Recently in the Typography Category

The AWWWARDS site has a list of best 20 web fonts. Web typography is a little far afield from this blog's usual topics, but I figure it's close enough.

It struck me a while back that every time there's any text on any sign, someone had to choose a font and a size for it, among other design choices. (Some things may be mandated by law, but that just means the lawmakers had to make those choices.)

I'm reminded of that again when I see things like this: a set of photos of a bus station in Amsterdam that's currently under construction. The word AMSTERDAM is spelled out in huge letters on the roof, and they're starting from both ends and working in toward the middle. And so the blogger expresses concern that they may not have calculated the sizes of the letters correctly, especially since the evidence so far suggests that the people building the station aren't using consistent kerning.

. . . Speaking of kerning, I don't seem to have mentioned the word keming here. It's a joke word coined by David Friedman in 2008; it's defined as “The result of improper kerning.”

One more thing while I'm here: Google kerning, and look carefully at the letter-spacing of the word kerning in the search results. (May not work in all browsers, I'm not sure.)

Want some sample filler text, but find faux-Latin too stodgy?

Now you can use Hipster Ipsum—“Artisanal filler text for your site or project” to fill your space with hipster-related terms.

Example:

Tofu tattooed Brooklyn farm-to-table put a bird on it, hoodie +1 raw denim locavore cliche. 8-bit Portland keytar butcher wolf lomo retro.

Video demo of a nifty project called Typeface 2 by Mary Huang. It analyzes the user's face and generates letters of a typeface based on things like the user opening and closing their mouth, or widening their eyes.

Guest blogger Shmuel here again... the problem with getting behind in blogging is that you feel that after taking so long, you ought to write something really good, which of course takes more time and effort than you have in reserve, so you procrastinate, and then the post needs to be even better, and so on and so forth. (I have the same problem with e-mail.)

So let's keep it simple. Check out Priori Acute, a display face that's both cool and disturbing, with a 3-D effect that doesn't quite make sense in the real world.

(The other flavors of Priori are interesting as well, with eclectic mixtures of angular elements and fluid flourishes.)

John Gruber at Daring Fireball has been linking to various posts having to do with the use of small caps in typesetting.

For example:

• Gore's choice explains Al Gore's request that the numeral 1 in a particular font be made to look more like a 1 and less like a capital I.
• In response, fawny Joe Clark [see comments below] rants about the evils of small caps. ("Use of small caps for acronyms and abbreviations is a surefire indication your compositor is a snob.")
• Aegir Hallmundur at Ministry of Type responds that small caps are not bad per se; it's more a question of how and when to use them appropriately.