Typography Resources

[angelize]

A thread for posting and discussing resources relating to fonts and typography.
Here are a few resources to start things off.

Typography education
http://www.fontshop.com/education/
a collection of pdf documents from fontshop.com that cover all sorts of topics related to typography and fonts.
Howzit done
A thread started by Gary Bouton in which he provides a tutorial showing how to create your own typeface of special characters using Fontlab.
http://webtypography.net/
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web - a practical guide to web typography
Anatomy of a letterform
An article on DesignModo that explains some basic typography terms.

Font Identification tools
Name That Font
TG's own font identification and recommendation service
whatthefont.comhttp://www.whatthefont.com/
identifont.com
whatfontis.com

Other resources
Font First Aid
A new service only on Talkgraphics! Got a free font that has problems that you can let us fix?

[Gare]

This is definitely opinionated advice, but this page I'm providing a link for here shows typefaces you really should have in your collection if you're into the printed word and DTP, and it provides the creators.

And I agree with much of what is covered here!

A few good fonts

My take is that we originally went from digital type back in the later 1980s that was prohibitively expense and you were luck to own screen versions of the original 19 PostScript faces, to today, when you need to practice some good judgement and taste not to have 1,200 installed fonts!

My advice is to know the worth of any given typeface to you and your work, definitely check out the FontShop because they're associated with The Xara Group and every dollar helps, and to use your fonts appropriately. IOW, use goofy fonts for goofy messages and use Ariel in 3pts. for the label on an aspirin bottle.

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

If you think an "ascender" is someone who goes to Heaven eventually, you really should check out the nomenclature for fonts, which can help you describe a typeface you want to someone who might be selling it:

Anatomy of a Typeface

And here's a fairly Plain English visual glossary to help you discern between sans serif, didot, Blackface, and other types of fonts:

Distinguishing 7 different categories of typefaces

—g

[Gare]

Nick Curtis isn’t a name you see next to Brad Pitt or Will Smith on the headlines of tabloids, but the gentleman has been somewhat quietly helping designers for years, and I’d like to sort of introduce him here by way of his work.

Nick designs typefaces. Specifically, he has designed a positively huge backlog of digital typefaces that all have a common thread: they look homey and familiar and they are perhaps “Retro at its Best”.

I had the honor of communicating with him a few years ago about offering one or two samples of his font collection—for free, nothing in it for him—for the Xara Official Guide. He said ”yes” and went so far as to brand special editions of five typeface with the Xara logo hidden in an extended character register.

It really broke my heart to learn from Nick that he’d stopped making typefaces for the fun of it, and is now only a commercial vendor you can buy from at Fonts.com. Why the change? Because low-lives, real Web scum, had collected all his free fonts not once, but several times, and were selling his free fonts on a CD.

The good news is that many, many of his “classic” typefaces have resurfaced on dafont.com. I recommend that you run, don’t walk to the link here, and check out some of Mr. Curtis’ incredible mastery of typeset communications.

Nick Curtis' free fonts on Dafont.com

Here’s an example of what I’ll call an “Instant logo”. Nick’s “Creampuff” font can be enveloped in Xara and still maintains a lot of its character and legibility.



There are so many typefaces that are expensive commercial reworks of originals that were designed centuries ago. It’s a privilege to have virtually met a living artist in this trade who expressed himself in such a sharing way! If you like his free work, perhaps you'll consider turning to his $$$ work the next time you need a unique typeface for a paying gig, huh?

My Best,

—Gary

[wizard509]

I agree Frances. I also had in mind freebie fonts also. The Letterhead fonts site is just an example for showcasing a font. Granted their fonts are very elegant but I think font play could be showcasing a particular font each month maybe like a challenge to see what can be done by the members using that particular font in some way. The theme should be the font itself and what it might suggest to the contributor. For instance look at the elegance Psaumure puts into his designs. I think he could make a cat box look good. I noticed you are setting a theme of mans best friend or something like that in another thread and letting whomever pick a font to fit the theme. To me it should be the other way round. Contributors pick a theme of their choice to fit the particular font of the month. But maybe I'm all wet here.

[wizard509]

Thanks for that information Gare.
I have used that font to make my own screen saver and my startup in X3D.

[Gare]

I think in addition to font recommendations, folks, that Font Unrecommendations should qualify for posting, too.

IOW, places that vend pirate typefaces, broken, ones, who have unreasonable practices such as spamming sign-up members, and so on.

But I don't want to whack a site without giving a reason.

I think a "Font Unrecommendation" that fits my critea for posting is:

•Fontspace.com-Although this site has a good collection, many of the typefaces are rip-offs, some have only been renamed from the original files from Corel Corp. and other sources. If you have a doubt about one of their typefaces, download it and right-click then choose Properties to see the copyright, if any. FontSpace requires an account, which can be overridden if you're clever about it, but if you do sign up, expect your email address to be sold to spammers.

I have never found a resource for high-quality commercial typefaces that have been created free and clear of commercial copyright issues, and I've been trolling the web for fonts for more than a decade. Because I'm a fontaholic and I need a fix regularly.

FontShop and Dafont usually have good knock-offs of classics such as Kabel, Aachen Bold, perhaps even Garamond, but if you want quality fonts for free, forget the notion that you can get commercial knock-offs, and just settle for original cottage industry typefaces.

Hey, there are some fresh new creative authors who offer interesting stuff all the time. Stay tuned to Smashing magazine who does a round-up of free fonts about once a month.

—Gary

[wizard509]

Here is a really nice looking font called overlock and a little of what I found out about it.

Copyright (c) 2011, Dario Manuel Muhafara
This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1. - 26 February 2007

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/overlock

The OFL allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and
redistributed freely as long as they are not sold by themselves.

[Gare]

It's an attractive, fresh face!

Generally, the FontSquirrel offerings are intented, although not always, as Font Face (Web Font) media. If anyone looks carefully at the Xara Xone, Barbara and I use three Web Font-enabled typefaces, so the text can always be copied and reading machines can read it for the visually impaired.

I think if the Web Font thing picks up some stream, it will be another renaissance for font creators, who have been in the dumps for a decade because Microsoft and Apple trashed the price of typefaces with the TrueType file format.

Anyone recall paying $40-$60 in 1994 for a cheap font family?

-g-

[angelize]

I featured the Overlock font (actually there is a whole family of about 8 styles) in the January Freebie Friday post, and I agree it is a nice fresh face, and a very generous offering too.