Long before there were hi-res laser printers in every design firm and PDF specimens on every foundry website, typographers discovered, compared, and selected type using specimen books.

There is too much separation from the display to the printed page for a designer to see how the curves, the straights, and the joins truly interact. The best way to review and analyze the utility of a typeface is through viewing the samples in print. Nothing can replace this.

To this end, “FontBook” is a type reference worth much more than its weight in gold. And it weighs a lot! (More than six-and-a-half pounds, in fact.)

Some might say, “but it’s a book and it can’t be updated.” True. Containing font releases up to 2006, “FontBook” is best used in conjunction with FontShop.com and other online vendors for a more current view of what’s available. But the book offers insight not found online, such as the “see also” cross-references, and offset printed samples complete enough to really give a good idea of what you’ll get when you go to press.

This comprehensive reference is curated, organized, and printed with loving and tender care — a vital tool for keeping things original and fresh for each client and project.

Tiffany Wardle de Sousa is a typographer living and working in San Jose, California. She earned her MA in the Theory and History of Typography at Reading. Active in the type community, Tiffany has written for several design publications and serves as a SOTA board member and Typophile moderator.

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404 error pages are one of the most common ways for companies to have a creative website.  Although there are the boring, generic 404 pages, today we have a great roundup of 101 purely awesome, hilarious, creative or just plain cool 404 not found error pages.

If you enjoyed this post, please take the time to leave a comment, submit it to your favorite social network, or just simply share it with your friends.  Face it, we could all use a laugh and a smile, so hopefully this post will provide just that.

Thanks for reading!

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Marlene is an elegant, high contrast Egyptian face with a distinctive and contemporary calligraphic flourish. When I first saw it I was impressed at how incredibly crisp it was, as if drawn with a pen so sharp it could just as easily cut the paper as leave ink there.

The italic expresses this sharpness with a wonderful sense of speed; those beautiful thin upstrokes and unusually high connection points of the bowls on a, g and y, and the standout exuberance of the k feel as if it can’t wait to get you moving on to the next letter, with the stark horizontal of the terminal serif seemingly flinging you onward. The horizontal serifs along the x-height and baseline also create strong lines that add yet more of a sense of urgency and pace to text set with it. This face isn’t hanging around for anyone.

The face is contrasty too, not just of the thick and thin of upstrokes and downstrokes, but of the speed and sudden direction changes that give this face such quirky character and appeal. The regular a is unusual in carrying through such a heavy serif from more open characters like the c and r, and as a result ends up with a tiny counter that successfully keeps the character balanced. It’s a sign of the quality of overall design in this face that such a conceit not only works well but adds a distinctive and appealing character. I think the face is a great release and while it’d work well for body copy, especially for magazines and short copy, it will really shine in a display setting.

Aegir Hallmundur is a type-obsessed web and graphic designer living and working Brighton, England. He also runs The Ministry of Type, a website mainly about type and sometimes calligraphy, illustration, architecture and photography.

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Hermann Zapf introduces Doyald Young’s “Dangerous Curves”, not by discussing Young, but instead by singing praise to the pencil. Zapf then goes on to describe the typical height at which he drew letters, the difference between drawing for a punchcutter and a scanner, and a desire to show his own hand in his typefaces. While it’s odd not to mention the author in the introduction to a retrospective of his work, Zapf’s comments encompass the sensibility of Young’s book. An ode to intense scrutiny, “Curves” demonstrates Young’s dedication to type, nuance, and the human hand in design.

Syndication sponsor: Use this link to buy FontFonts and they’ll turn your type love into Typographica support.
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Adobe Photoshop isn’t the only graphic design tool in the Adobe family of products.  Adobe Fireworks provides a unique balance between vector and raster graphics, which is a nice hybrid between Illustrator and Photoshop.  However, good resources and tutorials for Fireworks are somewhat hard to find.

Today, we have 20 tutorials that will get you started with Adobe Fireworks and will help you to create professional effects.  So if you have thought about trying out Fireworks but didn’t know where to start, check out these tutorials.

Fireworks 101: Introduction to Fireworks

Create a Vista-like Wallpaper in Fireworks

Creating Fading Light Vectors in Fireworks

Create James White Inspired Lighting Effects in Fireworks

Grass Textured Text in Fireworks

Simple Orbs in Fireworks

Creating an iPhone Interface in Fireworks

Create a Planet from Scratch in Fireworks

Abstract Smoke Effect in Fireworks

Setting Text on a Path in Fireworks

Creating the IE7 Logo in Fireworks

Awesome Floral Type in Fireworks

Vibrant Digital Collage in Fireworks

Create a Peelable Sticker Effect in Fireworks

Amazing Neon Lights in Fireworks

Glowing Light Trail in Fireworks

Light Painting in Fireworks

5 Steps to a Barcode in Fireworks

Creating a Mouse in Fireworks

Create a Vector in Fireworks

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