There is perhaps no single typographer whose work can be found in such a diverse range of applications. Adrian Frutiger, who died last week at age 87, created typefaces that make you feel at home in every single place you see them, from subway stations to your computer keyboard.
The history of the Star Wars logo has long been controversial for its purported connection to fascist or even Nazi typography. After all, the Star Wars saga is an apparent analogy for World War II, where the Empire is the Third Reich and Darth Vader represents Adolf Hitler.
In welcome news for those of us who couldn’t take another year squinting at that spindly, bad-for-screens typeface, 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that Apple will replace Helvetica Neue with its new San Francisco typeface for all operating systems. This is the font Apple designed in-house for the Watch—and if this is true,…
The art of handwritten script is lost on most of us keyboard-attached slobs. But over the past few years, a small group of designers have dug into the archives of famous thinkers and artists to bring their script into the digital world—meaning that you, too, can write like Einstein, even if you can’t think like him.
They found them in a file cabinet. The original masters for a legendary typeface called Haas Unica, designed in the late 1970s and killed shortly thereafter by what amounts to bad luck—and the digital age.
What does a world-class city need these days? Museums, skyscrapers, leafy parks, and, perhaps, a custom typeface.
Brittle, anemic Helvetica is simply not a good choice as a default display font for Apple's operating system. That's why I'm pretty excited about this little trick to replace Helvetica Neue (the standard font that comes with Yosemite) with San Francisco, Apple's new typeface designed in-house for the Apple Watch.
Humans have been writing for a long, long time—we were making lettermarks for thousands of years. Of course, that doesn't mean we've ever reached a consensus about the perfect way to write or print. And over the past few years, we've seen designers take on real, tangible problems using type design.
It was square, squat, and inherently cute. It was friendly. It was easy to use. I'm talking about the beige box with the blue grinning face that came to live with us in 1985. But I'm also talking about the font that came with it.
When she was a design student, Khyati Trehan embarked on an ambitious project to highlight history's 26 most influential inventors with a unique alphabet. Remarkably, each letter of the special typeface is drawn with a world-changing invention while also name-checking the inventor. The letter "E," for instance, is…
Despite the grim PSAs and massive fines, plenty of us still end up reading our in-dash displays on the road, whether to navigate or change the song. Today, the type design giant Monotype unveiled a typeface designed to help you read faster and more accurately while driving. How? With a few design tweaks.
We all love stories about teenagers schooling the government, but sometimes we get schooled, too. Last week, we wrote about 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani's research project that suggested the government would save $400 million by switching from Times New Roman to Garamond. Turns out, it's a little more complicated…
Of the many schemes to make the government more efficient, this is probably the only one that involves typography. A middle schooler in Pittsburgh has calculated that by simply switching the typeface used in government documents from Times New Roman to Garamond, it would save taxpayers $400 million in ink.
iOS 7's switch to the Helvetica Neue Ultra Light typeface was one of the bigger design points for the new OS. But it came with a catch: It looked, in places, pretty bad on non-retina screens. The fix was simple enough. Just change it back to regular weight.
If people are snooping on your textual communications and you don't like it, there are a couple of things you can do. You can try to block the prying eyes, you can stop saying things you don't want to be seen, or you can make your messages make no sense to the outside. The anti-authoritarian typeface ZXX is shooting…
Apple had three favorite typefaces: Myriad, Lucida Grande and Helvetica Neue. Now there's a new favorite: Avenir. It has appeared simultaneously OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6—which means you will see it featured in the next iPhone.
Watching this video, I can see all too well how cruel the favored typefaces are for dyslexic readers. If this Dyslexie typeface from Studio Studio was used more often, particularly in education, reading would be easier—for both dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers.
Dogs. Fonts. Comic Sans. There's no need to explain this poster, really. [Fuckyeahdementia based on Fineline Design]
I always hated tombstones. I don't want a tombstone. I want to be cremated and sent to space. Or buried at sea. But if I had to have a tombstone, it will be similar to this, in Helvetica.
File Mary Huang's Typeface, a piece of software that analyzes your face in real time to create a custom font, in the "projects preceded by their puns" category. But unlike some things with that designation, Typeface is surprisingly functional.
