Readable Web

A Fond Goodbye To Donna Summer

Richard Fink — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:52:28 +0000

A lot of people looked down their noses at the Queen of Disco because, well, because she sang disco. But they secretly dug Donna anyway. You could tell.

Great tunes. Great beat. And a great voice for it. The seventies wouldn’t have been “The Seventies” without Donna Summer. (Alright, add a sprinkle of Barry Gibb, and let’s call it a decade.)

The last dance sucks but it can also soar.
RIP, Donna. Your voice became an emblem. And high art or low, that takes a great artist.

[A Side Note On Snobbery]

After writing this post as it appears above, it became apparent that those who “looked down their noses” at Donna Summer obviously included many of the high and mighty in the music business. Having lived through the Zeitgeist of that time, I can sum up the attitude for you: Disco is trivial. It’s shallow, formulaic dance-fad stuff – a kind of musical soft-core porn lacking in redeeming social value. Disco was seen as music so commercial in nature it was almost dirty. If you liked it, and you probably did, it was a guilty pleasure you kept to yourself.

And it looks like those attitudes lived on. As was reported by Jon Pareles in the NYTimes:

Jon Landau, the chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, issued a statement — an unusual one in which he said it was unfortunate that the hall had never inducted her:
“There is absolutely no doubt that the extraordinary Donna Summer belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Mr. Landau wrote. “Regrettably, despite being nominated on a number of occasions, our voting group has failed to recognize her — an error I can only hope is finally and permanently rectified next year.”

Harrumph. Damn right. And, by the way, yes you could dance, heck, you wanted to dance, to Donna Summer’s records but the songs also had substance. They said things. You can’t sell as many records as Donna Summer sold with nothing but fluff.

No related posts.

In Web Design, The Narrow Column Is King

Richard Fink — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:01:29 +0000

Get used to it. Learn to live with it. Make it work for you.

Check this out: Re-Thinking The Mobile Web
It takes a good twenty minutes to get through but it’s worth it. Even if you are already familiar with the pitfalls of trying to accommodate all the different screen sizes out there. Maybe especially if you’re already familiar with the pitfalls.

My friend Jerry Maddox – Professor of Art and teacher of New Media Design at Penn State is totally on the right track. He’s obsessed with finding the absolute minimal one-column layout with as little CSS as possible. Something that can be committed completely to memory, preferably. Here’s the latest iteration featuring the same text and CSS using each of 5 free open-source web fonts of high visual quality.

A Free RasterBRIDGE® Web Font: Puffbuddy Light

Richard Fink — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:03:46 +0000

What you see above is a screen shot taken on Windows XP.
It looks smooth and clean, right?
Unlike most so-called ‘web fonts’, all RasterBRIDGE® Web Fonts are specially prepared to look as good in Windows as they do on the Mac,
and on the iPad,
and on the iPhone,
and on the Kindle Fire, and so on and so forth.
Before we ship, we test the font in a wide variety of browsers on all major platforms and devices.

As a RasterBRIDGE® Web Font, Puffbuddy Light will remain balloony, buoyant, and jolly in any browser, on any platform.
Download it here and spread the word. Enjoy.

What’s The Font Got?

Puffbuddy Light features the HTML Basics+ Character Set. That means you get all the important HTML character entities, a full complement of spacing characters and you’re covered for the following languages:

• English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Irish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish.

RasterBRIDGE® Web Fonts Stay Small and Load Fast

RasterBRIDGE® Web Fonts are specially compressed to stay small and load fast. The Puffbuddy Light TTF font file weighs in at only 41 kb, the Woff at 28kb, and the EOT at 26kb. A whole font for the size of a small image!
And did we mention that, for the “price” of those 28 kilobytes compressed, the HTML Basics+ Character Set also covers these languages, too:

Basque, Albanian, Gaelic (Irish), Gaelic (Manx), Gaelic (Scottish), Luxembourgish, Afrikaans, Haitian_Creole, Indonesian, Javanese, Estonian, Fijian, Filipino/Tagalog, Afar, Bislama, Breton, Chamorro, Comorian, Faroese, Gilbertiese/Kiribati, Kinyanwanda, Kirundi, Luba/Ciluba/Kasai, Malagasy, Malay, Marquesan, Ndebele, Oromo, Palauan/Belauan, Quechua, Romansh, Sango, Sesotho, Setswana/Sitswa, Seychellois_Creole, SiSwati/Swati/Swazi, Somali, Sotho, Swahili, Tetum, Tok_Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Tuvaluan, Uzbek/Usbek, Walloon, Xhosa, and Zulu.

¡WOW!
Ett stort värde. Ein großer Wert. A mikils virði. Yon gwo valè. Një vlerë e madhe.

The Inclusionists

Richard Fink — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 04:10:25 +0000

There is a bit of a kerfuffle going on in the world of web standards regarding the use of vendor specific prefixes for CSS properties. There’s an article on AListApart about it that every web developer or anybody in “e-publishing”, for that matter, should read.

A Comment From A Fellow Inclusionist

One commenter had this to say:

“What do you expect when the same evangelists that promote standards, promote no-portfolio CSS “geniuses” that do nothing but create experimental stuff like pink gradient goodies signing ‘sorry, didn’t have time to test in FF or IE’.
If these people had only one past work experience in a normal enterprise or a governmental institution, they’d understand what cross-browser and accessible really means and how we’re busting our behinds everyday making sure things work for everybody.”

Philosophically, this is where I stand, too. (Minus the slightly, maybe, too misconstruably homophobic and/or chauvinist “pink gradients”. Purple would have done just fine.)
Alright, go ahead, call me an HTML Inclusionist, I don’t care.

Me in my web dev days at New York Transit, sans beard and looking like Jimmy Hoffa just before the hit.

I cut my eyeteeth in web development at a governmental institution: The New York City Transit Authority. In my experience, if you work for a company with a web site facing outside (not an intranet), a site where actual customers come, you better get it working acceptably across the browser spectrum or you will get your head handed to you. Or a pink slip. Or both.

And rightfully so. Welcome to the real world.

When The World Shifts Beneath Your Feet

Richard Fink — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:19:03 +0000

Garrick Van Buren, my taskmaster at Kernest/Konstellations, sent me over a link to an article about how different publishers are dealing with DRM and, just as importantly, the Walmart of online publishing – Amazon.
Cutting Their Own Throats on Charlie Stross’s blog.

Uh, there seems to be a notion floating around that somehow there’s something people in the publishing biz can do to “avert the evil decree”.
(To grab an apt phrase from Jewish liturgy.)
But, like drowning in a tsunami, or any other deluge of “Biblical” proportion, there is no averting – or avoiding – the devaluation of anything that can be converted to bits and bytes.

Back in mid January, I wrote that this year already “felt” different. And it’s been. And today I’ve been musing about the people in publishing who are going to lose their jobs. Yes. They – maybe you – are going to lose your job. And no purchasing of an act of Congress like SOPA or an outfoxing of Amazon is going to prevent this.

“Teach Me To Dance, Will You, Zorba?”

“There are people who fall hard and do not find their feet for a long time, if ever — a condition some psychiatrists call complicated grief. And the depth of the economic collapse has unceremoniously stripped thousands of far more than money: reputations have reversed; friendships have turned sour; families have fractured.”

In reality we are all like beggars selling apples or pencils on a street corner. But that reality gets masked over time and people feel safe and secure. The beggars huddle for warmth within things called “industries”. After awhile, the idea that people will continue to prefer buying from “us” over the other beggars begins to look and feel like a law of nature. Life can be good, even for a beggar.

I used to work in apparel manufacturing in the United States – an industry that crumpled to nothing in the face of lower-priced foreign imports. We knew that no matter how loudly we begged, no one was going to buy from us any more.
The auto workers who used to populate Detroit know all about this, too.

When the market says to you: “We can’t pay you anymore for what you do”, you move on.

But when the world shifts beneath your feet like that, don’t just stand around flat-footed, dammit. Instead, with a fresh start, focus on the possibilities and ask Zorba to teach you how to dance. If you’re lucky, he’ll oblige.

Practical Font Design, Third Edition

Richard Fink — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:29:12 +0000

Practical Font Design
3rd Edition

In Digital Publishing you need to co-ordinate your efforts with many people. Web designers, developers, server techs – the list goes on and on – and the more you know about how those people go about their work, the better off you will be.

With fonts, the “collaboration” might take the form of a purchase, or a free download, or just a link to the font in your HTML. But there is a font-maker somewhere on the other end of that transaction. And the more you know about how that font came to be, the better off you’ll be. And unlike a lot of things in today’s fast-paced environment – where it’s hard to separate the side-shows from the main attractions – a knowledge of fonts and how they’re made won’t be obsolete in just a few years. Changes in font technology come at a snail’s pace, and what changes do come, are incremental. So what you learn about fonts will pay dividends for as long as you live. Really.

Have A “Practical” Christmas

David Bergsland’s Practical Font Design is now in its Third Edition. It’s greatly improved in many, many ways from the Second Edition. (Bergsland not only listens to reader feedback, but he acts on it, too.) It’s still the only book of its kind, and it does a simple thing: it tells you, in a friendly and to-the-point manner, how one experienced font designer and teacher – David Bergsland – goes about his work. It’s a must-buy for font designers. It’s a should-buy for any web designer, graphic designer, or anybody involved with digital publishing.
Not much interested in the technical details? – It’s worth the price just for the “history of type” section and as a flip-through reference. If you’ve ever used Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw, you already know more than you necessarily need. And a demo download of FontLab Studio – the professional level font editor referenced in the book – is available for Mac and Windows free.

Here’s a little piece to give you an idea of the tone:

“My plan is to go through my decision making process so you can do the same as you develop your fonts. There is no right or wrong here. All you have to guide you in the process is your personal sense of style – what’s right and wrong.”

Practical Font Design, The Links:

Amazon Print and Kindle

Lulu PDF

Lulu Paperback

David Bergsland sells his fonts at:

Hackberry-Fonts

And blogs here, dispensing technical tips and helpful font-making tools:

Hackberry-Fonts Blog

Extensis Brings Google Web Fonts Straight Into Photoshop

Richard Fink — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:42:10 +0000

Extensis, the company behind the WebINK web font service, today announced a plug-in that brings Google Web Fonts straight into Photoshop.

Free And Open-Source Fonts Served Alongside The Proprietary, In A Surprising Twist

Since launching the WebINK web font service, Extensis has concentrated on building a library of fonts drawn from the proprietary type community, building on long-standing relationships developed through Extensis’ other font and design products: Suitcase Fusion (a desktop font manager) and Universal Type Server (a server-based font library and font license manager for workgroups).
But they haven’t left it at just being another service operating in the shadow of (now Adobe) Typekit – as services like Fontdeck, WebType, and others have done. From day one, I’ve personally seen them strive to find new ways to meet the needs of web designers with innovative software tools that, in combination with their hosting service, make the use of a font service – as opposed to shopping the web for suitable fonts and then self-hosting – a much easier and useful proposition. They’ve continuously shown up at the major web conferences to promote, of course, but also to watch and learn and listen. What’s sets them apart is that they turn around and act on that knowledge in creative ways.

Riding Piggy Back On Google’s Web Font Initiative

[A developing story... more analysis, riding in on piggy-back, is on the way...]

Amazon Moves To HTML5/CSS3 For New Kindle, Leaves Mobi Format Behind

Richard Fink — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:50:10 +0000

Some folks I know are waiting for E-Pub to magically arrive and provide a comfy transition from print to screen. But anybody who’s looked into that closely knows it’s a fairy tale.

Ain’t gonna happen, and here’s the latest nail in the E-pub coffin:

Kindle Format 8

The List of Features Includes @Font-Face

Here’s a list of supported features on the way:
List of supported HTML tags and CSS elements

(Note to Amazon: It’s HTML Elements (but I’ll accept “tags”) but definitely not “CSS elements” CSS Properties, it is.)

Steve Jobs Role In Typography By Computer

Richard Fink — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:21:37 +0000

A few weeks ago, my eye doctor said to me, “I only know of two people who know anything about fonts, you and Steve Jobs.” Seemed Dr. Patel was re-doing his web site and had questions about the qualities of Trebuchet MS. But the line about Jobs raised an eyebrow, naturally, and it was as I suspected – Dr. Patel had read Jobs’ commencement address to the Stanford graduating class of 2005, the relevant portion of which follows:

“Reed College [where Steve Jobs enrolled for awhile] at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

Setting The Record Straight

A lot of people know that Benjamin Franklin did research on electricity. The silhouette of Franklin in a lightning storm with his kite flying and key dangling is emblazoned on the average American’s brain: the rugged individualist in pursuit of a dream, no matter the danger. But what almost nobody knows is that Franklin’s work on electricity was as a part of a team of co-equals. And that his signature was only one of several others’ that appeared upon publication of that work. But Franklin had the fame and got the credit. Sound familiar? History is a single-sentence thing.

A lone eagle, as an icon, works great. A flock of geese, not so much.

FinksLinks: Pre-Approved For Your Reading Pleasure

Here’s a couple of articles to help put it all in perspective:

The Impact of Steve Jobs on Typography

Steve Jobs and Type: Connecting the Dots

And here, on Typophile.com, a bit of additional insight, debate, and perhaps a few ruffled feathers: Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Adobe Announces Acquisition Of Typekit

Richard Fink — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:43:00 +0000

It’s fair to say that those close to the development of Web Fonts expected Typekit to be acquired by somebody. Well, today somebody did.

Adobe Buys Phonegap And Typekit for Better Web Tools

The Typekit Blog Announcement

And Adobe’s press release: Adobe Acquires Web Typography Innovator Typekit

A good thing? A bad thing? An inconsequential thing? Who knows?