beemo | TEXT

Who you callin' a Font-face?

Brian — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:58:05 GMT

When I set up a comp for a website in Photoshop, many times I can spend hours figuring out which pixel goes where and what color it is. And since I drank the web standards/semantic web Kool-Aid, I’ve tried to keep the “text as image” scenario to an absolute minimum. So, while I’m in Photoshop lining everything up, I always seem to end up creating the big content box of greek text. What font should I use for the body copy? It usually ends up being Arial or Times New Roman. As web designers, we’re able to select our 3 or so favorite fonts for a certain class and hope for the best. My favorite thing is the “serif or sans-serif” declaration, which to me seems like a shot in the dark since people can change this preference in their browser. Essentially, outside of Arial and Times New Roman web typography has been just that—a crap shoot.

Not ever person realizes that websites are designed and built by people who are not necessarily designers (or builders for that matter). So, this is sort of a good thing to constrain font usage on the web. Having a limited amount of fonts to choose from creates a usability construct in that people on the internet get used to seeing Arial or Times New Roman, so anything outside of that throws them for a loop.

A colleague of mine once cringed at the possibility of selecting body copy fonts for a client as it would add another layer of complication in producing a site. I can understand this, though it strikes me as a bit lazy for a designer to disregard something as vital as the typeface of the majority of the content. It’s hard to imagine a book designer only being offered 2 fonts for the body text, isn’t it?

Enter the font-face descriptor from 1997 —that really worked out great, ugh. I can’t remember which browser supported this or didn’t, but I do know that it didn’t gain any traction at all and we all kept seeing the same ol’ fonts.

Twelve years later, I think the fire under people’s collective asses are being lit as Safari and Firefox have embraced “new” ideas in web design, including embedding fonts in websites. Of course, this means designers will end up waiting a few years for Microsoft’s IE to catch up, then another few more years for grandma’s to update their web browser—but hey, I’m not complaining.

There are a few potentially large repercussions to all this font-face business. We could potentially have to interact with ugly fonts and/or font treatments. Also, I’m no performance analyst but I wonder how embedding a font or twelve million will slow down me hitting a website.

One of the interesting areas though is licensing typefaces. Right now, designers are limited in the legal sense to free fonts. The idea of “you get what you pay for” typically applies. When I think of free fonts out there on the internet, I always think of the ACDC or Purple Rain fonts which are purely decorative. I’m unaware of any free web fonts out there that are readable in terms of using it for body copy.

In my mind, this opens up the possibilities on two fronts. The first being foundries being able to license fonts for specific usage online, hence increasing their revenue. The other possibility is for type designers to tackle readability issues regarding web typography. So, we might be seeing some really interesting new fonts in webpages! At the very least, this whole font-face thing might stir up the typographer/webdesigner debates in after-work cocktail parties.

By the way, this is set in CA BND by Cape Arcona. While it’s really nice headline font, I wouldn’t want to read someone’s blog using this face.

tags: css, typography, web design, web standards

Playing for change

Brian — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:04:18 GMT

Chanda Mama from Playing For Change.

This Song Around The World is a folk tune from Chennai, India. We started the track in New Orleans and added musicians from the across the globe before finally delivering it the people of it’s origin. We ended up in Chennai recording and filming the vocals from the Oneness Choir. The track has a feeling of perseverance and joy and features vocalists from four continents.

Nice collaboration of well-known and relatively unknown artists from several different countries making music. On one level, the collaboration itself is inspiring. On a more basic level for me, the music is just good. Check them out, watch the videos, buy the album, etc. at Playing For Change.

tags: activism, music

CSS button craze

Brian — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:14:15 GMT

I’ve been trolling the internet looking for what’s new with CSS 3. One of the things I’m really looking forward to is making really nice buttons without opening Photoshop. Take a gander at these two buttons above. Rounded corners, drop shadow, and background gradient—and no images whatsoever—hot!

Obviously, not all browsers have adopted CSS 3 as of yet. As far as I can tell, Safari is in the lead in terms of early adoption.

Firefox 3.0.9 No gradient, no button drop shadow, no text shadow, but rounded corners look good!
Camino 1.6.7 No gradient, no button drop shadow, no text shadow, rounded corners look horrible.
Opera 9.6.4 No gradient, no button drop shadow, renders text shadows, no rounded corners.
IE No idea, but I’ll bet it looks busted up.

Here’s a screenshot from Safari 4:

tags: code, css

Mingus Day

Brian — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:48:44 GMT

Happy 86th birthday Chaz!

tags: birth and death, jazz, music, new york city, nyc

Aterciopelados anticipation

Brian — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:23:27 GMT

I absolutely cannot wait to see Aterciopelados play this Saturday!

tags: music, new york city

Words, a mathematical interpretation

Brian — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:21:58 GMT

Craig Damrauer presents interesting bits of text as mathematical equations. As well as other things.

tags: art, funny, visualization

The paper clip, re-designed [2]

Brian — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:42:05 GMT

It has always been my dream to design something that’s overwhelmingly simple, accessible (cost is cheap), and globally accepted—like the paperclip. At any rate, I was happy to see the Skrepkus paper clip this morning. Fantastic!

tags: product design

300-horsepower paintbrush

Brian — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:38:18 GMT

This work, conceived by artist Robin Rhode, will be on display at Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall between 25 March to 6 April.

tags: advertising, art, bmw, car

Saint Patrick and Pantone® 347

Brian — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:00:45 GMT

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

tags: green, holiday

Images by Getty

Brian — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:28:55 GMT

If you’ve ever scouted out stock photography, there’s a 99% chance you have a Getty account in which to find the perfect photo to please your boss. I have always had a love/hate relationship with image houses in general. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a place for stock photography as well as sites that sell the work. However, I was shocked to read that Getty makes more money off an image than the actual photographer does. And now, apparently, Getty is licensing exclusive rights to certain Flickr photographs. What the hell?! Flickr is a great resource for creative types as-is, why wouldn’t you just contact a photographer directly and negotiate usage?

I realize that “crowdsourcing” is now an official water-cooler buzzword, but who plans on defending photographers (and illustrators) while image houses continue to run the show?

tags: flickr, getty, photography

Andrew Holder

Brian — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:33:00 GMT

Fantastic illustrations—attention to textures and muted colors—loved it! Check it here.

tags: illustration

Book Surgeon

Brian — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:55:17 GMT

Brian Dettmer is a unique craftsman. He slices up books for the sake of art. And a damn fine craftsman he is!

tags: art, book, flickr

Typocalypse

Brian — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:43:22 GMT

Dutchman Lars Willem Veldkampf tells us what certain famous typefaces are trying to say via Typocalypse well as trains our brain. Nice!

Also, check his portfolio.

tags: flickr, netherlands, typography

Resurrecting Polaroid's instant film

Brian — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:48:02 GMT

An amazing—or should I say amazingly qualified—team have acquired a functioning instant film production facility in the Netherlands and are hoping to keep the “insta-foto-dream” alive. My hat’s off to them! They could use our support too, so let’s try to give them a hand—more at the-impossible-project.com.

tags: business, netherlands, polaroid

Adobe UI gripes

Brian — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:17:11 GMT

I’m a huge fan of a unified UI, specifically with OSX. Actually, let me put it a different way—it’s an enormous “turn off” to use an application that doesn’t look and feel like it belongs on my operating system. Public enemy #1 is Adobe’s Creative Suite. There are 1001 things about how the collective user interfaces are riddled with poor design. I’ve often thought of compiling a list myself, but luckily someone else has accepted the challenge. Lots of gripes with an assortment of accompanying four-letter words can be found here. Keep up the good work Adobe!

tags: adobe, ui

Augmented Reality

Brian — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:43:50 GMT

Wow, looks pretty fun. Here’s a few more examples:

The GE Smartgrid piece looks the best by a long shop. Along with the amazing 3d modeling, you can blow the windmills (your webcam microphone picks that up) and apparently the sound gets louder the closer you get to the webcam. Really interesting and ACTUALLY interactive!

tags: ads

12:01

Brian — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:25:25 GMT

What a fantastic blog post from the new White House site.

tags: politics

An Archive of Book Cover Designs and Designers [1]

Brian — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:43:13 GMT

Wow! Look at THIS amazing collection of book covers!

tags: archive, book cover, catalog

Finding a clean toilet in NYC [1]

Brian — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:48:35 GMT

Diaroogle is the premier toilet search engine. At least in Manhattan, SFCA, and London—where a nice, clean toilet is definitely a sought after item. Seems a little silly, but trust me, this site could save your life (or at least your $200 designer jeans).

tags: google maps, mobile, nyc, toilet, webapps

Adobe Illustrator & green crop lines [2]

Brian — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:50:43 GMT

Sick of those green lines in your Adobe Illustrator documents? Hit SHIFT + O (letter O, not zero) and delete them.

This has been plaguing me for months. I finally got off my ass and figured out how to get rid of those annoying green lines. Now, I’m feeling better and I hope you do too.

tags: adobe, how to, illustrator, software, tips