Recently Commented
- 01.27.12
Sutturah
Marian Bantjes: I love this! My highest compliment: envy.… - 01.27.12
Neue Haas Grotesk
Erik Spiekermann: That, Matthew, is why Helvetica was so successful: nobody except a few Swiss & German designers would have ever dared order t… - 01.27.12
Apple Color Emoji
Christoph: You can find a complete overview of all the Apple Color Emoji characters here. (Works only with Safari. Hover to see Unicode … - 01.26.12
Changing
André Mora: I would love to read a 5,000 word review by Paul Shaw on this typeface. Though something tells me he'd only need 5.… - 01.26.12
Ambicase Fatface
Stephen Coles: Celebrating its inclusion on this list, Ambicase Fatface is now 30% off at MyFonts.… - 01.26.12
Our Favorite Typefaces of 2011
Stephen Coles: Jason Santa Maria just posted a nice summary of highlights from the list.… - 01.26.12
Reina
Marian Bantjes: Whoa. Fantastic!… - 01.26.12
My Favorite Font Sources: A Shortlist of Trusted Foundries and Retailers
Josh Farmer: What about Underware and TypeTogether?… - 01.26.12
Elena
Fredrik Jönson: I remember seeing Elena in an early specimen (from the MA?) some years ago already. Loved it instantly. Now I feel there are …
Apple’s font naming system also made possible the desktop publishing rule for not looking like an amateur: Avoid fonts named after cities.
Good rule that one- heck, I STILL find I have to teach it, even after the demise of the original convention [somewhere in Mac OS 8?] and years of so-called ‘proper’ fonts bearing city names.
Hey! Don’t dis’ those fonts. Geneva is still a useful typeface, and I keep San Francisco around for possible – not imminent; please don’t invade me – use.
c
I think the rule was invented when DTP was really taking off and a lot of people who didn’t know anything about type were getting into the act.
The original Mac bitmap fonts were very nice as screen fonts, but not very useful for print designers. No one did much print design with Macs anyway until the LaserWriter came out. (Emigré was the most notable exception.)
I think the outline version of Chicago is a total cop-out; it could have been so much more.
hhp
When you compare those outline versions to Georgia and Verdana for example, you can safely argue that they should have done their homework and done much better Jobs with them. Chicago, Geneva et al have about the ugliest outline shapes I’ve ever seen. Talk about awkward.
BTW Hrant this is your proof that I’m not some politically correct “all typefaces are good it’s how you use them” guy. ;-P
One needs to remember the era in which these fonts were designed, Troubleman. There was nothing remotely close to Geneva’s readability at the time it was created. These were groundbreaking works in the realm of screen display. They helped to bring about the evolution of more developed bitmap fonts like Georgia and Verdana.
I guess Hrant and Trouble are talking about the outline versions of those faces, Stephen, not the original bitmap versions. You know, the scalable versions came out later.
I’m trying to think of real typefaces (as opposed to computer screen fonts) named after cities.
Memphis doesn’t quite fit because it’s named after the ancient Egyptian city, not the one in Tennessee. Bitstream has retired the name Zurich now that they can use the name Univers. Cheltenham kind of fits, although I suppose it’s not a “world class” city. There is at least one real pre-digital typeface named Chicago. There’s Neville Brody’s Tokyo.
If I recall correctly, Tarzana is named after a small city in California.
Yes, I meant the outline version. The disease of WYSIWYG has stunted its growth.
Yves, please have some chocolate in your honor on my behalf. BTW, I just realized that your name is “yes” with Victory embedded!
Mark, there’s bunches of fonts with city names. One that’s of course installed on virtually every computer is my experimental Georgian font called Akhalkalak, named after an Armenian town in Georgia. ;->
hhp
Here’s a list of the Mac “city” fonts:
Chicago*
Geneva*
New York*
Monaco*
Athens*
San Francisco*
London*
Venice*
Toronto* **
Taliesin
Cairo
Los Angeles
*Shipped with the original Mac.
**Dropped after one of the first system updates.
Microsoft had one, too, which was included with MultiPlan called Seattle. It came in 10- and 20-point. I recall that it was the first Mac font in those sizes. The 10- and 20-point versions of Geneva came later.
One other bit of trivia: The version of Geneva that came with the first release of the Mac system software had a one-story lowercase a. It was changed to two-story with the first system update.
One other bit of trivia…
Likewise, somewhere along the road to TrueType the Geneva asterisk lost a limb, moving from a six-point star to the current five-point version.
I think I’ll have 36 point Venice on my tombstone :)
Gosh! weren’t some of those early fonts awful?
I think I’ll have 36 point Venice on my tombstone :)
Don’t joke about that…
(Frame grab from a recent movie.)
Heehee.
(Frame grab from a recent movie.)
NO! Is this for real?! Argh…
BTW Stephen I was indeed referring to the outline versions of Geneva, Chicago et al. The original bitmap versions are the only ones I let near my menus and windows pre-OSX. I think Apple made a big mistake by following the bitmap grid too slavishly when producing outline versions for them.
NO! Is this for real?!
The frame grab is, the tombstone isn’t. It’s from a 1999 movie called Oxygen. It’s from a scene in which a character is leaving ransom money at the grave of Houdini. (It was sent to me by someone who read my article about the use of type in movies.)
cute that the stones are on top of the headstone, though; they might have got the type wrong, but that’s a neat detail to leave in.
Heh, yeah, those pebbles almost had me believing it. ;-)
A case of attention to detail when it’s not too much work. Notice how the numbers are raised rather than recessed. Easier to do when you make it out of plywood (or whatever they used). Completely insane if it was carved from marble.