The folks over at LinoType.com have just graciously released two excellent typefaces and made them available for free to celebrate the re-launch of their website. The site has a few stylistic changes and all in all browsing is a pleasant experience, though I can’t exactly say I’m a long term lurker on their site.

They have made available a 5-computer license for two fonts that go well together – Trump Mediaeval Italic as a heading font and Neuzeit Office as a body font.

I tried them out in Word 2007, but I haven’t tried them out in any other graphics software yet. Also available is a web font version which I also haven’t tried. I put together a little sample and was going to see how it rendered as a PDF (from Word) when I noticed quite a difference:

On the left is the document in Word 2007. On the right is the exact same file converted to a PDF using Standard optimization. The difference in weight may only be an optical illusion, but the difference in size is quite noticeable. Since this is a screenshot of the document it may not appear as crisp as it does when viewed in Word (I’ve always wondered about that… I guess printing is the only way to tell for sure) but I did find Neuzeit Office to be extremely clear and crisp.

Do you know about the difference in rendering between Word and its PDF generator? Are you able to duplicate results like this? Leave me a comment below and tell me how you did it.

A lot of people give the font called Papyrus flack. Designers for the most part call it a horrible font and it should never be used. It made a “big” impact on the design world when the movie Avatar used a similar font in its credits. I say big in smart quotes because hey! we’re just talking about designers here!

Here is a design secret to help you reach ordinary people, not designers: Most non-design people love Papyrus.

That is why I chose to use Papyrus as the title font for a new site I’m working on that helps people use martial arts for health.

The Papyrus font provides a feeling that is a bit ancient, a bit wise and is good for things that are supposed to be old. This feeling can be enhanced by antiquing the font or grunging it up a little bit. This is the kind of feeling I want.

Another possible font could be ITC Kick, which you can get for a limited time as a free font when you place an order at Fonts.com

Or another consideration would be a free font like Chinese Takeaway:

Those last two have a more playful or perhaps even insulting overtone to them. Be very careful when you choose which fonts to use because each font has a specific message.

And so, that is why I choose Papyrus. If you visit my martial arts site and don’t see the banner in Papyrus, it is because I spent too much time writing about it here and not actually doing the banner

If you want to find a good font for real Chinese characters, get a good collection of traditional Chinese character fonts here. If you are really stuck, Linotype offers you high-quality fonts in all formats. Explore, shop, and download our collection. Find your fonts

Yes, I am a Typegeek, but I don’t know near as much about type and typography as I’d like. That’s why I’m glad David Airey pointed out this reference to Font Shop’s Education resources.

There is a wealth of information at Font Shop’s Education site, in fact about 72 pages worth of typographic goodies and information, broken down into sizable bits. The largest e-book (they are all .pdf files) is Meet Your Type: A Field Guide To Typography weighing in at 52 pages.

The other booklets are easier to handle at 9 pages or 2 pages. I think I’ve found my bedtime reading tonight! It’s a great way to learn about fonts and typography used in graphic design.

For years I’ve wanted to design a t-shirt. Actually, I have already designed a t-shirt, and it was worn by over 1000 first year students at my university during my 4th year of a 3 year degree (it actually took me 5 to finish, but that’s another story).

So over the years I’ve come up with a few ideas but haven’t committed them to pixels yet. So in David Airey fashion, here are a few designs I finally chose to put together. Tell me what you think, and if you hang out on any t-shirt design sites, tell me which sites you like best.

I do still have one of the first shirts I helped design. It was done using CorelDraw! 5, one of my all time pieces of software so perhaps I’ll post a pic sometime soon.

Follow me on Twitter here, and check out my Flickr. But like I said, write some comments and let me know what you’re thinking!

Admittedly not the greatest example of hand typography, but dang funny at the right time:

I have a few other items posted on my Flickr page, so check it out!

A few weeks ago I finished reading The Non-Designer’s Type Book by Robin Williams and have been interested in smart quotes ever since. Using smart quotes makes your documents and web pages look more professional, and here’s how to create them.

It’s important to remember that the book itself is aimed at non-designers, so full-time designers will probably find her writing annoying and possibly offensive (in a design-geek sort of way) but for beginners it is a really great book and I’ll probably review it in detail in the future.

Regarding “smart quotes”, they are the curly quotation marks that should be used when quoting a word, phrase or statement that has been stated by another person, or sometimes when something is meant to be said in an ironic sort of way. The quotation mark key on your keyboard doesn’t actually make smart quotes. See a problem here? At the beginning of this paragraph I have used quotation marks incorrectly, but at least I used the proper quotation marks.

The book discusses how to use smart quotes in desktop publishing software but does not mention word processing software such as Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect. Although both (and probably all major) word processors have the ability to turn on smart quotes and convert them automatically, this doesn’t always work, and can cause problems.

When using Word, whenever I want a set of smart quotes I am getting into the practice of inserting them using the ALT key in combination with their ANSI/ASCII representation. For example, in Word holding down ALT+0147 will give you a left smart quote, and ALT+0148 will give you a left smart quote. You can try this in Word or simply use the text area below:

Try putting smart quotes around something.

This will work in word processors (Word, Wordperfect, Google Docs, OpenOffice…) as well as web pages and commenting on blogs.

However, when writing HTML you might be safer to use the SGML/XML method. In HTML there are character codes such as   and á (displays as á) for displaying special characters. There is also “ and ” but its recommended that you don’t use them because they are not cross-platform enough.

Instead, use “ to get the left double curly quote like this ( “ ) and ” to get the right double curly quote ( ” ). Remember, this only works if you are editing HTML tags directly.

Now the only thing that ticks me off about using smart quotes is how they are rendered by certain fonts. Verdana is a very popular web font, but to me the smart quotes look awful. As well, Microsoft Office 2007 has switched the default font to Calibri which has better looking quotes than Verdana (at least they are curly) but are still horrible looking IMHO. Check them out, click the image to see its fullsize glory:

When using quotation marks in pull-quotes, I especially like the way Georgia looks… although Adobe Caslon Pro is a close second but they look better large and appear to render badly in MS Word, but I could be wrong.

For more details, Font.com has an excellent article on Smart Quotes. To learn how to use quotation marks properly within a written work, you might want to check this guide and this guide at the OWL at Purdue University (Online Writing Lab).

So there you have it. A short look at smart quotes. Did you know about using smart quotes? Let me know if you’ve had any experiences or if you found this post helpful.

In celebration of my 1 year wedding anniversary, I wanted to revisit something that completely blew my mind, and renewed inside me my love of typography, font design and letter shapes – my visit to Dublin, Ireland to see the Book of Kells.

One year ago today my wife and I travelled to Ireland for our honeymoon. I really could go on and on about how great it was, and how we wish we were back there even now, one full year later. Perhaps especially now as the weather here is very similar to the weather there last year. But before I digress too much, I wanted to talk about the Book of Kells.

You’ll have to find examples on the sites listed below, but the illustration and illumination of the Book is simply incredible. There is such precision and fine mathematical detail that scholars are still unsure exactly how a 7^th century scribe (or three) could have created the works. The image here shows a page that was never completed… over 1200 years ago. You can see some text through the page on the other side. The image illustrates how a complex illuminated manuscript page was laid out.

I didn’t get to see the Book of Kells until much later in our journey when we returned to Dublin around June 18th, 2008. But when we were in Knowth I picked up a copy of George Bain’s Celtic Art – The Methods Of Construction.

This book *completely* floored me. George Bain is said to have been responsible for the resurgence of celtic inspired art beginning in the early 50′s. Celtic Art contains an entire chapter on Lettering and an incredible collection of copies of the letters and ornamented capitals from not only the Book of Kells, but also the Book of Durrow as well as the Lindisfarne Gospels… two other famous illuminated manuscripts. I counted more than 5 different versions of the letter A! All hand-drawn by George Bain from copies of books as well as stonework he had seen while travelling the countryside.

There are chapters on knotwork, including the use of knotwork for use in clothing, metal and stone carving. There is also a chapter on zoomorphics, which is the inclusion of animal images within the shapes of the letters themselves (like this one) as well as anthromorphs, where images of humans are tied up in the letters such as the ones in the corner shown here.

Bain’s book really is an incredible achievement, and it gives an amazing taste for the type of design found in the Book of Kells. If you want to create celtic art, you NEED Bain’s book Celtic Art.

Ok that’s enough for me. Its late. I could keep writing but I think I should get some sleep

References for this post:

• Book Of Kells DVD - http://www.bookofkells.com – I bought it, its FANTASTIC.
• Kells Travel Info – http://www.myguideireland.com/kells
• History of the Monastery - http://www.heritagetowns.com/kells.shtml
• An article by Michelle Brown of the British Library - http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/c-d/celts07b.html
• Dunn, J. (1910). Book of Kells. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.Retrieved June 11, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08614b.htm
• Wikipedia contains some excellent images and far more references and resources –  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_kells
• Review of the facsimile edition, 1958: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2865000 – man, I would LOVE to have a facsimile of this. Article starts at the bottom of that page, but you’ll need access to JSTOR to read all of it.
• Location of Facimilies – University of Rochester (acquired 1952): http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=2457, University of British Columbia: http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/kells.html (Yay a Canadian copy!)
• Another book about the Book of Kells

I saw this and just had to share it:

And now… for some beautifully kerned Helvetica. Ok just kidding. I don’t have Helvetica installed! I know, its a crime. I’ll have to track one down.

Image of Arial created in Adobe Illustrator with some tracking applied.

I suppose either Arial or Verdana can both fight for the spot of “the new Helvetica”.

Check out XKCD for social commentary… but mostly jokes for computer and tech geeks.