I really like these videos. They are how I explain to my non-typophile friends why typography is interesting. The ability to convey so many meanings with different fonts is fascinating, I’ve been trying to think of a project I could use the technique for.

Robert Newman (Resource Guides on the site) and Kate Elazegui present examples and tips for fresh design.

This may be because I’m not a designer, but I’m really confused by the constant “These are the designs I’ve done” thing. Yes, we learn by looking at other people’s work, we get ideas from other work, but I really don’t feel like I’m getting much out of this. Also, brainstorming to me means we present a challenge or problem and toss around possible solutions. Does going back through your portfolio and telling me about your thought processes count?

- Collect illustrations and layouts you like to look at while brainstorming.

- Functionality and practicality over beautiful design

I left this session 30 minutes early and wandered over to the exhibits. Found some cool things I’ll write about after lunch.

Clue: a number of people, 19 across, eleven letters

advice: teach yourself how to write, learn how to do crossword puzzles

design of comic book covers: BOUNDARIES! gay superman, robin kicking batman in the crotch

Forget the preconception of what a best-selling book might look like.

Typography 101: Make the word look like what it says. What happens when you turn this the other way around? Avoid literal representations. Try to work elements from life into your work.

Sometimes the light just goes off, even if its a stupid book. Book jackets can only do so much.

Kidd is freaking hilarious.

Answer: Anaesthesia.

Jared Novack and Mike Swartz talking about taking a print publication online.

“How to make an extra $10,000 at your first job and not get laid off 3 years later” is the title of their presentation.

First step is to establish a Web identity. Look at the flags from established, important newspapers and then check out their online representations. Ew. You already have a print identity. Use the same logo, carry your brand over isntead of creating a new one.

WEB DESIGN IS NOT PRINT DESIGN ON A COMPUTER. amen.

Remember:
hierarchy content placement
teasers and reefers more important
columns and grids
design fundamentals
ads are content too
scannability (provide a buffet of info..I’m hungry!)

Forget:
large amounts of real-estate
large amounts of copy
overdesigned logos

Design it once: modular design

Online typography: Only a few typefaces to work with. Make the best of it with CSS. Check out A List Apart. Typography is what users interact with most on your Web site.

Three tips:
Play with letter-spacing
Play with line-height (approx 130% of font size)
Use font size for hierarchy

Newspaper Sins:
Flashturbation: Hell to make and update, hell to link. But, Flash can do the work for templated packages.
Blog Jammin’: Why are so many newspaper Web sites inundated with blogs? Rife with: non-information, uninteresting and mundane, not current or neglected, leftover stories. When they are extremely targeted, have organized information and are used as an easy portal to content, they can be good. Good idea: crime blog.
Podcasts: enhance content by providing a primary source, don’t just read the headlines.
Video: YOU ARE NOT TV and that’s a good thing.

Use Google Analytics. Use SEO.

David Berlow, founder of The Font Bureau, which produes typefaces for newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal.

Fonts tell about who and what you are. (smaller lighter type for younger audiences, bigger, heavier type for older)

Critical: Don’t lose touch with your audience, keep line and letter spacing under control.

Big problems: Too much whitespace (WHAT?! I don’t think I’ve seen too much whitespace on a newspaper site…)

My battery is about to die and the power cord is upstairs. More later.

UPDATE:

Advice: the right side of the letter indicates what letter it is, so focus on that. repeat shapes throughout one typeface.

For my 21st birthday (which was a month and a half ago now) my mother promised to buy me a Blackberry Pearl as soon as I qualified for the T-Mobile discount, which would be sometime in October. Well, October is here. This means, that despite not having a laptop, and my MacBook Pro not being delivered in time, I should be able to blog my way through SNDBoston (Society of News Design conference).

So, this is my tentative plan:

On Thursday, I’ll be attending the Student Sessions, which promise advice but are a little vague on structure and content.

Friday

9:30 am You can judge a book by its cover
Described by USA Today as “the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design today,” Chip Kidd revolutionized book design. Kidd shows how to tell and sell stories using conceptual thinking, visual puns, and found images.

11 am Brainstorming workshop: design
Inspiring examples and practical tips for fresh approaches to design. Robert Newman (Fortune, Real Simple, Vibe, Entertainment Weekly) and Kate Elazegui (art director, New York magazine).

And at this point I’m conflicted. At 2pm, there are two fantastic looking sessions:

Roundtable: The elections
Print and online designers, graphics artists, and picture editors discuss fresh ways to cover the upcoming elections. Panel includes Elliott Malkin (nytimes.com), Paul Nelson (Design Director, The Virginian Pilot), and Dan Wasserman, editorial cartoonist for The Boston Globe.

and

It’s the little things
Recent innovations in presenting stock tables, sports agate, and other small information. The panel includes Dennis Brack (The Washington Post) and typographer Matthew Carter.

Input anyone? Onward, then.

3:15 pm Multimedia, the next frontier
The next place for great design and photojournalism is multimedia argues Brian Storm founder of MediaStorm and former head of multimedia for MSNBC.

Oh, poppycock, more conflicts:

Brainstorming workshop: graphics
Inspiring examples and practical tips for fresh approaches to infographics Archie Tse (New York Times) and Javier Zarracina (The Boston Globe).

or

Typography roundtable
A discussion on trends from readability to revivals with typographers Matthew Carter and David Berlow.

And Friday ends with

6 pm ‘Helvetica, The Movie’
It’s the 50th anniversary of the typeface you love—or love to hate. Director Gary Hustwit’s documentary has been drawing rave reviews on the film festival circuit. The Chicago Tribune enthused that the film “sharpens your eye in general and makes connections between form and content, and between art and life.”

Saturday

9:30 am Reinventing The Guardian
Mark Porter, creative director of one the 2005 SND World’s Best-Designed newspapers on reinventing the print and online versions of one of Britain’s leading newspapers.

11 am The future is now
A look at new and emerging technologies from The New York Times R&D team. Interface designer Nick Bilton and futurist-in-residence Michael Rogers demonstrate the handheld Times Reader and discuss interactive newspaper technologies in development.

This conflicting sessions thing is really obnoxious. I need a time machine!

2 pm Reinventing page one
Long the most traditional page of the paper, panelists Jeff Hindenach (San Jose Mercury News), Gayle Grin (National Post, Canada) and Søren Nyeland (SND 2006 World’s Best-Designed Newspaper Politiken, Denmark) show how to build memorable fronts with photography, graphics, teasers and a strong design voice.

or

2pm Storytelling in print and multimedia
Jenn Crandall (washingtonpost.com’s onBeing) project and Kelli Sullivan (Los Angeles Times projects including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Altered Oceans“) show how words and images can be combined to create compelling narratives.

At 3:15 I’ll be having my portfolio reviewed. I’m really nervous about this because this Web site is in dire need of a redesign (which I’m working on) and I can’t really print out a lot of my work.

The (for me) icing on all this newsy cake is a session at 4:45 with Adrian Holovaty.

Making data webby
Adrian Holovaty of washingtonpost.com shares philosophy and strategies for making data browsable online. He’ll touch on several of his past projects, including chicagocrime.org and Faces of the Fallen.

I’m working on a couple of database projects this semester and probably will be working with Django next semester, so I’m looking forward to satisfying my fetish for the geekier side of journalism.

One of the most important elements of Web design is typography. It’s hard to read any long block of text off a computer screen, so the text must be made as easy to read as possible. On the other hand, you want to have a little individuality and make the text attractive as well.

My favorite way to explain the importance of typography is through a few videos I’ve found in the past (and posted here) that use typography to convey emotions.

Today, via Information Aesthetics, I found a slew of such videos.

My favorite is the Bob Dylan video. Which is yours?

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries presents a slew of typographical and visual examples.

There are too many to summarize, just check out two or three of these
and think about how they make you feel, what they make you think, and what they are trying to convey.

Daryl Cagle notes that the LA Times print edition uses 22 fonts - just above the fold on the front page.

Cagle has a great graphic showing where and how the different fonts are used.

Here’s his list:

1. The logo font, we’ll excuse this one.
2. A font that’s used only for the date on the left and the price, on the right.
3. A serif font used only for “Valley Edition,” of-course, the Valley need’s it’s own font.
4. Here’s a different serif font for the copyright notice.
5. A condensed, sans-serif headline used for two of the stories on the front page.
6. This serif font is also used twice, in combination with the san-serif headline font above it.
7. And then switch back to sans-serif, twice, but it’s not quite the same font as that headline font above.
8. Oh! A new font, in regular and italic, just for the photographers credit, and it’s a different font than the copyright notice above.
9. This font is only for the names of the reporters.
10. This bold sans serif font is printed in a halftone gray and would seem to be used for the titles of photos, “Spy Uncloaked” and “Fred Thompson” - but no, it’s not just for titles, because the third time it is used to direct readers to another page, “NATION, A19.”
11. This serif font is black, and goes with the gray font #10; it is used only for the caption under the photos
12. This red, bold sans serif font is used only for the words “Column One.” (A great name for a column, huh? There isn’t any Column Two.)
13.”Column One” also has it’s own, Italic headline font, which is used nowhere else on the front page.
14. Here is a serif headline font that is used only for the Fred Thompson story (it is used for two other stories below the fold).
15. This italic font is only for the words “Times Staff Writers” under the names of the reporters.
16. This Bold, serif font is used only for the name of the city where the story is filed from.
17. This is the standard body type for the text of the stories, we’ll excuse this one.
18. This italic headline font is used only with “Column One,” where the columnist seems to have his own font preferences.
19. This sans serif font is found on the front page only once, with the words “RELATED STORY.”
20. Here we find out what the “RELATED STORY” is, and we find out in an all new font.
21. Oh! I just realized that the photographers credits are in two different fonts, regular and italic, and I only counted one of these fonts before, so I’ll count the other one here.
22. Wow, here’s a giant, red, Italic letter “I” - it made me jump!

This is a redesign of their former front page, which I can only assume accompanied the reorganization of their newsroom.

Wow. The mantra for beginners in typography is “no more than three fonts.” I know you’d like to draw attention to different items on the page, but that is accomplished by good design and use of space and color - not fonts.

While not on my top 5 movies to see list, this sounds really cool. Even though I don’t see Helvetica used often on the Web, it should still provide some good insight as to how and why to use different typefaces.

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Helvetica will begin screening at film festivals worldwide starting in March, followed by cinema screenings across the US and Europe, and the DVD release.

Sidenote: I keep being told by other students (not by teachers) that Tahoma is the preferred and most professional typeface for the Web. Yet, I don’t see many sites using Tahoma. Tahoma is not one of the “safe fonts” and

is very similar to Verdana but with a narrower body, less generous counters, tighter letterspacing, and a more complete Unicode character set. (Wikipedia)

My confusion is that the people I’ve heard this from are capable Web designers. Why are they insisting on using a non-safe font that looks almost exactly like Verdana, which is safe?