Every now and then we look around, select fresh high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and find them so that you don’t have to.In this selection, we’re pleased to present Piron, Nobile, St Marie, Code, Arcus, Crimson Text, Quadranta, Juice, Prociono, Mr Jones, Ibarra Real and various useful symbol fonts. Please note that some fonts are for personal use only and are clearly marked as such. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts; they can change from time to time.You may be interested in the following related posts:20 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts25 New High-Quality Free Fonts15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts40 Excellent Free Fonts for Professional DesignYou can find over 80 more free fonts in our Fonts section.[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that we are publishing a Smashing eBook Series? The brand new eBook #3 is Mastering Photoshop For Web Design, written by our Photoshop-expert Thomas Giannattasio.]New Free High-Quality FontsPiron Piron is a highly legible typeface, very well suited to any display or text usage: Web, print (especially magazines), brochures, logos, posters, flyers, motion graphics. The font comes in two weights: regular and oblique. Designed by Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova. Available for free and commercial use, and available in OpenType format.Nobile The font is designed to work on digital screens and handheld devices without losing the distinctive look usually found in fonts designed for print. The aim here was to design a font that would function well, have good legibility on screen yet also look good — not only at larger display sizes but also right down to small text sizes. The font is available in the Google Font Directory and was released under the Open Font License. The family comes in four weights (regular, italic, bold and bold italic).Mr Jones Book and Mr Jones Book Italic (Registration required) Mr Jones was originally conceived as a family for print design, consisting of a sans and a headline. The lowercase forms are wide for legibility at small sizes, while the caps are narrower to save space and keep an even balance of negative space when used in body copy. The overall widths of certain characters have been adjusted to almost extremes to keep an even balance of white space around each letter. The font works well in body copy but will need decreased tracking in larger settings. It comes with proportional, old-style and tabular figures and discretionary ligatures.Pigiarniq Inuktitut (Download link) An oldie but a goodie. Heard of Nunavut? A small territory in Canada with one of the lowest population rates of the world? Probably not. Only 0.01 people live there per square kilometer, mostly Inuit. The citizens of Nunavut speak four languages: French, English, Innuinaqtun and Inuktitut. A few years ago, the government of the region decided to design a new typeface to enable its 28,000 citizens to use all four languages in a uniform manner. The result was a beautiful, rich and professional free sans-serif. The family includes bold, heavy, italic, light and regular weights, all available for free use.St Marie St Marie is a rich type family designed for online applications and print. This release is a preview of the upcoming family, and the designer has released two weights (St Marie Thin and St Marie Thin Web) for free. The download package contains the weights in the formats OTF, WOFF, EOT and SVG, as well as a @font-face kit. See this example of St Marie Thin Web (HTML-page).Code: Free Font This sturdy yet playful little font family can be applied to different kinds of graphic design work: Web, print, motion graphics, t-shirts, posters, logotypes. The font contains 192 characters and two weights (regular and bold) and is available in OTF for PC or Mac.VAL Stencil A quite distinctive, memorable font with two variations: lowercase letters bend to the left and uppercase letters bend to the right. This unique font will give your headlines originality and dynamism. Designed by Svetoslav Simov of Fontfabric, available in OTF.akaDora (For personal use only) akaDora is a fairly simple script font with wide character support. Designed by James Daniel Milligan.Arcus and Arcus Italic (Registration required) Arcus is a geometrically constructed font with rounded curves. The font contains a wide range of alternative signs, small capitals, lining and old-style numerals, fractions, superiors, inferiors, ligatures and discretionary ligatures; all this is within the frame of OpenType functions. The type family was designed for headlines, logotypes and corporate identities, and it is not a good fit for long text. Available for free and commercial use.Crimson Text Open that old tome from the bookshelf over the fireplace, stick your nose in its pages and smell the ink, the glue and the immortality of the printed words. That is what Crimson Text is meant to be like. The font is released under the Open Font License.Acid (Free for personal use only) Acid was designed by Stephan Baum specifically to be used in logotypes and body copy. The form of glyphs is similar to the design classic B42 by Marcel Breuer (Bauhaus) and has a very geometric character. The font contains 103 glyphs, comes in six weights (regular, regular italic, medium, medium italic, bold and bold italic) and is in the process of being developed. Released under Creative Commons.Real Origami (Free for personal use only) (PDF specimen) The designers based this font on an origami alphabet by Japanese artist Taichiro Hasegawa. A very original, distinctive and playful font.Quadranta According to its creator, this design was started with quadrant arcs. Quadranta is a display font that would fit logo designs and playful headlines. Available for personal and commercial use. Designed by Darim Kim using FontStruct.Balonez Fantasia Yet another distinctive, playful font with rounded glyphs. This would be great fit for brochures, magazine and t-shirts. Designed by Thiago Calza. Freely available for personal and commercial work. Available are two weights in TrueType.Juice Juice is a modern, dynamic sans-serif type family. The font contains six weights (light, light italic, regular, italic, bold and bold italic), each containing 161 glyphs. The font is available in TrueType format. Designed by Dhany Arliyanti.Geomancy Typeface (Free for personal use only) Geomancy is a chunky, retro geometric font that hearkens to French and American art deco. With some letterforms taken directly from posters and ephemera of the period, the all-uppercase set comes with many alternates and ligatures, so you can give a little of that varied, hand-painted feel to your work. Available in two weights: hairline and extra bold.Prociono Prociono is an Esperanto word meaning either the star Procyon or the animal species known as the raccoon. It is a roman typeface with blackletter elements. The release includes both OTF and TTF. Source files are available as well.Edelsans (Free for personal use only) Edelsans was designed as a noble geometric font for the screen, with few corners and mostly rounded glyphs. The typeface is not completely finished but is free for non-commercial use.Neu Eichmass Neu Eichmass (German for New Etalon) is a typeface based on the weight 100 grams. The name is a reference to International Prototype kilogram, as a base unit of mass in the International System of Units. The typeface has a modern, cold, measured feel to it, reflecting its origin (its metal “parents”). It is a sans-serif font and takes inspiration from famous grotesques and stenciled types associated with marketplaces and street traders. Further inspiration comes from 1920s and ’30s constructivism. The font can be easily stenciled and is appropriate for different uses (street art, retail, independent shops, street markets). It comes in a headline font and a medium point body text suitable for print. Designed by Ivan Khmelevsky.Ingleby Font A beautiful, carefully crafted serif font, with signs of the fine antiqua tradition. Designed by David Engelby, the font comes in four weights: regular, italic, bold and bold italic.Ibarra Real Ibarra Real is a public domain font of Ibero-American character. Created in 2005, Ibarra Real is an elegant design, mixing tradition and modernity; a genuine badge of the particular Spanish culture that was created by Joaquín Ibarra in 1780. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux.Notice 1: Packaging Symbols (Download) A symbols font with various weather, packaging and usage symbols.Notice 2: Navigation symbols (Download) Yet another symbols font, this one containing symbols for public transit, car and flight navigation.Notice 3: Cloth Symbols (Download) This symbols font contains pictograms for the clothing industry. The font is available in OpenType and was designed by the Russian studio Otlab.Glyphyx (Registration required) This set of two free fonts features symbols and icons for use in data visualization. Glyphyx One includes symbols related to transportation, while Glyphyx Two has symbols related to leisure activities. Available in OpenType and TrueType formats for Windows and Mac.Free Symbol Signs Collection Here is a collection of 50 common symbols for signage, professional designed. The symbols are free for use and are available in OpenType format. All were designed by Sander Baumann, set to the proportions of a regular typeface, so you no longer need to copy and paste such icons into your designs.Rally Character Set (Specimen | Preview | Download) Lukyan Turetsky released this character set of car rally symbols. The font contains standard signs of control in rallies, rally-related infographic icons, blanks for logos and other graphics, symbols for legends and other symbols and marks. In OpenType and available for free.Oblik Serif Bold (Registration required) Oblik Serif Bold is a sophisticated contemporary font with vivid and playful glyphs. The font could be a great fit for headlines and posters but is hardly usable for long body text. The font has wide character support and is available for free and commercial use. Comes in OpenType format.Paranoid Paranoid is a yet another experimental font, collaboratively designed by Simon Carrasco, John Stuart and Kevin Yeun Kit Lo. Paranoid is a purely geometric display face, conceived as a contribution to (and subtle critique of) the still growing trend of bold, geometric and counterless typography. It is equally suited to bringing back the joy of ’80s dance parties or expressing the ominous foreboding of inevitable nuclear disaster. A flexible face in spite of its limited form. Please contact the designers before using this font commercially.01.BASE This free font is bold and experimental. It would come handy for bold statements on t-shirts and posters. The font was designed by Fabian De Lange and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.Last ClickTypedia Typedia is a community website dedicated to classifying typefaces and educating people about typefaces. Think of it as a cross between IMDB and Wikipedia, except for type. Anyone can join, add or edit pages for typefaces and the people behind them.(al)© Vitaly Friedman for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags:
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30 New Free High-Quality Fonts
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August 12 2010, 12:34pm | Comments »
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20 Fresh High Quality Free Fonts
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Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to.In this selection we’re glad to present you Kilogram, Adelle, Ayita Pro, Hattori Hanzo Typeface, Andron, Tertre, Luxi Sans, Sapir, Otari and a couple of other high-quality free fonts. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts — the license can change from time to time.25 New High Quality Free Fonts15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts40 Excellent Free Fonts For Professional DesignYou can find over 80 more free fonts in our section Fonts.[Offtopic: By the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has a mobile version? Try it out if you have an iPhone, Blackberry or another capable device.]20 Fresh High Quality Free FontsKilogramA very bold, striking and unique font which may perfectly serve for headlines. The font can be downloaded and used free of charge for both non-commercial and commercial work.Luxi SansA very clean and legible sans-serif font that can be used for headings and body copy.Otari Bold Limited (Registration is required)Otari is vibrant and contemporary, but serious and built to last. Its character shines in display type, but doesn’t interfere at text sizes. Otari Bold Limited is available for free download.Museo Slab 500 and 500 Italic (Registration is required, PDF Specimen)Museo Slab is robust slab serif which comes in 12 styles. The font family supports a very wide range in languages and is a complete OpenType typeface. Each weight counts 455 glyphs.Adelle Bold and Adelle Bold Italic (Registration is required, discount code is provided)The OpenType Basic version, full commercial licence, of Adelle Bold and Bold Italic can be downloaded free of charge. Adelle is a slab serif typeface conceived specifically for intensive editorial use, mainly in newspapers and magazines. The typeface can be used for subheadings and headlines.Lobster fontA bold condensed script font with hundreds of subtle ligatures and alternates. The Lobster font contains over 70 ligatures and 37 terminal forms. The font supports full Latin1 Charset.Hattori Hanzo TypefaceThis free font is stylish and clean; it was created for headings and short text and is especially suited to items such as infographics and charts. Designed by Roman Shamin.Sketchetik Light (Registration is required)Sketchetik is a hand-drawn font in four styles: light, regular, bold and black. It is recommended for use as display typeface. Only light weight is available for free download and use. Registration is required to download the files.Ayita Pro SemiBold | Ayita Pro Thin Italic (Registration and checkout are required)Ayita Pro is a cheerful sans serif design by Jim Ford. Ayita’s open shapes render faithfully at small point sizes and on device screens while the compact design allows more characters per line for headlines. The Ayita Pro fonts feature a typographically-rich Latin character set, with OpenType features for advanced design applications.Andron (Private use only!)A rich serif font designed by Andreas Stötzner. It contains accents for Roman, Germanic, Slavi, Hungarian, Baltic and Turkish languages. The font is being designed, and the author could use some feedback. Also notice other open source fonts available on the site.Free Font SapirActually, Sapir was designed as a stop gap, while waiting for better, professionally designed fonts for linguistics. Available in two styles — Regular and Italic. Designed by Eric Schiller.Fat Love (personal use only, currently unavailable, mirror)An experimental bold typeface with playful letters. Created by Jonathan Calugi. Available for personal use only, no commercial use.Tertre Extra Bold and Extra Bold Italic (Registration is required)Tertre is a display/short text typeface with a wide range of applications from signage or posters to menus and pricelists; branding, packaging or publishing. The letters have no overhangs and the stroke thickness of capitals and lower case letters is identical, making hinting or anti-aliasing more uniform at any point size and zoom combination. Two weights, Extra Bold and Extra Bold Italic are available for free download and use.Franchise BoldFranchise is a strong display typeface meant to communicate your message quickly and with power. The characters are drawn to achieve a unifomity without compromising style. Strong, memorable and free. You may want to support the designer by making a small donation.Surface MediumFree humanist sans-serif font that may serve for catchy and attractive corporate headlines in web designs and booklets. Unfortunately, only one style (Medium) is available. Free for personal and commercial use.Clementine Sketch FontTo make this font display correctly — that is, with the beginnings and ends of each word closed — you must begin each word with a capital letter and end each word with the symbol ^. (There are two irregularities: W & V. If a word contains a W, you must end the preceding letter with a ^. If a word contains a V, you must end the preceding letter with a ^ and capitalize the letter following the V.) example: Amazingly^ Fe^w^ Discotheques^ Pro^vIde^ Jukeboxes^.SorayaHalf serif, half sans serif. Capital letters A-Z, available only in Illustrator AI format.Triskweline: A new fixed-width font for programmersThe TrueType TTF version of Triskweline works only at size 10 pt, which should do for your programming editor of choice. However, printing will look funny, as will using the font in word processors like Word or drawing tools like Corel Draw. If your editor supports it, prefer the pixel-font versions of Triskweline (.FON or .PCF).Barrister SansBarrister Sans is a geometric sans-serif designed initially as a corporate Cyrillic typeface which quickly evolved into fully grown typeface, available in Latin, Cyrillic and Greek codepages. It includes a set of 5 weights plus their matching italics, with several Opentype features as ordinals, fractions & tabular lining. Barrister Sans is a modern tech-looking sans serif alternative for all your needs. Available for free download until the 16th of May 2010.ReminderPlease notice that the free fonts listed below are still available for free download and use.FF Nuvo OT Medium (Registration is required) Designed by Siegfried Rückel, it’s a contemporary type design with vertical contrast, and especially the characters a, g and y show the calligraphic touch. Suitable for magazine design from headlines to longer texts as well as for advertising, packaging and corporate design. A free download for a limited time. OpenType.Mayberry Pro SemiBold (Registration is required) AscenderFonts still offers the font Mayberry Pro Semi Bold for free download. This font belongs to the Mayberry Pro family. This family is a humanist sans serif designed by Steve Matteson to provide optimal legibility on screen in applications ranging from User Interfaces to web pages. The registration is required to download the font.Last ClickSo You Need A Typeface (Infographics)A nice infographics that can actually help you select a typeface for your design work. You may want to search for the path to Comic Sans.© Vitaly Friedman for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Be the first to comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: Fonts, free, typography
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May 11 2010, 11:08am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
50 Helpful Typography Tools And Resources
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May 6 2010, 10:37am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
25 New High Quality Free Fonts
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Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to.In this selection we’re glad to present you PT Sans, FF Celeste Sans Offc Black, Secca STD, Cantarell and many other regular and experimental high-quality free fonts. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts — the license can change from time to time.You may also want to take a look at our previous typography-related posts:20 New High Quality Free FontsIn this previous “free fonts” edition we present Madawaska ExtraLight, Apparatus SIL, League Gothic, Contra and many other high-quality free fonts.40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional DesignThe price of good fonts usually reflects their quality and starts at 50$ per typeface. However, before purchasing a font you will probably use only once in your designs you might want to take a glance at outstanding free alternatives first.50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web TypographyA review of useful typographic tools, techniques and resources for creating effective and expressive designs. We will also look at some hands-on typography tools that help designers and developers learn how to style their Web content, test it interactively and see the changes instantly.[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the brand new Smashing Book?]New High Quality Free FontsPT Sans (PDF specimen) The Russian type design company “Paratype” released an extensive free sans-serif family with 8 font weights: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Caption Regular, Caption Bold, Narrow Regular and Narrow Bold (700+ glyphs each). The family can be used for legal documents on screen and in print. The family contains glyphs to various Cyrillic languages as well Latin glyphs, signs, fractions, numerators etc. A very impressive free font. License: free for personal and commercial projects.FF Celeste Sans Offc Black Set (Registration is required)FF Celeste Sans Offc Black Set comes in an easy-to-use format optimized for everyday use in Microsoft Office apps. You can use the style-linked (regular and italic in one menu item) FF Celeste Sans Offc for free. License: free for personal and commercial projects.Secca STD (2 Demo fonts) (Registration is required)Secca is a fine and simple typeface honoring the roots of early German grotesque type designs but mastered for the needs of today. The weights work perfectly for body text. Two weights are available for free downloads: Secca Std Demo Regular and Secca Std Demo Bold. Designed by Andreas Seidel. A registration is required.Fh_Lentil Regular (the designer has removed the font)For more fonts, and other resources, visit Fictionalhead.com’s Fonts New font created for personal use. Additional families being developed (bold, italic, etc.) to be released at a future date. License: free only for personal projects.Mr Jones BookMr Jones was originally conceived as a family for print design consisting of a sans and a headline. The lowercase are wide for legibility at small sizes while the caps are narrower to save space and keep an even balance of negative space when used in body copy. The overall widths of certain characters have been adjusted to almost extremes to keep an even balance of white space around each letter. He works well in body copy, but will need decreased tracking for larger settings. Two weights are available for free download: Mr Jones Book and Mr Jones Book Italic. Designed by Richard Miller.ClutcheeClutchee Font is perfect for t-shirts, also applicable for any type of graphic design, web, print, motion graphics etc. License: free for personal and commercial work.DigiticaA very interesting, original geometric font, designed by Samuel Delabarre and available for free download. License: free for personal and commercial work.CantarellThe typeface is designed as a contemporary Humanist sans serif, and was developed for on-screen reading; in particular, reading web pages on an HTC Dream mobile phone. Each font file currently contains 391 glyphs, and fully support the following writing systems: Basic Latin, Western European, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Dutch and Afrikaans. To date, Pan African Latin has only 33% glyph coverage. Since the design is aimed at display on-screen at small sizes, the printed output (especially of the bold and oblique) may not work well. License: free for personal and commercial work.tribbon ‘Layered’ fontThis layered ‘ribbon’ style font was created by Dominic Le-Hair. It is a working ‘ribbon’ style font that consists of several layers and is available in both TTF and OTF font formats for free download. License: free only for personal work.Exus PilotAn original geometric free font in True Type format. A good choice for poster design. Designed by Mauro Hernández. License: free for private and commercial projects.OrbitronA geometric sans-serif typeface intended for display purposes. It features four weights (light, medium, bold, and black), a stylistic alternative, small caps, and a ton of alternate glyphs. Orbitron was designed so that graphic designers in the future will have some alternative to typefaces like Eurostile or Bank Gothic. License: free for private and commercial projects.Ripe Font FamilyA geometric post-modern slab serif face. The serifs feature simplistic rounded terminals and its stroke is uniform. Ripe was designed to be a practical typeface. Each character is distinct, yet consistent. Its subtle differences are clear enough to be easily read at both high and low resolutions, perfect for print, web and screen media. The family has 4 weights (Regular, Light, Semibold, Bold) containing 577 characters in each weight. License: free for private and commercial projects.Goudy Trajan RegularGoudy Trajan is based on the drawings by American type designer Frederic W. Goudy of his rendition of the capital letters inscribed on the Trajan column. One of the most elegant typefaces in the CastleType library, Goudy Trajan works especially well at large sizes. The Regular weight (shown above) contains many alternate letters and discretionary ligatures for more versatile typography. It also includes the Cyrillic alphabet and over 100 classic fleurons. Click here to view all glyphs. Download specimen. “Goudy Trajan is possibly the finest font I have discovered” (D.S. from Omaha, Nebraska.) The Goudy Trajan family includes: Regular, Medium, and Bold. A single font is available for free download. License: free for private and commercial projects.St Transmission (free for personal use only)This free font is available in two weights: thin and extrabold. It has standard OpenType features such as ligatures, slashed zero, contextual alternates and lining figures. The Extrabold weight is ideal for bold headlines. Designed by Sascha Timplan. License: free only for private projects.Keeparty (Large preview)A very original, colorful typeface created by Eugene Rudyy. License: free for personal and commercial projects.LOT (large preview)LOT is a free font applicable for any type of graphic design – web, print, motion graphics etc. It is a good fit for T-shirts and other items like logos or pictograms. Format: Opentype (.otf) Compatible: PC and Mac. The font contains 78 glyphs. License: free for personal and commercial projects.Recycle it fontLicense: free for personal and commercial projects.Denne’s aliensA hand-written, original, playful font with basic glyphs set. Designed by Denise Bentulan. License: free for personal projects, designer’s permission is required to use the font for commercial purposes.Pac FontAn older, yet quite original and attractive free font. License: free for personal use only.MergeA very simple, yet playful and nice looking free font, designed by Philatype type foundry and released for free download in the OpenType format. License: free for personal and commercial projects.Further useful collections24 high quality free and stunning symbol fontsFonts are the vital need of any designer. But now a days font demands are increasing in regular computer users as well. Depending on the needs and modern trend we are going to list down some really beautiful and unique examples of 24 High Quality Free And Stunning Symbol Fonts. We hope these fonts will be useful for you.Top 10 Programming FontsA round-up of 10 readily-available monospace fonts. Many of these fonts are bundled along with modern operating systems, but most are free for download on the web. A few, notably Consolas, are part of commercial software.40 free unique cartoon and comic fontsHave you ever feel that traditional fonts are a little too boring and plain for your designs and artworks? Ever wanted to use fonts that are funkier, stylish and fun to look at? Cartoon and comic fonts are very popular and most people are only familiar with Comic Sans MS and that’s about it. We have now discovered 40 unique and refreshing cartoon and comic fonts for you to give your artwork and design that extra ummmppphhh. Here are a few for sneak preview and the full list is right after the jump.5 Excellent Calligraphic FontsA small collection of nice calligrapic fonts found over at Dafont.com.Related PostsYou may also want to take a look at our previous typography-related posts:20 New High Quality Free FontsIn this previous “free fonts” edition we present Madawaska ExtraLight, Apparatus SIL, League Gothic, Contra and many other high-quality free fonts.40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional DesignThe price of good fonts usually reflects their quality and starts at 50$ per typeface. However, before purchasing a font you will probably use only once in your designs you might want to take a glance at outstanding free alternatives first.50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web TypographyA review of useful typographic tools, techniques and resources for creating effective and expressive designs. We will also look at some hands-on typography tools that help designers and developers learn how to style their Web content, test it interactively and see the changes instantly.© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 56 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: Fonts, typography
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January 18 2010, 1:11am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmashingMagazine/~3/yV21Ra6QEdY/
Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to. In this selection we’re glad to present you Junction, Nadia Serif, Nilland, CartoGothic Std, Bergamo Std, Comic Serif, Birra Stout, Vegur and a couple of other high-quality free fonts. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts — the license can change from time to time.
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May 11 2009, 7:39am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/27/css-typographic-tools-and-techniques/
Typography is elegant when it is attractive and communicates the designer’s ideas. When chosen wisely and used carefully, it can be very effective in supporting the overall design. Designers are always exploring different techniques with type: some use images or sIFR to produce very beautiful typography, while others prefer CSS alone to get the typography just right. Today, we will look at 50 most useful typographic tools, techniques and resources for creating effective and expressive designs. We will also look at some hands-on typography tools that help designers and developers learn how to style their Web content, test it interactively and see the changes instantly. These tools are great for experimenting with different font types for your website. Below we cover typographic tools, useful typographic references, font browsers, typographic CSS- and JavaScript-techniques, hyphenation techniques, sIFR tools and resources, grids and related tools, free and commercial fonts, a guide to Web typography, examples of great Web typography. Please feel free to suggest further tools and resources in the comments to this post. And if you like this post please feel free to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter . You may want to take a look at the following related articles:
50 Extremely Useful PHP Tools 50 Extremely Useful CSS Tools
- Typographic Tools Instead of doing your own testing, use the useful and time-saving tools below. They’ll help you play with typography and make choices by giving you a real-time preview of many of the available CSS font properties. HTML IpsumA useful little website created by Chris Coyier. It provides you with the standard Latin text already in HTML tags. Clicking on any of the blocks automatically copies the text to your clipboard!
TypechartTypechart lets you flip through, preview and compare Web typography while retrieving the CSS. You can browse different typographic styles. Each style corresponds to a style ID, which allows you to annotate prototypes and retrieve the CSS while coding. Another useful feature is that you can compare Windows (ClearType) rendering with Apple font rendering.
TTFTitles WordPress PluginThis plugin lets you use images to replace the titles of your posts, thus circumventing the problem of guessing what fonts your end-users might have installed (via hyperdjango).
FontstructFontStruct is a free font-building tool that lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks.
abcTajpu Firefox ExtensionType in accented letters, international characters or symbols into Firefox or Thunderbird, either simply by using a context menu (there being support for many languages), or quickly by keyboard macro (you can even define your own).
PXtoEMThis tool converts pixel-units to em-units using the 16px browser default size (via @briancray and @CasJam on Twitter).
Em CalculatorEm Calculator is a small JavaScript tool that helps you make scalable and accessible CSS design. It converts sizes in pixels to relative em units, which are based on a given text size.
CSSTYPECSSTYPE v2 lets you preview your text as you modify it. You can set the font-family, size, color, letter-spacing, word-spacing, line-height and other properties. The CSS code can be generated easily once you are satisfied with the previews.
CSS-Typoset Matrix and code generatorThis tool (unfortunately, only in German) calculates font-sizes and line-height in em and px and presents them in a matrix. The tool computes both symmetrical and asymmetricam margin. Useful!
wp-typogrify WordPress Pluginwp-typogrify is a collection of Django template filters that help prettify your web typography by preventing ugly quotes and widows and providing CSS hooks to style some special cases. Python-script for Django is available as well.
FontBurnerAfter you find the font that you would like to use, Font Burner gives you a chunk of code that you will insert into the head of your webpage. Provided you don’t have any stylesheet conflicts, the new font will show up on your site immediately.
Convert TrueType Font to sIFR Flash FileUpload your typeface and the tool generates the Flash-file (swf) and sends it to your e-mail. Text 2 PNG ConversionThis service provides you with the ability to convert you headlines and navigations to PNG images automaticlly. It works by adding a JavaScript file and selecting which tags to replace. Useful, for instance if you want to generate an image with an embedding e-mail-address. 7 Free Tools To Identify A FontA list of free online tools to speed up the identification process. 21 Typography Web Applications You Can’t Live Without 2. Useful typographic references Better CSS Font StacksA couple of useful font cascades for your CSS-stylesheet.
FontsMatrixMatrix of fonts bundled with Mac and Windows operating systems, Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite (via @lucianosb on Twitter)
Common fonts to all versions of Windows & Mac equivalentsThe list with the standard set of fonts common to all versions of Windows and their Mac substitutes, referred sometimes as “browser safe fonts”.
Default Mac OS X 10.4 fonts list (via Elementiks)
Default Windows fonts list (via Elementiks)
3. Choosing a font Type TesterType Tester is an online application that allows you to test different typefaces. You have three columns of text and can modify the typography any way you please. You then get the CSS that accompanies your selections.
STC fontBROWSERThis tools enables you to preview fonts installed on your system online.
Font PickerThis simple tool shows you all the fonts installed on your computer and helps you choose which one is most suitable for a particular project. Also available as Adobe AIR application. FontTesterFont Tester is a free online font comparison tool. It allows you to easily preview and compare different fonts side by side with various CSS font styles applied to them.
CSS Type SetCSS Type Set is a handy tool that lets you preview your CSS text as you modify it, and it generates the code for you immediately (@jmreedy).
Flipping TypicalThis is a nice way to explore the popular typefaces you have on your computer and see which one fits the project you are working on. This is done by creating text that is displayed using various typefaces from your computer.
4. Typographic Techniques 12 Examples Of Paragraph TypographyA showcase of some interesting techniques for designing paragraphs, by Jon Tan. Some of these styles are experiments using pseudo elements and adjacent sibling selectors; browser support is not consistent.
Rendering Complex Type — Who’s got the Love?Learn how to create a complex typographic sample with pure CSS.
10 Examples of Beautiful CSS Typography and How They Did ItA lot of great websites out there have beautiful typography using only CSS. But simply looking at them gives you only half the picture. This post showcases examples of good clean typography using nothing but CSS, and it explains what the designers did to achieve this beautiful type.
typeface.jsWith typeface.js, you can embed custom fonts on your Web pages so that you don’t have to render text as images. What makes it different is that it’s JavaScript only, not JavaScript and Flash like sIFR, or JavaScript and PHP like FLIR. So, instead of creating images or using Flash just to show your website’s text in the font you want, you can use typeface.js and write in plain HTML and CSS, just as though your visitors had the font installed locally. It’s pretty easy to use: load the typeface.js library and some typeface.js fonts, then proceed as normal.
Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR)Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR) is an image replacement script that dynamically generates image representations of text on your Web page in fonts that otherwise might not be visible to your visitors. The generated image is automatically inserted into your Web page via JavaScript and is visible in all modern browsers. Any element with text can be replaced, from headers (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) to <span> elements and everything in between! FLIR is SEO-friendly and only renders an image if JavaScript is enabled on the user’s browser. If you are using WordPress for your blog, you might find this plug-in useful to easily apply FLIR to your Web pages.
P+C DTRPHP + CSS Dynamic Text Replacement is a JavaScript-free version of the Dynamic Text Replacement method, allowing you to take a vanilla, standards-based (X)HTML Web page and dynamically create images to replace page headings, using only PHP and CSS. The technique is currenty unavailable for download.
Advanced Typography Techniques Using CSSWhile descriptions and basic uses of CSS typography controls have been beaten to death, many rich typographic capabilities of CSS are still not well documented. This post is a great example of what you can do by combining and tweaking type using CSS. Different techniques are introduced: reflections, drop characters, handwriting, newspaper headlines and more.
Typographic Contrast and FlowTypographic contrast is important because not every piece of content on a page has the same weight: some have greater significance than others. By creating contrast, you direct the reader’s attention to the important messages and also enhance visual appeal. Here are seven basic methods for creating typographic contrast, using size, typeface, color, case, style/decoration, weight and space.
5. Hyphenation OnLine HyphenationThis tool takes care of automatic Automatic hyphenation for texts and sites. The tool uses ­ and inserts hyphens in the right places to make the justified text look readable. The tool is a little bit buggy and not perfect, but is still useful. HyphenatorHyphenator.js brings client-side hyphenation of HTML documents to every browser by inserting soft hyphens using hyphenation patterns and Frank M. Liang’s hyphenation algorithm commonly known from LaTeX and OpenOffice. The goal is to provide hyphenation in all browsers that support JavaScript and the soft hyphen for at least English, German and French. Here is the server-side script that does the hyphenation. 6. sIFR sIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the MassessIFR (or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is a technology that allows you to replace text elements on the page with Flash equivalents. It uses JavaScript to target certain text page elements and replace them with Flash, which results in the same text but rendered in a new font. This means you are free to use any font you wish in your design, instead of being limited to a very small set of “safe” Web fonts. sIFR is easier to implement than any other image replacement technique. Instead of manually generating each header with an image editor, you’re able to skip the editor completely.
sIFR liteA solution similar to the original sIFR package, but smaller (3.7 Kb) than the original (22 Kb) and including even more nifty features. It auto-detects the color of text elements, is completely object-oriented, doesn’t use CSS selectors and targets elements by tag name and class. sIFRvaultA repository of sIFR fonts, rated, tagged and available for download. Users can submit their SWF-files as well. Please notice that you need to respect all copyright and licensing laws - some of the featured fonts appear to be commercial (via chrisjlee).
jQuery sIFR PluginThe jQuery sIFR Plugin is an addon for jQuery that makes it easy to replace text in a web page with flash text (sIFR). It gives you a function in javascript to replace text in a web page dynamically with sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) text, using native jQuery functionality along with the jQuery Flash Plugin.
Multi color sIFR 2.0.1This version of sIFR supports strong, em and span-elements and can color parts of the headline in colors.
jQuery sIFR PluginThe jQuery sIFR Plugin is an add-on for jQuery that makes it easy to replace text on a Web page with Flash text (sIFR). The jQuery sIFR Plugin does all the work of figuring out the text, files, sizes, colors and any other configuration needed to convert text to a beautiful sIFR font, with consistent behavior across all major browsers.
sIFR GeneratorThe big disadvantage of sIFR is that creating sIFR files is a tedious task that also requires Adobe Flash Studio in order to create a .swf file with the font of your choice. At least, that was the big disadvantage until now. sIFR Generator is an online tool that allows you to create sIFR .swf files with a few clicks of your mouse. Simply upload the TTF font of the font you want to convert, preview and download. 7. Grids gridr buildrrrThis tool generates various grids on the fly and allows users to define the width of the grids, gutter as well as boxes for the layout.
The Grid SystemAn aggregator of articles, tools, books and resources related to grid-systems.
Typographic GridIf your website is heavy with text content, you will need to pay attention to the underlying grid. Check out Typography Grid, created recently by Chris Coyier: “I was just screwing around with typography and getting things to line up according to a strict horizontal and vertical grid. It was inspired by the Compose to a Vertical Rhythm article by Richard Rutter a few years ago, except uses unitless line height.” Check out the demo here.
Grid DesignerAnyone looking for a little help to get going with grid design should look at this handy tool. Grid Designer 2 lets you set variables for your layout, such as the number of columns, the width in pixels, gutters and margins. You can also set variables for the typography, so that you can control the size, weight, line height and other variables for your paragraphs and titles. After you set up your desired layout, all you have to do is export the CSS to use in your own design.
Vertical rhythm calculatorThis AIR application allows Web developers who use XHTML and CSS to build their pages to understand and calculate values for vertical rhythm. Enter your starting values in the application, and then you have the option of copying the resulting CSS code onto you clipboard for pasting into your existing style sheet.
8. Free and Commercial Fonts 40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional DesignAn overview of over 40 excellent free fonts you might use for your professional designs in 2009.
60 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate DesignOver 60 first-class commercial typefaces for corporate design.
80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional DesignOver 80 gorgeous typefaces for professional design, based upon suggestions from designers and web-developers all over the world.
FontsquirrelA growing collection of free high-quality fonts. More high-quality free fonts.
Top 10 (Commercial) Fonts Of 2008This article lists this year’s most successful fonts on MyFont – in each genre. Based on sales numbers.
Clean font showcaseAn extensive collection of clean, legible free fonts.
Veerle Pieters’ 10 favourite typefaces
9. A Guide to Web Typography Good typefaces are designed for a purpose. Below, you will find very informative articles and guidelines, created by masters of typography to show us the overall effect that good type has on a project. On Choosing TypeA good article from I Love Typography on choosing the right typeface. The article explains everything from choosing between serif and sans-serif fonts to remembering to honor and read the content. It’s a great post for improving your typography skills.
The 100% Easy-2-Read StandardBest practices for good typography on the Web from Oliver Reichenstein.
Don’t be afraid of Serif FontsDavid Rodriguez discusses the advantages and disadvantages of sans-serif and serif fonts and suggests best practices. Elegant Web TypographyA great presentation by Jeff Croft about Web typography.
10 Common Typography MistakesThe goal of this post is to help designers and clients understand the importance of good typography skills and avoid some common mistakes. The Non-Typographer’s Guide to Practical Typeface SelectionCheck out Cameron Moll’s magic formula for picking the right typeface for your needs.
Make a list of those familiar typefaces that you trust and know will work well in a variety of projects. Supplement that list with a list of unfamiliar typefaces that address specific objectives for the project at hand. Test each typeface in small and large sizes. Test in both caps and lowercase.
The Principles of Beautiful TypographyThis is a great article that is actually extracted from the SitePoint book The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. The article goes into detail on fonts, letter forms, spacing, text size and more. It’s a great and informative read. Five Simple Steps to Better TypographyA series of articles by Mark Boulton that is highly worthwhile to read. 101 Typography Resources for Web DesignersA great list of typography-related resources from our author, Steven Snell. 10. Examples of Great Web Typography Some of the designs shown below demonstrate that sometimes less really is more. Others made it onto the list because they use text very well and demonstrate how the grid can be used to do wonders for the whole design. Jon Tangerine
Viget Inspire
works4sure
24ways
Alex Buga
Wilson Miner
Colour Pixel
Maxvoltar
Mark Dearman
Blogger Bake Off
Fixie Consulting
Drupalcon
Guilherme Neumann
Sursly
17 Stimulating Flickr Groups to Get You Typographically InspiredThis is a list of some of the best typography Flickr groups to feed your creative appetite.
17 Stimulating Flickr Groups to Get You Typographically InspiredIn this collection, you’ll find a variety of websites that showcase creative and functional uses of typography.
(al)
- Tags:
- useful
- typography
- tools
- Fonts
- CSS
January 27 2009, 8:00pm | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
The Right Type: 5 Inspiring Typography Tales
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/08/the-right-type-5-inspiring-typography-tales/
Nowadays, typefaces are a dime a dozen; there’s certainly no shortage of free fonts. But as in any artistic field, the standouts are rare, and understanding why they excel takes gradual experience. In this yarn, we’ll take a closer look at inspiring stories behind the design of typefaces that you may have seen or used but didn’t know the history of. We’ll explore the nooks and crannies — both literal and figurative — of the evolving printed word. By the end, we hope you come away with a better appreciation of how things came to be. 1. Sign language: of subways and skies The signs are all around us: both text and pictograms that indicate where to go, what not to do and situational info. Simply S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G it out is insufficient. A modern descendant of ancient hieroglyphs, stylized text enhances understandability and, hence, memorability. Many public transportation systems in cities around the world have gone through progressive transformations; like a bric-à-brac cake, new layers don’t just replace old ones but are often built on top of previous structures.
by FredoAlvarez The subways of New York City are one such example. While the crisp, nearly universal Helvetica — the subject of its own documentary — now flanks its tunnels, it wasn’t always this way. Paul Shaw investigated the subway’s depths and wrote an intensely dense article, which I highly recommend. Delving into the various NYC subway typefaces used over the past few decades, with plenty of pretty useful imagery, the article is a treasure.
by Catchpenny Furthermore, iconic typography need not be limited to real-life transportation systems: you only need to turn on shows like Lost, with its Oceanic Airlines logo, and the Hanso Foundation’s Bagua-inspired badges. Or what about the cyberpunk trappings of The Matrix Reloaded, in which Mobil Ave is shown on stark tiles before Neo confronts The Trainman?
by gulicious Fresh inspiration can be gleaned by glancing at logo compilations. You’re likely familiar with many airline logos, but lesser-known are subway logos from around the world, such as the ones in this impressive collection:
by Annie Mole Note the prevalent use of certain letters (in particular, M and S, for “Metro” and “Subway”), which are integrated in the designs. Most of the logos are simple but have diagonal or curved lines, suggesting motion. Others rely heavily on circles, lending a feel of the “round trip.” But however you analyze them, it’s clear: no great trip into the city is complete without a keen aesthetic touch. And if you crave more, here you are! 2. Metafont: Don Knuth’s math mastery It’s a rare soul who dedicates most of his life to an ambitious project that transcends his own existence and influences many in the process. I refer to legendary computer scientist Donald Ervin Knuth, whose speech is shaky but writing is sound, and whose home page looks like a Mosaic relic yet contains mounds of unique genius. (Maybe we could hook him up with some of our native talent?) He even knows how to “get down”!
by ioerror Synonymous with excellence in computer science because of The Art of Computer Programming (ongoing since 1962), one of his lesser-known and lesser-used works outside of intellectual fields is Metafont, which wields great precision in creating vector fonts. It’s amazing that one person can do so much and, not only that, keep at it. Case in point: Metafont continues to be updated but comes from a base developed in the late 1970s. Also, any typographer worth her ink (virtual or otherwise) is familiar with Hermann Zapf of Zapf Chancery fame (which I first became acquainted with through my high school’s LaserWriter). Or perhaps you’ve heard of Zapf Dingbats?
by Kent Wang Anyway, Knuth and Zapf collaborated to combine intricate computations based on the centuries-old growth of movable type — elegant equations that form beautiful characters. Keep in mind that in some circles there is a conceptual divide between tradition and technology, and these ideas were often shunned or outright lambasted years ago. But they didn’t give up. Far from being two old fogeys awaiting the Grim Reaper, Knuth and Zapf, grandmasters of their respective fields, continued to passionately push forth, even though newer generations know not of their original works, only of mere knockoffs and jokes. If you haven’t heard of Metafont, let alone used it, even Knuth concedes it’s too difficult for some to use: “Asking an artist to become enough of a mathematician to understand how to write a font with parameters is too much. Computer scientists understand parameters, the rest of the world doesn’t.” Admirable how instead of waiting for the world to catch up, Knuth forged ahead with impeccable precision. We’re still feeling the effects through our PostScript and TrueType vectors now. It’s also interesting how we’ve moved so far past bitmap fonts, in part thanks to Metafont, but pixel fonts continue to find their way into Flash animations and lo-fi tributes. 3. Opening titles: Kyle Cooper’s movie magic Kyle Cooper isn’t a computer scientist, but he does have something strongly in common with Don Knuth: he takes a driven, focused interest and becomes the best at it. On occasion, when Smashing Magazine has published lists of impressive motion graphics, Kyle Cooper gets called out in the comments, as in “You missed mentioning him!” I don’t think he gets enough credits (pun!), so here’s his due. Sure, Saul Bass brought love and life to cinematic type sequences and continues to inspire posters in his style from beyond the grave…
by jamacdonald … but in the present, Kyle Cooper rules with a diverse, deft touch. Learning from the late Paul Rand (who was like the Elvis of graphic design, sans impersonation), Cooper created work that stretches from the grimy, unnerving sleaze of Se7en to the neo-militarism of the Metal Gear Solid games. His work leads to many forum questions like, “Where can I get the font in that movie’s credits?” He’s even played a major role in revitalizing comic book movies with the Spider-Man titles, as detailed in this Wired article. Pop your eyes out with his 2006 demo reel:
So the next time you’re at the movies and being wowed at the beginning, look up who’s responsible, and it’s likely you’ll find Kyle Cooper or one of the many who have been influenced by his trendsetting ways, turning the intro tease into an art form all its own. As was the case with the cracktros that preceded Commodore 64 titles (an unlikely comparison), sometimes the appetizer is better than the entrée.
Cooper’s entry in the Monographics series is well worth the stare into the artist’s mind. 4. LilyPond: notation sensations Music notation is a special kind of typography of its own. Like the language of literal type, the classical “staff view” possesses its own breed of ligatures and accents. Much the same way that calligraphy often expresses the intent, even the “soul,” of the creator, handwritten music script conveys much of the composer’s temperament. To the untrained eye, notation can look the same: notes, slurs and pedal markings are all in plain sight. But like a golf pro following through, there’s a flow underpinning everything that happens.
by pfly That’s where LilyPond comes in. Similar to Metafont in the respect that it’s a blend of art and science, LilyPond helps create beautiful engravings. Think about how kerning on the computer makes digital typography flow better; LilyPond works on a similar principle for musical glyphs. It even has its own typographical features, which are readily apparent after the fact. LilyPond is among the latest in a long line of music notation software and certainly takes an original approach. I remember playing with the Music Construction Set by Electronic Arts (before it was a multi-national behemoth) in the ’80s on my Commodore 64, and that was a time when editing movies on your home computer was unthinkable. The democratic waves of technology continue to be dispersed, and open source has benefited from the contribution of LilyPond. Alas, like Metafont, LilyPond is highly technical: an input file resembles a programming language and isn’t as intuitive as putting pen to paper. However, it may be easier than you think. The degree of control it offers is astounding. But LilyPond’s true promise could lie in bridging the gap between ease of use and incredible depth, much the same way as WYSIWYG-style rich-text editors have promised since the dawn of selectable fonts on the computer. This is controversial for some but needs to be contended with. And writing of controversy… 5. Comic Sans: who’s laughing now? This is not a joke. But there is a valuable lesson herein, given all the design excellence we have featured here. Bear with me: many professional typographers loathe Comic Sans, which is, oddly enough, a fitting testament to its stand-out presence in a sea of look-alikes. Comic Sans is a curious cultural case that not only has spawned haters who vigorously oppose it, but paradoxically continues to live on with increased usage. From its origins, being plastered across the word bubbles of Microsoft Comic Chat, to more contemporary uses, such as the packaging of the top-selling game The Sims, Comic Sans has more lives than a cat! Can you spot the irony in this?
by Andreas_MB Its creator, Vincent Connare, is perfectly capable of creating marvelous typefaces, so what went wrong here? We shouldn’t lay the blame on Comic Sans itself, but rather on how it’s being used, much like a poorly sized screwdriver stripping a screw. After all, each typeface carries its own “signature,” which is why flourish-filled simulated handwriting is favored for wedding invitations and big block typeface adorns pro sports jerseys.
by mactiste Like generic clip art tastelessly resized and aliased (which is enough to make anyone who knows better grind their thumbs into their eyes) Comic Sans is often abused in inappropriate contexts. Poor font. Connare says: “There was no intention to include the font in other applications other than those designed for children when I designed Comic Sans. The inspiration came at the shock of seeing Times New Roman used in an inappropriate way.” Be sure to see the Comic Sans documentary, which is the intriguing antithesis to Helvetica:
I’m never one to withhold what the creator has to say, and now you know the rest of the story. Throughout these five tales, we’ve seen feats, fables and foibles. There are many more stories to be told, both those that lie undiscovered and wait for a voice to shine on them like a light, and those that will soon be in the making as a result of your creative energies. Related resources
Smashing Magazine’s Free Fonts Sexy, Bold and Experimental Typography Vintage and Retro Typography Showcase Behind the Design: 5 Stories of Great Inspiration
What amazing typography tales do you have to share? Tell us in the comments! About the author Torley Wong amplifies your awesome with the useful and fun. He also has an irrepressable passion for discovering the connections between seemingly unrelated things, and unfolding how they were invented. Enjoy his personality at Torley Lives. (al)
- Tags:
- inspiration
- typography
- Fonts
December 8 2008, 6:30am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/24/15-beautiful-high-quality-free-fonts/
Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to. In this selection we’re glad to present you Aller Sans, Mayberry Pro SemiBold, Quicksand, Agrafa Hairline, Sketch Rockwell, Megalopolis Extra and a couple of other high-quality free fonts. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts — the license can change from time to time.
Free Fonts Of March features Myndraine, Museo Sans as well as handwritten and grungy fonts. 40 Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design You can find over 80 more free fonts in our section Fonts.
15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts Aller Sans [ Specimen | License | Download ]Henrik Birkvig designed a beautiful sans-serif Aller Sans, sponsored by Danish publishing company Aller (hence the name). The typeface was designed as part of the Danish School of Media and Journalisms new CI and is now available for free use and download (via).
Mayberry Pro SemiBold (registration is required)AscenderFonts released the font Mayberry Pro Semi Bold available for free download. This font belongs to the Mayberry Pro family. This family is a humanist sans serif designed by Steve Matteson to provide optimal legibility on screen in applications ranging from User Interfaces to web pages. The registration is required to download the font.
Rally Character Set [ Specimen | Previews | Download ]Lukyan Turetsky released a character set of rally symbols. The font contains standard signs of control in rally, infographics rally icons, blanks for the design of logos and other graphics, symbols for signs legends (transcript) and other symbols and marks. OpenType, available for free download.
QuicksandQuicksand is a brilliant sans-serif font designed by Andrew Paglinawan and available for free download.
Agrafa Hairline (registration is required)“Agrafa is a technical but versatile display face that works well in both large and small sizes. Most of the glyphs are made from one continuous line and shows the constraints of bending a paperclip/wire.” Designed by Mugur Mihai. [ via ]
ConglomerfontConglomerfont is a free font created by Jay Hilgert (BittBox) and the design community from all over the world. Jay asked people to send individual letters to his inbox, and I coagulated the submissions into a single font, hence the name, Conglomerfont.
Sketch RockwellA sketchy hand-drawn script font, designed by Lukas Bischoff, available for free download for PC and Mac OS X. Free for personal use only.
Megalopolis Extra [ Specimen | EULA License ]Revamped version of the 2004 one. Now in OT with extended language support and OpenType features with alternates, ligatures, different styles of figures, etc. You can use it freely for all your personal and commercial work. [ via ]
SansationA modern sans-serif, designed by Bernd Montag and available for free download and usage. PC / Mac OS X.
Exljbris fonts updateJos Buivenga has recently updated his free fonts, partly available for free download. The improved Fertigo Pro, Anivers, Museo and Museo Sans have been recently re-released and are now available for free download.
Birra Stout (registration is required)Birra arose from years of compulsive doodling in pen and ink, and conjures the whimsy and syncopated contrast of novelty handlettering in the early 20th century. Birra Stout is a free font, made available by Darden Studio.
Miso [ Preview ]MISO is an architectural lettering font completed in 2006 by Mårten Nettelbladt. It’s available in three weights (light, regular, bold) in TrueType format for Windows.
AdventAndreas K. improved his typeface and made a new version availabe for free personal, non-commercial usage only.
Last Click High Heels TypefaceThis was a fun project overall because I got the chance to explore a diverse and massive collection of High-heeled shoes, which was the main inspiration for the typeface that I have created. Not available for download.
Sources and Resources
20 Beautiful Free Serif Fonts 21 Awesome Free FontsA beautiful selection of freely available fonts. 30 Most Curious And Interesting Dingbats
November 24 2008, 6:01am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
The Graphs: A Free Icon Set
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/03/the-graphs-a-free-icon-set/
Another day — another fresh freebie. Today we are glad to release The Graphs, a free icon set with 18 various graphs in the formats .png and .max (3D Studio Max). This set was designed by Goce Mitevski especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. Download the icon set for free! You can use the set for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. You can freely use it for both your private and commercial projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. The set may not be resold, sublicensed, rented, transferred or otherwise made available for use. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word.
preview (0.3 Mb) download the set (.zip, 7.1 Mb) download the sources (.zip, 3D Studio Max, 1.1 Mb)
Motivation behind the design As always, here are some insights from the designer himself: “In general the idea was to create a stock-like collection of widely usable graphs with a professional look and feel. The initial idea was to create a singe graph icon, which was then extended and “The Graphs” was born. During work on various corporate projects I often find myself in the need of simple graphs to show the success of my client (to graphically represent progress), and I don’t always have the time to make custom graphs. That’s why I created “The Graphs”. I needed a nest for graphs, so I made one. :) The project is extensible as well, since everyone can download the source files, re-render and modify the models regarding the personal needs.
The design took place in 3ds max and the rendering was done with Vray. No previous sketches were made, so the design process was more like a 3dsmax + Vray experiment of getting high-quality 3D graphs with very little effort and fast. Personal information: I’m a freelance designer from Macedonia. I work mainly as a web designer, but I’m a great Vray enthusiast. I love to illustrate. I love photography and realistic 3d animations. My current portfolio page is http://monsteer.deviantart.com/gallery/#Portfolio.” Thank you very much, Goce! We appreciate your efforts. Last But Not Least We are constantly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we may feature you in one of our upcoming posts. If you would like to release a free high-quality font, a Wordpress theme, Photoshop brushes, a Drupal theme, some wallpapers or an icon set, please contact us. We would like to support you (both financially and with the broad readership of Smashing Magazine).
November 3 2008, 2:20am | Comments »
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