Latest Blogs

Scanning Around With Gene: Everybody Loves a Party!

Worried that your next party will be a failure? Not with these games to break the ice. Who could resist Bottle Bombing, Appleplexy Race, and Para Shoot?

Scanning Around With Gene: The Miracle of Photochrom

Before the invention of color photography, there were several methods to add color to black and white photographs. None were more successful than the Swiss Photochrom process.

TypeTalk: Distorting Type

Are you tempted to stretch or squeeze letters, perhaps to make a headline or subhead fit better? Don't do it!

Scanning Around With Gene: The Pioneering Look Magazine

From 1937 to 1971, Look magazine was a publishing powerhouse that pioneered unique photographic and printing techniques.

Scanning Around With Gene: The Images of Autumn

There’s nothing like a blustery fall day to invigorate the spirit and remind us that change is in the air.

TypeTalk: Find Figure Styles in OpenType Fonts

To designers' delight, many typefaces include several kinds of numbers: oldstyle, lining, tabular, and proportional. But how do you discover which fonts have which styles?

Scanning Around With Gene: Oddball Image Roundup Two

It's time once again for my annual collection of offbeat images that don’t fit anywhere else.

Scanning Around With Gene: Rest in Peace

Does the size of a tombstone say anything about the character of the deceased?

TypeTalk: Times Roman vs Times New Roman

What's old, what's new, and what's what when you're talking about Times?

Scanning Around With Gene: Illustrations Carved in Steel

Before the advent of photography, it was up to engravers to depict the majesty of natural wonders.

Scanning Around With Gene: Linoleum Love

Up until the 1960s, real linoleum was the hard floor covering of choice, and boy oh boy, could it define a room!

TypeTalk: Best Headline Breaks

When headline and subheads are more than one line long, grab the reins and make those breaks manually. Here's what to look for.

Scanning Around With Gene: Really, Really Deep Type

Before there were instant drop shadows everywhere, type that appeared to be three-dimensional looked like it was drawn by an architect or draftsman.

Scanning Around With Gene: Twin-Bed Relationships

Up until the 1960s, most 20th-century depictions of married life in the movies, TV, and even home-decorating magazines placed couples in separate beds.

TypeTalk: Point Size and Letter Spacing

When you make type bigger or smaller, don't forget to adjust the letter spacing, too. The result will be more evenly colored text.

Scanning Around With Gene: Made-Up Names for Made-Up Products

Would you buy something made out of Pliofilm? How about Velon? They may sound funny to us now, but in the 1940s and '50s, brand names were nothing if not inventive.

Scanning Around With Gene: Give Me Back My Book!

An Ex Libris bookplate was once a common way to identify books as coming from your personal library.

TypeTalk: InterroBANG

Both a question mark and an exclamation mark, the interrobang is hard-working punctuation.

Scanning Around With Gene: Thirteen Decades of Fine Printing

For the last 130 years, the Goes Lithographing Company of Chicago has been turning out beautiful printing that you'll recognize.

TypeTalk: Does Foundry Size Matter?

There are so many places to buy type. Are large distributors better than small type studios?