June 23, 2009
Brick by Brick, Reloaded
Yves Peters made public the other day on The FontFeed what many members of the FontStruct community already know – I have recently joined the FontStruct team to take care of user support, promotion of FontStruct on the web & in the real world and publication of content here on “Brick by Brick”.
Today I’m going to write a little bit about the past, present & future of FontStruct and the new plans for “Brick by Brick”, the FontStruct blog.
FontStruct so far
FontStruct was released on the 1st of April 2008. Since then: 167,144 users have registered, 167,305 FontStructions have been created, 7,371 FontStructions have been made public and 317,770 FontStructions have been downloaded.
We have also collected several success stories of FontStructions out in the world, from the use of FontStructions in a huge LED display at the TU Darmstadt to the recent appearance of Sessions in an article on Grain Edit, or the Communication Arts Interactive Annual we received (more about it on The FontFeed).
These are fantastic results for one year of hard work. But we want even more.
FontStruct as an educational resource
So far we have been blogging mainly about FontStruct itself: improvements to FontStructor, examples of FontStructions in use, messages to the FontStruct community etcetera. For the curious and/or mobile FontStructors we now even have a FontStruct channel on Twitter.
But we want you not only to be up-do-date, we want you to be inspired. For this reason, the FontStruct blog’s mission has been re-defined to cover all things related to modular alphabets. Among many possible topics we are specially interested in the use of FontStruct for education in type design.
FontStruct is great for education because it’s free, it’s simple and it’s a lot of fun. It can be used on any computer with a modern browser and Internet access, independently of platform and without installation of additional software. FontStruct stimulates sharing and collaboration, while respecting the creator’s right to decide about it. Users are presented with a set of flexible and familiar Creative Commons licenses to choose from. Peer-review, user votes and the sought after Top Picks complete the package that makes of FontStruct not just a tool, but an exciting environment for learning how to build fonts and design typefaces.
Here are some of the topics we are planning to blog about:
Modular classics
One of the best ways to learn about type design is by looking at samples of work done by masters. We want to select famous modular alphabets – think of Josef Albers’ Kombinationschrift, Wim Crouwel’s New Alphabet or classic bitmap fonts such as Susan Kare’s Chicago – and examine them closely. What are the ideas behind the designs? How were the forms constructed? With which modules, on a grid of how many units? In what kind of real-life projects were those letters used?
Modularity in type-design
Type design deals with patterns and repetition of shapes, so it’s natural that there is a lot of modularity in it. A typeface can contain many different types of glyph shapes: different alphabets with upper- and lowercase, numbers, accents, symbols. Each of these groups has its own development history and construction principles. For example, while the typical modulation of latin uppercase characters is based on basic geometric shapes (circle, square and triangle), the typical modulation of lowercase characters is based on more irregular/organic forms produced by the hand. The spacing of a typeface is also generally highly modulated to create a legible and pleasant rhythm for reading.
Each particular style of type – roman or italic, humanist or modern – has its own rules and patterns for standardization and simplification of letter forms. We can also find many examples of modularity when we think about the choice of type sizes, the organization of text and images on a page and the proportions of the page/canvas.
Tips & tricks
While FontStruct is extremely simple and easy-to-use, some of the type designs produced with it can be quite complex and sophisticated. In this section we plan to invite master FontStructors to talk about their tips & tricks to get the most out of FontStruct.
What would you like to read about?
These are just some of our ideas — there is a lot more to come. But we would also like to hear what you think. Is there a topic you would like to read about, and which is not included on our list? We look forward for your suggestions and comments.
