pixelspread

Summer

Matt McInerney — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:21:18 GMT

Summer has begun and I’ve realized I haven’t made a post in a long time. Over a month I believe it’s been. But I’ll tell you why. I have good reason I promise…

First of all, if you’ve been here before you probably know that I run a clothing company called Turn Nocturnal. Well, what started from one shirt about beards has turned into multiple designs and orders from all over the world. We’ve now got 9 products on the store, a lot geared towards fellow design nerds. So check those out

Secondly, I’ve been working on WuChess.com. WuChess is a collaboration between RZA of the Wu-Tang clan and Chesspark to create an online chess community for fans of hip hop. If that sounds a little confusing, check out WuChess.com and take a tour. I promise it makes sense after a little exploration. Also google Hip Hop Chess Federation to learn more about how Hip Hop and Chess work together.

And as always, I’ve been doing a lot of freelance work. One project I was very happy to see launch is Hairburners. It’s a social network for hair stylists that I recently redesigned, logo and everything, and I think it ended up looking pretty nice.

A Brief Update

Matt McInerney — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:58:48 GMT

It’s been a little while since the last post. Life has been incredibly busy. That’s a good thing though. Design, design, design. That’s how I like it. Since my last post: Turn Nocturnal has released a new shirt. WuChess was announced and I’m in the process of designing it. I’m also working on two entirely new web apps, both revolving around quick, easy, simple communication.

In other news, I’ve gotten a chance to play with the new VIRB beta. It’s gorgeous. Go sign up and hope you get in. Jonathan Hoefler wrote a wonderful post about the Ampersand. I was excited to get my name mentioned in it. If you’re following the links on the left, you’ve already seen it. That will stay updated with great design and typography news if you’d like to subscribe. And I just noticed that my List Based Calendar was featured on Smashing Magazine’s Best of April post.

I’ll probably be updating the portfolio with some new work soon and there’s a lot more in store for Turn Nocturnal in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

The Freebies Section

Matt McInerney — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:58:10 GMT

After releasing so many tumblr themes, fonts, and icons recently, I’ve decided to consolidate them all into a section called Freebies. I’d say it’s pretty self explanatory. You can click the new link at the top left or right here and go download some free stuff. I’ll continue to add to it as time goes on. You may not find older tumblr themes I’ve created in there because they were created for older versions of tumblr, and don’t support all the new features.

If you think I’ve missed anything, something I’ve written about in the blog or I’ve posted on tumbl.us, feel free to drop a link in the comments. Hope you enjoy.

Serifs on the Web

Matt McInerney — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:56:28 GMT

It’s been a little while since I’ve uploaded to the /demo folder, but the more and more I see beautiful serif type around the web, the more and more I feel like I have to play with it. And if you haven’t seen any beautiful serif web typography recently, check out Seed Conference or Twisted Intellect.

But here’s my little serif demo. My idea is this: If you can make a flexible layout, you’ve always got Georgia or Times New Roman to fall back on. Why not try some new Serifs? The problem of course is that most PCs aren’t going to have fonts like Baskerville or Garamond installed, but that’s why I say make a flexible layout. Seed Conference proves that Times New Roman can still be beautiful, so if your layout can work with different letter widths and heights, try something for the folks (Mac users…) that have some beautiful fonts installed. On the demo, I’ve set font-family to font-family:"Hoefler Text",Baskerville,Garamond,Times New Roman;. Hoefler Text of course from the talented Jonathan Hoefler. So if you have a site that warrants it, try something nice for the folks that are able to appreciate it, and just double check that it still looks good for anyone else that can’t. I know it caused a bit of a stir on JeffCroft.com, but I think the issue of type on the web is far from resolved.

More Alphabets

Matt McInerney — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:58:30 GMT

I can’t promise that this will be my last post about playing with Crouwel’s New Alphabet, but atleast it’s a step towards that. I obviously I have been playing with his designs for a few days now, and I’ve been thinking about what makes them work, what makes them legible, and what makes them illegible. There is also a clear concept and structure behind each letterform. They were designed to work very well within a dot matrix system, so 90 and 45 degree angles are key for every piece of the typeface design. This enables each letterform to work at any size and not lose it’s shape. This is something I’ve been trying to stick to when recreating and exploring these designs.

With that said, I’ve decided the next step is to create a more legible font out of New Alphabet. When I say that I mean use these same principles to create a font that more closely resembles the latin alphabet that we all use everyday. From that I’ve reached the Pentagrid Alphabet. Based on a 5×5 grid with ascenders and descenders, this what I’ve arrived at.

Pentagrid Alphabet

New Alphabet

Matt McInerney — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:43:07 GMT

When I saw the set up of FontStruct for first time, I immediately thought of Wim Crouwel’s New Alphabet designs, which I made reference to in my last post. And since I’ve been playing with FontStruct all day, I figured that’d be a fun one to try and recreate. I tried to stick to the very closely to his original letterforms, and of course the concept and strictness of the 90 and 45 degree angles for all strokes. It only has one case, so it will work as uppercase letters and numbers. I might copy and paste all the letters into the lowercase too at some point. If you want to play around with it, go download it . Maybe you’ll come up with a cool futuristic looking album cover)

New Alphabet and a quick preview:

Edit: New Alphabet quickly became a Top Pick picked by the FontStruct staff!

FontStruct

Matt McInerney — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:06:02 GMT

I just thought I needed to share this new service from FontShop that I’ve been playing with a lot recently. It’s called FontStruct and if you have any interest in typography and/or type design I’d say it’s time to check this out. I’ll preface by saying that if you’re trying to design the next Helvetica, you’ll quickly hit the ceiling on what FontStruct can do, but for experimentation and basic letterform construction, it is a lot of fun, and pretty straight forward.

I’ve spent some time today putting together my own pixel font. Reminds me of the days when K10K was what web designers strived for. But anyway, I’m calling it Neuescreen. I had Wim Crouwel’s new alphabet in mind when constructing the lowercase letterforms. You can go download it and have fun with it. I’ll probably give it a few more edits and hopefully make a poster/type specimen with it.

Anyway, here are some previews of Neuescreen:

Note: I’m finding that this font is working best in Photoshop with Anti-Aliasing set to Crisp at 8pt. Kerning gets a bit off with Anti-Aliasing set to None.