Who Designed the font…?

Verdana was designed by Matthew Carter to be used and read on screen. Carter co-founded Bitstream Inc. in 1981, one of the first digital type foundries, where he worked for ten years. Designed with an eye for both function and aesthetics, Verdana's characters have a large x-height and are widely spaced to ensure that letters don't run together. The font was first released when shipped with Microsoft's Internet Explorer in 1996.

Baskerville is a transitional serif typeface designed by the English gentleman printer John Baskerville in 1757. Baskerville had also mastered the craft of engraving headstones, a knowledge that influenced his design process. His letters are sharply detailed with a vivid contrast between thick and thin elements. During his lifetime, Baskerville's letters were denounced as extremist, but today we think of Baskerville as a classic, elegant, and easy to read font. Baskerville's lifestyle was also regarded with suspicion: he was a professed agnostic living out of wedlock (see Mrs Eaves).

Bodoni , created by Giambattista Bodoni in the 1790s, is known as a modern typeface. It has nearly flat, unbracketed serifs, an extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall vertical stress. Compared to Garamond, which is based on handwriting, Bodoni is severe, glamorous, and dehumanized. Similar typefaces were also designed in the late eighteenth century by François Ambroise Didot and Justus Erich Walbaum.

Caslon is named for the British typographer William Caslon, whose typefaces were an eighteenth-century staple and a personal favorite of Benjamin Franklin (who also enjoyed the racier innovations of John Baskerville). The U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were first printed in Caslon's types. Classified as transitional, Caslon has strong vertical elements and crisp serifs. Adobe Caslon, designed by Carol Twombly in 1990, transports Caslon's solid Anglo pedigree into the digital age.

Centaur was designed by Bruce Rogers between 1912 and 1914, inspired by the work of the fifteenth-century Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson. Emphatically calligraphic, Centaur is paired with the italic Arrighi, designed by Frederic Warde. Centaur was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for printing the museum's ephemera. It is called Centaur because it was used in a 1915 publication of Maurice de Guerin's poem of the same name.

Century Expanded was created in 1900 by Morris Fuller Benton, who was trained as a mechanic and engineer and became a leading designer during the early years of the American Type Foundry. The Century family is so called because it was initiated by Morris's father, Linn Boyd Benton, for Century magazine. Classified as Egyptian owing to its slab serifs, Century Expanded maintains its substance and openness at small sizes. It is often used in children's books.

Clarendon, named for The Clarendon Press that commissioned its design in 1845, is classified as an Egyptian typeface. It has heavy, slab serifs and ball terminals on the arms of some letters. This stocky, functional, Victorian face can be seen in early advertisements as well as in dictionary entries.

HTF Didot was created by Jonathan Hoefler in 1992, inspired by the late eighteenth-century designs of Francois Ambroise Didot. It has an overall vertical stress, extreme contrast from thick to thin, and unbracketed serifs. Hoefler created different styles for use at different sizes, enabling the typeface to maintain its distinctive character across wildly divergent scales, from enormous letters on the side of a bus to tiny text on the pages of a magazine. Each font is represented by a number that lets the user know the smallest point size at which it should be used.

Fedra Sans was designed by Peter Bilak in 2001. Bilak was commissioned by Reudi Baur Integral Design to develop a corporate face for the German insurance company Bayerische Rück. The design brief required a "de-protestantized Univers." Bilak, a Czech-born designer working in the Netherlands, sought to create a face that would work equally well on screen and on paper, and at both small and large sizes. The Fedra type family includes at least 35 variations.

Franklin Gothic, designed in 1902 by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders , is one of the most popular sans-serif types ever produced. Named after Benjamin Franklin, it is a weighty sans-serif font often used for headlines. ATF later gave ITC permission to create additional weights for the Franklin Gothic family. Matthew Carter created a refined version of Franklin Gothic for use in the graphic identity of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Futura was designed by the German typographer Paul Renner in 1927. This geometric sans-serif font embodies Bauhaus ideals in a practical, commercially viable typeface. Futura has round O's and a capital M, N, and W with sharply pointed peaks and valleys. Renner, who viewed Futura as an appropriate typeface for the machine age, streamlined the alphabet by eliminating the tail from lowercase t and j.

Georgia, designed by Matthew Carter in 1996, is the serif companion to his sans serif font Verdana. Commissioned by Microsoft and created specifically for on-screen reading, it maintains clarity at small sizes and at low screen resolutions. It has a more vibrant character and open quality than Times, another common default face for Web designers.

Gill Sans was created by the English designer Eric Gill in 1928. Its forms are more humanistic, less geometric, than its German contemporary Futura. Note how the lowercase a relates to the a in Garamond (in contrast to the circular a of Futura). Additionally, Gill Sans is recognized by its flared capital R and the closed descender of the lowercase g. Gills Sans has been called Britain's Helvetica; it remains today an overwhelmingly popular typeface across the United Kingdom.

Garamond is the name for typefaces based on pages printed by Claude Garamond in sixteenth-century France. Many versions of Garamond were created in the twentieth century, including Adobe Garamond, designed by Robert Slimbach in 1989, and ITC Garamond, a distinctly 1970s version with a grossly enlarged x-height. Adobe Garamond honors the proportions of its Renaissance source while translating the face for modern use. Note the elegant, three-dimensional bowl of the lowercase a and the gap in the uppercase P.

Helvetica was designed in 1957 by Max Meidinger. This deliberately anonymous typeface is one of the world's most commonly used fonts, with variations created for both Latin and non-Latin characters. Its solid, upright forms are tempered by surprising curves in the lowercase a and the uppercase R. Helvetica has a generous x-height and is available in numerous weights and styles. It was called Neue Haas Grotesk before getting its current name, Helvetica, in the early 60s, which is the Latin word for "Switzerland."

News Gothic is a solid sans-serif face designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1908. It is similar to Benton's other sans serifs, Franklin Gothic; and Alternate Gothic. The caps in News Gothic have a relatively uniform width, and the lowercase forms are compact and powerful.

Trade Gothic was designed by the American designer Jackson Burke between 1948 and 1960 for Linotype. Similar in character to nineteenth-century grotesques and twentieth-century staples like News Gothic, Trade Gothic has a large x-height and excellent condensed variants. Often used for newspaper headlines, Trade Gothic is tough, direct, and generic.

Ideal Line Lengths - a core usability issue

I happened to browse through one of the blogs today. The subject was pretty interesting, but there was no column separation whatsoever. The text runs from the extreme left to the right making the reading experience quite tiring. It is importance to understand the benefits of having a ideal line length for the content.

Well I am again comparing the print and the web. In print, be that magazines, books or newspapers the column width is maintained for comfortable reading. This has scientific reasons. At normal reading distances, your eyes can comfortably span an acute focus of only about 3 inches width. A 30-40 character per line is considered to be ideal in print layouts, so that you have a comfortable eye span focus.

In web, there is no fixed screen width. When the design is a fixed width layout, things are easier to control to a certain extent. But when you have a liquid layout, the alignment changes with the resolutions the user sets in his computer. Imagine a 1024 resolution with your content running from left to right! Not very interesting right?. A designer can control the width in a liquid layout using css. But its not foolproof.

The discussion about fixed vs. liquid layout has been going on for a long time with each on having their merits and shortcomings, with browser compatibility being one of the major concerns.
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/liquid/
http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2003/12/15/fixedorliquid.html

Lets be conscious of how we display our the content and make online reading a pleasant experience.

Typeface in the New Business Line

First it was the Hindu redesign on April 14th last year, Mario Garcia has now proved it again with the redesign of Business Line. The financial daily by the Hindu, unveiled its new design on Feb 14, 2006.And Frontline, a bi-weekly magazine published by The Hindu, gets its new look on March 2. And what is of interest to us besides the design aspects is the typeface used.
Mercury Display, Mercury Text, various weights of Griffith Gothic and Big Caslon are the type faces used by Mario Garcia and his team for the news paper.
Mercury as research suggests uniquely suits to the demands of editorial typography.

Griffith Gothic An interesting fontface with 18 styles, Griffith Gothic is recommended for Newspapers, Magazines and Branding & Identity.

Big Caslon Caslon’s text types have often been revived, but the display sizes, forceful and a touch eccentric, have had no digital version until Matthew Carter’s Big Caslon. The face is meant for use at eighteen point & above.
Among other uses this fontface is highly recommended for magazines.

Welcome Change for good!!!
Hopefully I get sometime during this weekend to ponder into the design aspects and usability of this new avatar :)