Mark’s Notebook - Page 26

Probably more than you ever wanted to know, but it was fun rummaging through my old stuff to piece the story together.

The Making of Kandal

(Thanks, Brian!)

I saw the new Star Trek movie this last night and was thrilled to spot one of my fonts, Changeling, in a supporting role. Here are some examples from a couple of high resolution publicity stills for the movie:

Changeling was a redesign and expansion of an old film font from the seventies called China. I added more weights, more styles, and more characters, as well as modifying the design as I saw fit. One of the more noticeable things I changed was the “4”, which is how I know it’s Changeling that was used in the film.

What’s funny about all this has to do with my choice of the name “Changeling”. It contains all the letters in the name “China” (I added things to it, get it?). A “changeling” refers to something that comes back in a different form, and this was a font coming back in a different form. It’s also the title of an episode from the original Star Trek t.v. show, something I was aware of when I chose the name—the sci-fi connection made me like the name even more, because of the way the font looks. Finally, that particular Star Trek episode was the basis for the first Star Trek movie.

Needless to say, I was in several kinds of geek heaven last night.

Proxima Nova stars in a new animated short film by Brent Barson, sponsored by Veer: “F is for Fail” (and co-starring Adobe’s Arno Pro). The still from the film (above) sums up my reaction. Well done, Brent! (And thanks to Veer, too.)

I’m really honored to have my Lakeside and Filmotype Zanzibar among the 40 typefaces chosen in Typographica’s “Our Favorite Typefaces of 2008”. Thanks so much, Dyana and J.F.

I participate in this annual tradition from the other side of the fence as well. I chose Nick Shinn’s Modern Suite, which blew me away when I saw the specimen book for it at last year’s TypeCon in Buffalo.

This has been in the works for a while now. I released the current version of Anonymous in 2001, with a few tweaks and updates since, but nothing you could call a major new feature.

In fact, there have been numerous requests for features from users, and many of these have been incorporated into Anonymous Pro, such as:

• Bold and italics, making it a complete four-style family

• Expanded character set, covering most Latin-based languages, as well as Greek and Cyrillic

• Metrics adjusted to make it more similar in size to other fonts

• Several characters redesigned for better readability and clarity

• Many small improvements to the overall design of the characters

• Box-drawing characters—you never know when you might need them

I’m still in final testing, but I expect to release Anonymous Pro soon. [Update: Anonymous Pro is available now.] And, like the current version, it will be free. Here is a sneak peek:

The results of a survey on the meanings of the words typeface and font among both “type industry professionals” and graphic designers, conducted by Thomas Phinney. My opinions on the matter fall squarely with the “type industry professionals” for the most part.

(via Typophile.com.)