Webdesigninformer.com

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Type Hinting : Peter Biľak: I have been designing type since the early 1990s, and for as long as I can remember, type designers have been saying that hinting would soon be made obsolete by new advances in hardware and software. Now, almost 20 years later, hinting seems to be more relevant than ever. According to Peter, hinting—the process of mapping a font’s mathematical outlines onto a monitor’s pixels—remains relevant even with @font-face in play, which explains why it’s likely we’ll see font foundries republish their libraries as “web safe” (e.g. FontFonts Web Fonts ): Last year there was considerable hype about the @font-face declaration, a function that makes it possible for a webpage to display any font, freeing designers from dependence on the ‘web-safe’ fonts and opening new design possibilities (not the least of which is the creation of visual identities which are consistent across both print and web media). On the other hand, this also raises new issues, including poor onscreen display of non-hinted fonts. … Read the rest here

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Seth Godin: Goodbye to the Office : Seth compares factories from the industrial age to corporate offices today, and draws this conclusion: If we were starting this whole office thing today, it’s inconceivable we’d pay the rent/time/commuting cost to get what we get. I think in ten years the TV show ‘the Office’ will be seen as a quaint antique. When you need to have a meeting, have a meeting. When you need to collaborate, collaborate. The rest of the time, do the work, wherever you like. Although the factory vs. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Woodtyper : “Notes on large and ornamented type and related matters.” … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Fontdeck : Another web font embedding service at your disposal, Fontdeck is now available to the public. In contrast to Typekit , Fontdeck is a piece-meal approach allowing you to select certain fonts and license those fonts annually per website. … Read the rest here

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Reprints of my first letterpress type poster are now available for purchase . 150 copies are available in this run. All copies are in stock, ready to ship. Use discount code TYPE10 to receive 10% off the listed price. (Offer expires June 4, 2010.) Additionally, copies of my second poster, the Roman Coliseum, are also available . … Read the rest here

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Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design : I received a copy of this book in the mail today (signed by the incredible Debbie Millman , no less!). It’s unlike any other book on my desk with its handwritten type and interspersed illustrations. I suppose if I had a copy of Orbiting the Giant Hairball on my desk they might be similar, at least in design. Nonetheless, I’m really looking forward to reading it. … Read the rest here

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Typekit and Google Announce Open Source Collaboration : Commercial agreements with big names like FontShop , Veer , and now an open-source effort with Google. Jeffrey Veen on the latest news: We’re happy to announce that we’ve teamed up with Google to make webfonts ubiquitous and more accessible. Starting today, we’re making our Typekit font events an open source project called WebFont Loader …. Additionally, we’ll be supporting Google’s new collection of open source webfonts . … Read the rest here

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Don Quijote Didn’t Ship : Seth Godin: I know, I know, I’m supposed to be the guy who says, “go for it!” but the fact is, most of the time the choice to take on impossible odds, to challenge the entrenched monopolist is the work of the lizard brain. After all, if you dream the impossible dream and go after the thing that can’t possibly work, you don’t have to worry about being criticized, you don’t have to worry about the responsibility of shipping or serving your customers. After all, it was impossible. Tangling with the largest possible opponent, when you are severely overmatched is a way of giving in to the resistance, of not actually shipping. Check Seth’s advice at the end: Win little battles, get in the habit of shipping. Then worry about taking on giants. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

I’m very pleased to present A Book Apart , a new publisher of brief books for people who make websites, founded by Jeffrey Zeldman , Mandy Brown , and myself. Our first book is HTML5 For Web Designers , by the indomitable Jeremy Keith . If you’re already getting your feet wet with HTML5, or just trying to figure out what the hell it’s all about, you’ll want this one. I’ve read it three times and love how approachable it is. You can read more from Jeffrey about how we chose our first title , or from Mandy on how A Book Apart works as a publisher . … Read the rest here

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Fonts.com Now Offers Web Font Embedding Service : The tutorial video makes this service look like a carbon copy of Typekit , to be frank. … Read the rest here

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This Week Only: 50% Off Your Authentic Jobs Listing : Use promo code 50CM to apply the discount. We typically do only one 50% off promotion each year, so this is a pretty big deal for us. Discount applies to any of the job listing types—full-time, freelance, or our new contract job type . Valid today through Friday, May 7. … Read the rest here

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A few months ago 37signals redesigned Basecamp ’s notification emails, and the result was a move from plain-text emails to HTML emails. For reference, these emails are sent when someone posts or replies to any of the content types in the system (messages, to-dos, etc). I’m generally opposed to receiving HTML emails if a plain-text alternate is available. I use email as a tool to send and receive communication, and too often some creators of HTML email offer visual noise more than anything else. Ironically, they fail to leverage one advantage HTML email has over plain-text email: visual hierarchy, or the ability to help the reader get the right message using color, proportion, and so forth. Visual hierarchy, the classification of elements according to importance and relationship to other elements, tends to be one of the most ignored and underutilized principles of design. … Read the rest here

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jQuery Masonry : I can’t explain it any better than its creator, David Desandro: Masonry is a layout plugin for jQuery. Think of it as the flip side of CSS floats. Whereas floating arranges elements horizontally then vertically, Masonry arranges elements vertically then horizontally according to a grid. The result minimizes vertical gaps between elements of varying height, just like a mason fitting stones in a wall. If TypeNeu were still up, you’d see a fantastic example of this kind of concept in play. … Read the rest here

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I Love Typography: The Vignelli Twelve : John Boardley, refuting Massimo Vignelli’s storied argument that designers should restrict themselves to just 12 typefaces: Surely a dozen designs of chair would suffice. And, while we’re at it, let’s make do with a dozen designs of houses, tables, books, bridges, teacups, salt-shakers … everything. Why, then, do we see such profligacy in design? Because that’s what we do, that’s who we are. Our restless minds are always striving for ‘better’, for more functional, more comfortable, stronger, more durable, more economical, more ornate, simpler, more complex, smaller, bigger, greener, healthier, clearer, more legible; even, more aesthetically pleasing. … Read the rest here

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“The Colosseo poster has to be experienced in person. Truly beautiful.” : Thank you, Tiffany . (It’s worth noting Tiffany Wardle earned her Master of Arts in Theory and History of Typography and Graphic Communication from the University of Reading in England). … Read the rest here

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Restoration Hardware’s Cast Metal Letter Collection : Sand-cast aluminum “in a beautifully proportioned serif font,” finished in chestnut bronze. Available in four sizes from 4” to 12” for the entire alphabet, as well as ampersand and ‘@’ characters. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

New HTML5 Form Field Type: range : Amidst all the HTML5 buzz over the past year, somehow I missed this: HTML5 offers a new input field type, type=”range” , which renders a UI slider for entering data anywhere between the min and max values you specify. This feature could become as useful as CSS multiple backgrounds, in that a) it’s long overdue and b) we’re already faking it all over the web. The HTML5 presentation from which this slide was taken, by the way, is wonderful. It’s an interactive teaching tool on the subject of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript APIs. Slide 41 is really wild—press 3, then arrow left or right. Update: I failed to mention these slides are best viewed with a browser that already supports these features, i.e… Read the rest here

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Congratulations to Glen LaFortune and Phil Coffman for winning an iPad 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G and 16GB Wi-Fi, respectively. Tallying the numbers from a few hundred poster orders and a couple dozen postcards, Random.org spit out the number 35, bestowing Glen the fortune of winning an iPad. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun, Glen). The low number also meant those who placed orders within only a couple of hours after launch were destined to win, deservedly. Phil’s Colosseo micro-site hovered in the top 3 spots for the required search phrase , sent the most traffic to colosseotype.com , and generated lots of positive buzz. But above all, I smile every time I flip the light switch on his site… Read the rest here

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The results (and selections from myself based on a purely ambiguous, subjective awesomeness rating) are in. Here are the eight nine winners. Martian Poster Winners The following individuals have won a signed copy of the Colosseo, Exclusive “Martian” Edition : Based on number of likes, Craig Henry’s ßark and Dave Mott’s Dribbble Ball are automatic winners. Even without the likes, however, they should have won—they’re both incredibly creative and obviously required a good amount of time to execute. Darren Geraghty’s This Is Not A Chair illustration was another shoe-in win. … Read the rest here

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Twitter Unveils “Promoted Tweets” Advertising Plan : Claire Cain Miller, reporting for The New York Times: The advertising program, which Twitter calls Promoted Tweets, will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user…. When a Twitter user searches for a word an advertiser bought, the promoted message will show up at the top of the results, even if it was written much earlier. The posts say they are promoted by the company in small type, and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow. Best Buy, Virgin America, Starbucks, and Bravo are among the first advertisers, but expect that list to grow by the thousands very shortly. … Read the rest here