This lead to sophisticated systems for classifying fonts based on their appearance throughout history. ClassificationĮarly in design school I’ve learned about the history of writing and practiced calligraphy to understand how writing evolved and how tools had an immediate impact on the design of type faces. Before I dive into parsing font files, glyphs and metadata tables, let’s first have a look at classification, curated lists and then anatomy. There are various ways to limit the options. A systematic approach to finding typefaces Limited choice, various styles, but not necessarily the best possible typefaces. The font menu in “Papyrus” by Saturday Night Life. While I like to be surprised, I also like to influence my odds. This is obviously not an interface made for systematic exploration - but infinite surprises. Now you either get trapped in a time consuming process of scrolling through the whole list from start to end or you simply decide to pick the first best match from the upper part of the list and call it a day. The average font menu presents a list of available fonts, sorted by name, but completely unrelated otherwise: A typeface designed for bold headlines is followed by one designed for small user interfaces and then a fancy script typeface made for wedding invitations shows up. Dinner for none: The font menu’s bitter taste On the other hand, web font libraries with hundreds or thousands of fonts can be quite overwhelming and lead to a paradox of choice. On one hand, a limitation to system fonts, as seen in the video, can lead to a bad choice because there simply isn’t something better installed. The seemingly mindless choice of a font is a general problem with font menus: there are either too few or too many options. In the parody produced by Saturday Night Live, the designer of the logo opens the font menu, browses the fonts one by one, and randomly decides to go with “Papyrus”. Originally published on Medium, Even years after Avatar’s release, there’s one thing Ryan Gosling just can’t get over: the choice of the movie’s logo font “Papyrus”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |