Font art geekery

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

As part of my college education (Graphic Communication), I took a class called "Design With Type." We didn't get into font design, but more about the usage/selection of fonts in creating an overall look. We also got into kerning (the space between letters), leading (spacing between lines of type), etc. Not only does the font itself have visual impact, but how it is presented as well.

One of the things I was fascinated with is the adjustment made to individual characters depending on their size. If one blows up a 6 pt. version of a character and compares it to a 48 point version of the same letter, there are subtle differences to account for visual acuity.

One downside of the mass availability of information is how poorly it is sometimes presented. HTML, et. al. isn't perfect. But even a lot of printed items are just attrocious. A coworker (a former Adobe instructor and graphic artist) and I often just cry when we see some of the garbage that we are printing.

Dig. And terminology, yay!

Originally Posted by Alex

I believe most know about it. But if not, I recommend watching Helvetica, a documentary about, well, the history and use of the Helvetica font. (It is available for instant viewing on Netflix, which is how I watched it.)

I've been putting off seeing this - thanks for the reminder. GD gets to blame you when he is forced to watch this.

I use Comic Sans in comic contexts. I resisted using comic/anime inspired fonts in my Teen Zone signage. So. Over. It. Using Comic Sans for communique? Bwahaha. The background users suck, too.

I've been partial to Book Antiqua forever but am now finally over it. I think I need a new basic font. I do like Palatino. Helvetica is a bit too harsh for my taste. Garamond is still cool (The font of Harry Potter, if I'm not mistaken).

Anyone know any geeky font sites? I'll post some later...