Just My Type - Font Programs in 2008.

"Attack of the Type" by Grandchildren

I recall my first Typography class in design school. Me and my classmates anticipated it with the same excitement as one would a root canal. The professor who taught it was obsessed with letter forms to a degree I had never seen before, and have rarely seen since. We would wince as we handed our assignments in, shrinking under his scrutinizing gaze as he spoke to us in the foreign language of type: serif or sans, orphans and widows, leading and kerning, ems and ens.

Nowadays I am rather obsessed with type, and am usually the one screaming about leading and kerning. Aw, how things change.

Typography has had its ups and downs through the years. Since Gutenberg blew up its spot in 1440, it's been a long, weird journey for letter forms. With the rise of the computer and the resulting obsoleteness of letterpress printing, there was great concern that the art of typography would be lost in the digital age. However, that has not been the case.

In fact, it's becoming a very good time to be a font. As this New York Times article points out, there are more ways to make fonts than there have ever been before, in ways more accessible to the public at large. In the past, typography was considered a strange, incredibly specialized field; typographers viewed with the same curious interest and mystery as some rare, red-tailed lemur. However, with the new profundity of programs available on the market, more and more professionals and hobbyists are picking up this enchanting art form. There are even interactive social networks that are being built around font creation and sharing.

The current selection of fonts out there today is utterly enormous and wonderful. MyFonts.com publishes a wonderful newsletter dedicated to the faces behind the fonts, and there are numerous online font sites that host stunning libraries of free, downloadable fonts.

Read the full New York Times article here. What are your favorite font destinations?

Mac Tools: 100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols

As a designer, I am often need to use all sorts of wacky text symbols whilst working on projects. And though I and many others have been in the biz for some time, the honest to god truth is I am yet to meet a designer that actually knows all of them off the top of their head (if you happen to be a designer that does, I tip my hat to you, in all your compulsively-anal craziness). Nary a month goes by in the shop when one of us isn't shouting to another something along the lines of, "WHAT THE HECK IS THE SHORTCUT TO A DOUBLE-DAGGER!?!?!"

Suffice to say, for the designer that doesn't want to memorize about 80+ key-commands, this site is a godsend:

UsingMac.com: 100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols

Not only does this site give the commands to a majority of common shortcuts, but it's also rather easy on the eyes. And as a Mac Nerd, you can imagine my delight when I discovered there was a key command to create the apple logo:



The fact that's it's completely and utterly useless just makes it that much better.