography easy for everyone, and providing many of the advanced features you'd only find in applications such as InDesign or Quark. Ross demoed the word processor for me at WWDC. Check out the video for a brief overview of the application and some of the philosophy behind it. While it hasn't been "officially" released yet, it's available for download and trial in its 1.0 incarnation.
First Look: FontShuffle puts FontShop in your pocket
If, like me, you do a lot of your font shopping at FontShop, you're sure to love FontShuffle. FontShuffle is like having a copy of the indispensable FontShop catalog right on your iPhone or iPod touch. I know my dog-eared copy from 2002 needs to be updated and/or retired: FontShuffle is a nifty, free replacement. It's ideal for situations where you know what look you want, but don't know what font to use. FontShuffle lets you choose from six major classifications of type: sans serif, serif, slab serif, script, blackletter, and display. Tap one, and FontShuffle shows you six more sub-categories to choose from. Tap one of those, and you're presented with six selections from the FontShop catalog based on the look you selected. If none of the fonts fit the bill, press "Shuffle" or simply shake the device to get six more fonts. Tapping a font lets you view a customizable string of text in that font, and even save a picture of the text to your device's camera roll. Rotating the screen displays a specimen. Unfortunately, FontShuffle can be frustrating if you know what font you're looking for, as there's no search tool. You have to shuffle through page after page of fonts until it comes up in a random selection. Also, FontShuffle doesn't contain FontShop's entire catalog. They promise to add more fonts in upcoming versions. FontShuffle is free, and available from the App Store. It's a must-have for any type geek or designer that needs a font reference handy. %Gallery-39918%
Beta Beat: Fontcase
A few months ago, a teaser appeared for a new Mac OS X font management app, Fontcase, developed by Pieter Omvlee and with an UI design by Laurent Baumann. Fontcase is designed to replace Apple's Font Book utility, which is not only a mediocre font management app, but has a less than nuanced interface.For the last several months, Fontcase has been in private beta. Today, subscribers to the Fontcase newsletter were invited to download the latest beta. The app is very close to completetion, with a release date scheduled for sometime mid-January 2009, after Macworld. I used a few version of Fontcase while it was in private beta, and as a typography nut, have really been looking forward to this release.First off, the interface is just beautiful. This won't be surprising to anyone who has seen Laurent's work in the past, but it is worth mentioning because of just how elegant and Mac-like the application feels. I think I've used almost every font manager available for OS X and Fontcase is certainly the most attractive.When you open Fontcase, you are given the option to import your System and user fonts (basically everything that is already in Font Book). If you use Linotype's FontExplorer X , you can also import sets and meta-data directly from that application. You can share font collection via Bonjour to other computers on your network.
Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3: typography showdown
Ralf Herrmann recently took a look at the new typography features found in Firefox 3, pitting them against what's been available in Safari 3 for a while. The results show some major advances, and some major problems. The current OpenType or Apple Advanced Typography features in Firefox 3 include promising features like basic ligatures, which is exciting to those who live and breathe typography, but it fails in some non-English languages. Overall, it seems there are a lot of would-be nice new features that don't quite provide enough detail to be universally helpful. But it's a step in the right direction. Check out the post at Ralf Herrmann's Typography Weblog for a very complete overview and comparison.
QuarkXPress 8: Sleek Interface, Better Typography
Quark Inc. announced QuarkXPress 8 at the Drupa printing exhibition in Düsseldorf today, the latest version of the high-end design tool for Mac and Windows. Many of the changes to QuarkXPress are in the areas of user interface and workflow, which were criticized by many users after the long-delayed release of QuarkXPress 7. Some of the interface enhancements include: A picture content tool for moving, rotating, and scaling images in real-time New Bézier Pen Tools An enhanced measurements palette with new controls for modifying drop-shadows Drag-and-drop from the desktop, Adobe Bridge, iPhoto, MIcrosoft Word, and the hundreds of other applications that support drag-and-drop Instant access to master pages and exports to PDF, SWF, HTML and EPS QuarkXPress 8 offers improved typographical controls for designers, including hanging characters with multiple presets. There's also built-in support for Flash content creation, which formerly required the purchase of Quark Interactive DesignerQuark also noted that designers who purchase QuarkXPress 7 at regular price between today and August 1, 2008 and those who purchased QuarkXPress 7 or an upgrade between May 1 and today will receive the upgrade for free. The package is expected to ship within 60 days, and no final pricing has been announced.Thanks to Ling for the tip!Update: Jay Nelson has a huge writeup of QXP8's features at Planet Quark.
QuarkXPpress 7 released, but not as a Universal
QuarkXPress 7 has hit the streets, but it oddly isn't a Universal Binary (Steve Jobs, if you remember, announced at January's Macworld event that Quark had a beta UB version available). A UB update to version 7 is reportedly going to be made available later this summer (I guess Adobe isn't the only big software house having trouble). This new version brings plenty of new features to the table including enhancements to typography, color management, transparency (apparently it can do such advanced things as color opacity, drop shadows and alpha channels now), non-destructive mask manipulation, revolutionary 'Composition Zones' which let you design once and use anywhere with live updates, as well as improvements to productivity and collaboration, output and digital workflow and much more. Check out Quark's entire new feature list for the full details, as well as Macsimum News with summaries of what all the new features mean to you.Quark is also taking QuarkXPress on tour through seven US cities as well as Toronoto, Canada. Take a look at their schedule for details and registration information.
