The Open Library provides you with an ever growing collection of digitised vintage and rare type specimen books. They are downloadable as reasonably high-resolution PDF’s.

Lot’s of classy eye candy.

► Found on DesignersBooks

Big fan of the work that both Riley Cran and Tyler Galpin put in over at Lost Type Co-Op website: not to mention the various designers who have contributed a number of typefaces for you to download.

Although the typefaces are freely available via the Lost Type they operate on a Pay-What-You-Want scheme, the first online typeface store of its kind, with 100% of the contributed donations going direct to the respective designers. Also worth nothing that neither Riley or Tyler take any cut from this operations neither do they hold onto any funds.

Lost Type Co-Op Store

I have recently been chatting to Riley because I am a big fan of his design work, and have previously featured some of his amazing logo designs, and through these chats Riley brought up the subject of the new Lost Type Co-Op Store.

I’m delighted to be able to help these guys spread the word about the store with their initial offerings shown in the photographs above. Merchandise includes: The Official Button Kit and a Font Specimen Book for their font Ribbon.

The graphics on those pins are just gorgeous.

If you don’t fancy buying anything from the store then you should at least browse the stupendously varied selection of fonts on offer. The fonts above are just a small selection from their library.

You may already be familiar with Aaron Kuehn’s typographic work if you have previously seen the Bicycle Typogram? Strategically placed words to form a bigger picture. Easy to give it a quick glance and move on, but just look at how the skull, for instance, has been formed to create a very clear visual outline from just skeletal words; it really is pretty impressive stuff.

Should one like then one can order prints of the Skeleton and Bicycle Typogram by visiting the link below.

Click on the images to view larger versions, but also click the top-right “full screen” icon to view in maxivision.

View Aaron’s original post: Skeleton Typogram

The Characteristics of a Typeface wallaper by Arno Kathollnig @arnoKath is quite a visual feast if you are looking for a new desktop wallpaper, and just happen to dig typography with a very classic touch.

Not sure it’s the most legible of typeface anatomy posters I have seen, but it is certainly very striking as a display piece.

There is detailed text via the Flickr image, and this is where you can download the 1920×1200 wallpaper.

Everything you could ever want to know about printing letters and figures.

Letter Fountain: The Anatomy Of Type By Taschen looks set to be THE type book to get this year. I caught a glimpse of it over on Swiss Legacy and have pre-ordered my copy from Amazon for £44.99.

I have just flicked through the first 100 pages via the Taschen website so this is a great way to see the quality and variety of content you will be getting.

A few nice features include: hardbound in half linen with three ribbon bookmarks, 144 pages appendix with resourceful glossary and indices, and convenient typographic ruler with conversions between four measurement systems and hidden shortcuts for your Apple keyboard.

The editor and author:
Joep Pohlen is a graphic designer, devoted with heart and soul to professional typography. With his colleague and friend Geert Setola he founded Dutch Fontana Publishers in 1994 and together they published their first edition of Letterfontein. From 2002 to 2010 Joep Pohlen rewrote most of the contents and enhanced the book to 640 pages. He has won several awards with book design on typography and art.

From the website

Looking back as far as man’s first efforts to communicate with visual signs and drawings, Letter Fountain is a completely unique typeface handbook: in addition toexamining the form and anatomy of every letter in the alphabet (as well as punctuation marks and special characters…

Further attention is given to the esthetics of the digital age and typographical recommendations such as the choice of the right typeface for a job…

Over 150 typefaces, their origins, and font characteristics are discussed in detail, visually explained by full page tables including scale, weight, and useful alternatives…

Read more on Letter Fountain

Win A Copy Of Letter Fountain

When Letter Fountain is released you will have a chance to win a copy as I will be offering one up as a very special prize.

Make sure you follow me on Twitter and sign up to the RSS feed to make sure you get notified when the giveaway goes live.

Font Fuddle is relatively new, and low key font project/quiz that I thought some people might like to have the odd crack at. The concept is simple but the actual unfuddling can be quite tricky. Font Fuddle runs on the same WordPress theme: Gridalicious as Unevolved Brands.

As the About page states:

Fuddle
-verb, to muddle or confuse. -noun, a confused state; muddle; jumble.

A Font Fuddle is a font that has had certain characteristics altered in easy or majorly devious ways – this is to say there will be a number of difficulty levels. The Font Fuddler challenges you to work out which font the letter belongs too, and to then list the uncharacteristic alterations.

Levels so far consist of: Super Easy, Medium, Hard and Devious Fuddles. Each Fuddle is colour coded according to the difficulty level: yellow is Super Easy, orange is Medium (as example below), red is Hard and Devious Fuddle will be black.

Each Fuddle will have a small description that will provide a hint as to how many Fuddles have been committed. For example: if I have rotated and smoothed off the slab serifs then this means two Fuddles have been committed.

Not all Fuddles will have an anatomical change but this will be indicated on the easier levels but will leave you guessing on the harder ones.

Answers will be posted online a few days after the initial posting.

Font Fuddle will require you to work out what certain anatomical parts of a font are called as well as stretching your overall font recognition skills.

Flickr

Just as I have done with Unevolved Brands there is a dedicated Font Fuddle Flickr Set up which you can also comment on should you care enough to try the quiz.

Why Should I Care

I can’t think of any awesome reasons why you should care about sparing a few moments to check it out; I mostly do it for self gratification and a miss directed sense of trying to offer up something vaguely fun and interesting.

You also won’t care then that I will update this just a few times a week which is not at often as Unevolved Brands.

From the talented hands that brought you The Lobster Font; Pablo Impallari brings us some free fonts to download. This post lists four of them.

Terminal Dosis Light is a really really light, almost hairline, sans-serif rounded font. In fact, it’s so light she only wants to be used at 36pt or up. Designed by Edgar Tolentino, refined by Pablo Impallari, spaced and kerned by Igino Marini iKern.

Terminal Dosis Light has just been made free–I purchased this a while back, but nice to see the generosity now shown by Pablo–so I would head over to his website for a quick download in case they change their minds.

Other Free Fonts By Impallari

As well as Terminal Dosis Light, they have released a few other free fonts that are definitely worth looking at.

Cabin Font

Dancing Script

Quattro Cento

The Lobster Font

Found on Quipsologies, Lost Type Co-op is a typeface collaboration between Riley Cran and Tyler Galpin.

They have created an all-caps, condensed font called Muncie in an impressive 24 hours,  and even more impressive is that it’s available as a free download.

From what I can tell, other fonts will be released on a ‘pay what you want’ basis. Visit the site to download your version of Muncie.

The Typefaces of the World poster by Shelby (@wanken) has been doing the circuit over the last week, and quite rightly so. I blogged about it over on the other channel last week, the reason I am posting again is that you can now…

Pre-Order your copy

The poster is now available to pre order over at Scribble On Everything for a very reasonable $29. It is printed on a 24 x 18″ sheet of Classic Crest Epic Black, printed 3 colours by traditional offset.

I will have a few copies to giveaway in time, so sign up to my RSS feed to make sure you don’t miss out.

Impressive portfolio and whilst you are over on his site, worth signing up to his RSS feed.

Source Link Michael Doret | Found on Grainedit

The overall post seems to be a bit of a flop. There are a few interesting results though, namely the V&A mark designed by Alan Fletcher, appeals to me for just sheer class.

The faux bar formed for the A out of the ampersand arm is just perfect. The left edge of the bar just aligns perfectly with the imaginary left hand diagonal stroke of the A

Source Link http://www.creativereview.co.uk

I have spent a fortune on buying fonts that I feel will add value to my work, I have no problem with investing good money in this way. After all, fonts are generally the foundations of a logo, makes sense that you place value on an aspect of your job that without, would be all but impossible to do.

This is why I have the utmost respect for typedesigners, this is a skill beyond just being creative. When I am working on a new logo project and see a new commercial font that would be perfect, I will buy it, no questions asked. And yes, a medal would be nice.

Commercial fonts have licences of course, they are not without limitations, but they are for the most part, more than reasonable.

I guess a reasonable comparison would be musicians and royalties.

There are a scenarios where ‘non-comercial use’ is valid, like a beta font for a possible new commercial font. I can understand the reasoning here, and usually there is a detailed description of ‘why’ accompanying the font.

The other one is where there is family of weights for example, one weight (with limited character set) might be made free for the purposes of testing, allowing the user to try before they buy. This expands on the limited type testers usually now found on type foundry websites etc.

Great, so that tackles commercial fonts.

The main point of this post is to try and understand the non-logic behind the restrictions that some free fonts have time to time. I’m not talking about the awful variety usually associated with free font sites, I’m talking about fonts like the stunning Franchise Font by Derek Weathersbee or the equally stunning The Lobster Font.

Fonts where the designer has clearly put their heart and soul into the design and creation of something that will be of value to other designers. Derek makes no demands, other than presenting a few marketing ploys to bolster the distribution of his work, like making a small donation or buying a t-shirt, all VERY reasonable under the circumstances. In fact he goes the other way, he makes it very clear that if you do use his free font for commercial or non commercial use, that you send him examples of it… this is what makes it all worthwhile.

Seeing your work being used by someone else for someone else.

I’m a little confused Sir

What confuses me is when I come across what looks like a lovely free font. First impressions are really positive, the accompanying gallery images make the font look like a real winner, but then you see the ‘No-Commerical Use‘ line.

So you have spent all this time and energy, crafting a wonderful new font, going to the trouble of creating supporting imagery to presumably help promote the font, but then specify that we can’t use it for commercial use.

What is the logic behind this move?

If you don’t want people, other designers, profiting from your work then why make it free in the first place. If you are that sure/presumptuous other designers would want to use the font for commercial use, then charge for it, but don’t presume people would want to use it for commercial use, but take away that option. It really makes no sense and makes you look a little odd to be honest.

Or do you forever want your creative creation always assciated with Church flyers and birthday parties?

Either make it free with no restrictions like Derek, or make it a commercial purchase or even a trial (limited character set) font.

I do understand the logic of not wanting other’s to profit from your work if you have not got anything from it yourself, especially if these other people have copied your work or other less honest means. People like Derek are clearly proud of their achievements, without having some control type issue over it and want to literally, spread the love.

This has a greater accumulative affect on the marketing of that font and consequently your own image and profile. This is what you should be focusing on.

What goes round generally comes round.

I guess some people say we should be appreciative that someone has created something for free in the first place, regardless of the conditions tied in with it, I disagree with that logic when it is associated with design work. If I see a font that is free but that I can’t use for commercial use, it really isn’t much use to me, unless I am designing party invites or playing with concept work, which I avoid like the plague.

So ok, the latter point, concept work is important for a designer, so yeah sure, downloading a cool free font that helps you here is awesome. However, this is also flawed logic. By helping people with their concept work, which by itself is non-commerical, you are actually helping them create a reputation that will surely make rich and famous. So regardless, you are helping someone financially, it’s not just as quick. It’s just short sightedness on your part.

By imposing restrictions you are reducing the potential impact and reach of your work. Not so many people will download it, not so many people will see it, not so many people will hear of you or see the work you can do.

By imposing restrictions you are missing out on helping designers with their paid work, the work that pays their bills. So we go back to the point that you have a grump about people profiting from something you have previously made available for free, or you have control issues. Neither are helpful and wise to really promote or have associated with your name, people like me get grumpy about things like this. Its like one big tease, just not useful in the greater scheme of things.

Hooking people in to your website with the promise of a free font should extend to making it totally free to use.

If you are giving something away for free, then make it totally free and without condition.

If you really can’t bear the thought of 100′s of other designers profiting from your work, then don’t make it free, charge for it. If it’s that good, people will pay the money. You will receive respect and plaudits for your skill and business prowess.

Whilst getting over Christmas, I was preparing a quick post about Fonts In Use (found on Coudal) but then they featured an article about The Egotist Network which I also wanted to post about. So now I can blog about both in one post. Convenient.

That pretty much sums up what Fonts in Use is about. The website is a lovely catalogue of typography in use in the real world, from branding, advertising, signage, packaging, publications, in print and online — all with an emphasis on the typefaces used.

Read more about their Mission.

I would say it’s a daunting task, how on earth do you choose what to feature when you have so much choice, but this is clearly just the start for the project. Certainly no shortage of subject matter.

I imagine it’s not a quick process to knock up a case study, a certain amount of research is needed just to get the basic information.

The image above gives you an idea of the content so far, as as well as the particular discipline you get a list of typefaces used and written about.

An example study – The Egotist Network

For example, picking the Graphic Design format, I can choose the case study about The Egotist Network. I would say it’s pretty obvious why I chose this as an example. The following image shows a portion of the case studies with a quick list of typefaces used on the right

They breakdown the particular typographic elements used, in this case the nameplates used by each network. Personal views are offered by the author as well as the names of fonts used.

This is a fantastic idea they have going here and I look forward to new studies as well as any future plans for Fonts in Use. Once they have been around for a while, it will be pretty interesting to be able to click on a certain typeface in the main navigation and see where and how it has been used. At the moment there is one case study per typeface listed,

If you like to dig and poke around, then this ought to be a site that you bookmark and subscribe to.

A nice giveaway to do this one. 8Faces is a majestic typographic magazine so a big WOOP to the following 3 winners. Even luckier as it quickly sold out after I launched the giveaway.

8Faces Giveaway Winners

1. Ian Cylkowski – @Hexual
2. Sabrina Sturm – @die-sturm
3. David G – @ColourofAir

For the above winners, please email me your postal address. I have two copies right now and another on back order. So I will send out two copies to Ian and Sabrina then David, will send yours out in the New Year when they estimate the 2nd batch will be dispatched.

8Faces is by Elliot Jay Stocks

Seems Maniakers Design has been quite busy since releasing the original FREE 232 MKSD Font. It has now been updated with a huge range of extra glyphs.

Important to note that this covers both Round Light, Round Medium and Round Bold and that the family is still a free download.

Font Licence - There are some limitations for it’s use, so please read the Font License provided.

Download 232 MKSD Round direct from http://mksd.jp

Download More Free Fonts via IJC

Over the last few months I have been amassing a neat collection of quality free and open source fonts for download. Some are even exclusive to ImJustCreative. Head on over to Free Fonts for a looksie.