Luminous

Nymphont

2010-01-12T17:24:00.000-08:00

Nymphont

a graphic design/typogrpahy/web design blog
i use the font champagne & limousines on my resume and everything else

sandra dawson

2009-12-10T14:02:00.001-08:00

sandra dawson blog

St. Pucchi Inc

2009-12-10T14:02:00.000-08:00

St. Pucchi Inc

where i will get my future wedding dress from

The Cloud by Atelier Hapsitus

2009-11-24T03:02:00.000-08:00

"The Cloud is a speculative design for a resort city elevated 300 metres in the air above Dubai and supported on slanting legs resembling rain."

Dezeen » Blog Archive » The Cloud by Atelier Hapsitus

A History of 16 Science Fiction Classics, Told In Book Covers - book covers - io9

2009-11-21T07:32:00.000-08:00

"A single book can inspire a wide range of covers, and sometimes those covers can be works of art themselves. We look at some classic science fiction novels and the various covers they've worn throughout the years."

A History of 16 Science Fiction Classics, Told In Book Covers - book covers - io9

Earth Artists . Org

2009-11-19T00:25:00.000-08:00

"collaborative fine art works, performances, and exhibitions, of ecological advocacy."

Earth Artists . Org

Design Timelapse

2009-11-09T18:47:00.000-08:00

Peter Belanger | Blog | cover creation

http://vimeo.com/5989754

"After working on the latest cover for Macworld Magazine I wanted to show what is involved in making a cover. I focused on the three main areas: the photography, photoshop and design. I chose a time lapse format to convey lots of information in a small amount of time. The only drawback of time lapse is that since half a day goes by in 30 seconds, the whole process seam so easy! Lots of details were left out of the design process (like the cover meetings and rounds of layout options). I began to photograph the design process after the layouts had already been narrowed down to just three cover designs."

Type and the Web

2009-11-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

August 23, 2009
Type and the Web

The Illustrators and painters were afraid of the photographers. The photographers hate the point and shoot. iPods replaced cds, replaced cassette tapes, replaced eight tracks, replaced records. Blu-ray and HD-DVD duked it out over who would replace DVD (which replaced VHS). Video killed the radio star. Print is dead. Web 1.0 is now web 2.0. 3D is the new 2D. The cell phone you owned last year is a dumbphone compared to what you have today. Every day something new is replacing something that was probably only five minutes old to begin with. Change is the only constant and with the advent of the Internet it seems to be picking up speed.

But the more things change the more they remain the same. Text, whether we’ve carved it into stone, written it with a quill, printed it on a press, or typed it into a computer has been a fundamental form of human communication possibly since 6000 BC. It develops and changes based on the needs of those who use it and the tools that are used to create it. And transversely, the very tools a writer uses (pen, pencil, typewriter, computer, text message) affect their writing.

This leads to some deep thoughts: how has the web changed text? How has text changed the web? And how has reading and writing text on the web changed us?

Certainly the web has caused a huge shift in the way we receive text. People are always asking if print is dead. Personally I have become of the opinion that if it hasn’t died yet it wont for a while. Even people with Kindles are still buying roughly as many physical books as they are e-books. The day physical media disappears completely will probably come about just as the flying car becomes the standard mode of transportation; someday maybe but not tomorrow.

Still, there is no denying that the web has had an effect on its oldest predecessors. And from a design viewpoint the effects are inescapable. The web is intrinsically different than print, it is dynamic, and often the end product can depend on factors completely outside of a designers control such as the browser being used to view the site or the fonts available on a users
computer. Thus, the structure in which text is conveyed takes on whole new levels to consider.

The web (as opposed to the internet itself) was first build around text and clicking hypertext links is it’s most used feature (just before using the backspace) so it boggles the mind that text is still very restrictive in it’s design options. With the availability of free typefaces from websites such as Dafont and the ease of stealing a font are type foundries facing the same problems the music industry is with its intangible product? Although fonts are definitely easier to steel than music you certainly don’t hear about the lawsuits against font pirates, though they do exist. Reluctance to make such vulnerable information even more vulnerable is possibly the reason behind the fact that for so long web designers have been confined to the short list of web safe fonts.

As with most restrictions though people are working diligently to find a way around them and the solutions to the font problem that have been proposed come in a variety of flavors both simple and complex. Some methods include using php to generate images of your text dynamically, using flash, a technique that involves pdfs, and a few others, which looked too complex to be worth the trouble. A relatively recent method that is available and supported by most web browser is the @font-face rule. The rule can be used to easily embed fonts through CSS, you write a bit of CSS, upload a font to the web, and include that URL in your CSS. @font-face allows you to link to fonts that are automatically activated when needed. Because of the nature of this method multiple @font-face rules can be applied and styled just as you would any other element of live text on a website. This kind of font embedding works in both firefox and safari but it dose not prevent fonts from being copied and using them on a site is often illegal anyway since they are being uploaded without a license.

Even more recently, so recent it’s not even out yet, is a new service called Typekit that is looking to help protect fonts. According to the Typekit blog it is a service that will host both free and commercial fonts that “is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.” Apparently all you would need to do in order to use it is enter a single line of javascript. If this method can do all it is promising maybe in as soon as the following months the good old Helvetica/Ariel Verdana Georgia web we know could be replaced by a flood of new styles.

Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, even the majority of YouTube comments come in the form of text. New lingo and uses for symbols have emerged from users faced with the restrictions and possibilities of communicating by text over the web such as emoticons, l33t, ZOMGItypeLikanIdOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~1, and the long list of acronyms that have materialized in order to make communication faster. Not only has the web caused us to create offshoots of our visual language Web 2.0s social networks, user generated content, and other advancements have changed the way we write. Typing something into a computer feels different than typing it on a typewriter and mailing it out to 300 friends. Just as years ago using a stylus was different from using a quill and ink. Although, we are still just making markings.

Works Cited

Wall Street Journal “Amazon's Sales Surge, Bucking Retail Slump”
Use it “How Little Do Users Read?”
I love Typography “web fonts – where are we?”
Creative Professionals “dot-font: A Font Pirate Is Brought to Justice”
Typekit blog

Dell Mini 10 & Mini 10v Netbook Product Details

2009-11-09T14:23:00.000-08:00

Dell Mini 10 & Mini 10v Netbook Product Details

most awesome thing on earth =D

that and dropbox

https://www.dropbox.com/

Instructables

2009-09-20T13:51:00.001-07:00

instructables is the Biggest How To and DIY community where people make and share inspiring, entertaining, and useful projects, recipes, and hacks.

http://www.instructables.com/

byroglyphics

2009-09-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

Online gallery for UK Artist/Illustrator RUSS MILLS.

http://www.byroglyphics.com/

High tech graffiti from the Graffiti Research Lab

2009-09-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

A short video documentry @ Time Magazine

How to make LED-Throwies @ instructables

Graffitiresearchlab

Texts from Last Night

2009-08-26T22:23:00.001-07:00

"Texts From Last Night (TFLN) was founded in February 2009 by two friends for reasons that may or may not include: the tendency to press send more easily as the night turns to morning, friends social habits, Kwame Kilpatrick, exes, law school, closing down bars and leaving tabs open, general debauchery and/or a common disgust for all the negativity surrounding the "sexting" phenomenon.?"

It's showing everyone the crazy text you received last night, just on a much larger scale. A grand treasure trove of hilarious one liners, and short inappropriate stories.

Indexed

2009-08-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

"This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math."

A cool blog with little charts and graphs explaining the world in the best way possible (tongue in cheek). Also, I wholly support the avoidance of math in any situation.

Indexed

Kanye West Blog

2009-08-26T22:13:00.001-07:00

I love his music and I love his blog. this is kinda what i intend to do with mine, not a journal just a place to post links to interesting things and inspiration.

Kanye W est Blog

Marcus Kenny

2009-08-26T22:01:00.000-07:00

Marcus Kenny

A Softer World

2009-08-26T21:54:00.000-07:00

A Softer World is a comic that was created by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau so that people would recognize them as important artistic geniuses. Sometimes the "comic" is sad or harsh. It should be noted that this is in the tradition of George Simenon's 'romans durs' (or 'hard novels') and not in the lesser traditions of comics like Peanuts or anything else not French. Comeau is a French name. (Pronounced kuh-moe, by the way. Joey is very important, please say his name correctly. Emily is also very important but her name is easier to pronounce.)

A Softer World

first post

2009-08-23T08:33:00.001-07:00

hello world

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