I just KNOW that some of you are typographers, even if you won't admit it. So you should

watch this video; it's pretty funny. Good to see that there are people around who STILL care about type.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

Redstone

That was pretty amusing.

Some fonts really really piss me off. I should seek help.

most of all Helvetica! Does ANYTHING just scream 1957! like a magazine ad or a catalog set in Helvetica?

Reasons for this hatred:
1) Lithos because it was, and continues to be, WAY overused.
2) Futura because it's so Euro-ugly.
3) Helvetica because of, see above.

Redstone

It's a documentary about typography and graphic design. It's not just about Helvetica (and there are plenty shown who echo some of your own complaints). Anyway, if you're into typefaces, you might like it. :)

Redstone

...and dumped in a ditch outside of town.

Bank Gothic sucks shark anus too.

If a company on the level of Monotype won't carry it in their catalog, it's worthless.

(Disclaimer: I make my living with this stuff, so I HAVE to have standards. Your mileage may vary.)

Redstone

I work a lot in the signage industry and sometimes a strange font is necessary, but often it's use is simply gratuitous. Unfortunately a lot of the layouts I come across are the same 50 fonts used by lazy designers who don't know dick about letter spacing.

on typefaces for the most part, except when something like this happens: One of my customers recently got bought out by a larger company, so instead of the ITC Myriad and Minion I had been using for their printed pieces, I had to start conforming to the "corporate standard," which is...guess what?

Helvetic Condensed, that's what.

And this is a "corporate standard" what was developed NOT in 1958, but in 2003!

Some people never learn, I guess.

Redstone

I use it as my email font at home :P
(and yes, I know type having had it way back when in graphic design classes.)

I tend to choose either Bookman or Centaur if I'm writing in Word, though, as both are easier on the eyes than sans serif fonts. I just don't care for how the '1' looks in Centaur.

people don't know how to treat them as art.

It's so much easier to read....

Redstone

I didn't actually watch the vid b4 I posted....

:rofl:

:rofl:

was to be instrumental in a redesign. I got to redesign some page elements, but never the whole deal.

Pity. I could've gotten into heated arguments over font choice, with a possibility of fisticuffs.



(They don't let editors do stuff like that anymore, anyway. Now they hire Outside Consultants — because, y'know, all newspapers should look alike.)

EVERY SINGLE design element they'd decided on, in such navel-gazing (not to mention subscriber's-eyes-glazing) detail that I had to write them a letter and ask them to get over themselves and get back to printing some actual NEWS.

Redstone

"This new, exciting, dynamic look signals the Republican-Democrat's vision for the future — a vision that is new, exciting and dynamic."

If publishers had the brains of a safety pin, they'd leave everything to their editors, who'd just run a box on A1 telling everybody where they can find shit now.



But don't get me started.

Thanks for posting it!

:rofl:

Redstone

:)

Redstone

Redstone

My son is in boot camp, and I just sent him a letter changing font styles every paragraph. Briefly identifying and evaluating each at the beginning of the paragraph.

I figured it would amuse him, and given my earthy mother to son advice, and obnoxious news, I'm certain it will.

A small serendipity here, I think.

Want sequels.

one font--JUST ONE!!!--that wasn't a dogshit Microsoft TrueType cut. No one who actually cares about type uses that crap.

How about a Cochin, perhaps Veljovic (in a previous life my boss liked to bring in people whose politics I disagreed with and make me set type for them...well, one of the groups he brought in made Birchers look liberal. All this "Communists are bad, immigrants are bad, Jews are bad, nothing that isn't 100-percent all-American Protestant is worth anything" bullshit. So, naturally, I chose the only typeface I own--Veljovic--that was designed in a communist country. And just for good measure, I took the little nazis on a tour of the plant...where I somberly pointed out the Israeli-made imagesetter, the Japanese scanner, the East German paper cutter, the Japanese and German printing presses, the German folding machine...they never came back, which may have had something to do with us having them thrown in jail for paying their bill with a $7900 NSF check.)

Redstone

...waving a wand over a bubbling cauldron of PostScript and spewing out a stream of Adobe Garamond.

cases of "oops, I'll fix that for the next printing;" it has to be perfect EVERY time.

That means sticking with what works, as antiquated a notion as that may be these days.

Redstone

If not for Dumbledore, he-who-must-not-be-named would own ALL the fonts, and they would be TrueType, "optimized" for computer screens but sloppy in print. And every couple of years you'd have to "upgrade" them.

Redstone

As a typesetter, I'm sending this to everyone in my dept. :rofl:

"Get with the Times, New Roman!" Love it!

etaoin shrdlu.

I'm sure you'll understand.

Redstone

Although, my E and T keys *are* getting a bit smudgy, it took me about ten seconds before I realized what it was-- we're not Old School Typesetters using Linotype and going home with ink stained fingers, we do all our stuff on computers.

"Typesetters of the Word, Untie!"
(send it to Proofing...)

I had a customer who FORCED me to buy the world's ugliest typeface for her job:

"DOOBIE". !!!!!

Urk.

And don't get me started on people who think Zapf Chancery is "elegant".

use bookman olds style for everything i do for myself. argh.

New Century Schoolbook. It's more compact than Bookman (which I do really like), but is much more readable than any version of Times.

Redstone

right now it is still all gibberish. i do expect to get a grip on it soon.
but the subject of fonts, and why the hell the web can't standardize enough to add a dozen more fonts is just freakin' beyond me.

to making pages and CSS stylesheets that include the fonts that the visitors to your website are likely to have installed on their computers.

Hence the dominance of Arial, which NO self-respecting designer would use for a printed piece...but on the Web? You just have to swallow your pride and include it in your style sheets, as much as it hurts to do so.

That's why we old farts who remember working in the world of projects that ended up being printed on a printing press have so much of a problem "eveolving" to doing websites: When you're doing work for offset printing, you work with page elements that you can control to the level of 1/5000th of an inch, and those elements will be RIGHT THERE coming off the press.

But with the Web? You got 72 DPI placement and picture resolution, and that's what you get, like it or not.

Redstone

:applause: :applause: :applause:

New Century Schoolbook is from the horrifically sad period of time when International Typeface Corporation decided in the name of "readability" they'd increase the x-height on many of the most popular fonts.

I used to run a lot of Weidemann. It's got a nice narrow set width, and it's pretty. One of these days I'm going to put some on the side of a car.

I think I'd use a lot more Baker Signet if there was an oblique and a bold cutting. Great font if you can use it.

the readability of New Century Schoolbook. It's become a classic, and a standard, for damn good reasons, such as readability.

You want to use Weidemann s a display typeface for a vehicle wrap? Be my guest, and let me compliment you on a good choice. And let me further compliment you for retainng the ability, so scarce in this "digital age" for understanding that the basics (like, for example typography) are STILL important.

Redstone

It's just that, as one of the 35 fonts in the original LaserWriter Plus, it's been wore the fuck out. However, Palatino may be worse...

(gratuitous showing off of car.)

in it are a couple of wraps I did. You'll like 'em.

BTW, what's this Obama stuff doing on a Suburban? "Not driving Suburbans" must be at least as important as "inflating your tires."

Incidentally, at this point there's a full-size pickup in my office (the only room in the plant with AC) and someone's getting me buzzed on seam sealer.

drives about 5,000 miles a year or less. hubby takes the train to work every day, and also owns a 1 year old honda fit, which is the car we usually use. i often ride my bike to work and when i don't, it is still less than 5 miles.
it was the only vehicle available that could haul all 5 of my kids and pull a trailer. i suppose you would like me to do some penance for the kids, but, well, i'm not.
the thing is 15 years old, and i do not intend to consume the energy necessary to make a new car any time soon.
in the meantime, i intend to use it, as i did 2 weekends last month to carry obama volunteers out to canvass. and piss off republicans along the way.


jesus, du sucks sometimes. what a judgmental place.

I've sent it to all my graphic designer friends.

is available on itunes.

your perspective changes. "Live a little" is great advice if it's a game for you. For some of us, it is far from a game.

Redstone

I'm doing a Honda Element wrap for an employment agency in Lumberton. This is the art they brought me:

one logo consisting of PMS 289 type with a drop shadow...the same type dropped above and to the left of the blue type, and set in solid black with no soft edge. The distance between the edge of the blue type and the edge of the black is 2 picas.
one picture of a Hispanic woman wearing bright-green eye shadow running from the side of her nose (yes, the sides of her nose are painted green) to a point half an inch outside her eyebrow, and intense red lipstick
one picture of a Caucasian woman wearing absolutely no makeup whatsoever, not even powder, Nor is she wearing any hair spray.
a third woman on the back of the car with a good face, good hair and clothes that look like they were wadded up in the bottom of the closet for a week.
a picture of a man whose lack of shaving makes him look like an amateur wino.
another guy wearing safety equipment...let's count the OSHA violations in THIS picture...
Instructions to put the logo across the back of the car in a size a foot longer than the car's wide.

This is a for-profit business. I realize this is a small area, but come on...people down here really are capable of dressing and grooming themselves before they have their portraits made. I have seen some absolutely beautiful makeup on people in Lumberton. Unfortunately for this customer, it's not on any of the people they used on this $5500 wrap.

Oh yes...about the "bones" font we just saw above...I actually USED that font on a paying job! It was for a restaurant--one that serves very good food. I got an oak oval off my backgrounds-and-textures DVD and put some bones on it. They were happy, we were happy, all is good.

customer-supplied crap like that. Every time I visit the guy who does most of my printing, of the husband & wife company who does most of my large-format stuff for trade-show graphics, I hear those horror stories.

I am, as I remind myself every day, a fortunate son of a bitch.

Redstone

But I poke fun at anyone that takes themselves too seriously, including myself.
"there are many here among us, who feel that life is but a joke"-The immortal words of Dylan.

too seriously:" Do you have a family that you support with what you do? When THAT is the case, serious is as serious does, because it pays the bills, and the mortgage, and puts the food on the table.

"Poke fun" as much as you want to, but please let me know when you're able to bill customers at $225 per hour as I do, and guess why I get to do that? Because I take my work seriously, THAT'S why.

Enough of this slacker attitude, OK. Whether you want to understand the concept or not, hard work, and good work, will continue to be rewarded, whether that fits your worldview or not.

Redstone

However...I actually got a chance to sell some Churchward Brush!!! Churchward Brush is what Brush Script and Comic Sans hope to be when they grow up.

I had to use it...it was a banner for Vacation Bible School. I showed a proof to the minister. He asked what font it was. I told him...I didn't know preachers could laugh that hard.

where you can throw a cat between some of the letters. ugh!!

I was trained in the old transfer type Letraset days on how to kern properly - pretty expensive to make a lot of mistakes so you had to learn fast.

just as you were finishing a project, you ran out of ONE character to set down with your burnisher.

And then you had to go buy another whole set of Letraset sheets, in order to be able to rub down that one letter or two.

I remember.

Redstone

back in those days I was in love with type, I could see amazing beauty in the form a single letter.
and could recognize pretty well all the fonts available at the time.

I still use the oldies more often than those young sprouts that pop up all over.

Camera, didn't they?

But then came Desktop Publishing, and every secretary (forgive me, but it's true) instantly became a Graphic Artist, and tortured us guys who own advertising / marketing agencies with their "new and exciting ad design ideas," which ALWAYS featured text that was set centered, every bit of it, and had bullet-pointed paragraphs with not even ONE hanging indent.

Redstone

i started typesetting on Mergenthaler MVPs, and keylining.

i worked in the composition department at a book manufacturer. i had to teach customers how to typeset, how to provide us the files, how to create postscript files, how to create pdf files, how to make files that will actually color separate, etc. etc.

i still hate desktop.

may i ask what software packages you use?

stay with it, because my financial well-being depends on being productive.

Although I do have a MacBook Pro with the Adobe CS2 apps, I only use them now and again (such as using Acrobat 8 to make print-quality Acrobat files for the magazines that demand files in that format).

Most of my work is done on my main workstation, which I still run on System 9.2.2. I'm at version 5 for Quark, 5.5 for Photoshop, 6 for Illustrator (I absolutely DESPISE every version of Illustrator newer than that), and Dreamweaver 4.

Other essential tools: ImageReady, Fireworks, Fontographer (for converting the occasional TrueType-only face to PostScript, Graphic Converter (Thank you, thank you, Mr Lemke, the price I've paid for your wonderful Swiss-Army-Knife do-everything software is FAR too little for the time it's saved me over the years), PowerRip 2000 PostScript RIP for my Epson proofer.

If I have a problem with any of the above (with the exception of Quark 5 randomly slowing my computer down) more than once or twice a year, that would be a lot.

But then again, I never add or change anything on that workstation unless absolutely necessary, and I back up my project files to three external hard drives twice a day, and back up the apps and system folder to those drives twice a week or so. The work that I do pays the mortgage, so I absolutely HAVE to be able to get to work two minutes after starting up the computer.

PS: I can identify with what you said; because I knew a thing or two about printing, back when I started this business (1992), I made a fair amount of money making files that printing companies had received actually printable. My guys in the printing business tell me that it's not anywhere near as bad these days, but back then there must have been maybe two or three "graphic artists" in the entire country who knew how to make an imagesetter-ready file.

Redstone

but stuff like that makes me cringe too!

i've been trying to find the chunky square sans serif font chevrolet uses in their branding. i want to know what it's called and where i can get it. i've tried the usual places. knowing my luck, and since i like it so much, it's probably a proprietary font.

that were so popular in the the late 1950s and early 1960s.

But, trust me, you may never find out what that specific typeface was. Consumer advertising in America in the 1960s was in such a stae of flux that it may be the case that nobody actually remembers the kind of detail you're looking for.

A lot of it has gotten just plain lost. Remember that in the process of your research.

Redstone

Death to Souvenir and Olive.