This Week in Type #12
Great experimental fonts, light and shadows as tools for creating typography, nostalgic hand drawn typography, smart quotes, a short animated history of typography and more. Yes, just another week in the wonderful world of types. Now make some coffee and let’s browse together:
Typecast: How New Technology Is Reinventing Typography
This is an interesting text about the rare craft of designing typefaces. For hundreds of years, designers had to master wood carving and metal casting to practice their art. However, with the rise of computers they learned to conquer bitmaps and vectors using tools like Glyphs, FontLab, or RoboFont. New technology and standards continue to put a new face on type, and the use cases are extending off our computer screens and into the physical realm too. As programming becomes a common part of the designer’s skill set, innovation is continuing along these lines and this article will guide you through. Read on!
Light and Shadows Create Striking Typography
Perfect (happy!) collision of art and typography. This shadow font experiment from Fred Eerdekens is an absolute delight. Sculpted from copper wire, cotton and various other materials, he plays on the art of light and shadow to create words on the walls. A beautiful art installation that proves typography is still one of the most creative outlets around. And that distorted fonts have many…. faces.
Nostalgic Hand-Drawn Typography Of Quotes, Posted On Instagram
By combining an image with hand-drawn type, Florida-based designer Zachary Smith has created some beautiful pieces of work based on quotes of sage advice. With beautiful graphics and famous quotes, his lovely nostalgia-themed work is highly popular on social networks such as Instagram, where he already has up to 7,500 followers. Are you gonna follow too?
This video published on YouTube at the end of April this year is a paper-letter animation about the history of fonts and typography. It took 291 Paper Letters, 2,454 Photographs, and 140 hours of work. If this video sparks any ideas, don’t forget to let the creators know. Until then, enjoy!
Pencil to Pixel typography exhibition, New York
Here you have a comprehensive exhibition offering typography fanatics a chance to get up close to rare implements, artworks and artifacts relating to type history, charting the development of typography up to its present technology-infused state. The exhibition will run from 3-9 May. Tickets are required, but admission is free. Don’t miss it if you’re in the hood!
47 Top Typography Tools and Resources
To help you improve and learn more about typography, Mashable have compiled 25 useful tools and resources, from fundamentals to modular scales. Have they left out your favorite typography tool or resource? No worry, share your recommendations!
By the way, do you know why typography works? “It creeps into you and before you know it, you’ve received the message” Erik Spiekermann
Have a fab weekend!
