Mark Simonson's Notebook - Page 27

MyFonts has been doing interviews of typeface designers for the last year or two in their Creative Characters series. Yesterday, they posted one featuring yours truly.

AIGA New Orleans has posted a really cool video on Vimeo: A slide show from 1962 created by the Art Directors and Designers Association of New Orleans (now an AIGA New Orleans). The pace is almost painfully slow by today’s standards, but patience yields a fascinating glimpse into the design world of the early 1960s.

Several things caught my eye as I watched it, including two Filmotype typefaces I recently revived: Ginger (at 4:43) and Glenlake (at 14:16). But I did a double take, and then a triple take when I saw this slide (at 30:52):

First of all, it looks like a White Stripes CD cover.

Second, the gizmo in the guy’s hand is a Scaleograph, an aid for sizing photos and art that was commonplace before computers made their way into design studios.

Third, according to the narrator, the guy in the photo, New Orleans designer Bob Brandt, invented it.

I still have one of these once handy gizmos hanging in my office for sentimental reasons. Sure enough, in small print it says: MFD. BY THE BRANDT CORP., NEW ORLEANS, LA.

Cool.

In 2003, I released my interpretation of China, an old VGC face, which I called Changeling. I redesigned many of the characters for more even type color. I also added lowercase-style variants to nearly all the uppercase forms, for endless “unicase” combinations, alternate forward- and back-slanting characters for A, M, V, and W, and a more complete character set. I spaced it to emulate the “tight, but not touching” style of spacing popular in the ’70s. Finally, I created four new styles—Light, Regular, Stencil, and Inline.

Changeling Neo (2008) builds on this with even more alternate characters (including a few from VGC China I had previously left out), extensive language support, and lots of improvements in fit and finish. Changeling Neo is available exclusively in the OpenType format. Alternate characters are accessed using OpenType Stylistic Alternates and Stylistic Sets features. Standard characters that were “hijacked” in Changeling (to make room for alternate characters) have been reinstated. Changeling Neo also includes support for fractions, superscript and subscript, as well as tabular figures.

For more information, I’ve made two PDFs you can download:

Changeling Neo Specimen

Changeling Neo User Guide

Changeling Neo is available now.

Long-time friend and colleague Eric Hanson has a blog now (ER-H Blog). Eric is an illustrator and writer. I used to hire him quite a lot to do spot illustrations back in my art director days. He just published a wonderful book called A Book Of Ages this last Fall.

Refrigerator dates back to 1988 as one of my earliest PostScript typefaces. The concept was very simple: A blocky, condensed sans serif with rigidly geometric forms. I was inspired partly by Neville Brody’s Industria, but very quickly it veered toward more of a mid-20th century vernacular appearance. It wasn’t based on anything specific. Rather, it seemed to come from memories of block-style lettering from when I was young.

Refrigerator Deluxe (2008) extends the family from a specific vernacular style to an anthology of vernacular styles through the extensive use of alternate characters, nearly doubling the character count. (The alternate characters are accessed either through OpenType Stylistic Sets or the Glyph palette, depending on your software application). These range from squared off, closed shapes, with a minimum of angled strokes, to open, stylized shapes with more of an Art Deco feel. Using different combinations of these alternates, Refrigerator Deluxe can take on an endless variety of appearances from basic block to high style.

Also new in Refrigerator Deluxe is the addition of a fourth weight (Regular), improvements in many small details, like spacing, kerning, hinting (for better on-screen display), character design refinements, extensive language support (most Western and Central European Latin-based languages), fractions, case-sensitive forms, and lots of “f” and “t” ligatures.

For more information, I’ve made two PDFs you can download:

Refrigerator Deluxe Specimen

Refrigerator Deluxe User Guide

At first glance, I thought it said “R & Nails” with some sort of weird ampersand, but a second look reveals that it actually says “Red Nails.”

I wouldn’t recommend hiring a graphic designer to do a manicure, either.

Seen in Saint Paul, Minnesota on March 22, 2008.