Viewing entries tagged
Typography

Fun With Type!

Last year I became a beta-tester for Astute Graphics’ Adobe Illustrator plugin “VectorScribe”. Those who know me know that I’m not really a very tech-savvy person. I get quite comfortable just sticking with doing things the way I usually do them. Over the years I’ve become very adept at using Illustrator, and was not overly excited at the thought of having to learn some new tools. I’d heard of Illustrator plugin tools, but I’d never really thought of using them before. So, to my surprise, I almost immediately embraced the new tools in VectorScribe. They work really well, ironing out a lot of the inherent flaws in Illustrator. I’d learned to live with a lot of those flaws, but once I learned I didn’t need to live with them anymore, those “flaws” started to look more and more like gaping wounds. VectorScribe is great—now I don’t know how I ever got along without it! You can download a little Case Study we did about VectorScribe here. I would definitely encourage all serious Adobe Illustrator users to at least try the 14 day free trial version. It will change your life!

So when the good folks at Astute Graphics asked me if I’d work on a little printed promo for them I thought “Well, why not? I really believe in their products”. The front and back covers of the piece were to be covered with testimonial quotes about their plugins from other users. The challenge was to make this list of quotes visually exciting. Most of my work is lettering-centric, but with this project the challenge was to only use set type and limited color—something a little different for me. I did use two of my own fonts, PowerStation (currently on sale) and DeLuxe Gothic: see if you can find them. Anyway, I think you can see that it’s possible to create a lot of visual fun by just using the basics, and combining them in imaginative ways. This is real Alphabet Soup!

Above is how the front cover turned out...

...and the back cover below:

Typography Enters the Space Age! - Dynascript's World Premiere on MyFonts

DynascriptDynascript brings the ease of “Pushbutton Automatic” to your typesetting experience. Dynascript is actually 2-Fonts-In-1: without switching fonts you can instantly change from Dynascript’s connecting font to the non-connecting italic with the simple push of a button. (Just press the “Stylistic Alternates” button in the OpenType palette.) 2 Fonts In 1! Typesetters across the planet will also be able to set copy in their language of choice. Global Language Support Dynascript’s 694 glyphs can be used to set copy in: Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kalaallisut, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, and Welsh—and of course English. Sorry! Off-world languages not yet supported. Dynascript Complete Character Set What is Dynascript? It’s is a completely original, never before seen, bold script font—but to some it may be reminiscent of various mid-century neon signage, and of sign writing, Speedball alphabets and even baseball scripts. The design of Dynascript also takes some cues from a historical typographic curiosity that began in Germany in the ‘20s and which lasted into the ‘60s—when Photo-Lettering gave it the name "Zip-Top". Basically it was believed to be the wave of the future—that by weighting an alphabet heavier in its top half, one could increase legibility and reading speed. The jury’s still out on whether or not there’s any validity to this claim—but you can decide for yourself!

Dynascript makes it's debut today on MyFonts, and we'll start its special introductory sale on MyFonts tomorrow (25% Off!).

For more detailed information please download “The Dynascript Manual” pdf (800 kb).

Dynascript Design and Art: Michael Doret

Dynascript OpenType Programming: Patrick Griffin/Canada Type

 

 

 

I Am Pleased To Announce...

...that my latest font design is just about ready for release. It's a script font in OpenType format, but I believe it's unlike anything else on the market.Dynascript (connecting script) What makes Dynascript unique (apart from its design) is that it's actually two fonts in one. The default font (above) is a connecting script. However, with the simple press of a button in the OpenType palette you will be able to convert your copy into the alternate non-connecting version of Dynascript (below)—a very different look! Dynascript (non-connecting script) Dynascript will contain almost 700 glyphs with support for the following languages: Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kalaallisut, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, and Welsh. Oh, and I almost forgot—English.

I'm currently involved in creating the supporting graphics, and I hope to have Dynascript released very soon. Also in the works—a completely redrawn upright version of Dynascript which I should have ready for release withinin the next few months.

Steinweiss on Steinweiss

When I originally did the title lettering for "Alex Steinweiss: The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover" I hadn't yet designed "Steinweiss Script". In fact it was designing this headline that spurred me to do that typeface design. In retrospect there were many interior headlines and other lines of copy for the book that Josh Baker, AD at Taschen, would have liked to have had set in a new Steinweiss Script font. But they had to settle for what was available at that time, which was one of several different digitized versions of what Alex Steinweiss had originally designed for Photo-Lettering. Now Taschen has released their more moderately priced trade edition of this incredible book—and just in time for this release I was able to reset all their headlines and other copy the way we had originally wanted to—in Steinweiss Script:

Above: Before and After Details from the older and newer editions

Below: You can Look Inside the earlier edition...

...or Look Inside the newer version:

Our intention was that the newer version, with everything reset in Steinweiss Script, would feel closer to what Mr. Steinweiss would have done had he been able to apply his scrawl to these pages.

Just a reminder: Steinweiss Script is available for purchase on MyFonts, Veer, FontShop and YouWorkForThem. To learn more about these fonts, read Steven Heller's Imprint article or MyFonts' Creative Characters for January.

Alex Steinweiss, 1917 – 2011

Just having returned from vacation, I discovered that while I was incommunicado Alex Steinweiss—one of my heroes and the inspiration for my Steinweiss font—had passed away. So I'd just like to add my voice (belatedly) to the chorus who have recognized him as one of the giants of 20th century design, who has influenced countless people in the design and illustration fields, and brought delight to millions of others through his beautiful work. The world is indeed a lesser place without him. R.I.P. Mr. Steinweiss.

Fonts In Use: GQ Picks Steinweiss Script for their Comedy Issue

I just got a call from my pal Glenn Parsons of Astrolux Design who informed me that my last font release Steinweiss Script was all over the new issue of GQ Magazine. Kudos to their Creative Director Jim Moore for making such a smart choice!* Here's a collage of a few of the pieces taken from different pages in the current issue. I think these demonstrate nicely some of the versatility of this font, such as the ability to set words on curved paths—and still have all letters connect properly. You can find links to all the outlets where Steinweiss Script is sold (as well as all my other fonts) on the Alphabet Soup pages of my website. I'm also proud to announce that Steinweiss Script is now being sold from the YouWorkForThem website, my newest font reseller.

*Update – June 7,2012: I stand corrected. The choice to use Steinweiss Script was made by GQ Design Director Fred Woodward. My apologies for not checking on that first. M.

 

Collage of Steinweiss Script Samples in GQ

It Began in NoHo: Thank You Art Institute!

Last Friday I gave a talk to a capacity crowd at Art Institute of California – Hollywood. A big "THANK YOU" goes out to John Judy, the Academic Director of Graphic Design and Foundation Studies who planned the evening, and set it all up. I tailored my hour-long talk "It Began In Brooklyn" to what I expected would be a mostly student crowd, but many professionals showed up as well. The school opened up their space to a triple–wide room with three screens and three projectors—an unexpected layout which actually worked quite well. Afterwards we had a Q&A where I tried to answer some great questions from students and professionals. We then raffled off a Wacom tablet, a 1 year subscription to Lynda.com, several signed event posters and a CD of the complete Alphabet Soup Font Collection. I must say that it was really gratifying to see the high interest level displayed by many of the students. All in all it was a great evening. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did! Below, a few photos taken by John Judy after the talk.

Is Steinweiss Your Type? Pre-Valentine's Sale!

R U My Type? Mark your iCals! The Steinweiss Script 20% off sale will begin on Tuesday, February 8th.

Steinweiss is the perfect type for helping to pull you out of your shell, and getting you to express your most heartfelt sentiments.

Available in Bold, Medium and Light, or all together as a loving Family.

Just go to MyFonts on (or after) February 8th to hook up.

If you'd like to cozy up and get more familiar with Steinweiss before jumping into a serious relationship, read Steven Heller's recent Imprint article. Steinweiss Script also features prominently in the lovingly composed interview I just did for Creative Characters.

Canter's Truck Design Co-Stars with Bonnie Bloomgarden On Channel 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sirQx_KSnkI

Watch for it – it's about halfway through, and then again at the end. Ain't she a cutie...I mean the truck.

Bonnie is the great-granddaughter of Ben Canter, founder of Canter's Deli. Bonnie, along with her sister Dena, conceived the truck idea, found me, and worked together with me to come up with a great design.

To see and read more about Deliscript and the Canter's Truck design, click HERE.

Steinweiss Script - Just Released!

We're very proud to be able to finally announce the release on MyFonts of The Steinweiss Script Family. We've described these fonts briefly in the last two postings (scroll down) but, to reiterate, this family is made up of three weights—a Light, a Mediuim and a Bold. Within each of the three weights, through advanced OpenType features, a user has the ability to access three distinct variations: Simple, Fancy, and Titling. Rather than trying to describe them again, I've provided an image that demonstrates what they are:

I began designing this font with just the larger caps and taller ascenders/descenders, but in the end felt that giving user's these options would add usefulness to the font. These variations make Steinweiss Script accessible not just for headlines, but for applications where vertical space might be an issue,  and also for longer passages of text.

To help users understand how to be able to access these features (and also to show off the font) I created "The Steinweiss Script User's Guide" in PDF form (1.2 MB download). I've also created an "Incomplete" character showing to give somewhat of an idea of what's in the font:

Steinweiss Script is available on MyFonts and FontShop either as a family of all three weights, or each of the weights can be licensed individually.

As always, we'd love to hear your comments about this font!

Steinweiss Script - Design and Art: Michael Doret - after Alex Steinweiss Steinweiss Script - OpenType Programming: Patrick Griffin/Canada Type

Steinweiss Script Update: Release Date Set

Head's up everybody! I've just set the release date for the Steinweiss Script Family for Tuesday, November 9th. It will be available only on MyFonts—at least initially. And I'll be running an introductory sale at a 20% discount. For a good preview of what's in the font and how it's OpenType features work you can download "The Steinweiss Script User's Guide" (about 1.2 MB).

"Steinweiss Script"...Soon to be Released

Back in the summer of 2009 I was contacted by Josh Baker at Taschen Publishing about doing some work on the huge commemorative edition they were putting together on the work of Alex Steinweiss. For those of you who are not familiar with that name, Mr. Steinweiss is considered to be the inventor of the album cover as we have come to know it—as a kind of mini-poster with graphics relating to the musical content of the album. He produced hundreds of covers for 78 RPM albums between the late 1930s and the late 1940s. Of course I was thrilled to have anything to do with this project. My assignment was to do some lettering for the cover and title page that was in the spirit of Mr. Steinweiss' very graphic calligraphy, which had become known as "The Steinweiss Scrawl". This "scrawl" had become ubiquitous and inextricably associated with his work. Here's an example of one of his album covers:

Steinweiss' calligraphic work was very spontaneous and kinetic, while the work of lettering artists tends to be more carefully studied and worked out. So it was a bit of a challenge to try to capture that spontaneity in my piece of digital art for Taschen's cover—as seen below:

While I was working on this, Josh and I had discussed the possibility of doing similar lettering for all the different chapter headings and headlines throughout the book (about 16 of them), but decided that it wasn't practical for budgetary reasons. The subject of creating a "scrawl" font was also discussed, but was nixed for the same reason—in addition there wouldn't have been enough time to do it: creating a font from scratch can be a very time-consuming process.

Around 1951 Alex Steinweiss had actually created a font called "Steinweiss Scrawl" for Photo-Lettering. (Coincidentally my first job after graduating Cooper Union was as Ed Benguiat's assistant at Photo-Lettering!). But this font was extremely limited in it's capabilities, and although it had a certain bouncy charm and naïveté, in my opinion, it didn't really capture the fluidity of Steinweiss' calligraphy:At any rate, shortly after completing the Steinweiss project for Taschen, I decided to pursue on my own the design of a font in the spirit of his calligraphy. The challenge was enormous—to create a typeface that retained the sense of hand-letting and fluidity within the context of a digital font. Where Steinweiss' scrawls were all slightly different from each other, shifting and changing according to the needs of a particular cover design, a font designer has to commit to specific forms that need to be set in stone, so to speak. In this particular font, the "managed" nature of the design had to appear to be "unmanaged"!

Part of my solution was to create the typeface with a ton of alternates, lowercase ligatures, and caps/lowerase ligatures. Creating this as an OpenType font would be the only way to wrangle these thousands of pieces together into a coherent typeface design. Luckily I was able to count on the expert programming help of Patrick Griffin of Canada Type. Also, I was fortunate enough to be able to contact the Steinweiss family through Taschen, and get the official Steinweiss approval for this font design.

At this point until the fonts are released (very soon!), for those interested in seeing more, you may download "The Steinweiss Script User's Guide" that I've just completed (about 1.2 MB).

In a nutshell, here's how the fonts are organized: "Steinweiss Script" is a family of fonts in three weights: "Steinweiss Script Light", "Steinweiss Script Medium", and "Steinweiss Script Bold". Additionally, within each weight there are three variations: Simple, Fancy, and Titling. These relate to the size/ratio of the caps to the lowercase, the complexity of those caps, and the size of the ascenders/descenders on the lowercase characters. The reason for all this is to add usefulness to the font, making it accessible not just for headlines, but for longer passages of text as well.

I am going to try to release these fonts within the next week or so. Please stay tuned for more information! I will announce here as soon as they go live.

PEGs Cover Released w/Laura Smith Artwork

Years ago I designed the cover for the 6th Edition of the "Graphic Artists Guild Handbook–Pricing & Ethical Guidelines". I'd like to believe that my cover helped start a tradition of having excellent covers for the Guild's main publication. Among the previous cover artists have been such luminaries as Lou Brooks, Noah Woods, John Hersey, and Richard McGuire—each with a decidedly different point of view and aesthetic. Now my wife, illustrator Laura Smith has joined that grand tradition.

The Graphic Artists Guild has just released the 13th Edition with Laura's beautiful work gracing the front back and spine:

The cover artists chosen by the Guild for the this project have always been given free reign to come up with a theme that would be carried through the book. Laura chose a circus theme since two things she loves are storybook illustration and circus imagery. This is especially evident on the back cover of this book where she's created and written copy for an elaborate series of spots highlighting in circus/storybook style various aspects of the business of design and illustration:

Laura has always been one of the few illustrators who understands how to completely integrate typography into her illustrations, and this cover really demonstrates that fact. The Guild has chosen to highlight Laura and tell more of this story in their Member Spotlight. But also please check out the rest of the Graphic Artists Guild website—it's the only organization that's totally devoted to promoting and protecting the social, economic and professional interests of all graphic artists.

I will be headlining an event that the LA Chapter of the Guild will be holding later this month in downtown Los Angeles . . . but more about that later.

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I wasn't going to post the PEGs cover I designed back in the day, but since Ms. Blake asked, here it is. Side note: the beginnings of the style that eventually became my Metroscript font can be seen in the word "Guidelines".

Introducing DeLuxe Gothic — 50% Off Special!

Due to a threatened lawsuit by the folks at FontHaus (who somehow believe they are the only ones entitled to use the name "Bank Gothic") I have changed the name of my font "Bank Gothic AS" to "DeLuxe Gothic". I have great respect for the original designer of Bank Gothic, Mr. Morris Fuller Benton, and chose the name DeLuxe Gothic because it was the name that The Intertype Corporation used for their version of this classic font during the early years of the 20th Century.

My particular take on this design was that I always felt it could use a set of lowercase letters, and that is what sets my font apart from the rest. You can get a better look at it if you download the DeLuxe Gothic Brochure. Coincidental to the release of my renamed font, I've decided to run a Special Promotion on MyFonts: 50% off this font for one time only, and for a limited time—hurry and get yours before they sell out!