For the love of Typography

As most of my design and graphics students know, I’m a bit of a type geek. In almost every class, even if it’s not in our regular syllabus, I try to include at least a brief introduction to Type as Design – or, Typography. 

And, you probably also know how I stress the idea of kerning – the way individual letterforms fit together, as a method of refining your work, adding a cohesive look and confirming that you’ve taken some time and put in some effort at making your type look good, as well as read well.

Today, I found an excellent infographic at Digital Synopsis.com, that may help you to make better decisions about how to improve your Headers, your Titles, and all display type. Take a look!

Really Interesting and Informative Typography Article

As almost all of my students know, I’m a bit of a type geek. So, imagine how fulfilled my inner geek feels, when I find blog post about Typefaces, Type Structure, Type families, Type anatomy, and Type Classification, the use of Type in Paragraphs, Typographic Terms like kerning and spacing, Page Layout and Type, and so much more!

Although this article is written with a focus on software development, the article is about DESIGN. Knowing what you’re using, and why. As I always say “in design, you can always break the rules, but first you have to know what the rules are!”

I seriously recommend this article to all my design students, my motion graphics students, my still image students, and anyone else who feels that Type is more than just a way to make a word show up.

http://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/a-typography-workshop/?ref=webdesignernews.com

Adobe is Severely Limiting it’s Font Installations

In a recent article on InDesign Secrets, I can finally find the reason why so many of my InDesign classes have been having font errors when using files from the Adobe courseware. It seems that InDesign – and all of the Adobe programs, for that matter, are no longer installing the fonts that used to come with the programs! I’ve been using Adobe programs for too many  years than I want to count, so of course, I have the fonts installed, but so many of my students are downloading demo software for their classes, and work in an environment with security limitations, so they can’t easily access Adobe’s Typekit (part of the Creative Cloud suite).

In my opinion, this is a terrible move on Adobe’s part, and I can’t quite figure out why they’re choosing to do it. Over the years, I’ve seen Adobe seemingly losing touch with their users in quite a few ways, but in software that’s ABOUT design, I can’t imagine what they’re thinking.

To view the post on InDesignSecrets.com, please visit http://indesignsecrets.com/adobe-drops-fonts-leaves-users-stranded.php

There’s an earlier article about the issue here: http://indesignsecrets.com/happened-fonts-indesign.php   (which includes a work-around)

And, for a list of the fonts originally installed, and mostly still necessary, please see Adobe’s article here: http://www.adobe.com/products/type/creative-suite-6-installed-fonts.html

As for me, I’ve backed up ALL of my installed fonts into a directory I use for my font management program. I suggest you do the same. If you’d like instructions for doing so, please comment on this post.

 

27 Useful Design Tips

For my design and typography students, here’s a really nice blog with some tips and ideas to improve your feel for good design, good use of typography, and maybe provide some inspiration.

http://digitalsynopsis.com/design/beautiful-illustrated-graphic-designer-tips/

InDesign Font Management – with new CC feature that makes things easier!

Adobe TV has offered a new tutorial on how to manage missing fonts in an InDesign document. As you know, with InDesign, if you don’t have a particular font installed on your system, you will receive errors when you open a file that uses those fonts. This tutorial shows the Find Font feature that’s existed in InDesign for several versions going back. However, at 5:23 in the video, this instructor will reveal a VERY cool new feature to manage fonts in InDesign CC. Take a look!

http://adobe.ly/13Hg1xT

Adding an “Impossible Gradient” to Editable Type

Jeff Witchel, an Adobe Certified Instructor for Adobe Illustrator and a frequent contributor to Layers Magazine (which many of you know is one of my favorite resources), has created a video tutorial for the addition of Gradients to type, WHILE keeping the type editable. This is one of those un-obvious Illustrator controls (uses one of my favorite tools – the Appearance Panel) that will help a bunch of you!

http://www.jeffwitchel.net/2012/03/apply-an-impossible-gradient-to-editable-type/

 

Cool FREE Commercial Use Fonts from MacAppware

As I’ve mentioned before, designers are FONT FREAKS! We never do get enough of them, do we?

So, with this in mind, MacAppware.com has offered 10 Free Commercial Use Fonts, with 10 user licenses. Nice deal! Check them out at:

http://www.macappware.com/mac-fonts.html

Free Dingbat Font from ffdingbatsfont.com

 Graphics.com has posted a link to a very cool FREE Dingbat font. I know you guys like FREE, and my designer friends are ALL about the fonts, right?!

FontShop has made available for free download the Erler Dingbats font, which ncludes a wide range of popular symbols and pictograms such as arrows, pens, phones, stars, crosses and checkmarks, plus 3 sets of cameo figures on round backgrounds.

http://ffdingbatsfont.com/erler/

Awesome Article on the 5 Main Groups of Typefaces

SmashingMagazine.com has an excellent article about the 5 main typeface styles.

So often, my students ask how to select an appropriate typeface for their projects. This article clearly explains the main groups from which you can choose, and helps you choose which are best to combine for your specific needs.

Visit http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/12/14/what-font-should-i-use-five-principles-for-choosing-and-using-typefaces/