Posts Tagged 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).
Looking good in print isn’t just about “art”
Posted by Alan G in Creative Tips, Graphic Design on April 25th, 2009
Ann Wayman, whose excellent blog is a terrific resource for freelance writers in any field, left a comment the other day about an author whose book had been “designed” by someone with super-powerful design software, but who clearly had never bothered to learn the hows and whys of graphic design. It wouldn’t, Ann conjectured, sell very well. She was exactly right.
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.
Creative Tips #4: Blank Lines and Rogue Space Bars
Posted by Alan G in Creative Tips, Graphic Design on March 23rd, 2009
This week’s Creative Tips for office software users covers the dreaded (by designers) “extra blank line” between paragraphs, why not to use them, and the Better Way to space your paragraphs; why spaces don’t work to make text line up from one line to the next, and how and why to use tabs instead.
You can reach it from the Creative Tips page or directly 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.
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!
Creative Tips Newsletter
Posted by Alan G in Graphic Design, News on March 3rd, 2009
The first Creative Tips newsletter has hit the cyberwaves.
The idea of this series is to help improve the world’s documents by giving basic tips on using Microsoft Word and similar programs that are as ubiquitous as the generally boring (or, let’s be brutally frank, downright awful) documents that are turned out by the millions every day.
If we can get rid of some of the uglies, I think the time will be well spent!