Articles&Blog
The Anatomy of a Character
February 15th, 2012
Knowing the terminology for the anatomy of a character might seem like a painful exercise in memorization, but it’s actually useful knowledge for any design professional. Not only does it make it easier to communicate about typefaces and their characteristics, …
TypeCast Webinar Series premieres with a bang!
December 26th, 2011
I am excited to announce that the premiere TypeCast Webinar was given on Thursday, December 15. This FREE session entitled Troubling Typesetting Mysteries: Solved at last! went off with a bang. We had a whopping 87 sign-ups even with the …
ALL CAPS: To set or not to set?
June 23rd, 2011
One of the most common detriments to typographic readability is the overuse of ALL CAPS. Setting text in all caps (especially lengthy blocks) decreases the ease, speed, and appeal of reading, and can cause a reader to quickly lose interest, …
Typographic Checklist
May 17th, 2011
I always recommend that designers and students make a typographic checklist to help avoid committing type crimes, as well as to aid in finessing their typography. At long last, I finally created a checklist that covers issues I’m most frequently …
The Story Behind Zapf Chancery
April 21st, 2011
The ITC Zapf Chancery® typeface has been seen by just about everyone who uses a personal computer. In particular, one member of the family – Medium Italic – has been selected (or not) by millions of designers and non-designers alike. …
Which Flavor of OpenType Is Best?
April 20th, 2011
Lot’s of lively comments on this one… Q. What’s the difference between the TTF and CFF OpenType formats? A. OpenType fonts come in two flavors with two different extensions: CFF, which usually has the extension .otf (often referred to as …
Missing Font Mysteries – Solved At Last!
March 9th, 2011
Have you ever experienced the frustration of opening an existing document and being confronted with a prompt for a “missing font” that you have not used in the document? Or, have you on occasion found unused fonts listed in the …
U&lc back issues now available
February 14th, 2011
In 1974, ITC began publishing U&lc, The International Journal of Typographics. Herb Lubalin was the editorial and art director of the first issue and his seminal design set the stage for future issues of trend setting and award winning editorial …
’Tis the season to be … apostrophic
January 17th, 2011
Last month, in “How to avoid a quotastrophe,” I wrote about the use of smart, typographically correct quotation marks as opposed to dumb quotes. So what the heck does the apostrophe have to do with quotation marks? Quite a lot, …
Space Invaders: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.
January 16th, 2011
“Two-spacers are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste. You’d expect, for instance, that anyone savvy enough to read Slate would know the proper rules of typing, but you’d be wrong; every third e-mail …
