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.

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.

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.

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.

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 and a quick preview:

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

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.