Among 30 conversations on design presented by Idsgn, Erik Spiekermann and Ellen Lupton focus on typography obviously.

Alphabet ? The triangle of design, the greatest innovation for mankind, we hear. Book ? One of the most perfect objects ever invented as useful today as several centuries ago. The book’s alive, in so many forms and always reinvented as EL tells us…

& :
- Erik Spiekermann.
- Ellen Lupton.

Add-on for anyone concerned (students included) : Thinking with Type is the online avatar of the outstanding Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton.

Stumptown Printers offers high quality artefacts for digital products such as music cases. Monocle has issued a reportage from Portland, Oregon.

“All are convinced that however fast the cyber age moves, as long as humans have hands and eyes, there will always be a need for beautiful objects you can hold.” It is also a question of control, quality and sustainable business models for small but maybe promising activities. There is more to it than just music : typography, posters, and many other tangible products that proof our eyes.

& :
- Type + Paper + Ink.
- Not so Ancient Printing.

Global warming maybe, doomyears for some but here is a good graphical video called Beds Are Burning (Vimeo version).

Of course, we can dance to move the colors…

(Merci à BL).

Paul Renner created the Futura font (@Linotype.com). His life is recalled in a book written by Christopher Burker :

“German typographer Paul Renner is best known as the designer of the typeface Futura, which stands as a landmark of modern graphic design. This title is the first study in any language of Renner’s typographic career; it details his life and work to reveal the breadth of his accomplishment and influence.

Renner was a central figure in the German artistic movements of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming an early and prominent member of the Deutscher Werkbund while creating his first book designs for various Munich-based publishers. As the author of numerous texts such as Typografie als Kunst (Typography as Art) and Die Kunst der Typographie (The Art of Typography) he created a new set of guidelines for balanced book design. Renner taught with Jan Tschichold in the 1930s and was a key participant in the heated ideological and artistic debates of that time. Arrested and dismissed from his post by the Nazis, he eventually emerged as a voice of experience and reason in the postwar years. Throughout this tumultuous period he produced a body of work of the highest distinction.”

Open your eyes, a short video presents Futura, courtesy of Vimeo (ie. YouTube with a much higher quality).

Add-on : Fonts may be compelling and even passionnate stories, as one forum of Typophile shows. The New York Times has just given the facts, and few comments : in short, Ikea has just ditched Futura to Verdana. Mario Garcia Garcia blogs in his own witty way, whereas Idgn.org says its mind about the Big Switch (and shows the differences) and informs next that Verdana and Georgia will turn to print soon.

& :
- Know your type : Futura (Idgn.org).
- Typowiki : Futura (Typophile).

A typophile wandering in Berlin, and then a meeting with Erik Spiekermann and you might get hooked…

Need more addiction ? There is a film, not a cure for it.
- Helvetica (Long) Trailers : Erik Spiekermann, Wim Crouwel, and more.
- Helvetica Film Official Trailer.
- Looking for Helvetica, by Gary Hustwitt the film director.
- Helvetica Font (@Linotype.com).

Need even more to justify ? I-You?-HeOrShe-We–You?-They Love Typography.

I simply do, you do perhaps, he does definitively, some of us do, some of you do too, they do obviously love typography.

John D Boardley from I LoveTypography (iLT) has just designed a new appetising sister site called with no surprise We Love Typography. We (I at least, maybe you) will rave at rafts of graphical examples with a typographical focus.

- TypOL simply enjoys it, because this bridges reading and abstract art.

Alfred Mahlau was a great graphic artist from Northern Germany, as iLoveTypography informs faithful TypoAddicts :

- What Cooper Union Typography says.
- What Ministry of Typography claims.
- What Wikipedia publishes in a so brief version (Deutsche Fassung mit mehr Belehrung).
- What type Peter von Zezschwitz wonderfully designed in his honour.

Ich liebe Lübeck, wo Männer lebten.

Let praise the birth of a new type (not the rebirth of the cheapest item in France). TypOL is interesting because of the mention “Designed for extensive reading“.

Indeed : TypeOff’s Dan Reynolds has announced on iLT that LinoType has released his new family called Malabar : “With six fonts for the Latin script, Malabar is a sturdy oldstyle serif. Designed for extensive reading, Malabar was originally part of a larger design project conceived for Indian newspapers, and a Devanagari addition will be released at a later date.“

For the most curious typophile, fetch a PDF file of Malabar(s).

Types can move, swirl, jump. As iLT suggests somewhere scrolldown a recent post, video may enhance the typographic experience :

- Agostina.
- FontFont’s Trixie.
- The whole Typo category on Vimeo actually, including iLT’s own selection.

TypOL has already recorded some good clips : here, there especially.

Once again, John D Boardley’s i Love Typography makes one’s eyes beam. He informs TypoLovers that a new podcast has just been launched by two students, Aaron Heth and Matt McInerney, to learn how to read between the leading (sic).

TypOL is about to spend some nightly time hearing the types…

&:
- Lavoisy/Net > TypoGrapho

Il faudrait écrire en anglais et en français pour faire état de la nouvelle maquette du Monde qui, tout amateur que TypOL soit, lui fait penser au Guardian (organisation verticale) et à l’IHT (bandeau supérieur).

Les professionnels sont d’un avis plus averti :
- Mark Potter, commentant la toute nouvelle version de fin janvier 2009 : “Out goes Matthew Carter’s Rocky, and in comes Lucas de Groot’s TheAntiqua. I think it works well. Even though Lucas is Dutch, TheAntiqua feels more French than Rocky, (which is good) and reminds me a little of the previous Le Monde fonts from Jean-Francois Porchez.”
- Palmer Watson, présentant la version précédente datant de 2005.
- Plus à venir, espérons.

&  :
- Presse & Press.
- Supports de l’écrit.
- TypOL.

Ajout/Add-on : Mark Potter wrote another post “about design in elite newspapers (…) Intelligent, upmarket newspapers used to be identifiable by their small headlines, restrained use of pictures, and pages full of text. The form reflected the content, and often the typographic eccentricities of the country and language. (…)“.

Les signes diacritiques sont les ornements de langues comme le français : à ç é è ê ë ï î ù ü. La Toile ne fait pas souvent bonne affaire de la diversité des langues, du moins au chapitre typographique.

iLT (i Love Typography) en fait son récent billet On diacritics : “The globalisation of the type market and rising interest in multi-lingual typeface design is a source of great optimism among many typographers. Yet despite the proliferation of these beautiful new typefaces, many still do not support some European languages, let lone cater for African and Asian languages. In fact, contrary to the claims of advertisements, the offering is, in respect to language support, quite limited.

The aim of this article is to explain the fundamentals behind the use and design of Latin diacritical marks (accents) and help typographers make informed choices regarding their use. (…)“

Just read, enjoy, even admire and look at fonts differently…

Once again, iLT has just invited anyone prone to be interested in it to have a closer and enthralling look at everyday fonts.

Many font-addicted know that fonts may be defined by horizontal lines at different highs : from the lower descender, baseline, midline, caps-height to the upper ascender. But adjust your glasses with Alec Julien to discover metrics tricks.

iLT ? Here is its own silo :
- of typolinks : Directors Club, TypeOff, Typographer, TypeFoundry, the Grid system, Opentype.info, Typblography, John D. Berry, Typophile, FontFeed, Le Typographe, Typographica, Typofonderie, FontStruct, Sites, Fontwerk, Unzipped and Web typography ;
- of links stemming from a general interest about you-know-what : Smashing Magazine, TypeNuts, juststuffifind.com, Swiss Miss, Under Consideration, Coudal, Jason Santa Maria, Design Observer, AisleOne, Jon Tan, Inspirationbit, Daring Fireball, Elliot Jay Stocks, Design View and Designer’s review of books ;
- of a bundle of books marked via Amazon : Designing books (Hochuli & Kinross), Designing type (Karen Cheng), Thinking with type (Ellen Lupton), Elements of typographic style (Robert Bringhurst), Secret history of letters (Simon Loxley), Stop stealing sheep (Erik Spiekermann) and Complete manual of typography (James Felici).

Let’s type in 2009, TypOL would say.

New Year, new Task : to understand further, better actually, what is and how works a Grid. So, type the grid in 2009 because we Love Typography ! Let 2009 be another type-addict year.

Thanks to The-Grid-System, TypOL draws a link to a “96 page PDF book by the master Massimo Vignelli on better understanding typography in graphic design with a nice section of grids.” Many other references are also available there.

Add-on : The Ministry of Type himself gives some very operational clues to how to construct the Grid.

There is no better way to gear in a new year with enthousiasm for types+fonts, grids and many other gems than to browse the greetings post of the day from iLT’s Johno.

Let 2009 be a typophile year, with no other reason than that typography is what language looks like, as Ellen Lupton says.

By the way, TypOL does type his own greetings to anyone wandering around…

The grid system is the basis of sound typography. Mark Potter saying so and giving his praise for 12-column grid, no doubt should arouse about this.

Ellen Lupton, who urges us to think with type, proposes few examples : single-column, multi-column, horizontal anchor, modular. For her, “Grids belong to the technological framework of typography, from the concrete modularity of letterpress to the ubiquitous rulers, guides, and coordinates systems of graphic applications. (…)  Avant-garde designers in the 1910s and the 1920s exposed the mechanical grid of letterpress, bringing it to the polemical surface of the page. In Switzerland after World War II, graphic designers built a total methodology around the typographic grid, hoping to construct with it a new and rational social order.“

Wishing to know more ? Browse The Grid System, which is “an ever-growing resource where graphic designers can learn about grid systems, the golden ratio and baseline grids” : e.g. Why use a Grid ?, The Grid : the  Structure of Design, Setting a Baseline Grid.

Recreational time, perhaps ? Discover some jewels of  Typographic Art on iLT (i Love Typography).

Never tired of typography ? Follow TypOL.

How sites should look like ? Jon Tangerine is indeed one of the most beautiful achievements on the web ; Vivien from Inspiration Bit has recently explained why on TypeSite edited by Kyle Meyer (whose personal website, Astheria, is another resource to quote).

Other selections ?
- For the press, WebOL lists Monocle, NRC Handelsblad, IHT and maybe the best of the whole web, mainly thanks to Mark Porter, The Guardian.  Unfortunately, Zeit Online is no more up to its paper edition -which is outstanding-. Le Monde has recently improved -congratulations for that-.
- As an example of corporate website, WebOL praises Arup’s own, which is of higher quality.
- iLT (i Love Typography) is to be lauded to help anyone interested understand what is all about, and much more via WebOL’s TypoGrapho category.

Courtesy of iLT (i Love Typography), this is a 1947 film document on the printing processes. If Gutenberg reads this post, WebOL respectfully invites him to discover how movable types were mechanically used in the 20th century.

Then, take time to feel the paper and the ink, and much more on WebOL : let types dance on the grid.

Typography makes your mind readable, as WebOL have already posted. Jon Tangerine has just published an informative account of Detail in typography by Jost Hochuli. Typotheque presents several views of that interesting small book.

Let’s quote Jon : “It discusses ‘microtypography’ — the fundamentals of legibility; everything from how we read, to analyses of letters, words, lines, linespacing, texture, and the qualities of type.“

- i Love Typography.
- Thinking with Type.
- TypoGrapho @WebOL.

Courtesy of iLT (i Love Typography, which needs no introduction) courtesy of Aisleone (about “graphic design, typography, grid systems, minimalism and modernism“), one is aware that Nancy Stock-Allen has put online her lectures on the History of Graphic Design.

&
- @WebOL : the whole TypoGrapho category.
- More links under investigation…

Jon Tangerine explains the differences between a typeface and a font. It may be that the error has already occurred @WebOL as well.

- Typeface = a type family’s design.
- Font = one member of a type family.

&
- @WebOL : Type Terms, TypoGrapho category.
- @Lavoisy/Net : TypoGrapho.

It seems that it could simply mean life actually… enjoy that amazing animation (courtesy of MC Doyon). If you have time left, do not forget to lose few minutes watching typography in motion.

Nicolas Bouvier ushered mindful ideas about the sterile opposition of writings and images. They meet in books, posters, etc. When having edited even few books, one understands that typography & graphism are a discourse all along words.

Typography @Lavoisy/Net :
- Top sites – Thinking with Type, by Ellen Lupton | I Love Typography | TypeSites | Jon Tangerine
- Museums & Resources – Museum Plantin Moretus (Anvers, BE) | Luc Devroye’s Pages on Typography (Univ. McGill, CA) | Rencontres internationales de Lure (FR) | Atelier Perrousseaux (FR) – Ouvrages de culture typographique et graphique | Imprimerie Nationale (Paris, FR) | Association GUTenberg – Groupe francophone des utilisateurs de TeX.
- Type foundries/Font distributors & libraries/Font stuff - Dafont.com | Linotype | Typotheque (Den Haag, NL) | Emigre | Myfonts | Fontshop | Optimo | Lineto | FontFont | Fluxus-Virus – Non latine typesetting and desktop publishing | 100 Beste Schriften – 100 Best Fonts | Helvetica is 50 years old in 2007 (MOMA, US).

Graphism @Lavoisy/Net :
- Graphic designers -  Muenchundmuench | Mark Porter | Wieslaw Smetek | Christoph Niemann | Otto – Interview @XXI | MC Doyon’s Graphisch Ontwerp.
- NAGO – Nederlands Archief Grafisch Ontwerpers | Publishers/Books – 01 Publishers – Nijhof & Lee – Arminius – Hyphen Press.

TypoGrapho @WebOL :
- Graphic Novels, Font dependence, Typography in motion, Type+Paper+Ink, Typography for the web, Type terms,  we Love Typography.

To Jon Tang, a blog may be both “knowledge silo and sandbox“. This post is a new grain for the WebOL’s typography grind.

- Kyle Meyer’s Typesites provides weekly comments on typo-oriented websites via a showcase.
- John D Boardley’s i Love Typography doesn’t need any introduction. Type addiction has no cure actually, hasn’t it ?
- Jon Tangerine is about Pith & pulp (“not an image, but perhaps a reversion to type“).
- Typophile’s Typowiki.

&
- WebOL’s typography category.
- @Lavoisy/Net > TypoGrapho.