Inside typographer Alan Kitching's studio

Those of you enthused by typography should really enjoy this short film about Darlington-born Alan Kitching. It shows how he created five pieces of work to celebrate famous graphic designers on their centenary ...  Tom Eckersley, Paul Rand, FHK Henrion, Josef Müller-Brockmann and Abram Games. What is really good though is the look inside Kitching's amazing studio and the fact is he still has his County Durham accent. 

Times New Roman: The movie

Times New Roman wouldn't be my first choice of typeface for a newspaper design. There are many more readable serifs for body copy as my chart below shows (you can read about the chart's origins here). That said, I appreciate the elegance of Times and Times New Roman and their historical importance. These are nicely reflected in this short film dedicated to the font by The Times and Sunday Times. It's a must-watch for anyone interested in typography. The film is part of the Forever Unquiet series of shorts on journalistic issues which include photojournalism, the power of words and why journalists should question everything. When you get a minute take a look at them all. You won't be disappointed.

Footnote: The settings for this blog mean this is a lo-res jpg of the type chart. If you would like a hi-res PDF drop me an email on petersandssms@gmail.com and I will send you a copy. There is also a chart comparing the characteristics of sans headline faces used by newspapers 

Type is my life: Fonts legend Mike Parker dies

Mike Parker, the man who gave the world Helvetica, died on Sunday. He was 84. He was also responsible for around 1,000 other fonts. He also featured in the movie Helvetica which, if you haven't seen it already, is a must-watch. Parker's amazing typographical journey started with the Mergenthaler Linotype Company in 1959 and ended with the Font Bureau. There are many tributes to him around this week including this one on Time's website and this fascinating interview, which opens with 'My name is Mike Parker and type is my life'. Please watch it. 

Four funny fonts films

If you are interested in typography (which you should be) and even if you think you're not, you need to watch the History of Type - an Animated Short by Ben Barrett-Forrest. It covers everything from Gutenberg's original Blackletter typeface to creating your own fonts on a computer - all in 5 minutes 10 seconds.  Brilliantly done - and funny too.

It joins my list of all time favourite typography shorts. These include the excellent tribute to Neutra Face by Lady Gaga. "You can read my Neutra Face, (even when it's bold italics)" to the tune of Poker Face. Stirring stuff.

Then there is the fonts conference with typefaces given human personalities. Baskerville is 'a shrivelled bastard,' Futura a space girl and Century Gothic a modern goth with attitude. Only problem is that it's Comic Sans who saves the day. What are they trying to tell us?
This video led to my family recognising people they knew by their typographical traits. I like to think I'm a cross between Utopia Bold and Avant Garde. My kids think I'm more Goudy Heavyface and my wife definitely likes to think of me as Minion. Which one are you?

From the same stable, CollegeHumor, is the fight to the death between Helvetica's gang and Arial's gang. Watch it here.  "Arial. I haven't seen you since you cloned me and stole my identity. I've been waiting for this day for 26 years." This time, though, Comic Sans reverts to type.
It all serves as a reminder that typography isn't just for geeks ... it's fascinating and it's funny. Really.

Can you tell your Goudy from your Gouda?

I will be talking typography with the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail trainees in Howden this week so, here's a couple of topical links. This neat introduction to typography video is nicely done and covers all the basics. And I am grateful to Mail subbing trainee Lauren York for pointing me in the direction of the irresistible Cheese of Font game. Be warned though, only visit the site if you are prepared to waste an hour or so of your life.

The Cooper Black comeback

When I was a young chief sub on the Evening Despatch in Darlington, 30 years or so ago, I was nominated for a design award and off I went to a swanky hotel in the Smoke. When I didn't win I collared the judges in the bar and asked why the winner's portfolio was better than mine. "Ahh," one of them said. "We liked your pages, confident use of pictures, good white space, big impact ... but you could have used more modern typography."  "Like what?" I asked. "Look at all the winners they said ... they all used Cooper Black."
We didn't have Cooper Black in our caseroom. Just Century Bold, Times, Bodoni, Garamond, Clarendon and a selection of sans faces including Tempo (the font The Sun still uses today) and Univers. So I could only look on as the newspaper world fell in love with Cooper Black. 

The Sunderland Echo - Cooper Black titlepiece

Everyone from the Liverpool Echo to The Sun decorated their pages with it. The Sunderland Echo even used it for its titlepiece. 

It wasn't just newspapers either. I thought it looked pretty cool on the album cover of the 1971 Doors' album LA Woman but when it was hijacked by TV programmes - Dad's Army, Cheers and Mash included - often in yellow caps, it lost its coolness altogether. 

It was an Old Style serif which seemed to have been drawn by a child. Its O sat at a peculiar angle, the cap A was definitely distorted and the lower case f looked like a deformed chess piece. 

You couldn't use it as a text face (it fills in under around 14pt) and it didn't have a great headline count either. But the newspaper world loved it ... briefly. For some reason, when the computers came along, it disappeared from newspapers almost as quickly as it appeared. It was occasionally used on ironic features about 70s and 80s fashion, but that was it.
Now though, the font is enjoying a bit of a revival ... and I don't just mean easyjet and Garfield making it synonymous with orange.

Modern bands, such as Marina and the Diamonds and The Black Keys, have adopted the font. And tee-shirts declaring a love for Cooper Black are for sale online (although I have never seen anyone wearing one in real life). 

So I was fascinated to receive the brilliant Visual History of Cooper Black (at the top of the page) which Fibers sent me this week. Very smart, stylish and informative. I have long grown out of my blind dislike for Cooper Black. It reminds me of my youth, can have impact on posters and is bold and effective on artwork and tee-shirts. But I still draw the line at using it in newspapers. It was never, ever, really a newsprint font ... despite what those misguided 1980s' design judges believed. 
Thanks to @fibers for the nice graphic.

Suit happens ...

Wow. Here's a typographical peril I have never encountered before. What else can I say? Thanks to @SimonNRicketts for the tip, Imgur for the picture and @David_C_Lewis for the headline.

If typography was a sport ...

Never mind the Olympics, why not enter the 2012 Typography Games? This Olympic style contest for designers looks like a challenge more suited to most of the people I know. You have to design a typographical poster about sport using the phrase 'it's not what you win but how you conquer it'. Even if you don't fancy taking part, the launch video is definitely worth watching.  

Can you read the bottom line?

Thanks to Andy Cooper, editor in deepest Devon and Cornwall, for this addition to our bill collection. Clever. A slab serif too, close to the original Snellen chart.

If fonts were dogs ...

Ha! Comic Sans getting more stick (previous post). Thought this was quite clever though ... made me smile. Originals here and here.

Type comparison 2 - sans headline faces

One of our Irish clients has been in touch, looking to change their sports page headline font from Franklin Gothic. The key question in any such change, of course, is why? Do they want:

• A more economical face (a better count)
• Clearer legibility
• Stronger display
• Something more modern
• A different font from another title or from other sections
• A brand change?

Anyway, in order to help them consider which font they might go for, we have prepared another typechart. This one is for sans display faces for newspapers. There are of course different weights for all those listed, except Impact. If you would like a higher res PDF than the jpgs above, let me know on petersands@mistral.co.uk and I will send you a copy. The previous typechart for newspaper body copy fonts can be found here.

Good use of space?

Here's a splendid video from National Geographic magazine to kick off the New Year. By the end of 2011 you will be one of 7 billion people. It's a fascinating message ... and really first class use of typography. Have a happy and prosperous New Year and use your space wisely.

Body copy comparison - Times v Nimrod

Had a call from the Halifax Courier's Tim Robinson this week asking about body copy. Tim is a self-confessed Times New Roman junkie but was asking about accessible alternatives. "Please don't say Nimrod - to me it looks as up-to-date as the ad for Worthington E," he added. Times New Roman is OK if used properly. It has served newspapers well, commissioned specifically for The Times newspaper in 1931 (although even The Times doesn't use it any more). Times and Times New Roman have a smaller x-height than many other serifs and have thin strokes and hairlines, so has a tendency to break up if used too small on newsprint. I regularly see research which says readers find a newspaper difficult to read - and more often than not it is Times or Times New Roman used at 8.5pt or under and across too narrow a measure. As it has a small x-height you don't really need to lead it, just use it bigger. Nimrod is certainly ubiquitous and hardly at the cutting edge of design but it is functional and readable. Clarion is very similar to Nimrod. News Miller and News 701 are very readable. If economy is more important, ITC Cheltenham works well. Newspapers tend not to be awash with great off-the-shelf serifs ... some of the most stylish fonts, such as Poynter and Gulliver, can be costly. And not many newspapers are in the business of buying in new fonts these days. I put the above chart together for Tim which compares common text faces and specifically looks at Nimrod v Times New Roman. It's a jpg but if you would like a better quality PDF drop me an email on petersands@mistral.co.uk and I will send you one.

Lady Gaga meets typography

Clever video extols the virtues of Neutra Face. More classic typography funnies can be found here, here, here and here.

The eighth wonder of the world

Who would want to go back to the days of cantankerous printers, composing room overseers, the frustrations of headlines that wouldn't fit, the inexact science of casting off or the lack of colour? Not me ... although this excellent trailer for 'Linotype: the film' made me have second thoughts. If you were around, as I was, this is guaranteed to give you goosebumps.

The case against upper case

The advance of lower case - road signs, health warnings and even tabloid headlines now embrace the more legible style

A timely piece on The Guardian's style blog this week. I had just finished a typography session with the Daily Mail trainees, banging on about why the world was rightly becoming lower case, when David Marsh posted his case against uppercase.

Middle market newspapers, I am pleased to say, are almost wholly lower case in their display typography these days. The Mail still goes for caps for impact on Page 1, but is just about exclusively lower case inside. 

Even the red tops have moved towards more lower case headlines. Why? Partly because capitals are harder to read. Anyone who went on a Bob James course, and there were hundreds, will have it drummed into us that lower case letter structures and word shapes are more distinctive - the ascenders, descenders and other projecting parts increasing clarity. Caps also eat up more white space, which is essential to legibility. Equally important is the fact that caps are less economical and therefore we get fewer meaningful words. The legacy of local newspapers trying to copy the black sans caps of The Sun and the Mirror, has been thousands of meaningless headlines in which none of the key words fit. I recently came across a local newspaper that carried this headline in 230pt Helvetica Neue caps on Page 1:

SUPERMARKET

CAR PARK ROW

It was a story about a shopper who had damaged a tyre in a supermarket car park and was cross because the store would pay up the £66.30 to replace it. Barely worth one deck of 14pt, let alone hitting the poor reader across the head with a dull mallet. 

Marsh mentions the lower case font now used on British road signs. When you are darting between the lorries on the A1 in the rain and dark. legibility is critical. A wide open sans, lower case, with plenty of background space is just what is needed. He might have also mentioned the warning notices on cigarette packets - all lower case by edict of European parliament. 

Caps are still needed of course, as Marsh's column illustrates vividly. 'I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse' really does need a capital J. 

Don't go back to the bad times

Here is a worrying typographical development - a comparison of fonts and how much ink they use. It works by using Arial as the base at 100% and gives a bigger or smaller percentage to other fonts. Why worrying? Times Roman comes in at 71% ...  one of the most economic. Having spend much of my life successfully persuading newspapers to stop using Times as their body copy, what's the betting that men in suits will now decide it is the best face after all? Times uses less ink because it has a small x-height and it has upstrokes and downstrokes too thin, at smaller sizes, for the ink to cling on to - certainly on newsprint. Less ink often just means less legibility. If you are faced with a manager who suddenly becomes a typographic expert overnight, explain that there is only one serif on the list and that your Nimrod/ Clarion/Gulliver/Miller /Poynter or whatever actually uses even less ink. A total lie of course ... but I can guarantee he won't know. 

Africa wins the typeface World Cup

If the team with the best typography won the World Cup (as type designer Dalton Maag claimed when Italy won in 2006) it would have been Ghana who collected this year's trophy. For me, their away kit was the best strip of the tournament (with Slovenia, home and away, and the US, away, vying for the worst). African countries carried their names and numbers with a flourish, using the typeface Olembe, designed by Puma's Paul Barnes and sported by both Ghana and Cameroon. 
Now the favourites to win must now be Brazilian designer Yomar Augusto whose Unity font is to be found on the adidas shirts of Argentina, Germany and Spain. Certainly a worthy winner - but not quite as stylish as Olembe. 

The numbers in Unity are bold and clear but the letters less so - and the R and A look the same (FABAEGAS??) which isn't such a good idea for a tournament where half of the players are unheard of. This year, Italy's typeface is called Crepello. That's why they played so badly. Read interviews with both designers on the FontFeed website.

The sans and the fury

A couple of issues have the typographical world hot under its collective collar this week. The purists are particularly upset at the poor typography on the iPad ... just four fonts in iBooks and full justification with hyphenation the only option. The fonts on the iPhone 4G, Helvetica and Arial, have also come in for a pasting with some commentators even arguing (gasp) that Microsoft is better than Apple. A huge debate has grown up from the initial posting on The Font Feed and a piece entitled Better Screen, Same typography. It's all a bit surprising that Apple should be criticised for typography, given that it was the Mac that pioneered desktop publishing and turned everyone into a potential typographers. Hopefully, given that the type types, have been doing their best to crash Twitter with their outrage, Apple will be stung into action in time for the next generation of gizmos. 

Equally alarming, though, is the Wall Street Journal's decision to use Comic Sans on a news headline this week (albeit on a story about a cartoonist). As you probably know Comic Sans is the most vilified of fonts. There is even a Ban Comic Sans campaign and, should you be minded, you can buy t-shirts declaring your hatred for the Microsoft font. The comments on Typophile about the WSJ's lapse include 'the barbarians have breached the gates and made it inside the walls of the city' and 'heads should roll'. Microsoft better than Apple? Comic Sans in the WSJ? Sounds like Armageddon to me.

Put your best font forward

I know typography can make a page sing ... but now it can make it dance too. Clever type graphic from Spanish designer Roman Cortes. He has created a nice tribute to the Beatles too.