MyFonts has posted the top 10 fonts of 2008 as determined by sales, and unsurprisingly they are mostly retro-fabulous. It’s a good collection of new fonts, and I think it supports the idea of a taste trend towards the hand-made, away from the bland, put-it-together-quick design that was so prevalent not too long ago. They are homages to things that take a long time to do, which is becoming increasingly less desirable as the economy becomes even tougher.
Sometimes the best solution is the most simple solution. Colin Willems of SPRANQ, a communications agency in the Netherlands, came up with Ecofont, an ink-saving font that purports to use up to 20% less ink thank your every day Helvetica. An eco-friendly solution for those things you need to print that might not be so precious.
For those of you have it, and for those of you who don’t, OS X’s best font management utility has been updated to version 1.1. It’s light years ahead of Font Book, easier to use than Suitcase, and best of all – it’s free!
Just last week a friend asked me what font I thought they used for The Godfather. Naturally, back in the day before they had digital type, there was a thing called a “letterer” or “title designer” whose job it was to make custom titles and logotypes for things like companies, movies, and candy.
However, that was a very long time ago, and many of those hand-made titles have been digitized and expanded into full alphabets using best guesses based on the existing samples.
And today while searching for something completely unrelated, I found this: http://www.typenow.net/themed.htm
Enjoy!
To add to the list of summer conventions and expos that I can’t afford to go to, a friend alerted me to the upcoming TypeCon 2004, with “twenty optional workshops cover everything from letterpress printing, showcard lettering, Asian calligraphy, and Renaissance handwriting to digital font production, type for mobile devices, and expert typography.”
Please Stop Using Rosewood
Everyone who knows me, even if they don’t know Arial from Times New Roman, knows at least one font: Rosewood. What was once a great font to invoke the era of the Industrial Revolution, or even the Old West, is now one of the most overused fonts in the design arena, seen on everything from book covers to food packaging to billboards.
Read more on Please Stop Using Rosewood…