Typography

Scanning Around With Gene: Best in the West Graphics, 1970

When advertising people judge their own, the results are always interesting. The 27th Annual Portfolio of the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles, published in 1970, revealed four trends of the time.

Cutting-Edge Conference for Print and Digital Publishing

Whether you're looking for the latest tips on publishing to tablets and ebooks, want details on the upcoming Adobe Creative Suite 6, or just need tips to optimize your print workflow, PEPCON is the place. The conference takes place in San Francisco on May 14-16.

TypeTalk: The Anatomy of a Character

You've known the names of letters and numbers since you were a little kid. But did you realize that every part of those characters have names, too? Knowing this terminology will help you better understand typefaces and communicate about design.

Best of the Blogs: Old School and New Skills

Don't have time to keep up with design and photography blogs? Keep calm and read on. In this blog round-up you'll find the most popular fonts of 2011, an amazing type book from 1912, a Herb Lubalin video from the 1980s, and a Photoshop cooking demonstration from 2007. Plus, there are plenty of Photoshop how-tos, digital photography tips, and design ideas.

When It's Safe to Use Free Fonts

Type foundry FontShop explains the ins and outs of font licensing in a free, downloadable guide.

Type Is Everywhere

Help to preserve the vernacular typography that makes a place unique by supporting this Kickstarter project.

Try These Type Webinars from Ilene Strizver

If your print or online projects use type, you can benefit from this series of webinars designed by CreativePro.com columnist and type expert Ilene Strizver.

Hand-Lettering Lovers, Rejoice

Lisa Congdon (known for her Collection a Day and her work as an illustrator/artist) is at it again. She's committed to creating and posting an example of hand lettering for every day in 2012.

Daily Drawings Reach One Thousand

Professional illustrator/designer Chris Piascik has drawn something every weekday for the last four years. The project has brought him personal and professional satisfaction, and soon there'll even be a book compiling all 1,000 of the daily drawings, many of which are heavy on type. Take a look.

Starry, Starry Type

Gravilux 2.0 is an app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch that lets you render text in stars and then affect that text with the gravitational forces of an alternate univers. It's art, it's a game, it's Gravilux!

TypeTalk: The Dos and Don'ts of Type in Motion

Type has gone multimedia, appearing in many forms beyond its traditional role. Now it's in motion on websites, commercials, movie titles, video games, and more. These tips will help you create type in motion that will attract and hold your viewers' attention.

The Merits of Uneven Leading

Just because your page-layout program says your leading is consistent doesn’t necessarily mean it looks that way. Here’s how to spot the problem and how to fix it.

Five Tips for Choosing the Best Webfonts

Learn how to evaluate typeface readability, legibility, optimization, character set, and weight and thickness variety when choosing fonts for a website. Plus, I'll throw in a bonus tip!

European Design Conference Comes to America

The first TYPO conference held in the United States will be in San Francisco on April 5 and 6, 2012.

Get to Know InDesign's Glyphs Panel

Some people never even open InDesign's Glyphs panel, and that's a shame. It can reveal alternate characters in your typefaces; help you quickly select and enter unusual characters, such as currency or math symbols; and find and change glyphs instantly no matter how long your document is.

TypeTalk: Font Games Galore

It's OK to play with your type; in fact, it's fun! Just don't assume that professional typographers agree with all of the supposedly correct answers to these font games.

Best of the Blogs: November 4, 2011

This circumnavigation of the blogosphere includes posts about fonts (best, worst, and missing), color correction (Photoshop curves and/or levels), paper (handmade and mill run), printers (desktop and press), color calibration (monitor and printer), and an impressive if controversial demo of photo-deblurring technology. Plus, job hunting tips and product how-tos.

Spacing Out

Exaggerated spacing between characters may be eye-catching, but controlling it can be a tricky business. Here's how to do it in InDesign and QuarkXPress.

The Seven Lively Sins: Try These InDesign Type Effects

Some people think it’s a sin to alter a typeface. But I say that, used with skill and discretion, InDesign's transparency effects can make your type more lively.

TypeTalk: Smart Punctuation on the Web

Is it acceptable to lower your print design standards when your type appears on the Web?