Difficulty matching fonts?

Are you having difficulty matching fonts together? The people over at DesignMantic have come up with this infographic to help you.

The decline and fall of the ligature

Another interesting article from the folks at I Love Typography http://ilovetypography.com/2007/09/09/decline-and-fall-of-the-ligature/

Scratchboard drawing of Benjamin Franklin by Michael Halbert

I used to love doing scraperboards when I was younger, but this is quite something to watch …

Rebranding needs to be carefully considered

The guys over at Canny creative have an interesting article on ten rebranding disasters that makes for interesting reading http://www.canny-creative.com/2013/10/10-rebranding-failures-how-much-they-cost/

Have you ever wondered why superheroes wear their underwear on the outside?

Turns out it was to do with the limits of the printing process used to produce early comics. You can read all about it here http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/ever-wondered-why-superheroes-wear-underwears-on-the-outside/1/478836.html

Identifying a font

Have you ever seen a font somewhere you like but don't recognise? Or been handed a printed sample and asked to match it for a new piece of work … but you just can't quite place the font used? Well that's where 'What the font?' comes in. Take a scan, a screen grab or some sort of half decent image and follow the instructions on screen and nine times out of ten WTF will identify it for you. There's also an active forum where you can post your image and ask for help.

On the off chance WTF can't help you can always head over to 'Identifont' where you will be asked a series of questions about the font and then offered some suggestions as to what it might be.

So there you go. Never be stuck trying to name a font again!

'Gotham' designers bitter $20 million break-up

Anyone who likes type cannot have escaped the rise and rise of Gotham, a sans serif typeface that whilst clean and elegant was also highly legible and came in numerous weights. No wonder that for a while it seemed to be everywhere.

Now it seems the designers are in court with $20 million at stake. Read the fascinating tale here http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-15/font-war-inside-the-design-worlds-20-million-divorce

Lunchtime dilemma

Irish monks invented the spaces between words

We designers love our typography and laying out text so it is clear and legible. But did you know that it was 7th century Irish monks invented the spaces between words and exported it to the rest of Europe? Before that the words ran together continuously in what was known as "Scriptio continua".

Read more here … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_divider and here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua

Refining Aston Villa’s club badge

There's a lovely post over on Logo Design Love showing the redesign of the Aston Villa Lion by traditional engraver and artist Christopher Wormwell showing that sometimes, to get the right result, you have to eschew the mouse. Check it out here … http://www.logodesignlove.com/aston-villa-club-badge

Lorem Ipsum is "pain itself"

In publishing and graphic design "Lorem Ipsum" is filler text commonly used to replace meaningful content with unreadable text thereby allowing viewers to focus on graphic aspects such as font, typography, and page layout without being distracted by the content.

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2,000 years old. The term "lorem ipsum" is derived from the latin "dolorem ipsum" which translates as "pain itself" … which anyone who has repeatedly had clients ask why they can't read the text in the visual might find apt.

You can generate as many paragraphs of this dummy text as you like at this site: Lorem Ipsum

Or, if you are using InDesign you can simply select a text box with the type tool, go to the TYPE menu, scroll down and select "Fill with placeholder text" and your box will fill with latin placeholder text.

An excellent 10 minute tutorial on cut-outs in Photoshop

The guys over at Spoon Graphics have put together an excellent tutorial on how to cut out tricky subjects in Photoshop. Combine this with careful use of layers and you can make one image serve multiple purposes.

Check it out here … How To Cut Anything Out in Photoshop