Think you know fonts?

If you think you’re up for a challenge, click over to The Rather Difficult Font Game. I thought I knew my fonts but only scored a measly 26 out of 34. I now have to return my font merit badge to the proper authorities.

via Daring Fireball

Of Fawnt and dafont

via Daring Fireball (from a couple of weeks ago)

There was I time when I was crazy for fonts. I would collect and pore over the typeface catalogs from Adobe, Monotype, ITC, and Emigre and dream of the day when I would own every font in the world.

Nowadays, with everyone and their uncle (or aunt) creating fonts I’ve given up on my plans of world font domination. There’s also the fact that owning every commercially-available font would be prohibitively expensive and having zillions of fonts loaded on my computer would cause Adobe apps to take eight hours to open (Microsoft Word could take up to three weeks to launch).

But, for those of you still clinging to your font fetishes, here are a couple of sites to enable your addiction:

Fawnt.com

Fawnt is a font resource for designers, developers, and anyone that appreciates the web's highest quality fonts

dafont.com

Welcome. Here you can download fonts to use in your documents, create titles or logos.

I’ve perused both sites and have resisted the urge to download all the free fonts. I can just look at them and appreciate them. Yeah.

Well, maybe I’ll just try one.

Dr. Copperplate and Mr. Gothic

via Daring Fireball

Like many of us (I hope), I look back on much of my early graphic design—or, to tell the truth, desktop publishing (gasp!)—career with varying degrees of sheepishness and downright embarrassment. My greatest regrets: bad layouts and bad typography.

I used to chalk up my clunky typography to the clunky fonts at my disposal when a Macintosh IIfx, LaserWriter II, and PageMaker 3 were the high-end tools of the DTP trade: Avant Garde, Bookman, Courier, Helvetica, New Century Schoolbook, Palatino, Symbol, Times, Zapf Dingbats and Zapf Chancery. Later, I blamed my failure with Lithos on MTV’s beating of that typeface into the ground. Then, a long stint with what is now the US’s largest commercial bank left me irrationally angry at Futura Bold.

But, after reading through Armin Vit’s “Dr. Copperplate and Mr. Gothic”—a considerate view of Copperplate (another one of my font nemeses)—I’ve had to rethink the issues I’ve had with all the fonts in the past.

Maybe I just suck at setting type.

Free! Fonts!

via Smashing Magazine via popurls

Smashing Magazine is linking to six free (!) fonts and we’re linking to Smashing Magazine. I don’t know if you’d want to change the body copy of your entire newsletter-brochure-what-have-you to any of these free (!) typefaces, but any of them would work as a display face. Remember, “If it’s free, take one. If it’s free and not so good, take two.”

Helvetica comes to you

via Daring Fireball

If you haven’t seen Helvetica (the movie), the next geographically-convenient showing will be at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from October 5–7. Design Alliance movie night, anyone? Barring that, you can get the Helvetica (the movie) DVD in your hot little hands after November 6th (Pre-order here).

I haven’t heard any firsthand reviews, but Helvetica has been getting some good press online. All I know is that the movie posters are cool.

Favorite fonts of… 2006?

via typographica.org via popurls

When I first stumbled on this typographica.org post I thought, “Wow, it’s kinda late in 2007 for a 2006 list.” But, with the sheer number of cool (and useful) fonts highlighted I can hardly blame them.

While University Old Style is our house typeface and one of UC Berkeley’s identifying components, there’s got to be room in your font toolbox for some of Typographica’s Favorite Fonts of 2006.

S'mores and kerning

I thought I was kind of a nerd, but at least I'm not showing up to this (full disclosure: I did, however go here.)

Alternately, check out FONTSELF. This is a pretty alpha project that seems to be aimed at providing the ability to create fonts that preserve the gestures of a given handwriting and the original look of the drawing appliance (ball-point pen, pencil, ink, paper, etc.)

Looks like they're promising an online tool for uploading drawings, adjusting metrics and kerning, and possibly an adobe plug-in for using the faces off of the interweb. As of now, you can look at it online and wish that it existed -- like the iPhone!

Safari, Windows, Apple, Microsoft, font rendering

via popurls

Now that Apple has made their Safari Web browser available for Windows (Why? Macworld proposes at least two reasons), you can see on-screen font rendering Apple-style vs. Microsoft-style side-by-side.

To see the comparison, you’ll have to be using Windows XP or Vista and have downloaded the respective Safari 3.0 beta. Then, just launch Safari and Internet Explorer, go to the same Web page and compare. Side-by-side.

Or, you can just read this article at Joel on Software.

Comic Sans has a lisp?

It’s (still) Helvetica’s birthday! Following up on our posts about the BBC News magazine story and Helvetica the movie is this Sheldon strip by Dave Kellett.

Hmmm… what would Helvetica look like as a comic-strip character?

[first seen at Daring Fireball]

You've probably seen it a thousand times today. Why?

Fan's of type foundries may already know that this year is the 50th birthday of this Supremely Ubiquitous Font. Join today's BBC News magazine in a meditation on its influence, for good or ill. (Also impressive are the design-savvy Brits in the comment section.)

Helvetica—The Movie

This makes me smile (first time all week). —Roland

"Helvetica is a club." Neville Brody
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Love it or hate it, Helvetica looms large in visual culture. Helvetica is a feature-length film exploring the proliferation of one typeface as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Featuring a who's who of graphic and type designers, including Massimo Vignelli, Matthew Carter, and Erik Spiekermann.

Helvetica was co-produced by Swiss Dots and Veer and directed by Gary Hustwit. Read the director's film blog at helveticafilm.com.