Categories: movie, typography
Tags: 3d, block, font, title, type
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Yesterday with Patrick we discussed about how to fit as much information as possible in a tiny icon (16×16px). The idea was to put the name of the band (it is for Kitsune) on display on the icon.
We came trough a range of ideas including tiny micro type from the end of the 90’s developped for on-screen reading for and by flash designers; we also thought about the work of Louis Emile Javal (wikipedia notes on Javal work). Javal was an ophthalmologist who worked on character differentiation to increase legibility; he worked on the mainly on the counter-form of the letter, the shape created by its absence. the work on the lower case “o” is quite remarkable: it is a simple middle dot which helps draw the circle of the letter just by opposing contrast to surrounding letter-forms.
Interestingly, my quick searches lead me to a nice blog post Typographie Font Minuscule introducing a typeface designed by Thomas Huot-Marchand (of 256tm); he re-worked the principles developed by Javal according to contemporary technologies.
I read about an article in the Typographisches Monats Blätter covering this font but i couldn’t get my hands on it - this page mention a pdf, i would love to see more of the specimen; i really like the intelligence of the demonstration below:
Bloody smart, isnt’it?
Finally, there a few more resources on the subject:
* Typophile has a node about the Javal, and mention the work on the Minuscule typeface as well.
** Patrick came back this morning with the idea of using QR code (or something similar) which is brilliant: it lets you embed more information than a simple surface could ever contain. That’s all the Meat Data thing! I love this idea…
*** writing this post reminded me of our own attempts with Pierre Terrier at designing a small size characters which remains legible: the Jawut; a mix between the Javal and the Newut from André Baldinger. This typeface has been designed for the Analog Information Books projects documenting the installation Analog Information: 2 computers talking to each other using speech to text and text to speech technology.
**** Some forms of this Minuscule typeface are analogous to the one we developed for the typographic experiment we developed for our Futura Domus, a contribution to Domus 917 (September 2008) - it’s really nice to see the sphere of influence a non designer production can have on a wide variety of practice…
Categories: typography
Tags: compression, forms, geometry, javal, legibility, reduction
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That’s a didot i’ve been working on for quite some times now on a very low intensity mode. It would be nice to get more time to be able to only work on it and push it as far as I can.
I plan a few journeys to the St Bride Library later this september in order to perfectly identify the font and maybe get some a few digital specimen/scan - the image i’m working from is not so high resolution and i miss some details. The shape of the lower case o is in the form of an egg - it is what attracted me at the very beginning - a kind of odd feeling about it. Now, it hapens I quite like it (read: a lot!), and when looking at a regular Didot, I find the regular one to be too perfectly close from a circle.
I’m actualy drawing some letters which didn’t exist in my sample - it is the case of the 0 (zero) which is designed as a kind of clin d’œil to the zero of Francois Rappo for LaPolice.
When I finish a more descent version of it, i will post an early release on Fontnest.
* Didot typeface’s name comes from the Didot family - Didot is the name of a family of French printers, punch-cutters and publishers. Through its achievements and advancements in printing, publishing and typography, the family has lent its name to typographic measurements developed by François-Ambroise Didot and the Didot typeface developed by Firmin Didot. (wikipedia about Didot Family)
** This didone typeface I’m working on has been cut by Firmin Didot (1764–1836) a little while ago… here i’m not caring really about the dazzle effect and i’m trying to stay as close from the original shape cast in metal as possible. I think to dedicate this thin version (highest contrast) to only large letter size.
*** others Didot I like notably includes Didot Elder by Francois Rappo, Ambroise by Jean-Francois Porchez
Categories: typography
Tags: design, didot, revival, typeface
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Milton Glaser - Baby Teeth; Momus made some nice connection in reference to the work James Goggin did on his record cover in this article.
“Paul Klein - Designer of a commercial modern semi-stencil face in 1930” is the only information I could find. (from Luc Devroye’s Stencil Fonts Page)
This page has some other similar references.
Categories: typography
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There was a point at design school when I realised that I loved drawing letterforms, so much so that I would prefer to make typefaces than become a graphic designer. I think it was when I was drawing/copying Bembo letter by letter, trying to understand how it was put together. I noticed that the arch of the ‘n’ subtly curves into into the right-hand stem—all the way down into the serif.
Categories: typography
Tags: bembo, design, process, typography
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* I like the way the font size is adapted to the height of the window; i like contextual typography.
Categories: typography, website
Tags: context, javascript, nice, resize
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* just notice it on the new theme for ManyStuff (by Raphael Bastide)
nice curves
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This is a poster and a text: an analog R-Echos
Would you be interested in investing in the tangible production of this work?
1. You can download the digital archive
and decide wether or not you’re interested in particpating in this project.
2. Each participant donate a minimum of £8
3. The publication is produced
4. We share the publications
which means each participant own a fair amount of publications and participants decide (collectively or individually) what to do with it.
Categories: collection, designing, electronest, experiments, medias, newly released, project, r-echos, tangible, typography
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* in fact it is out ‘already’: R-Echos issue 1
Categories: book, bookmark, collection, designing, electronest, memory, next things, offline, open source, thinking loud, typography
Tags: objects, r-echos, republish
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Categories: cinemas, typography
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Categories: bookmark, designing, electronest, experiments, typography
Tags: magazine, publication, r-echos
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Categories: book, typography
Tags: jawut, music, poetry, recognition, sound, speech to text, text, text to speech
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Categories: designing, electronest, generative, typography
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This weekend, while diving amongst archives, I found an old piece of home made software I did a few years ago; it is called Fake Alphabet and produce typography: letters are using HTML missing picture as a matrix base. It is a typography made of its own absence.
Categories: typography
Tags: conceptual, pixel, typography
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Jawut went trough a few visual optimisation in order to make it readable at a very small size. Jawut has been specificall designed to printed in 4.5pt on HP5000 for the project Analog Information (post 1 and post 2)
The book ECAL Graphic Design showcased the Jawut typeface and printed it at 2pt - we had some feedback stating that it was (amazingly) still readable; grab a copy, be the judge and let me know.
* readability is defining the ease of reading a text trough its writing style; while legibility is the ease of reading the glyphs that compose a text.
Categories: book, typography
Tags: fontnest, jawut
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a very nice typeface with a monospace feeling; found by Owen on village /// vllg.com
Categories: typography
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Categories: experiments, typography
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