Typography is the study and process of typefaces; how to select, size, arrange, and use them in general. Traditionally, typography was the use of metal types with raised letterforms that were inked and then pressed onto paper. In modern terms, typography today also includes computer display and output.
#31492
The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint
I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.
Kawasaki, Guy. How to Change the World (2005). Articles>Presentations>Information Design>Typography
#20199
Using Photoshop's built-in features, you can easily create a simple looking 3D type effect in a few easy steps.
Kelby, Scott. Mac Design Magazine (2003). Design>Typography>Software>Adobe Photoshop
#20409
Accents and Accented Characters
Have you ever needed to set an accented character in copy but couldn’t find it on your keyboard? If these characters leave you feeling naïve, you’re not alone. Diacritic characters, as these accented letters are called, are essential to the proper pronunciation and meaning of many foreign words. When you come across an accented letter, don’t assume it can be eliminated without consequence, or you might end up misspelling a person’s name! Accent marks also turn up frequently in foreign-born words and phrases that have become part of common English usage, such as résumé, passé and tête-à-tête. Happily, diacritic characters can be accessed or created with most professional-quality fonts.
Strizver, Ilene. Upper and lowercase Magazine (2003). Design>Typography
#21746
Accessible Web Typography: An Introduction for Web Designers
Text is your flexible friend; it can be transformed into audio or braille; used to describe non-text elements; and be presented visually in an infinite number of sizes.
Byrne, Jim. Scotconnect.com (2003). Design>Typography>Web Design
#22388
Acrobat - TrueType-Schriften in PDF Sauber Darstellen
TrueType-Schriften erscheinen in der Standardeinstellung der Adobe-Software Acrobat 3 am Bildschirm immer nur stark gepixelt, während PostScript-Schriften sauber lesbar sind (das Problem konnte in Acrobat 4 bislang nicht beobachtet werden). Das muss nicht sein!
Transcom (2000). (German) Design>Typography>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#22391
Acrobat und Verwendung von PostScript-Schriften
Wir haben Probleme mit unseren PDFs, und zwar erscheint der Text bei einem Zoom von 100% auf dem Bildschirm verschwommen. Zoom von 150% ist ok, Ausdruck ebenfalls.
#13996
This forum is for the passionate. It’s for those who are crazy in love with type, absolutely hate the problems fonts can cause, have an uncontrollable need to learn more about typography, or an irresistible desire to share typographic opinions and stories. This is not a place for the typographically indifferent. This is the place to rant about dumb quotes (hey, I still see them in supposedly good design), find out why font foundries don’t want you to embed fonts in the files you send to service bureaus, discuss the merits of Emigre’s new font family, or ponder the value of hanging punctuation. It’s a place for criticism, observations and lively discourse. Come on in!
#21755
Many of the principles that the print typographer has learned and holds sacred, are no longer true when the medium is a neon sign, a television title sequence or a Web page. Text that is not printed on paper takes them into alien territory.
Gillespie, Joe. Digital Web Magazine (2001). Design>Typography>Online
#25168
Kenn Munk designs wonderfully different fonts and dingbats that allow the user to 'build' words, or in the case of dingbats - images. This obsesion is probably due to the hours and hours spent playing with LEGO bricks in his childhood. Shhhhh... be quiet!
Munk, Kenn. Design, Typography and Graphics (2004). Design>Typography
#20430
How do you tell one typeface from another? If you’re trying to distinguish Helvetica from Times Roman, the difference is obvious. In other cases, however–especially between text designs having similar characteristics–the differences can be subtle and difficult for the less–experienced eye to see. One important step in training your eye to notice the details that set one design apart from another is to examine the anatomy of the characters that make up our alphabet.
Strizver, Ilene. Upper and lowercase Magazine (2001). Design>Typography
#21912
A variety of technologies are evolving to help make type readable on the computer screen. Here's a report on anti-aliasing.
Tinkel, Kathleen. Adobe Magazine (1997). Design>Typography>Online
#20674
Antialiasing Examples from Real Applications 
Different graphical software applications have different abilities at antialiasing: some software is very good at it, while other software is not. Here are some examples for comparison.
IsoCalc. Design>Graphic Design>Typography>Technical Illustration
#20675
Antialiasing is a method of representing perfect, continuous vectors on imperfect, discontinuous display devices so that they look as perfect as possible.
IsoCalc. Design>Graphic Design>Typography>Technical Illustration
#19841
Appropriately using typefaces is critical to your document’s success. The opposite is conversely true. A poorly selected or implemented typeface can equal a document disaster. When selecting a typeface, technical communicators must consider a typeface’s legibility (how distinct, clear, and recognizable its letters are), readability (how easy it is to read in a text line), and personality (what feeling it conveys). Once selected, typefaces must be carefully used to enhance the document’s message. Typefaces must enhance—not distract from—your document.
Yoshida, Kathleen Burke. STC Proceedings (2000). Design>Typography
#27899
We call on the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance.
#22679
It doesn't matter how many hours of video and megabytes of graphics can be stuffed onto a silver platter, typefaces still serve an essential function that can't be duplicated by other means--transmitting complex intellectual and emotional messages in a very concise and precise way.
Will-Harris, Daniel. Typofile. Design>Typography>Fonts>Emotions
#21903
OpenType, a new font format and font-rasterization technology jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft, promises to make fonts more sophisticated and easier to use.
Larkin, James. Adobe Magazine (1997). Design>Typography>Standards
#20398
From a production standpoint, desktop typography is a vast improvement over phototypesetting. No more stinking chemistry or expensive dedicated systems! Also, the ability to fine tune, noodle, and tweak layouts is an immensely satisfying luxury, compared to the typographic systems of the '70s and '80s.
King, Liana. NALC (1997). Design>Typography>History
#27437
Brushed metal is always a cool effect to pull off in Photoshop. And after you’ve created your steel texture, what better place to use it than to produce beveled steel type?
Harris, Rich. Planet Photoshop (2006). Design>Graphic Design>Typography>Adobe Photoshop
#21179
Beyond the FONT Tag: Practical HTML Text Styling
Since its introduction, HTML's FONT tag has been the predominant means of specifying font size, face, and color on the Web. Use of FONT is unfortunate on many counts, not least of which for Web developers is the tedium and bloat of adding, e.g., '...' dozens or even hundreds of times to complex table-based pages. Modem users suffer too: often more than 20% of a typical commerce/portal site's weighty HTML code consists of FONT and its attributes. FONT is slow.
Fahrner, Todd. Cleverchimp (1997). Design>Web Design>Typography
#20940
OpenType is an awesome font format. Based on Unicode, and created by Microsoft and Adobe, it will inevitably become a universal standard—sooner or later.
Shinn, Nick. ShinnType (2002). Design>Typography>Standards
#22682
I like bit-mapped screen fonts. In fact, I prefer old-fashioned bit-mapped screen fonts to anything that ATM, TrueType, or Speedo can throw up on the screen. If we're expected to read documents on screen, we need better type than they can offer.
Will-Harris, Daniel. Typofile (1996). Design>Typography>Fonts>Online
#20953
It's not been easy for art directors and graphic designers to maintain a career amidst rapidly changing technology and design trends.
Shinn, Nick. ShinnType (2001). Careers>TC>Typography>Graphic Design
#20448
One of the lessons I learned at my mother’s knee was that you have to know the rules in order to break them properly. (Mother was a graphic designer.) The rules that are worth breaking are the ones you understand the purpose of – maybe you even agree with that purpose in general. There are plenty of stupid rules for the Web, rules that were put there by people who extrapolated too soon from too small a set of data. Those rules are no fun to break, kind of like removing a tag that says 'Do not remove under penalty of law' from a sofa cushion. We won’t bother with those rules today. Let’s go after the rules worth our time and effort. Given that, here’s my list of Web rules I’d most like to see broken, but only if they’re broken well.
Gunn, Eileen. Upper and lowercase Magazine (1998). Design>Typography>Web Design
#25960
Putting type on a path is not a new concept. However, Adobe InDesign CS adds a new twist to it. Not only can you put type on a path, but you can also link from path to path to have one continuous text flow. In this tutorial we’ll use this technique to replicate Apple’s new AirPort Express ad.
White, Terry. Layers Magazine (2005). Design>Typography>Software>Adobe InDesign
