of type foundry exljbris, which offers a number of high-quality, beautifully-crafted fonts for free. Designer Jos Buivenga just announced his latest release, a gorgeous serif text face called Calluna. Calluna includes ligatures, old style and lining figures in both proportional and tabular styles, superiors, anteriors, and a number of other goodies, all using OpenType wizardry to take (much of) the guesswork out of typesetting for non-professional typographers. Also make sure to check out iLT, where Buivenga wrote about his inspiration (Museo) and design process for Calluna.
I’d been using the same basic layout for quite a while with little modification, so I thought I’d change it up and take the opportunity to remove as much cruft as I could from the sidebar. The leaner, hungrier sidebar now only has the stuff that’s actually useful to most users (I think).
Less important browsing information like archives, categories and tags has now been moved into the expanded footer.
For those who are curious, the masthead font (and the heading and date font, if you happen to have it installed) is Sentinel (semibold italic in the former).
The color scheme was generated using the aid of Adobe’s neat-o kuler site—check out my public schemes. Note that Flash Player 10 is required.
Oh, woe is me. I am seriously struggling with temptation—the newest H&FJ offering is a lovely slab serif called Sentinel, which is the first multi-weight, text-suitable, with-italics version of one of my favorite fonts, Clarendon. And what’s more, the entire family of twelve styles comes at the quite affordable price of $200 for a single license.
Typography geeks should make sure to read the fascinating history section, as well.
Another object of desire: Gotham Narrow. Gorgeous.
In other typography news, this is a bit late, but here is Typographica‘s compilation of the best typefaces of 2008.
an advance birthday present to myself—I gave in and bought Archer, and then on that flimsy pretext redesigned this site’s template to use it. You’ll notice Archer being used in the heading graphic, and, if you have it installed, the headings and date badges.
I also took the opportunity to reduce the size of the excessively large header graphic and severely pared down the rest of the design to remove static and generally clean up the layout.
Until recently, my typographical horizons were pretty narrow—I was a strictly sans-serif kind of girl, with a sneaking fondness for Garamond—but they’ve been expanding.
Some of the speakers at An Event Apart 2008 used two Hoefler & Frere-Jones fonts that I want oh so much, and wish didn’t cost the earth: Gotham and Archer. Gotham you might not be surprised by, as it is a beautifully clean sans-serif based on the NYC subway signage, and which, neat factoid, is being used in the Obama 2008 campaign branding.
Archer, however, reveals my recent fascination for that elegant hybrid: the slab serif. The slab serif brings you the best of both worlds: the cleanliness of the sans-serif, the elegance and historical sense of the serif.
Sadly, as all great fonts do, these are not trivially priced. On a disconsolate search for more affordable alternatives, I found some nice fonts, though some are hardly less expensive: Register Serif, URW Egyptienne, the whimsical Farao, Vista Slab, and finally the gorgeous Museo, which (yay!) has some free versions. Also don’t miss Rockwell, which is arguably the quintessential slab serif.
Hancock, which looks good too. The title font—which is entirely too similar to Bank Gothic*—notwithstanding.
* A good font, but sadly overused.
Helvetica – 4 stars
This documentary is not, as I originally thought, about the Helvetica typeface, or at least not entirely; it’s more about the evolution of typography and visual design in the last half-century, centered around the huge role Helvetica had to play in both, as the standard bearer, at different times, of both revolution and conformity.
Fascinating (even to those who aren’t design wonks like I am) and beautifully put together, this is a must-see for anyone who has ever wondered what design is all about.
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Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara – 5 stars
This is probably my favorite movie of the festival thus far, though it wasn’t quite as tightly produced as Planet B-Boy. A dreamy and contemplative look at the inner life of acclaimed artist Yoshitomo Nara, this documentary followed him to his exhibitions in various cities around the world, culminating in the magical AtoZ exhibit in Hirosaki, Japan, his hometown. Tragically, the exhibit is now closed, preventing me from ever exploring it in person, which saddens me more than I can say.
The movie was bittersweet and beautiful, and gave me a deep appreciation for an artist whom I might never otherwise have taken the time to notice. Wonderful.
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Always Be Boyz – 2 stars
I probably would have been—a bit, though not much—more sympathetic to this movie had I not seen it so very soon after Planet B-Boy, to which it paled in comparison. While I will grant that the acting and script weren’t actually that bad (a hell of a lot better than the similarly pop-culture-underworld-themed Quattro Noza, heretofore the third worst film festival movie I’ve ever seen, after Sorry, Haters and Blackout), infantile plotting, extremely low production value (think Powerpoint-style transitions and iMovie effects, not to mention the use of the abominable Comic Sans as the subtitle font) and severe projection problems (the sound kept cutting out; I can’t tell whether this was the fault of a bad DVD print or the projectionist at theater itself) fairly ruined this movie experience for me.
If you really want to learn about Korean b-boy culture, watch Planet B-Boy instead; it has more intelligence, drama and pathos than this fictional drama ever could.
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A Gentle Breeze in the Village – 4 stars
I will admit I was expecting a lot from this movie, considering it was directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita, the same man who directed Linda Linda Linda, one of my favorite movies of the last few years. I will also admit that I was a bit disappointed; it’s not as good as Linda3, but has its own charm.
Gently humorous and relaxingly paced, this movie was strongly reminiscent of Shunji Iwai’s Hana and Alice, though not ultimately as good. Yamashita possesses a measure of Iwai’s skill at working with young actors, and it shows in this movie, but while it possessed charm in abundance, it lacked the brilliant hilarity of its predecessor. Very good, but not awesome.
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Yasukuni – 3 stars
This documentary was by far the most thought-provoking one of the festival, exposing as it did the festering wound under Japan’s serene exterior, centered at Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, the simultaneous symbol of the nation’s pride and its shame. Director Li Ying took a very interesting approach to this film, using long, unedited takes that started out serene and almost boring (I fell asleep a couple of times), and then exploded into conflict.
The film was profoundly disturbing, and had the most impact of any movie I’ve seen in a good long while, but had two big drawbacks for me: the cheesily-scored montage of Japanese wartime brutality near the end of the film, and the unnecessarily shaky camerawork (I had to look away to keep from losing my dinner more than once).
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Amal – 4 stars
This is the best Indian movie I’ve seen in the last 5 years, and it was directed by an Indian who was born and raised in Canada (Richie Mehta, whose brother, Shaun, wrote the short story upon which it was based). Astonishingly well made for a debut film, if a trifle predictable, Amal boasted some powerhouse acting talent, including Naseeruddin Shah and Roshan Seth, and painted a sympathetic and painfully accurate picture of modern India.
You may have heard me say before that I generally am disappointed by director Q&As at film festivals, because the directors are invariably less interesting than their films, and tend to express themselves best in that medium rather than in speech, which has the unfortunate effect of removing some of the lustre from the film itself. Not so with Amal. Mehta is intelligent and well-spoken, and his commentary about the film and its production really enhanced the experience for me; I look forward to the extras on the DVD. He is definitely a director to watch.
Just two more movies to go!
If you read Daring Fireball, you may have read Gruber’s recent post on monospaced screen fonts, specifically Panic Sans, the font bundled with Coda, Panic’s popular web site IDE. Now, I use the Best Text Editor EverTM, TextMate, so I’m not looking to purchase Coda, meaning I don’t have access to Panic Sans.
It turns out, though, that Panic Sans is a repackaged version of DejaVu Sans Mono, itself a modified version of Bitstream Vera Sans. I’m now using DejaVu Sans Mono 12pt (love those lowercase Ls!) as my main TextMate, TextWrangler, MarsEdit and Mail plain-text font (replacing Monaco 11pt), though I’m sticking with non-anti-aliased Monaco 10pt for my Terminal font; I like my terminal windows translucent, and anti-aliasing text on those translucent backgrounds just makes it look fuzzy and hard-to-read.
Those interested in another good monospaced font may want to check out Inconsolata. I’m also a big fan of Lucida Console. I am not a fan, however, of Courier or Courier New; I guess I just don’t like monospaced serif fonts for non-design purposes.
The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain performing Smells Like Teen Spirit. I am not making this up.
Also: Fontifier, a site that will let you make a font out of your own handwriting. Pretty damn cool. (Via FreshArrival)
