This Week in Type #14

Something’s in the oven, but we’ll open it at the end of our round-up. If you smell cake, you’re not mistaken. But before we dig in some typography sweets, we check design events coming our way this year. We stop to examine some rather serious looking tutorials and some less serious looking (but highly effective!) typography apps. There’s also a typography challenge for fearless competitors. And we totally agree with this new ‘big’ trend in typography. How about you?

Make a Kinetic Typography Video with CSS

Check out this tutorial, where they use kinetic typography to create a simple conceptual art piece, timed to a song provided by power pop band, Be Like Pablo. Rather than using After Effects, they take advantage of CSS3 animations and transitions to create the piece with standard web tools: HTML5 and CSS3 for the animation and audio and a smattering of JavaScript to add classes to various elements at appropriate times. Don’t be put off by the language, this is for developers with a secret passion for typography. Read on to find out how the magic is done.

8 Best Typography Apps

Take a look at this collection of  free and premium typography apps available online. Why? Because in this modern age of graphics and high definition videos, typography is still a strong pillar for words. If the words are right, and they appear in the right format, no image or video can surpass them. Correct? OK, then pick the apps that serve your immediate needs. Wonder if they serve stencil fonts too…

Submit Your Art to This Month’s Typography Challenge

You still have time to submit your typography for this month’s Psdtuts+ Design Challenge. Join the community on Google+ and upload your art for the chance to get featured in their monthly reviews. This time they ask you to Create a Typographic Illustration. You can submit your artwork for this challenge using Photoshop accompanied with any additional program or technique of your choice. The deadline? Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 12:00 PM EST. Good luck!

Trends: Going Bigger with Typography

This guy likes big type and he does his best to convince us that big typography is trending in a major way. Well, we didn’t need much convincing. You should remember that the point of text in your design is to be read. From navigation, to blog entries to item descriptions for e-commerce, type is meant to be seen and understood. Going big is a great way to do that. Read on, it gets… bigger.

Essential Design Events for 2013: Typography

This is a small part of a bigger list covering essential design events. Those in Germany, Cyprus, Turkey, UK and USA are favored by the gods of typography. There’s also traveling, so don’t despair. You can always attach a lecture or an workshop to your holiday. Enjoy!

‘Typography Cake’ Lets You Send A Message In Batter

Here’s something to remind you that the weekend is here: cake! This ‘Typography Cake’ lets you send your message within the sweet treat, by placing edible dough letters at the bottom of the pan (in one straight row) before pouring in all your batter. Bon appetit!