Archive for category Typography
Latest “Creative Tips” newsletters added to the site
Posted by Alan G in Business Communications, Creative Tips, Office Software, Typography, Word on February 19th, 2010
Issues 16 and 17 of the Creative Tips newsletter are now live on the newsletter page. Number 17 covers “capital offenses” — all those places where people commonly use ALL CAPS, but shouldn’t. (Hint: It’s most of the time!)
The next version of Microsoft Office is about to go (semi)public
Posted by Alan G in Business Communications, Office Software, Techie Stuff, Typography, Word on June 28th, 2009
Type designer Thomas Phinney posts in his blog that Microsoft Office 2010, due to be released as a “technical preview” in July, will make a giant leap forward in its handling of typefaces: it will begin to support some (not all, by a long way) of the many advanced typesetting capabilities built into modern fonts (a standard known as OpenType, which I’ll expand on later in this post).
How to make your Microsoft Word or Open Office documents look ten times better and more professional
Posted by Alan G in Business Communications, Creative Tips, Office Software, Typography, Word on June 19th, 2009
Microsoft Word, Open Office, Corel WordPerfect: they’re  everywhere. Almost every business in the Americas, Europe, Australia (or 90 percent of the rest of the world, for that matter) uses one of these Big Three or an equivalent. We used to use typewriters, when they were fairly cheap and computers were super-expensive. Now computers are dirt cheap, so we use word processors. It didn’t even take long for the revolution to happen.
A modern word processing program is a fantastically sophisticated tool that really can “do amazing things” like check your spelling while you type, let you select from a mind-boggling selection of typefaces, handle bulleted and numbered lists automatically and even apply all kinds of automatic formating to your documents. So if a word processor can do all this, and just about everbody has one, why do so many (most) business letters, proposals, resumes and promotional letters look, well… let’s just say “unpolished”? Read the rest of this entry »
The Battle for Good Looking Documents
Posted by Alan G in Creative Tips, Graphic Design, Typography on April 21st, 2009
I’ve been amazed how many people have told me — enthusiastically — that after reading Creative Tips #5 they are battling to overcome their years-long habit of typing two spaces after a period. Those typewriter habits we learned at our mothers’ (or fathers’ secretaries’) knees are sometimes hard to break, but folks tell me they’re persevering! Oddly enough, the two-spaces thing never was considered correct in the UK, so ex-pat Brits don’t have a problem with it.
It’s all in the interest of better-looking documents. That, and copy that designers can typeset without a fuss. There’s a degree of enlightened self-interest in these newsletters: the better the copy is written in the first place, the less there is to fix before it goes into the brochure, magazine, manual or book.
Creative Tips #5: Typewriter Habits You Should Just Say “No” To
Posted by Alan G in Creative Tips, Typography on April 3rd, 2009
Number 5 covers such things as “two spaces after a period” and other typewriter practices that don’t belong in proportionally-spaced type. It’s also true that when you type something in a word processor these days, you’re not strictly “typing” in the accepted sense of that word. What you are really doing is a simple form of “typesetting,” and the rules are different!
You can find Issue 5 here.
Getting Rid of Uglies
Posted by Alan G in Creative Tips, Graphic Design, Typography on March 21st, 2009
From the amazing amount of feedback I’ve been getting to the Creative Tips newsletter, it’s clear that there’s a vacuum of basic “how-to” information on simple layouts and making documents look good in standard office-type programs. This is mildly surprising, considering how many books, websites, etc., have been devoted to the topic over the years. On the other hand, I’ve looked at Microsoft’s website and discovered that the good stuff is hard to find. Lots of “Gee Whiz!” but the basics are well buried.
A Typographic Take on Human Rights
Posted by Alan G in Fun Stuff, Graphic Design, Typography on March 21st, 2009
Here’s a brilliant animation that presents the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in various flavors of Helvetica. Considering how clinically “clean” Helvetica is — the most beautiful or the most boring typface in the world, depending on whose opinion you ask — the amount of emotion and poignancy that Seth Brau imbues it with is amazing.
Two big thumbs up, as they say in the movie biz.
Typefaces and Fonts — Your Opinion Counts!
Posted by Alan G in Graphic Design, Typography on March 4th, 2009
Thomas Phinney, the noted type designer who designed at Adobe for many years, is conducting an informal survey of people who use type (fonts, typefaces) on their computers. He’s interested in how people use the terminology of type, and although some of the questions are undeniably of interest mainly design geeks he also wants input from more casual type users, such as people who use only the standard office type programs such as Microsoft Word, Open Office, and the like.
The survey is here, hosted on the surveymonkey.com website.
Go ahead and take the survey! Your opinion counts, too!