Please note: This site is now an archive, visit Atomic Ninja Labs for the latest content and updates.
Richard has updated his typographic tumblr theme to version 2.
“I’ve made all the changes outlined in the previous post now. I’ve also moved a few things around — I’ve applied the theme here, if you want to see the changes.”
A typographically focused tumblr theme, made finer still, with exceptional font choices — it’s great seeing bold use of larger font sizes.
Mr Hunt writes that he has refreshed his design:
“I’ve been publishing on cameron i/o for 8 months. I’ve gotten 18,000 unique visitors since I installed Mint in August. Cameron i/o has gone through five major designs, and today is the sixth. It’s going back to it’s roots; cameron i/o was originally light on dark.”
Simple meets dark. Web 2.0 be damned, this is 1.0 simplicity at it’s best.
Chris Cabanillas has written a wonderful and insightful piece on the current frustration that is licensed typography and the web:
“I’d like to show this post to you in FF Meta Serif but I can’t. Foundries would like you to be able to use their fonts on the web but they can’t just give their work away so they must wait for the technology.”
I agree strongly with Chris that technologies like sIFR are — with respect to Shaun and Mike — not a good solution. It doesn’t scale well, and to be blunt removes much of a typeface’s personality in the process of converting it into an image.
I’m simply not a fan of using flash-and-or-java-and-bitmaps to overcome typographical challenges. Irrespective of how brilliant the use of the technology might be. And it shouldn’t have to be this way, as most modern Operating Systems can render font families pretty darn well.
With the advent of Cleartype, even Windows has the ability to do a half-decent job. Yet here we are, still, converting typefaces to poor-quality low resolution images — to avoid breaching any typeface licensing — in order that we may inject some form of typographical colour to an otherwise vanilla-like pallet.
Converting typefaces to bitmap images, then, clearly isn’t the answer and in a way permits the world to embrace a second-best option rather than actually confront what has been traditionally placed into the “too hard” basket. If a fast and efficient methodology allowed for real time vector creation — given it’s wondrously crisp scaling capabilities — then one might be on to something.
But even that is a cop out, to a degree, as it’s still not necessarily rendering a typeface as the designer intended. Right now image replacement is an ugly, inefficient and wasteful process that simply doesn’t have any advantages. The alternative standard means I will have to keep on using Verdana, Palatino Linotype or other open-licensed typefaces.
“But, I think the only way we get there is if a web designer, a typeface designer, and a type developer get together over coffee and hash this out. If we leave it to a committee it may never happen.”
Chris poses some excellent questions and thoughts — if you’ve not subscribed to Restiffbard yet, I highly recommend that you do.
The previous blockquote highlight, a large and black-striped box, seemed altogether too ‘heavy’ for the (currently) more minimalist design in use.
The problem in selecting a replacement was two-fold. I wanted an oblique style, that translated well across both the Mac and Windows platforms, that also managed to avoid font jaggies, something Windows users are typically faced with in many italicised fonts. Normally it’s one, or the other.
For example, Garamond renders quite beautifully on a Mac. It’s a little less so under Windows, particularly if in italics, although it’s certainly not vulgar. I find I use it more often than I once did.
I’d never actually stopped long to look at common Windows fonts, in italicised form, at least until today. Few do. It’s a horrible experience.
As I cycled through fonts1 using a few short phrases as mock text, and becoming increasingly despondent as time dragged on, I noted something odd.
The typeface Palatino rolled into the selector in the form of Palatino Linotype. Where were the jagged edges, the horrible malformed characters?
Emboldened by my discovery I decided to investigate a little further.
Palatino is an old style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf at the German branch of Linotype. It was released in 1948 by the Linotype foundry.
In a stroke of pure unadulterated dumb luck I’ve stumbled on one of the few typically used typefaces that look just as stunning on a PC, as they do on a Mac. Including italics.
Random chance can be a surprisingly beautiful thing. Even on a PC.
- I still have the neck-pain from cringing (↩)
Typographic ruminations from Rob Keller — via Mr Dave Kellam.
