[type] Google/Monotype's Noto project: A Half-Gig of Free OTF Fonts To Get The Tofu Off Your Screen

3391.

Add to the list of logisms about the type tofu. Any time a computer displays web text, and the fonts on your system don't carry the glyph that the content requests or (worse) doesn't have the font at all, you get small boxes (most of the time) as place holders for the letter from the computer would draw if only it knew how.

For your device, it's a teachable moment. You learn it up by downloading a font, installing, and refreshing the font cache, usually by closing and relaunching the app. To he right of this Latin text you'll see a illustration from Wikipedia's article on the Deseret Alphabet before installing a font that has those glyphs defined.

That's tofu, intermountain-West style.

This is an issue that has developed as more information that didn't come from a core early compuiting constituency … Latinate-script using Westerners … came under the unblinking gaze of the Earth's developing, evolving technological consciousness. A lot of things, like the Deseret Alphabet or the Shavian script, were invented, not evolved and extant at the time computers began developing, and a lot of encodings weren't thought of at first. So, you'll go to the Wikipedia page on Shavian without the proper font file installed and come up with a case of tofu, all nicely arranged in boxes:

Yummy tofu, Shavian style

Which fill in quite nicely once a font file, such as andagii_.ttf is installed and recognized:

Fully cooked, Shavian in all its odd glory

It's a problem that you'd think that Google, with its Borg-like focus on assimilating information and returning it in a usable format, would be thinking about, and you'd be right about this.

Just announced and made available, the collaboration between Google and font foundry Monotype has goal that is simple if huge; eliminating tofu from your screen.  From the Google Developers' Blog:

Five years ago we set out to address this problem via the Noto—aka “No more tofu”—font project. Today, Google’s open-source Noto font family provides a beautiful and consistent digital type for every symbol in the Unicode standard, covering more than 800 languages and 110,000 characters.

There are, at this writing, 114 Noto fonts including Devangari, Cuneiform, CJK, Osmanya and, yes, Deseret and Shavian. Installing the extant Noto fonts should cover you in a variety of situations so wide that the average user stands more of a chance seeing tofu in their stir-fry, where it belongs, rather on their screens.

The biggest news for the font-avaricious is, perhaps, that the entire Noto family is free to download and use as thou wilt, and is licensed under the SIL Open Font License. That means they're free to download and use in any way you deem necessary; not only free as in Open Source, but free-as-in-free-beer-free. The whole zip archive is close to a half-gig of free fonts; the design, as seen in the illustration a the right, isn't out to be flashy or game-changing; the basic Noto Serif and Noto Sans are good, basic book-hands, meant to be pleasing to the eye but not to be the star of the piece. It's meant to harmonize, not to dominate.

The Noto Project's website is https://www.google.com/get/noto/ : this'll take you directly to a download page where you can download any number of the available font files or the whole thing at a go (about 473 MB worth). It's totally and wholly up to you, font explorer.

[design] The ABC Of Lettering, A Type Handbook From the 50s

3155.

I'm not quite sure where I got this gem, but it's going to be a valuable resource.

The book is called The ABC of Lettering, and the author is J.I. Beiegeleisen. It was apparently first published in the 1940s, and this copy that I scored somehow was apparently published around 1958.

It is in excellent condition, considering.

Extensive instruction on how to letter, what strokes to do - script as well as manuscript, and big, big, beautiful specimen displays, as thus:

I think this particular edition was published around 1958, and sold for $8.50.

I got it for $6, which means it held its value better than some cars and most houses.

[design] New Typography On Taco Bell's Sauce Packets

2994.

I shelved this one a while back, but it made me react so I'd have to say something about it. It's a good change.

Recently (but see stipulation above), Taco Bell has changed a bit of the design on its sauce packets. It created a better attitude, one I like better than the old one.

Below photo shows the packets on parade; the old style is on the left, the new style is on the right.

The whimsical, wacky type is gone, along with the old tagline Think Outside the Bun, which is a good change because it all seemed to be trying too hard, from the jaggedly lines to the forced and awkward edginess of the cute sayings in the middle of the design.

The literary review is strictly subjective. Maybe Things just got real just kind of annoys me less, in an unarticulatable way, than Sometines I crave myself … is that wrong? (For the record, it kind of is. If you're going to consume yourself, at least get a room before you do so. Thanks from me and everyone else).

The large type has a nice, straight-forward strength to it that hints as to why Swiss design got so dam' popular. It's straight ahead and just tells you what you want to know … as helped along by the elimination of the "Border Sauce" brand (the 'run for the border' tagline being almost older than the 1990s), which made for an awkward coinage at best. Besides, nobody I've heard ever called it that; the cashier at the window just wonders if you want Hot or Fire, never asks "Do you want some Border Sauce Hot?"

What it all comes down to is keeping the image current without trying too hard. The graphics on your sauce packets don't have to do the heavy lifting, they just have to harmonize with the rest of the brand. And this, they do. 

[pdx] Vintage Typewriters On Display At Powell's Books

2920.When we visited Powell's Books downtown store this last evening, I went to the Pearl Room, on the 3rd floor as is my wont, because I loves me them art-how-to books and the graphic design and typography books. And if you can't find it there and you don't already have it, you don't need it.

The third floor has a display featuring books on typography and type. So, what perfect accompaniment than … typewriters.

To those of you who were gebornt during the last 20-30 years or so, a typewriter is much like a computer, except your files were 'typewritten' (that Wikipedia thing would probably call this a portmanteau of typewriter and written) on things called pieces of paper, and these files were saved by a method we called putting them away in a safe place. Crazy, right?

Typewriters, while not able to run World of Warcraft, EVE Online, or connect to the cloud, did have the advantage of working during a power failure or after an electromagnetic pulse … though, honestly, if you were suffering through the aftereffects of an EMP you probably had other matters on your mind and stopped typing, at least for a while.

And you couldn't download apps to them. They kind of were the app. Anyway, please browse this brief little gallery, presented for your illumination. Clicky to embiggen.

This first one is a Royal of some make and more than a little antiquity. It was on the uppermost shelf, and was actually out of sight to me, even at 5' 11" in height. That didn't stop me from holding the camera up, though, and letting it do the dirty work:

 The next one is a Corona, distinguished most by this lovely maroon color.

Next comes a Corona that looks a bit older than the last one, with a plate on detailing the seller-servicer.

 The (poorly photographed) seller's plate tells us it was sold and/or serviced by E.W. Hall Co, Inc, purveyors of Office Appliances who were located in Seattle at 911 2nd Avenue and could be phoned at ELliot 3441. 

This next one is a Remington Model 2, or maybe Model 5. 

 
The card in the lid gives us a bit of information on one of this model's most famous owners – Agatha Christie, who we understand was a mystery writer of some note. We also note that this card does not state that this was the model Dame Agatha herself owned, the implication being her portable was of that ilk.

This Remington, in particular, was sold/serviced by Oregon Typewriter Company, 330 SW 5th Avenue, Portland, Phone ATwater 5378. That would be 503-289-5378 today. You can at least tell it was post-1930 by the post-Great Renaming address (otherwise it would be in the 80-100 range on Third Street).

If you can get by Powell's within the time these sweeties are on display, give 'em a good look. 

They also have great books on type there, several of which are in my collection.

[design] Design We Like: SE Portland's Township and Range Restaurant

2909.The various buildings and businesses along the ever-fashionable SE Hawthorne Blvd are in a state of flux. A building at 2422 SE Hawthorne was, for many years, a photo lab. It has become a restaurant.

It's called Township and Range, and being a geography hobbyist, I know of which they refer to, and found it intriguing that they should name a neighborhood bistro after such a technical term.

t caught our eye mainly because of the bold design of the signage, which is engaging to the eye, bold and attractive, and spiffily well-done. 

The design accomplishes the task of tying a philosophy of 'local is best' to the establishment's message by the rather clever trick of the geographer's term. The about page shows that they understand the thinking behind the Public Lands Survey System quite well, even to the point of just what the point of the Willamette Stone is, and they knew enough about to create an impressive logo that has the look of the Willamette Stone benchmark pretty much nailed.

When it comes to geographic attitude, it's got aplomb, Bob.  Which is an impressive bit of local passion, all the more so for a restaurant.

What really  caught our eyes, though, was the bold design of the signage facing the street, which we enjoy mightily:

Nice, eh? Bold, hard to ignore, and fun to look at. The type, reminiscent of automobile and appliance nameplates, is approachable, and the bright red neon provides the contrast you want against the coole colors of the building. The word and is lit from behind: when the night falls is when you see it outlined in silhouette.

It's clever and we wish we'd of thought of this. 

[design] How Many Fonts Do YOU Have?

2815.Looks like I'm running behind.

[type] Mission:Impossible - IKEA Protocol; Inapt Type In Movies

2768.This is the way serious typographers roll, yo.

Matthew Butterick, the mind behind the blog Typography for Lawyers, has a … gentle problem … with the recent film Mission:Impossible - Ghost Protocol. And, he put it in a letter to the movie's director, Brad Bird:

Inapt typography is not uncommon in movies. But big-budget studio films employ scores of people specifically to worry about the details that ensure the on-screen experience will be seamless. Therefore, it’s incongruous to put all that care (and money!) into the frame and then overlay it with an inapt font, which in its own small way, breaks the illusion. It’s not Mission: Impossible — IKEA Protocol, is it.

Which is all in pursuit of the answer to the question If you're going to spend that much to make every facet of the movie perfect, why skimp out and use Verdana?


The irony in my own posting is that, I think, when bolding and italicizing text on this blog, the software doesn't italicize, it obliques. Which I abhor. Got bigger fish to fry right now though.

Also that we refer to the Cruise-controlled MI series as The Franchise Which Must Not Be Named. Seriously. MI:2 is the only action film my wife ever returned to the video store midway through viewing for a refund. 


But Butterick has a point. Brad Bird, why you no pay closer attention to type?

Via the Candlerblog, here: http://www.candlerblog.com/2012/01/20/mission-impossible-typography/, where you can read the whole letter, which nails it utterly. What Cruise has done to the franchise is another matter entirely, best addressed in The Hague, perhaps.

[type] Pilcrow, Ampersand, Section Mark and Hedera, LLC

2732.The four marks alluded to in the title are more popularly known as "The Paragraph Sign"; "The And Sign", "That Funny Double-S", and "The Fleuron".

The article at Retinart, "Marks Unknown", (http://retinart.net/typography/marksunknown/), should smart you up a little … or at least get you to appreciate them.

[typography] Because the SarcMark™ Worked So Well …

2730.Now someone's come up with a "sarcasm font" which is … wait for it … just regular typed obliqued leftwards instead of rightwards.

Yeah, that'll work. Like the SarcMark™, that went over so just so very well.

It's the Sarcastic 'Font', and you can find it at http://glennmcanally.com/sarcastic/index.htm.

Yeah. This'll go over well, too.

The nifty thing about that answer is it'll hold true whether that is especially dry satire … or not.

[type] The Most Horrifying Picture A Graphic Designer Can See …

2725.… is the opening splash to any Adobe Creative Suite app … in Comic Sans …

There's even more tomfoolery at The Comic Sans Project, a tumblr blog whose unholy purpose seems to be re-imagining all sorts of logos and stuff with CS in instead of what belongs there.

Sinful. You'll want to watch, of course: http://comicsansproject.tumblr.com/

[type] A New Font For Dyslexics

2715. (VIA) Dutch type designer Christian Boer's Dyslexie is a font which is designed to make reading for dyslexics much more possible.

The font is interesting even if you aren't so affected. Dyslexie achieves its aim by distorting shapes to, for instance, make the d and p less symmetrical, which prevents the dyslexic brain from "flipping" the shape. Other irregularities make for a very organic feel, which is not altogether unpleasant to look and is actually rather artistic.

Dyslexie font sample screenshot from designer's website

The font can be seen in action at this article in Scientific American (which has a link to a PDF of the article formatted in Dyslexie), and the designer's website Project Dyslexie (most of which is laid out with the font). A single-user license will set you back 69 Euros, or about USD 98.00.

[type] Can You Tell the Cheese From The Type?

2712.Cheese or Font is a quick, nifty, and simple little game that throws up a word … it's either a cheese name or a font name … and then just asks you to choose.

It's surprisingly difficult.

Http://cheeseorfont.com

[type] It's A Wood Type Revival!

2690.Via the HOW Blog: Wood Type Revival is an attempt (so far, succeeding) at bringing wood type into the digital age as OpenType fonts.

The way they're doing it is to print sheets on a Vandercook proof press (probably not too much different from this one) and scanning the result, then digitizing it.

So far, they have four sumptuous faces done, including a very delightful Roycroft:

Each so far will set you back $15.00.

The address to know is http://www.woodtyperevival.com.

[pdx] Urban Archaeology at the Burlingame Fred Meyer (updated x 2)

2626.(Update, 23 May 11 1957) Just came down from the high induced by watching this posting being mentioned on local TV. KGW's "Live @ 7" program, broadcast weekdays from 7-7:30 PM, mentioned it as a part of the "Web Links" section, selected by producer Aaron Weiss and reported on by Steph Stricklen. Not only was Steph's reporting on the bit articulate and nifty, but she said my last name correctly! Seriously, you'd be surprised how many people have trouble with the name Klein.

Not only does this solidify my Live @ 7 fandom, it bears witness to the fact that, while all the Portland TV stations are fairly nifty, KGW's crew - and especially the Live @ 7 staff - are the most adept at connecting with viewers and fans on the Intartubez and the twitter-device. For your handy reference, the twitter-point for Steph Stricklen is @StephStricklen and for producer Aaron and the Live @ 7 production juggernaut is @TheSquare. This post is also linked from the Monday Links section at http://www.kgw.com/thesquare/inside/Mondays-links-122477424.html. And thank you, guys!

(Update, 20 May 11 0915) A friendly indvidual, fellow-traveller 'sputnik housewares' from the comments, pointed me at a nifty vintage picture of the FM Burlingame sign going in. Please see the bottom of this postng for the goods.

The Burlingame Fred Meyer store, located near where Terwilliger Blvd and Barbur Blvd meet I-5 in southwest Portland, is one of the oldest stores but has survived over the years where stores like the old Hollywood store (NE Sandy and 41st) and the Rose City (NE 72nd, where Sandy and Fremont cross) haven't perhaps because there aren't any other good Fred Meyers in convenient distance. Thanks to its small size, it's been presented as a "Fred Meyer Marketplace" (a term, I understand, for smaller Freddy's such as this one and the Stadium store), and boasts about the last vintage Fred Meyer sign that I can find.

During this season, Fred Meyer closed the store to put it through a balls-to-the-wall remodel. Everything was cleaned out, out to the walls of the old building. The Chase bank brand moved a couple hundred yards east, to the old Hollywood Video store on the west side of SW Barbur between Bertha Blvd and Terwilliger, but the rest won't be back until this Fall, according to the banners around the site. At this point, the building is extremely cleaned out:

Naturally, having the outside off the way it is, the building has had its skin removed; we're looking at the bones. It's more interesting than I thought it would be. For instance, in the above photo, notice the slanting-out faces of the vertical supports. They have details on, some grooves in the masonry that add visual interest, and there are mansard-style caps on each of them.

The vintage sign bears mention at this point. I'll refer back to it presently:

My understanding is that the style of sign used to be Fred Meyer empire style; I don't know how many old Freddy's it graced, but I do remember the old one, exactly similar in style, that used to perch over the corner of 39th (now César E Chávez) and SE Hawthorne Blvd at the Hawthorne store. It was smaller. After the Hawthorne store got LEEDed to the gills, a new sign - an inferior version, IMHO - was placed at the corner of SE CEC and Main. Here, you be the judge:

Meh, amirite (thanks, Google Street View, BTW).

Pulling this digression train back on the tracks, there were two most visually appealing palimpsets that I wanted to point out. At the eastern end of the building (Barbur is a N-S street but this is on an almost east-west kink in the road due to the low-spot in the hills that also hosts the famous Terwilliger Curves) is this:

Fred Meyer stores have long had a tradition of having additional retail spaces for things like salons and cleaners and the like. This is particularly intriguing because of the obvious human touch; the HAIR FASHIONS manifestly created by sight and hand as the uneven kerning and awkwardly sized S attest.

Just on the left of this art is a light blue angle, before the outer skin of the building ends. I wonder what that must have led into. I hope someone else captured it.

The big prize was on the east end of the building, nearest to Bertha Blvd:

In the state the building is in, this is as good as it got, but it's nice, no? Referring back to the vintage sign above, notice that the script style is all but identical (the descender on the g and the low-hanging bottom of the e being the giveaways) with the script on the sign styled to fit in with the backslanted sign edge. It's a small point to note, I suppose, like the Dude's rug, this ties the sign and the building together irrevocably.

As with the other bit of wall art above, I don't know if there was more to reveal. The building has got to be, oh, I don't know, at least 60 years old. I only got this; if there was more, I hope someone else noted it.

If you jumped down here because of the note at the head of this post: in the comments of the post, a commenter by the name of sputnik housewares posted a link to the following picture on Flickr, of the above sign going in at the first:

 

You'll note the sign at the bottom …My-Te-Fine Foods Drugs. As any dyed-in-the-Doug-Fir Oregonian knows, My-Te-Fine was the FM house brand, before the chain went through a series of sales which eventually made it a subsidiary of Kroger (which is why you can find Big K, the Kroger house brand, in Fred Meyer stores latterly.

Thanks, sput! Nifty!

 
Technorati Tags: Fred_Meyer, PDX_history, PDX_photos, Burlingame, Portland

[type] Handschrift: A Different Sort of Sign Language

2621.What do you need to create a type font?

José Ernesto Rodriguez needed a photocopier and his own two hands:

"Handscrift" is a complete 26-glyph, majuscule and minuscule, punctuation and special symbols, font produced by Rodriguez using just those two things. It's really cool stuff, and his project at Behance (http://www.behance.net/gallery/Handschrift/1271211) shows a complete display of the type, how he did it, and pages out a sketchbook, which is always my favorite thing.

 

[tech] They Actually Are Still Making Typewriters, Somewhere

2615.It would seem that, as a wise American once expounded, reports of the death of the typewriter have been greatly exaggerated. This from Gawker, via The Great Penguini:

In the retelling, however, this somehow came to mean that Godrej & Boyce was the last existing typewriter manufacturer in the world, and that this therefore marked the final, wheezing gasps for the antiquated word-processing machines. From the fake typewriter ashes, a million nostalgic personal essays bloomed.

There are at least a few firms left that are creating new typewriters, including a firm referenced in the article that apparently creates "see-through" typewriters for use by prisoners.

Referenced was this search on Staples website which turns up several models. I would point out that these are strictly electronic typewriters, which, to me, is an important distinction … perhaps not to others, but certainly to me. I think the mechanical typewriter has a niche, infinitesimal though it may be.

But breathe easy, fellow lovers of the rustic art of creating type with actual mechanical effort … our day is not completely over. Not yet, anyway.

And while we're there, mea culpa for spreading a bit of un-information there. But it was with a good heart.

[tech] The Typewriter Era Is Over … Period

2611.Typewriters have, of course, been on the way out for a long time. Here in America they've all but become ghosts, and those of us who have actual typewriters and use them (me, for one) have to know where to get typewriter ribbons (not an easy thing, but I at least have Bill Morrison's at 122nd and SE Stark St, which is within walking distance).

I was aware that they were less popular for a long time, you know when I knew that the typewriter's days were numbered? When you couldn't find them at the Goodwill store anymore. They used to have shelves and shelves of broken old machines. Then, one year … and not all that long ago … the old typewriters just kind of disappeared.

Those of us who like type and typing … and for me there's always a sort of joy to it, a healing feeling … cherish our machines. The author Harlan Ellison has several in storage, because nothing lasts forever and, I imagine, soon enough, there won't be any way to even get them fixed any more. Keeps spare typewriter ribbons in the freezer, I understand.

With the announcement of the last known typewriter manufacturer in the world ceasing operations, I fear that day is here:

With only about 200 machines left -- and most of those in Arabic languages -- Godrej and Boyce shut down its plant in Mumbai, India, today. "Although typewriters became obsolete years ago in the west, they were still common in India -- until recently," according to the Daily Mail, which ran a special story this morning about the typewriters demise. "Demand for the machines has sunk in the last ten years as consumers switch to computers." Secretaries, rejoice.

"We are not getting many orders now," Milind Dukle, Godrej and Boyce's general manager, told the paper. "From the early 2000s onwards, computers started dominating. All the manufacturers of office typewriters stopped production, except us. 'Till 2009, we used to produce 10,000 to 12,000 machines a year. But this might be the last chance for typewriter lovers. Now, our primary market is among the defence agencies, courts and government offices."

Well, my Royal Futura isn't on the verge of breaking down, and I can still get ribbons for it. But she's amongst the last of a now-extinct species.

[web_design] Quickly ID Web Page Fonts with WhatFont Bookmarklet

2596.There are quite a few ways of figuring out what font a web page is doing but Chengyin Liu may have just come up with the quickest, most intuitive.

Utilities like Firebug are nifty but they assault you with information … way too much unless you're a real web-design pro. Or maybe you are but you want a real quick read. Here's how you go about it.

1. Navigate to this page: http://chengyinliu.com/whatfont.html

2. Mouseover the gray button that reads WhatFont, click and drag to your bookmarks bar, and drop it. It will lodge there under with the label "WhatFont".

Additionally, you can click on the button to try it out without installing it.

3. To use the bookmarklet, click on it and mouse over the text. You'll see something just like this:

The font (as defined in the page's font specification) appears in a gray box just like above.

4. To turn it off, click on the "Exit WhatFont" block that has appeared in the upper-right-hand corner of the browser window:

… and it will go away.

It's just a clever, quick, and simple way to do it.

 

[art, typography] Lucy Knisley's Comic Alphabet

2584.Illustrator Lucy Knisley has matched up the alphabet with a significant character from the history of comics. It's a poster that you can buy and to do so, you can go here:

http://www.society6.com/studio/lucy/ABComics

Really, it's twenty-six characters no matter how you look at it.

[design] 40 Typographically Oriented Desktop Wallpapers

2572.Because I just wanted to post something and don't have something to say yet today:

That design says so much about me.

Thirty-nine (in PDX, "César E. Chávez") more of them here:

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/freebies/40-inspiring-high-quality-typographic-wallpapers/