“…these days, people seem to think that you go to college in order to get a job, and they treat it as career training, and that’s a mistake, a huge mistake. I think they should be developing their creative ability, developing themselves as human beings, developing their eye, but making sure they’re completely aware of the context of what’s going on in the real world. Because ‘designers are wankers’; because they think they don’t matter in a way, they think that they can just do shit, and it doesn’t bother anyone. Actually people live with this shit. What you and I do, even if it affects one person, it affects one person and there is a certain responsibility with that. ”

— Neville Brody

Designers are wankers

June 20, 2014

From a great interview with Neville Brody on Designers are Wankers.

*Image: metal type via Flickr, user tonystl*

the difference between a typeface and font

May 7, 2014

Over at Fast Company Design, there's a great short article on the difference between a font and a typeface.

“Back in the good old days of analog printing, every page was laboriously set out in frames with metal letters. … Printers needed thousands of physical metal blocks, each with the character it was meant to represent set out in relief (the type face). If you wanted to print Garamond, for example, you needed different blocks for every different size (10 point, 12 point, 14 point, and so on) and weight (bold, light, medium).

This is where we get the terms typeface and font. In the example above, Garamond would be the typeface: It described all of the thousands of metal blocks a printer might have on hand and which had been designed with the same basic design principles. But a font was something else entirely. A font described a subset of blocks in that very typeface—but each font embodied a particular size and weight. For example, bolded Garamond in 12 point was considered a different font than normal Garamond in 8 point, and italicized Times New Roman at 24 point would be considered a different font than italicized Times New Roman at 28 point.”

— What's The Difference Between A Font And A Typeface? — John Brownlee

I'll admit to being one of those pedants whose teeth grind when the two get confused by people who should know better. I have a slug (a clumping of metal type) on my desk that I use to explain this to my interns and minions.

For the curious, some great typography books:

And just for fun, a game to test your kerning skills: KERNTYPE, a kerning game.

sitzarbeit

July 1, 2011

… Since 2008, I have heard many designers bemoan limited budgets, clients who hire the owner’s cousin’s teenage daughter to build their website, clients who opt for a pre-designed logo purchased anonymously online, or timelines that are unrealistic (“I know it’s Thursday, but can you have a 16-page brochure released to print on Monday?”). ... Which is killing me, according to this infographic: <a href="http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/sitting-kills"><img src="http://images.medicalbillingandcoding.org.s3.amazonaws.com/sitting-is-killing-you.jpg" alt="Sitting is Killing You" width="500" border="0" /></a><br />Via: <a href="http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org">Medical Billing And Coding</a> Perhaps a standing desk is in order.

tortoise enclosure

June 27, 2011

My creative process: Get given a project Long stretch of apparently no work Snarl at people who interrupt my thinking Blindingly fast making-of-stuff Show finished project to client You see the problem, I'm sure. ... My process can make a methodical person's head explode from frustration that I am not doing things the way they would; which is to say, The One True Way to Do Things.

waxing nostalgic

March 23, 2011

I'd slide the finished, framed pictures into their huge plastic bags, sealing them, writing the customer's name on masking tape on my hand, then sticking it to the package I'd made, then hefting the package into the series of slots where it'd go until the customer came for it. ... For you kids out there, instead of doing your layouts in Quark or InDesign, you used to have to take your copy to the typographer, who'd type it up on a typesetter, then hand you the photostat to cut out and paste up onto your board.