Diary of a Network Geek

Your tax dollars at work for better design!

No, seriously, this is actually US tax dollars working to develop a “better” font. Not even kidding.
Believe it or not, there’s a little something called the United States Web Design System that’s collaborative team specifically started to “…make it easier to build accessible, mobile-friendly government websites for the American public.” And, as it turns out, they have some resources that might be helpful for non-governmental web designers, too. One such is a simple font called Public Sans, which they call “A strong, neutral typeface for text or display.” Which it is, actually. It can be downloaded from their GitHub page, which further describes the font as “principles-driven” and “open-source”. It’s also a fairly nice, and free, change from Helvetica. Oh, and it includes webfonts, so you can, in fact, use it to unify your on-line and off-line branding identity.
And, again, all freely available and all brought to you, one way or another, by the United States of America Federal Government.
Sometimes, the government really IS here to help!

Enjoy!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words!

Digital photographers almost never print their work, but they should.

Why?
Well, for one thing, while digital formats change, printed work stays the same pretty much forever.  Also, a nice print hangs on the wall a lot better than a digital image stored on a drive.
On a personal note, I know I don’t print enough of my own work.  When we were dating, my wife printed a shot I took of that year’s “super moon” and gave it to me in a…
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Marshall McLuhan said that, and it may be one of the few things I remember about him from my Marketing classes.And, I’ll be honest, outside of it being a catchy phrase, I’m not entirely sure it applies to this post.  But, I suppose, in a way, it does.

Take a look around you and think about how you receive information.  While a “picture is worth a thousand words”, the vast majority of the way we communicate information is via the written…
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You may not realize it, but typography is actually very important to me.

Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed that it looks just a little different.  That’s because I’ve changed how I make the fancy titles on my posts.  Instead of using an older plugin which relied on TrueType fonts and good, old PHP programming to generate titles on the fly, I’ve moved to a much newer plugin that relies on FontBurner fonts, which are Flash-based.  There are a couple of reasons for this, actually, but the main one is that my webhost has had server utilization issues with my blog since I’ve been with them and after digging through log files, some signs point toward that older plugin being the issue.  But, what you all haven’t seen is the horror of trying to find an appropriate font that is readable and still conveys the sense of technical whimsy that I think represents this blog well.  It hasn’t been easy.

Now, I understand that not all my readers will share my quiet obsession with typography, but for those who do, I think you’ll enjoy the link I’m bringing you this week.  Have you ever tried to explain to people what the different parts of a font really are?  Or maybe wanted to know yourself?  Ever wonder why “kerning” is so important to that crazy web designer you hired to do your site?  Well, you may still wonder about that last one, but for almost all your other questions about what goes into a typeface and what it’s all called, go check out Typography Deconstructed.
They bill themselves as a single, central location to find as much high-quality information on type and typography as you could want.  And, I really think they have done it!  There are two main sections to this site; Anatomy of Type and Type Glossary.  They both show you what the different parts of a typeface are and what the different parts are called, just in two slightly different formats.

Also, for you typography fanatics, or teachers, there are posters for download or purchase that do a great, graphical, job of showing and explaining just what goes into type.

Whether you’re into typography or not, this site is worth a look, just to understand how type works and get some idea of how deeply it effects our daily life.  After all, without type and typography, you couldn’t have read this blog!