“I hope that’s enough to keep you going until mid-​week”

Are you kid­ding, John?! This Sunday Type is fffff­fil­led with type­good­ies. I’ve just had time to check only a few of them (have to get back dec­or­at­ing the bday cake ;-))

I’ve seen sim­ilar kind of metal let­ters in one of the local design stores, was temp­ted to buy them but post­poned till the next time I’ll have some extra cash burn­ing my pocket (they cost $50 and +). But I do have sev­eral wooden let­ters dec­or­at­ing my daughter’s newly ren­ov­ated bed­room ;-)

Can’t wait to listen to the pod­cast from you next week (curi­ous to hear how your voice sounds ;-). Alec, thanks for the inter­est­ing pod­cast this week.

Oh, and that chocol­ate scrabble wouldn’t last for even a brief game, that’s for sure ;-) Thanks for the Type For Kids link, I’ll watch it with my girl later tonight.

I’m really look­ing for­ward to what you do with the pod­casts. Are you going to do all video pod­casts, or some audio ones too? I would really like some­thing to listen to about typo­graphy on my long road trips back home.

FYI: the link for Douglas Wilson’s work has an extra “http//” in there that’s lead­ing it to redir­ect to http.com.

God, giant let­ter­forms. I want. I also want let­ter­form fur­niture…

So glad you loved the big let­ters and chocol­ate scrabble as much as I did when I was put­ting the round-​up together for Grace over at d*s…and I actu­ally dis­covered your blog in the pro­cess, which I LOVE (and I LOVE typo­graphy as well). Keep up the excel­lent work!

Anne

Jam packed! Great work as usual, John.

The video pod­cast adds a nice inter­act­ive touch, look­ing for­ward to more.

Also, totally loving the Scrabble chocol­ate. Indeed, I don’t think games would last very long either, unless the rules pro­vi­sioned some way to eat your own pieces…

And I really laughed out loud at the Type dating game — who comes up with this stuff? Haha.

Thanks for the link to my art­icle as well, the response so far has been really great, and I’ve gotten lots of good ideas and sug­ges­tions.

Here’s to a great week!

Oh, man — it’s not bad enough that you keep intro­du­cing me to new fonts that I have to buy… Now I have to buy LivePen. Damn you, Johno. ;)

Sheesh, I hate listen­ing to my own voice. Anyone want to volun­teer to over­dub my videos? ;)

oh, c’mon Alec - your voice wasn’t bad at all - you were a bit shy, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it with a couple more pod­casts.

Mmmm… Chocol­ate Scra le…… Damnit, I ate the ‘b’s. :O

Re: itunes regis­tra­tion and locale dif­fi­culties

I’m not sure if this will work, but I got around itunes regis­tra­tion prob­lems by actu­ally buying a pre­paid gift card instead. Through mud­dling and fud­dling, I actu­ally star­ted an itunes account with no credit card inform­a­tion at all, but I think the bare min­imum is a gift card.

It may help you start an account while avoid­ing the region-​based dif­fi­culties…

Love the video on lig­at­ures and the idea of iLT pod­cast would be awe­some. I love the print­ing video as well, I saw it awhile back and laughed for hours. Another great art­icle :) good stuff!

Thanks for the link up John! Was a great sur­prise for me this even­ing while going through the feeds. Also, it’s great to see you link­ing up my good buddy and typo­graphic com­rade Doug Wilson. His posters are fant­astic and well worth every penny (or pound).

Mm, I’d love to try that game of Scrabble! But what’s that font they use? Looks a bit like Arial to me …

Then again, I’ a com­plete newbie to typo­graphy. It’s just that I always loved to look at and com­pare fonts - I’m not any­where near design busi­ness.
So I’ll take the chance to thank you for this blog. I’m glad I dis­covered it, sub­scribed to it after the first visit and always love coming back. I’ve learnt a lot since and I’ve enjoyed it. Love the design, too.

Nice to know about the Print Family Mafia haha! :) They’re in every society’s level. The illus­tra­tions of World­World look very good! I love your new and rare font applic­a­tions ;)

I made some foam type, and some card­board and balsa type too (for use in still life arrange­ments to paint). I much prefer the balsa. The foam gets every­where and is a pain to sculpt.
If you’re doing foam you need an elec­tric carving knife. I went to Clark Rubber (in Aus­tralia) where they have a sec­tion of foam off-​cuts. They’re very cheap too.
The balsa you can get very accur­ate. The foam, not so accur­ate.
There is a glue that works well with balsa, it is called ‘Zap!’ glue. Don’t get it on your hands or you won’t be able to move your fin­gers.

Huh. Just a few days ago I stumbled upon Word­World. It was very bizarre to be watch­ing and sud­denly real­ize that the frog was quite lit­er­ally “f-r-o-g”! After that it was just fun to spot the dif­fer­ent words.

And Chocol­ate Scrabble just about killed me. I have in my room five dif­fer­ent Scrabble boards (two small Scrabble boards, one with a turn table, Super Scrabble, and Span­ish Scrabble from my ill-​fated attempts to learn Span­ish). I’ve bought tiny Scrabble let­ters meant for scrap­book­ing, and I don’t scrap­book. As soon as they’re back in stock, that chocol­ate bar is mine!

inspirationbit
Birth­day cake—I’m intrigued.
Yes, those let­ters can be a little expens­ive. I’ve also been trying to get hold of some Japan­ese road signs (not by taking them from the road­side, of course).
It won’t be my video next week, but another of Alec’s. My will be coming soon. Per­haps just audio. Let me know what you and your daugh­ter think of Word­Worlds.

Dylan B.
Hope­fully mix of both video and audio. I’m also on the lookout for topics that might be well suited to this medium.

Justin
Thanks for point­ing that out; fixed now. I posted about some let­ter­form fur­niture a few weeks back. Did you see it?

Prêt à Voy­ager
And a great roundup it was. be sure to let me know if you write any more type-​related posts.

Hamish
That Type dating Game is pretty funny. My favourite—although it’s short is Mis­tral and Hel­vetica. Last time I checked, you had 60 com­ments to your Type for Pro­gram­mers post! Fant­astic. I’ve dis­covered some new ones there too. I’m going to try Panic Sans next. I’ve always wanted a font that matches the mood of my own code writ­ing :)

Alec
I’m also no fan of my own voice. Per­haps I’ll do mine with one of those Darth Vader voice thingies. ‘Vader on Type’ ;)

Dave Bowker
I wish I’d had you write that part of the post.

joel
I’ll give that a go. I did email iTunes Japan and they pretty much said ‘tough, that’s how it is’; when I replied and asked ‘why that is’, I heard noth­ing in response. Thanks for the tip.

Robert
Pleased you like the idea. Shout if you think of any suit­able topics.

Frank
My pleas­ure; some great work from both of you.

Kathi
Not far off at all. It looks like Akzidenz-​Grotesk to me.

Note how the tip of the t in Arial is not hori­zontal.

Estu­ardo
Pleased you enjoyed it. per­haps someone will make a sim­ilar typo­graphy video.

Dylan
Send some photos, please. I’ve made them from card­board and then covered in papier mache before. I had the same prob­lem with the foam, cut­ting it with a hot wire cutter—accuracy not so great. I’ll try the balsa. Thanks.

Rebeka M
You sound like a scrabblenut. I guess you’ve seen Hamish’s won­der­ful scrabble desktop wall­pa­per.

Here are some photos.. i hope this works…
Assor­ted let­ters by Dylanfm, on Flickr
Still life arrange­ment by Dylanfm, on Flickr
Balsa and Foam by Dylanfm, on Flickr

Dylan
Thanks for the links. Am off to take a look now…
…wow! Love those oil paint­ings!

Dylan B.
For more type related pod­casts check out Typer­a­dio. Those are great for long trips.

Zachary
Yes, great idea. Some won­der­ful inter­views on Typer­a­dio too.

Hey Alec

Nice to hear your voice :-) Its a good tutorial and I liked the Illus­trator part, espe­cially the lig­at­ure part in the Open­Type panel. Its a fea­ture many users don’t know about :-)

Pod­casts is a beau­ti­ful idea and needed I might add. Look­ing for­ward to sub­scribe them on ITS.

Esben
Good to see you again. I’ll be in con­tact soon. Hope all is well.

Hey Johno,

Well I never been away, I read all your art­icles, just haven’t com­men­ted on any­thing for some time.

You are always wel­come to con­tact me :-)

Esben
That’s great to hear. I’m moving apart­ments on March 1st (it’s been a hectic couple of months), so I’ll be in con­tact after that :)

Sure Johno, Im going to have a buzzy feb­ru­ary anyhow :)

I have always liked Mark Simonson’s typefaces and this one is out­stand­ing. Very beau­ti­ful.

Dylan
Inter­est­ing letter paint­ings. I must try paint­ing let­ters myself one day. I could arrange frag­ments of prin­ted paper into still natures.

I got this link the other day.. I don’t think this guy reads iLT (or any other type related con­tent)

Enjoy http://​uk.​you​tube.​com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​T​p​N​n​b​N​o​n​l​A​4​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​e​lated

yeah, another art­icle full of all sort of things … excel­lent!:)

com­ment on LivePen for illus­trator: yes, this is an inter­est­ing tool, but I think (yet unpub­lished) Kal­liCu­lator is much better :P

Kathi
The pieces them­selves look like Frank­lin Gothic.

Loved the printer movie!

I think that an iLT pod­cast would be great!

Leigh

I had the same prob­lem with iTunes, living in Aus­tria and having a German based credit card. How­ever, I man­aged to sign in by simply change­ing the coun­try in my adress to Ger­many and adjust­ing the ZIP-​Code. Hope this’ll work for you.

@Johno — “Vader on Type” — Hahahahaha! That’d be so awe­some!

Mmmm…DejaVu Sans. Very tasty.

I’ve never been much of a fan of the Bit­stream fonts, though—they always rubbed me the wrong way. but the DejaVu family looks pleaseantly like Linux.

@Zachary Thanks for the link. These look pretty cool.

Thanks for this won­der­ful col­lec­tion of tid­bits and links. Enjoyed the printer video!

This dimen­sional type by John Case­rta was linked in the Design Observer. Pretty cool stuff.

miha
Sounds inter­est­ing. Is it your work?

Markus
I’ll try that too; if that doesn’t work, I mail Steve Jobs :)

Alec
Now I’m tempted…very temp­ted.

JakeT

Bit­stream fonts…always rubbed me the wrong way.

Another addi­tion to my ‘clas­sic quotes’ :)

Chris­tian
Great link. Thanks.

Esben
That video is amus­ing; just a pity that people con­fuse ‘poorly designed’ with ‘poorly used’. Thanks for the link.

johno
No, it’s not my work. But I am plan­ning some sim­ilar pro­gram, so I know everything about para­met­ric font cre­ation:)

miha
Then you can write an art­icle about it too ;) Good luck with the applic­a­tion.

very very nice site. i love it!

Really inter­ested in this LivePen thing. Fre­d­er­ick Ber­laen has a sim­ilar idea, with his Kal­licu­lator. I haven’t been able to try either of them, but it seems like a really good way to gen­er­ate con­sist­ent con­trasts, and test the color of a font at dozens of weights before com­mit­ting to a final design. I don’t think these pro­grams will ever be able to gen­er­ate fin­ished fonts, at least ones of qual­ity, but it seems like it will be a great tool for cre­at­ing the gen­eral frame­work of large fam­il­ies.

on the sub­ject of typo­graphic fur­niture. check out http://​www.​set26.ch. Would love these in my office(if I had one) or as a shop window dis­play. If only you could choose from a selec­tion of fonts. great blog. love it.

Josh
I’m going to take a closer look at Kal­licu­lator (when I’ve fin­ished pack­ing). Might review it here. Of course there are a number of other tools that type design­ers use, some of which, I’ll be dis­cuss­ing here soon.

jon
Thanks for the link. I wouldn’t mind some of those too.

johno
About art­icle: first things first:). I see there is some interest on the topic, so here is new link with a (also yet unpub­lished) Type Gen­er­ator; be sure to check images.

Josh
> I don’t think these pro­grams will ever be able to gen­er­ate fin­ished fonts, at least ones of qual­ity
well, there is no harm if I try to prove oth­er­wise:)

I hope the scrabble chocol­ate wrap­per is bigger than that on the real art­icle, oth­er­wise that is going to be some dirty chocol­ate.

Totally inspired by Chocol­ate Scrabble and Hel­vetica, I just had to design my own wrap­per for my valentines this year: http://​preta​voy​ager.​blog​spot.​com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​i​-​h​e​a​r​t​.html

Anne

Johno,

I hadn’t see it, actu­ally. I’ve only just recently found you and hadn’t had time to explore the site like I’d like.

But that is really neat! Now I’m just going to have to wait for the day when someone puts down “graph” and I can make it into “typo­graphy” while laugh­ing crazily.

(I also forgot to men­tion my recently and unhes­it­at­ingly acquired shirt: Triple Nerd Score.)

Johno,
Finally I got some time to respond here. We did watch the Word­World show with my daugh­ter and we both loved it. I really liked how everything in that world con­sists of let­ters, includ­ing its inhab­it­ants, all the things and build­ings. Turned out that my daugh­ter was already famil­iar with this anim­a­tion, since she was watch­ing it during the day on PBS, while I’m at work ;-) But she still made me to watch that par­tic­u­lar frag­ment on Word­World site three times - “mama, more run­ning O letter”… ;-)

And some gor­geous letter-​pressed posters from the tal­en­ted Douglas Wilson, prin­ted on a vari­ety of sub­strates, includ­ing old maps. Well worth taking a look.

Yet another example of the mar­riage between typo­graphy and topo­graphy! :)

Great stuff Johno. And happy moving, btw!