Author Archives: ilene
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’Tis the season to be … apostrophic
March 17th, 2013
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, […]
The Story Behind Comic Sans
February 28th, 2013
OK, I admit it, I’ve added to the glut of articles on Comic Sans. But if you know me, you know I am not into font bashing — I’m kinda like the “Switzerland” of type. So check out this interview […]
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 […]
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 […]
Type gripe #1: Why I don’t have a “favorite” font
December 6th, 2010
As a typography specialist and educator, one of the first (and most common) question I’m asked in my travels is “What is your favorite font?” If I had a dollar for every time I’m asked this, I could buy an […]
Arial vs. Helvetica
October 22nd, 2010
We’ve all heard of the Arial® and Helvetica® typefaces, and have most likely used them both. Graphic designers either love or hate the designs. What’s the story behind these two polarizing typeface designs? Here’s the scoop! The Helvetica Story Helvetica […]
A Stroke of Genius!
September 20th, 2010
Bob Aufuldish of Aufuldish & Warinner recently “confessed” to me that in a recent poster he designed, he broke one of the cardinal rules of typography in the digital age: never put a stroke on the type. But in this […]
