Lowe’s Logo

I mean, I’m happy DIN is used on the web and in their commercials. DIN fits the serious nature of DIY home improvement: it’s rational, no-nonsense, reliable, and tough. But that S has been driving me nuts for quite a while. It’s the only curvy element in the logo, so it looks out of place. It’s the only piece that doesn’t say trustworthy construction, but Dear, let’s call a professional.

An S curves by nature; that’s what makes it an S and not a 5. But the curves could have been tighter and those terminals could have been more horizontal to keep with the solid nature of the rest of the letters. I keep thinking it’ll topple. Just like that one time I built a deck all by myself. The S here feels less like Dubai-Burj-Khalifa-work-of-art and more like house-of-cards-made-of-slick-plastic. At any moment — I can just feel it — that S is gonna slip right off the end of that gable. It’s already headed downhill.

If you’re like other type lovers, you also have wished the award-winning Skolar had more weights. Well now it has 10. Wishes are granted.

You may have seen the same post on the FontFeed. The competition is hosted by Conqueror Paper, owned by Arjowiggins Fine Papers, which operates from three locations: Great Britain, Scotland, and France. As Yves Peters put it,

“The Conqueror Typographic Games ask the question “What if typography was a sport”? This Olympic-style contest is open to all designers, professionals and students who think they have what it takes to win the Gold. The challenge at hand: create a typographic poster about sports, using the phrase:

It’s not what you win, but how you conquer it.

Choose from one of Conqueror’s premium papers, select two printing techniques, and submit your poster by the 30th of April, 2012.”

The Study

Tom and I thought this would be a fun exercise so we decided to follow a Swiss Design model of minimal elements with strong meaning. We believe you should be able to replace the word minimal with meaningful in any sentence about form or function. Minimal doesn’t mean meaningless, it means that what is left should be even more powerful and more meaningful since it is what remains. Take for instance this perfect poster by Josef Muller-Brockmann for a Beethoven concert. The simple curves have movement and give the understanding of sound waves, as well as a mimicking the shape of a music hall and the shape of some instruments. The understated type is integrated into the the overall grid along a vertical axis.

In this mode we first narrowed down what we thought defined the Olympics to just two words: best and determination. Next we created line and circle studies focused around those two words. How do you show determination or best with a line or circle?

The Visual

The primary — and quite accidental — thought that came out of it was the leader board, the narrowing of the competitive field until the very best emerges as winner. The leader board inherently speaks of determination and overcoming various obstacles. This visual idea is common in all cultures, and every kid dreams of making the big score.

The Shape

At first we defaulted to using the Olympic rings in our leader board sketches. But it had several problems: it was too literal, it had little emotion, it would tie the poster to only one event, and it had no movement or energy. Circles are easy, but they can be boring. Besides, it seemed most designers in this competition were using the Olympic rings, so we wanted to push ourselves further to see if we could find another route. We tried various shapes and patterns to see what would hold the weight of our expectations, and eventually we found that, when combined with the previous line studies, the triangle with a series of stripes running throughout worked best to get across the idea of determination.

Every time you fall, you get back up and push harder. Every day brings a new opportunity to do it again and do it better. Always moving forward. Determination. The circles, rectangles, and squares just didn’t have this kind of psychological underpinning, even though they could have worked for other reasons. But the overall design had to live and breathe on its own.

The Typeface

I love researching type for a project and this choice seemed rather straightforward. We could echo the triangularity of the design, contrast it with either harsh and round geometric circles, or choose something smooth and sedated. All the classic sans faces seemed out of place and a serif just didn’t work. So, no to Helvetica, Futura, Gotham, Trade Gothic, DIN, or any of the standard poster faces we would expect. Unfortunately, that meant that the AW Conqueror series by Jean-François Porchez, who is also the main judge for this competition, was out. (I don’t think this is the case, but I really hope we’re not judged on whether we used the Conqueror series or not.) But OurType had put out a gem just a little while ago that I knew would be perfect — Meran, in the semi-condensed, semi-bold flavor. With three widths and six weights (with matching italics), this defies-normal-categories face is a great headliner. Meran is built with contrasting sharp and curved corners and with some interior connection points taken out, so it is in perfect keeping with the angular shape of our design.

The Colors

This was not an easy decision — perhaps one of the most difficult ones — which is why we kept coming back to it. In fact, it was the last major detail to get settled, but part of that was because we wanted to get it right. Should we incorporate the kind of paper as one of the colors or design elements? How will paper stock effect print registry? Do we choose the Olympic colors or go with something less expected? We went reserved, then crazy, then back to restrained in our color choices.

The Result

Even after these major decisions had been made, we still had 15–20 iterations before we landed on a final design. And we had the great fortune of having to let go of some really strong contenders for good reasons.

What we end up with is an angular leader board coming in from the left of the poster. Each column of triangles is an Olympic color for this poster competition, but the colors could have several meanings. The stripes give it a sense of speed and energy. Several of the stripes on each triangle stretch out beyond their border to heighten the mental connection with the determination to push through whatever holds us back. The yellow (gold) triangle in the center is the obvious winner, showing how the athlete fits in with the overall design of the competition, but how they also deservedly stand apart as the best. The typeface echoes the angular design. The words are simple and speak the same message as the poster design. And it’s all done on gorgeous 300-gram (130-lb. for Americans) Conqueror Wove Calligraphy paper, using the paper as the foundational charcoal color and contrasting texture for the entire print. The poster would be printed using offset method as long as we can ensure a precise and consistent registry.

Hope you like the poster design and that you’ve enjoyed getting a peek at our process. If you think it’s a winner, let the fine folks at Conqueror know by voting and by passing the word. And take a look at the other entries while you’re there to see what we’re up against.

Legibility is Clarity

Note that there is a difference between readability and legibility. Being legible means that you can make out the letters; they’re not too distorted to hinder your ability to recognize them. Software coders are using this insight when they use a monospaced typeface to carry out their work. The characters line up perfectly so they can keep track of their levels, and each character is noticeably different from the rest. When characters are clear and differentiated enough from the rest, they are legible.

Readability is Simplicity Plus Excellence

On the other hand, readability is all about how little one has to work in order to breeze through long sections of text. This level of consideration takes into account the legibility of each character as well as the level of comfort (or discomfort) a reader experiences when plowing through the latest textbook on art history or pathophysiology. When text is easy and enjoyable to read, it is readable.

Part of measuring readability is in noticing how readily the characters, and therefore the words and paragraphs and pages, match up to our perception of character shapes. If it looks like an r, we don’t question it. If we have to question it — even for a moment — our reading progress stalls. This is the simplicity part of attaining readability; how one goes about making an r look like an r is where excellence comes in.

Our brain is fantastically adept. Studies have shown that literate adults do not sound out each individual letter, but match the shape of the word to a known word shape we have already memorized. Studies have also shown that when the first and last letters are correct, the middle letters can be jumbled but we will still be able to recognize, or “read”, the wrod corertectly. I know yuo’re stlil follwoing waht I’m siyanig here, but you can’t read comfortably like that for too long so make sure your text is readable. Make it simple and excellent because readability is king.

This was just a primer on the difference between legible and readable text. Stay tuned for a few articles to help with choosing typefaces for sizable amounts of text.

UPDATE: Here’s three links to articles on similar readability studies:

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n10/abs/nn.2187.html

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/breaking-code-why-yuor-barin-raed-tihs-210618332.html

http://fontfeed.com/archives/nyu-researchers-discover-defining-factor-for-legibility/

Distinction wins the branding game, folks. So here’s a slab serif with an actual personality, meaning you’ll immediately be able to recognize this in a crowd of other slabs.

Stan Four-Weight Sample

The j and f look like twins flipped upside down. I love how that north-bound ear on the lowercase g matches the rest of the slabs, but how the oblique angle breaks up the slab’s natural vertical emphasis. And I’m a sucker for the way the italic f drops below the baseline. I have always liked typefaces that make that choice. And notice how the lower left-hand side serifs disappear in the italic so the speed is emphasized. Very nice.

Stan comes in two versions: Stan and Stan Plus. The plus means that the ascenders and descenders are longer, which is useful when space is not a real concern. Think of it as the difference between Mrs. Eaves and Mrs. Eaves XL. And use it well.

There are so many possibilities for captions here:

• Apple admits defeat. Finally.
• Asian markets do not have iPhone hysteria.
• Coming to a Samsung retail store near you.
• The only non-Flash mob.

Shawn wrote four of the best paragraphs you’ll read this week. More philosophy and observation than related to type or design, but utterly important.

Regardless what you do, think deeply then live greatly. And if a gadget helps with that goal, good; but I — along with Shawn — don’t think gadgets are ever the final answer to living greatly. That answer must come from somewhere else.

Philosophically, I would say that any value not based in something eternal and good ends up in despair and hopelessness. Wasted time and energy never leads to true joy or fulfillment. And that’s precisely what finding your identity in stuff would be — futile.

Glad to see IE taking major steps here. (NOTE: I had originally worded this rudely, but this current verbiage is truly what I meant. I’m not above clarifying and improving my word choice. I’m very happy to see Microsoft taking a major leap from where they currently are to where all browsers should be.)

My real frustration is this:

Note that because Firefox and IE implemented different versions of the draft[,] the value syntax they accept is different. For example, enabling kerning in both browsers requires the following:

-ms-font-feature-settings: ”kern” 1;

-moz-font-feature-setting: ”kern=1″;

What is it about companies — all of them — that force coders to write specifically for them? Really, Microsoft couldn’t have just gone with what Mozilla had already baked in? This irks me to no end. Stop picking the version (or creating your own version) that suits you and your company. Go with the established one that suits the user and the other coders. We already have a long history of forcing coders to do almost entire rewrites so IE doesn’t break when accessing your URL. So let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be.

On to happier subjects. Isn’t FF Milo just gorgeous when it’s that big? I mean, c’mon, that lowercase a is beautiful, the non-connected leg of the k is great for small print (ink won’t glob up there), and the elegance of the bottom right leg of the k is subtle. FF Ernestine is a fun slab serif; I’m liking it a lot.

Dan Rhatigan gives a 20-minute talk on using type on the screen. Great overview of the challenges and some general concepts and options, but he doesn’t get into naming, for instance, his top 50 recommendations in each typeface category.

Type on screen: Choosing and using it well from Dan Rhatigan on Vimeo.

And here’s the same talk given at a different conference, but this one includes Rhatigan’s slides.

“Good choice,” I replied. “Now describe what you want as the first impression and the lasting memory.”

“Classy. Simple. And Vintage. And elegant, of course. But not too swirly — I definitely want a script font in there, but it can’t be too swirly,” she said, confident of her distastes.

So, I thought to myself, a script is necessary, but paired with what? A classic face with a long history like Goudy Old Style or Baskerville or Hightower Text. That could be too staunch. Calluna would work great in almost any situation, but it’s being used a lot; I’ll keep that on the list of possibles. Maybe an updated Didot or Bodoni for refinement? That could work.

Wait, no, not at 8 or 9 points. That might be too small to see the details. “What type of paper are you printing on?” I asked.

“Vellum.”

Of course. Dangit. Watch the thins, I thought. But I’ve heard restraints make for good work. So I set to hunting.

A few rounds later, we landed on Peter Mohr’s Fayon (PDF) for text and Nick Cooke’s Olicana Smooth (with some tasteful swashes activated).

Olicana can feel masculine or feminine depending on how the OpenType features are used. As a typeface that is supposed to look handwritten, it is expressive and rhythmic, but not too regular.

Fayon is a fantastic rethinking of Didot, it fits the classy–simple–vintage bill, and the italics are especially elegant given how easily that period could go wrong by either looking cartoonish with weight placement or by not being distinct enough from the myriad other Didot-based faces.

She is ecstatic. She emailed something about, “Beautiful! It looks perfect. Those fonts are both lovely. Thank you for your expertise and artistic ability,” and included a smiley face.

No doubt it will be a great event. And I’m glad I could help.

Fayon, Olicana Wedding Invitation Sample

Now for why this works. Yes, the basics are correct: it gets across the feel the client had in mind, it was within budget, and it was completed within the specified timeframe. But look at how the stroke contrast of the script matches that of the serif. The thicks and thins are practically identical, but there is the necessary difference between the two type choices to hint at hierarchy, and when printed it will look great. I’ve included an Olicana sample below.

Olicana Sample — notice how the alternate glyphs change the feel