Fitz Sans (progress)

Introducing Fitz Sans

(sort of)

This might be one of my most annoying posts with all the animated gifs and simultaneous motion. I've got a character set below, with most of the letter glyphs. Below that are the animations of open type features: 5 ampersands; alternate glyphs, @ and ¶; and alternate numerals (does not include 4 other styles of numerals).

(click for larger image)

The font is basically complete. I'd like to add (and subtract) weight for 3 or 4 styles. Probably work on true italics and then extend the family to a serif companion. All in time.

Hopefully some more updates to come soon—I'd really like to release this soon.

Type at the Crossroads

"About this videoMore than twenty years ago, Jonathan Hoefler made it his mission to promote desktop publishing (and shush its critics) by providing designers with a new generation of fonts: attractive and useful designs which set a new standard in quality and dependability for that technology. Today, as webfonts are buoyed by a wave of early-adopter enthusiasm, they’re marred by a similar unevenness in quality, and it’s not just a matter of browsers and rasterizers, or the eternal shortage of good fonts and preponderance of bad ones. There are compelling questions about what it means to be fitted to the technology, how foundries can offer designers an expressive medium (and readers a rich one), and what it means for typography to be visually, mechanically, and culturally appropriate to the web. This is an exploration of this side of web fonts, and a discussion of where the needs of designers meet the needs of readers." —AIGA

So I took notes on this video—the message is very clear, very well presented and very important. Jonathan Hoefler talks about typography and type design for the web or "screen" and then lays out disambiguation of what that means, what systems and environment entails.

The Screen is

media

     physical hardware

     device orientation

     color gamma

     video chipset

scale

     point size

     device resolution

     viewing distance

     user settings

application

     browser

     layout engine

     rasterizer

environment

     platform

     font format

     payload limit

     CSS requirements

     HTML implementation 


In conclusion, the points addressed also apply to other design systems (including print: media, scale, application & environment) but the screen is far more complex and less controlled by the designer.

Incomplete Manifesto for Growth (by Bruce Mau)

• 1. Allow events to change you.
     You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
     
  2. Forget about good.
     Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
     
  3. Process is more important than outcome.
     When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
     
  4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
     
  5. Go deep.
     The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
     
  6. Capture accidents.
     The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
     
  7. Study.
     A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
     
  8. Drift.
     Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
     
  9. Begin anywhere.
     John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
     
  10. Everyone is a leader.
      Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
      
  11. Harvest ideas.
      Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
      
  12. Keep moving.
      The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
      
  13. Slow down.
      Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
      
  14. Don’t be cool.
      Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
      
  15. Ask stupid questions.
      Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
      
  16. Collaborate.
      The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
      
  17. ____________________.
      Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
      
  18. Stay up late.
      Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
      
  19. Work the metaphor.
      Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
      
  20. Be careful to take risks.
      Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
      
  21. Repeat yourself.
      If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
      
  22. Make your own tools.
      Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
      
  23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
      You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
      
  24. Avoid software.
      The problem with software is that everyone has it.
      
  25. Don’t clean your desk.
      You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
      
  26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
      Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
      
  27. Read only left-hand pages.
      Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
      
  28. Make new words.
      Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
      
  29. Think with your mind.
      Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
      
  30. Organization = Liberty.
      Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’
      
  31. Don’t borrow money.
      Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
      
  32. Listen carefully.
      Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
      
  33. Take field trips.
      The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
      
  34. Make mistakes faster.
      This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
      
  35. Imitate.
      Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
      
  36. Scat.
      When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
      
  37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
  38. Explore the other edge.
      Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
      
  39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
      Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
      
  40. Avoid fields.
      Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
      
  41. Laugh.
      People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
      
  42. Remember.
      Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
      
  43. Power to the people.
      Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
  written of Bruce Mau

how to make gold

A simple process: add coffee grinds & hot water then wait 3 minutes. 

Press down for success. 

Enjoy.

Storm Type Foundry

I recently ordered a free '11-'12 Font Catalog from Storm Type Foundry. Štorm František, of black metal band, Master's Hammer, originally founded Storm Type in 1993. Recently, Storm Type published its 800th font (with more than 60 font families).
This is totally worth ordering—for free. I have several House Industries font catalogues and specimens, and a 2010 Adobe Font Catalog, trying to grow my collection of bookshelf typographic resources.

Order one for yourself.

quote

"

We make meaning by selecting and discarding — by editing. The more images we collectively over-produce, the more ruthless we need to be as individual viewers in bestowing our precious attention only on things that matter to us.

The unceasing production of personal photographs provides consolation for the ego, yet it is also a delusion: most of these images are hurtling toward oblivion. 

"
—Rick Poynor
The Infinite Warehouse of Images: Observers Room: Design Observer

new name

In an effort to create a new website with updated content, projects and information, I've decided to rewrite my name. This is a custom logotype for the eventual re-imaging. I'll post a more extensive case study when more of the site + work is finished.

Space Gear (2)

final installation in the space gear series.

this was a color study

this is one of the final compositions 8.5x11" (click for larger image)

music

The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition (RAC Remix)

remix idea ♫

This is my best idea of 2011.
Remix Slayer's Reign in Blood with Yeasayer's Odd Blood.
Final product: Yeaslayer's Reign in Odd Blood.

Perfect combination of thrash percussion and synth-pop beats with higher pitched guitar and keyboard solos.

Since I don't mix or remix music to any extend, this idea is anyone's willing to take on the challenge.
Please.

♬    ♪    ♫    ♩

Ol' Silver Keys

A few days ago—Monday, November 21st, 2011—my MacBook Pro refused to turn on. 
On Tuesday I took it to the only Apple-licensed repair store in Savannah. (The nearest Apple store is Charleston, SC.) The guy have me the news: the hard drive was alive and its contents were safe but the machine itself was dead. I left it for the day, for my files to be exported to an external hard drive.
After not receiving a call to pick it up, I took the initiative and called them, asking when I could stop by. They told me my external hard drive (with all the precious contents) had been given to another customer by accident and they'd left—not to return until Friday, November 25th. Clearly the cost of services provided was waived and I've walked away with all my working files, music, photos, etc. on my external hard drive...still computerless.


My MacBook Pro, "Ol' Silver Keys", has been with me from the start, since I before knew what "Adobe" or the "Creative Suite" was. 
RIP 2008-2011
Never Forget

Now its time to start saving up. Donations, anyone?