eastling: “Art doesn’t help people. People help people.”
[wooster collective]fowlr: This reminds me of the terrific “Design Won’t Save The World” idea.
That’s so great. There are some days I really need that shirt to wear to class…
Why Helvetica is superior; also, I apologize in advance for how EXTREMELY NERDY this is.
Slate: Since 1985, every Apple Macintosh computer—the choice of most graphic designers—has included Helvetica as a “resident font,” meaning that Apple licensed the typeface and embedded it in the system’s software. Microsoft, on the other hand, looked around for a cheaper alternative. In 1992, the company chose Arial, a digital Helvetica knockoff, as the default font in its Windows software. Since then Arial has spread like a virus, much to the dismay of graphic designers who dismiss it as a homely imposter.
I think this is pretty hilarious.
Forgive me for totally geeking out for a minute, but I’m going to go into a little dissertation on Helvetica and my love for it. Seriously, “geeking out” is probably putting it lightly.
I’ve noticed that a lot of newer designers have been saying that Helvetica is totally overrated as a typeface and that it’s used way too often and for too many things, etc. etc. And many people scoff at the idea that Arial is nothing but a Helvetica imposter, claiming that either they are too similar to matter, or that it is just an entirely different font. Both of these claims are technically right.
The three basic defining characteristics of a sans-serif are its x-height, glyph width, and weight. Arial is identical to Helvetica in all three of these aspects, which is enough to prove that Arial is a knock-off of Helvetica as opposed to being an entirely different font. That being said, there are many small differences between the two, and those differences are what make designers claim Helvetica to be of higher quality (without even mentioning the ethics of Arial’s creation).
My desktop background for a while was a quote from designer Katherine McCoy that said, “The Helvetica Medium lowercase ‘a’ in the original foundry and linotype is the most beautiful two-dimensional form ever designed.” That’s a little hyperbolic, but it definitely is at least one of the most beautiful glyphs ever designed. One of the key reasons for Helvetica’s success is that the negative space is given as much attention as the letterform itself. The lowercase ‘a’ is the perfect example. The counter (the hole inside) is fluid, like a teardrop, and is complemented by the negative space inside the upper stroke. In Arial, the counter is nearly identical, but it is not complemented by the above space - instead of flowing into the stem, the bowl is just attached to it, creating an angle instead of a curve.
Other obvious differences are the tails, and how the upper stroke is cut off. In Helvetica, all strokes are finished straight, whereas in Arial, strokes are cut off at various angles. (This article discusses more differences in depth, and is where the image came from.)
To most people, Helvetica and Arial are interchangeable. It’s not that I find Arial to be a hideous font; it’s not the new Comic Sans or anything. It has it’s place in say, a CSS doc where you list several different fall back fonts for various OSs or browsers. I don’t think Windows comes with Helvetica yet (although Mac now comes with both Arial and Helvetica - we’re so accommodating). But in my opinion, no designer should ever use Arial without some kind of specific purpose. Unless you’re the type of designer who would be okay with someone liking your design enough to copy and tweak it, but not actally pay you for it.
Typography on the Web is basic and dull. A startup called Typekit will fix it. - Slate Magazine
Typeface designers and font fanciers have new reason for optimism though. The past year has seen a surge of Web-browser innovation. Now, most major browsers—including the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera—recognize a CSS rule known as @font-face. What that means, in brief, is that Web developers can now easily embed downloadable fonts in their pages.
While this is definitely exciting, and definitely revolutionary in the field of web design, it’s also a little terrifying. Consider the number of people who have basic CSS and HTML knowledge (most likely learned from customizing their MySpace pages). And then think about what those MySpace pages look like. Now there is the possibility of having any font you like embedded in your page, or as many different decorative fonts you can get your hands on. Just imagine what the web would look like if all those people with Angelfire sites had access to hundreds of fonts… although, on the other hand, we might have been subjected to considerably less Comic Sans.
Droog NYC - High-concept just hit a new level. Amazing space - see shots below. I don’t know what was actually for sale, it was more like a museum of kooky pieces… no price tags in sight. Super snobbish staff, so taking photos was pretty terrifying… hence most of the shots here are from the Droog website.
Disappointing! Gijs Bakker (one of the founders of Droog) is a super down to earth and wonderful guy. I don’t think he would appreciate the Soho snobbery going on in his store.
This is for everyone in last year’s Graphic Design II class.
Think Vitamin: For years, designers have been using White Space in their designs to create a feeling of sophistication for upscale brands. This is where the Direct Mail client was actually correct in his view on white space for his product; adding white space to his design would position his product more upscale than it was. Coupled with a sensitive use of typography and photography, a careful use of White Space is seen all over certain brand markets to align themselves with their competitors. Take cosmetics for example, in fact most luxury goods, use white space in their marketing material to ‘tell’ the reader that they are sophisticated, of high quality and generally expensive.
This is a pretty good article on how to effectively use whitespace. It was my pet design issue when I worked on the paper, and this is exactly why.
Tempera Biblio
I really like this font.
Good lord, this is genius. I frigging love typography. Buuuuh.
It’s social suicide! … Sorry, I’m staring at boldface Futura and it’s making me think of Mean Girls.
Apparently today’s theme is “Graphic Design Tuesday”.
I pretty much REALLY MISS doing graphic design work.
Holy Crap, It’s the Inventor of Comic Sans (At ROFLThing-NYC) @ ROFLCon
“That’s right, Vincent Connare, the creator of internet anti-darling font Comic Sans, will be speaking on Jan 24th in NYC about the cultural impact of Comic Sans and his experiences as the man behind the much maligned font, as well as the ongoing campaigns against his creation.
Additionally, if you’re a real font-geek, Vincent’s also the man behind the implementation of Trebuchet MS. He was also on the original team that invented Webdings. Not kidding.”
Someone. Please fly me to NYC. I need to hear his reasoning behind… well, everything he’s done. I need some closure.
*New* new design.
This one is a million times better, but still needs a little work [just not at 5:30am].
Some things off the top of my head:
+ I took the photo of Cupid & Psyche at the Louvre this summer.
+ The quote is the title of Pas/Cal’s second album. I don’t necessarily love Pas/Cal, but that is an amazing title… but especially with the photo? Haha.
+ I will be removing the little “eastling” in the upper right corner of the brown box.
+ I need to fix the space between the left and right columns.
+ I’m probably going to remove the “comments?” link because it is often in the way, but you could still leave comments by going to the permalink.
+ I’ll be changing the sidebar around a lot.
+ Need to work on fonts and some color choices (like, links and text look almost the same).
+ Do something different with the twitter updates.
Any other suggestions? Really, anything, I’ll not be offended.
New design.
But yeah, that header is going to change. Ick.
Also I need to work on the comment box thing. And maybe the whole look. I don’t know, it’s working for Twitter, but it looks kind of… awful here.
simko: Poster by Michael Ciancio…
Really? Because that is one of the most awful poster designs I’ve ever seen. There’s too much crap floating around the letters. Not even other languages have marks on that many characters in a word. It may have stood a chance if the letters were all one color… Eh, nah.
The Ten Commandments of Design
Thou shalt not disfigure the font.
Thou shalt not steal the concept. Thou CAN be inspired by the concept, but thou had better change it so that people don’t call you a poser.
Thou shalt not use comic sans.
Thou shalt not cut corners, nor use a CMYK .jpg file in a print job simply because it’s do-able and you’re too busy to deal with it right now.
Thou shalt not kill…your boss for saying “How hard is it to put up a webpage, really?”
Thou shalt not lie…unless it’s that one printer who you have to fudge the deadline for in order to get it there on time.
Thou shalt not covet thy cubicle-mate’s brand new 200 gig computer with the shiny buttons and the CD/DVD burner that runs everything at the same time, even though he thinks Publisher is the best program to design stuff with and it sucks that they’re going by alphabetical order when replacing computers and it really irks you that your family name is Zwiegenschraum and…nevermind. Just don’t covet it, even though it’s like giving a Camaro to somebody who drives it like a riding lawnmower.
Thou shalt honor the Macs and the IBMs equally in your heart, for while they are separate, they are pretty much equal – unless you’re on Vista – but then you probably can’t read this, because you have to click through those security popups.
Thou shalt not fear new technology, nor pretend that you know what it does.
Thou shalt always get a contract, even though it’s just your cousin’ brother’s sister’s friend and he’s a great guy and wouldn’t EVER stiff you and besides, an email is just like a contract, right?
[via]
This just happened when I went to MGMT’s Last.fm page. I want this to happen to every Last.fm page. It looks infinitely better than the half-assed image they’re using now…
