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Ilene Strizver
Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio, is a noted typographic educator, consultant, designer and writer. She specializes in all aspect of visual communication, from the aesthetic to the technical. Ilene has written and lectured extensively on type and typographic design to both students and professionals in the field.
Ilene formerly was the Director of Typeface Development for International Typeface Corporation (ITC), where she developed more than 300 text and display typefaces with such respected and world-renowned type designers as Sumner Stone, Erik Spiekermann, Jill Bell, Jim Parkinson, Tim Donaldson, and the late Phill Grimshaw. She cut her typographic teeth by working on Upper and Lowercase (U&lc) and other type projects with such legendary icons as Ed Benguiat, Aaron Burns, and Herb Lubalin.
Her clients included International Typeface Corporation, Monotype Imaging, Linotype, Adobe, Galápagos Design Group, BJ's Wholesale, Haband, Nassau Guardian, Johnson & Johnson and bethere.com.
Ilene has written for HOW, Dynamic Graphics, and STEP Inside magazines. She also authors the popular column "fy(t)I For Your Typographic Information," which can be found on www.fonts.com and www.itcfonts.com. Her current book, Type Rules! The designer's guide to professional typography, 2nd edition, has received numerous accolades from the type and design community. She conducts her widely acclaimed Gourmet Typography workshops internationally.
TypeTalk: Creative Indents
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on July 2, 2009
Some layouts call for traditional ways to separate paragraphs. Other times, you can add a little visual interest with something more unusual. Here's how.
TypeTalk: Collect OpenType Fonts in Smart Sets
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on June 25, 2009
Font managers' Smart Sets make it easy for you to find and activate only OpenType fonts. Smart Sets also let you search for many other attributes to organize your fonts, such as family, foundry, library, and keywords.
TypeTalk: Change Word's Default Font
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on June 17, 2009
It's not hard to change Microsoft Word's default font when you know where to look.
TypeTalk: Top Ten Type Resources Online
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on June 10, 2009
We type lovers are voracious readers about our favorite subject. Check out this list to see if your preferred online resource is represented, and to possibly find a new favorite.
TypeTalk: The Importance of Style (Sheets)
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on June 3, 2009
There's no better way to maintain consistency and make fast changes to text formatting than to use style sheets.
TypeTalk: Are Free Fonts Worth the Price?
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on May 27, 2009
Some free typefaces are pirated from legitimate fonts. Others are not stolen but are poorly designed. Here's how to find the ones that both look good and are legit.
TypeTalk: Letterspacing
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on May 20, 2009
Is it a type crime to add lots of space between characters? Or is letterspacing OK?
TypeTalk: To Everything, Kern, Kern Kern...
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on May 13, 2009
Over the centuries, the word "kern" has evolved from a noun to a verb. See photos of metal type and get info on kerning in today's digital landscape.
TypeTalk: Ambigrams
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on May 6, 2009
Backwards, forwards, sideways, and every which way, ambigrams are intriguing typographic art forms.
TypeTalk: Get Typographically Correct Text from Word
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on April 30, 2009
Banish dumb quotes, double spaces, and double hyphens from Microsoft Word files.
TypeTalk: Tongue-Twisting Type
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on April 22, 2009
Type Love quiz time! Do you know how to pronounce these commonly mangled font names?
TypeTalk: Stylin' Sets
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on April 15, 2009
Some typefaces have alternate characters in Stylistic Sets. Here's how to use these sets and add typographic interest to text.
TypeTalk: Greeking Out
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on April 9, 2009
Is it a good idea to use dummy text in a layout? If you say yes, find out how easy it is in the top two page-layout apps.
TypeTalk: Where Did that Font Come From?!
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on April 1, 2009
You open one of your InDesign documents and see the Missing Font alert -- for a font you never use. What's going on? And more importantly, how do you stop it from happening ever again?
TypeTalk: When to Custom-Kern
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on March 26, 2009
Between some letters in some typefaces, there's a space that's just a little too big. If you're reading TypeTalk, that visual hole probably bugs you. Here's how and when to patch the hole.
TypeTalk: To Hang or not to Hang…
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on March 19, 2009
... starting quotation marks, that is.
TypeTalk: Stroking Text in QuarkXPress
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on March 12, 2009
In QuarkXPress, you can apply a stroke (called a "frame" in XPress) to text. You can even affect whether that stroke falls on the inside or outside of the characters. Just don't try to edit the text after you apply the stroke!
TypeTalk: The Best Way to Manage Fonts
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on March 4, 2009
Buying and learning another piece of software is the last thing you need, right? But a font manager is worth its weight in gold. It will speed up your computer and simplify the creative process.
TypeTalk: Document-Wide Kerning
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on February 26, 2009
Which page-layout application lets you customize a font’s built-in kern table for use in one or all of its files? You won't know unless you read this week's post.
TypeTalk: Two-Story Type
Blog: Written by Ilene Strizver on February 19, 2009
Have you ever wondered why the lowercase letters a and g come in two distinct forms?