This Is Locomotion - Design, Code, and News

Today in the news I noticed that Apple has re-branded their entire product line to prominently feature the Verdana typeface.

The California-based computer and electronics company, best known for their Macintosh computers and iPods, announced today the company will be adopting Verdana as their corporate typeface. The typographic change, Apple’s first since 2001, was spotted on several of the company’s international websites Thursday morning, and will soon be visible on all new packaging and marketing materials.

The news comes only months after Swedish furniture giant IKEA similarly adopted the Verdana typeface. “Verdana is a simple, cost-effective font which works well in all media and languages,” praised IKEA spokeswoman Camilla Meiby. After IKEA’s change, designers and IKEA fans alike were initally shocked to see the company drop Futura (their corporate typeface for 50 years) for the screen optimized Verdana. However, as time passed, people began to embrace the typeface in ways like never before. Source: Idsgn.org

PS. April fools

love this drop-cap from Jessica Hische who recently started a blog that features a different drop cap every day. While I can’t say I would use every single one of them I do have my favorites and the letter “I” is certainly one of them. Her decorative style of typography and illustration is very refreshing and I can’t wait to see the entire series in full.

Really liked this type design by remcovandermeer. The crinkled paper and 3d lettering is just exquisite.

This week Ikea made the decision to switch it’s dominant typeface used in all it’s catalogs from gorgeous Futura to Verdana. I simply cannot understand why any designer in their right mind would make such a switch knowing that Verdana really pales in comparison as a typeface for headings. Moreover it is a Microsoft typeface. Sigh.

Take a closer look at this typography sample below and you’ll notice just how wrong Verdana is compared to Futura for their usage. The uppercase “i” in particular just irks me. I get that they wanted to keep their branding consistent between their online presence and their catalogs but with inventions like TypeKit on their way there really is no excuse for such a poor type choice. More to the point, Verdana isn’t even a Scandinavian typeface, at least Futura was created by German born Paul Renner so it is sort of in keeping with their Scandinavian stylings. Oh Ikea, what are you thinking!

iQ font – When driving becomes writing.

When two type designers, an interactive artist, and a professional race car driver got together… a font was born.

The creativity behind the creation of this typeface is really inspiring. It’s rare to get a glimpse at what goes into designing a typeface and I really enjoyed the documentary.

Source: siljagoetz.com

As I have been working more on deepening my knowledge in the field of typography this year I’ve been steadily studying a broad swath of common typefaces. This week I chose to focus specifically on “Arial” which is almost ubiquitous on the web today. My aim in studying this typeface was to understand its origins and history so that I can better recognize when it is acceptable to use this typeface and when it is not. Surprisingly, Arial appears to be a complete knock-off of Helvetica (which, unless you are a type nerd you might not know) and has stolen both its proportion and weight. Arial has become a success on the web and also in print mostly as a result of Microsoft adopting the typeface early in development of Windows 3.1 as a method to reduce costs and not pay licensing fees to the creators of Helvetica.

When Microsoft made TrueType the standard font format for Windows 3.1, they opted to go with Arial rather than Helvetica, probably because it was cheaper and they knew most people wouldn’t know (or even care about) the difference. Apple also standardized on TrueType at the same time, but went with Helvetica, not Arial, and paid Linotype’s license fee. Of course, Windows 3.1 was a big hit. Thus, Arial is now everywhere, a side effect of Windows’ success, born out of the desire to avoid paying license fees.

Source: The Scourge of Arial

After reading the source cited above, I discovered in particular that despite its pervasiveness, a professional designer would rarely use Arial. Apparently to professionals, Arial is looked down on as a not-very-faithful imitation of a typeface that is no longer fashionable. One might even go so far as to say that Arial has never been fashionable with the elitist typography fashionistas who were familiar with its origins.

Additionally, I also found an excellent article on recognizing the visual distinctions between Helvetica and Arial.

No longer using Arial for body text (check).

A new technology solution for font replacement will be arriving later this year and has been heralded by the design community (and rightly so) with a big fanfare. The proposed solution is to use Javascript to handle the font rendering and could potentially have a huge impact on web design. Interestingly, no specific type foundries are mentioned which leaves me wondering what foundries are supporting the new venture.

We’ve been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.

As a Typekit user, you’ll have access to our library of high-quality fonts. Just add a line of JavaScript to your markup, tell us what fonts you want to use, and then craft your pages the way you always have. Except now you’ll be able to use real fonts. This really is going to change web design.

We’ll be launching this summer with a great collection of beautiful and hardworking typefaces. We’ll offer a free version of the service to get you started, and a low-cost way to grow from there. A truly scalable professional version will follow soon after.

Source: http://blog.typekit.com/2009/05/27/introducing-typekit/