Brick by brick: News about FontStruct
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
March 3, 2009
Dear FontStructors,
We’ve updated the preview widget used on the gallery pages and elsewhere on the site:
(Above Example: “Penmanship” by “Thalamic” in the sample text mode.)
There are a number of new and improved features which we hope will help you to get a better overview of a FontStruction and to see how it works at different sizes.
Revised Menu
The preview widget now has a “VIEW” menu with three options:
- “All Letters” which is the default, displaying all characters within the FontStruction
- “Sample Text” which shows a standard sample text (for FontStructions with sufficient characters)
- “User Input” which turns the preview widget into a text entry field where you can try typing with the FontStruction
One-Click Pixel Preview
On the left there’s a “PXL” button which will give you a preview of your FontStruction at a one-brick-per-pixel resolution, whichever option you have chosen from the “VIEW” menu.
Interactive Zoom
Between the “PXL” button and the “VIEW” menu, there’s an interactive slider which you can use to view the FontStruction at a range of different sizes.
Vertical Scrolling
On the right, there are scroll buttons which you can use to scroll the text vertically line-by-line.
Larger Preview on FontStruction Homepages
On FontStruction home pages the widget is now taller and will usually show about four lines of letters. There is also an experimental feature: You can drag the bottom right-hand corner of the widget to resize it vertically.
Looking at FontStructions in the new widget is very revealing. The importance of setting an appropriate width for the space character quickly becomes clear. It’s also great to be able to see a more extensive character set more easily. Some designs which may have looked flawed or even dull as an “ABCDEF…” in the old sampler now reveal their true qualities more readily.
We’ve also simplified the embedded version of the widget. It doesn’t have a border anymore so it should be easier to integrate into the design of your blogs and webpages.
Please let us know what you think.
Posted in News | 15 Comments »
February 4, 2009
UPDATE: A few users have had problems with this latest upgrade to the FontStructor. The FontStructor doesn’t load properly and it is not possible to edit anything. The solution is to empty your browser cache and then reload the FontStructor page. Thanks to djnippa for pointing out a useful Google help page on how to empty your browser cache. Please get in touch if you have such problems and this solution does not help.
Keyboard shortcuts are now single keystrokes
Before we get to the new stuff, there’s been a change in the way the keyboard shortcuts work in the FontStructor editor. Until now, keyboard shortcuts where mostly in the form Ctrl-Key for Windows users and Shift-Key for Mac users. In some browsers like Internet Explorer they didn’t work at all. It would be nice to have standard keyboard shortcuts like those familiar from desktop software e.g. Ctrl or Cmd-C for copy, but this isn’t possible in many browsers, so we’ve decided to simply drop the extra “modifier” keys (Ctrl, Shift etc.).
Keyboard shortcuts are now single keystrokes e.g. “C” for copy, “V” for paste, “S” for save etc. Most of them haven’t changed, the extra modifier key has just been dropped, and most will continue to work even if you still use the modifier key. A few, like “V” to select the pointer tool have had to change (because of a conflict with “V” for paste). Here’s a full list of the updated keyboard shortcuts.
New Spacing Controls
If you just want to have fun with FontStruct and make a quick font, you can stop reading now. FontStruct is designed to be easy to use, and aims to hide away or simplify many of the things that can make creating a professional font complicated. FontStruct will space the letters you create automatically and add a space character for you.
If however you want more control and the automatic spacing isn’t good enough for your needs then read on.
We’ve added four new features related to control over the space between letters.
Global Spacing Control
First of all, you can now set a single value for the spacing between all letters in your FontStructions. You do this by going to Preview, then selecting “Spacing” from the “Advanced” dropdown menu. This brings up a new palette titled “Spacing”.
Simply drag the slider in this palette to set the spacing for your FontStruction. I think the control is intuitive but for those who want to know exactly what is going on, the numeric value is in grid squares and is added to the width of every letter which by default (see below) is one grid square wider than each drawn letter. A quick way to make all the letters in a font join together, e.g. for a script font, is to set the spacing to -1. Anyway, drag the slider and see.
Monospacing
Many people want to make monospaced FontStructions – font designs in which every letter has the same width, like Courier and other “Typewriter” fonts for example. You can set a single fixed width (monospacing) for every letter in your font by clicking on the “Mono” radio button in the “Spacing” palette and then adjusting the slider. Again the units are grid units. Sorry it’s taken so long fontcollector!
A Space Character
At last! An editable space character. Sometimes people want to actually draw something in the space character slot but many more will want to adjust the space character’s width. The width of the space character in downloaded FontStructions is determined by a formula which doesn’t always produce good results. Now you can set the width of the space and other letters manually using the final new feature:
Adjustable Letter Width
By default, there is an automatic 1-grid square space added to the width of each letter in FontStruct. Now you can set the width of each letter manually. Go to the “Advanced” Menu and choose “Show” and then “Letter Width”. This will make the width of the letter visible as a solid green line. Drag this line to set the width of the letter you are editing. If you want to go back to the default 1-grid square width, click on the little “R” icon to reset the guide and it will start adjusting automatically again. Note that there is a close relationship between the global spacing setting and the adjustable letter width. The global spacing setting value is basically added to the letter width.
There’s a new help page about all these new spacing control features.
Other Changes
Along with these changes, there have been a number of minor optimizations to the FontStructor. The performance of some of the tools and the Preview have been improved.
Posted in News | 34 Comments »
January 27, 2009
We’ve added eight new bricks to the FontStructor:
I know people have asked for others but these are the ones that have consistently been asked and argued for. We will add more bricks and brick functionality in a later update to FontStruct.
Posted in News | 6 Comments »
January 25, 2009
Building a fine FontStruction can be satisfying. Installing it and creating a sample image in your favorite layout software is exciting. But perhaps the greatest moment of all is when your FontStruction is set free from the monitor and finds its way into a real-world application. As FontStruct grows we are receiving more and more reports of FontStructions in use.
Three FontStructions on a huge LED Display
Last week the Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany revealed its “Welcome Platform”, a new, central forum and entrance point for students, staff, guests and the general public. A permanent part of the building is a huge LED-Display, almost 16 metres in length and on that display, three original FontStructions! They were designed by Daniel Schöps for Fuenfwerken Design AG You can see and read more on Fontblog, or if you’re German’s rusty, you can try a Google translation. View and download the FontStructions here. There are many great FontStructions inspired by LED and LCD display fonts, but it’s wonderful to see someone going the other way and designing an original one for a real client. Check out the hanging numerals.
Thanks to Jürgen Siebert from FontShop Germany for the tip and the blog post.
FontStructions you can pick up and hold
Other known examples of FontStructions in extra-digital use include Afrojet’s wonderful Sawhorse beermats. Even the heraldic graphics are a dingbats FontStruction:
Then there’s Font Fairy’s ingenious popup FontStruction “Solly PopTab” and the rubber stamps created for the Peecso Typographic project by nelloz. In the FontStruct Flickr Pool I even noticed a FontStruction being used as part of a knitting pattern:
Any more?
If you use (or spot) your own or another designer’s FontStruction in a print or otherwise non-screen-based project please upload a photo and let us know.
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
January 5, 2009
Dear FontStructors, We are adding a number of new features to the FontStruct website today.
Homepages
The first one is a homepage for every user. This is a public version of your MyFontStruct page with a list of your shared FontStructions, and some customizable information about yourself. When you click on a user’s name in the gallery or elsewhere, you will now be taken to this page. This is a much better and more reliable option than the page of search results which you currently see.
So now you have your own unique FontStruct internet address (http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructors/yourusername) which you can use anywhere and everywhere as a reliable reference to your work on FontStruct.
As well as a listing of your FontStructions, the homepage also includes a ‘Profile’ page which by default shows some information about your participation in FontStruct. You can also place your own URL on this page to promote your private website, your business or another project, and there’s an option to display some additional information about yourself if you wish.
With the number of FontStructions in the gallery growing daily we hope that new features like this will help in allowing your work to stand out from the crowd.
Of course there are RSS news feeds for each user’s homepage. By subscribing to these feeds you can easily keep up to date with your favourite designers’ work.
Messaging
Registered users can now send short private text-only messages to other users. Many users have asked for such a feature which may be familiar from other social networking websites.
Some reasons people have given when requesting a feature like this are:
- To ask a designer whether their FontStruction can be used commercially.
- To contact designers because they are interested in working with them.
- To collaborate with other users on a FontStruction project.
To send a message to another FontStructor, go to their homepage (e.g. by clicking on their name next to one of their FontStructions) and click on the contact button next to their avatar. Then fill out the form to send the message.
You can configure the messaging system to suit your needs. For example, you can opt out of the system completely, or you can choose not to receive email notifications when messages arrive. Their is also a spam reporting mechanism which, along with other precautions, should help us prevent abuse of the system.
Redesign of MyFontStruct
Along with the new user homepages and the messaging system, MyFontStruct has been rearranged into a series of tabs.
There are also a few new settings. Under the “Profile” tab for example, there is a new option to show your “real name” instead of your FontStruct username on your user homepage. while under the “Settings” tab, and then “Messaging and Notifications” you’ll see the new settings for the messaging system.
Under “Profile” and then “Delete Profile” there is also now an option to delete your FontStruct profile completely. Yes, occasionally people really do ask for this!
What’s next?
The next feature to be added will almost certainly be additional control over spacing in the FontStructor (i.e. the right side-bearing and finally a space character).
Apart from that, keep your suggestions and bug reports coming. Even if they are not acted upon immediately or soon or ever, they are all taken seriously. The majority of them are turned into tickets in our internal tracking system where we plan and prioritize the development of FontStruct.
(teaser image on the front page features sweet home by mippo)
Posted in News | 14 Comments »
December 15, 2008
Our main server bit off one more brick than it could chew on Saturday, and gave up the ghost for good. This is why FontStruct has been unavailable for the last two days.
Anyway, we’re back up now on a shiny, new, wide-eyed, fresh-faced machine. So gather your bricks and tools, open your mind to the infinite mysteries of the grid, and let’s FontStruct!
Posted in News | 3 Comments »
November 20, 2008
Attention Bay Area FontStructors! I’m very sorry for the late notice, but I’ve just confirmed that I’ll be presenting FontStruct at Pecha Kucha tonight. The event is a high-speed, entertaining way for creative folk to show off their work. Each presenter shows 20 slides for 20 seconds each, ensuring that you’ll never be bored. Come check it out — even if you’re an old FontStruct pro — I’ll need you there too hoot and hollar your support of the site (or shout out any key points I’ve missed).
Posted in News | 3 Comments »
November 18, 2008
Server Problems Fixed
First up, sorry for the unheralded downtime last Thursday and Friday. With well over a 100,000 registered FontStructors and a similar number of FontStructions in the system, our server decided it needed a few hours of tender love and care from our sysadmins. Apologies to all whose bricklaying was interrupted.
Scrollable Character Selector
The FontStruct team has been a bit quiet for a while but don’t worry, we continue to make improvements to FontStruct, and are preparing many more. One recent change in the FontStructor is that the character set selector is now scrollable. This means that people with smaller screens can now easily skip between Tamil and Basic Latin. The old selector with its tendency to disappear off the edge of the screen annoyed and puzzled many, so we’re very glad to have that finally sorted.
Large FontStructions and Saving strategies
One of the ongoing challenges the development team has to deal with is the unforeseen ambition and scale of some FontStruction projects. Some designs contain so many bricks and so many characters that parts of the FontStruct system struggle to keep up. For example, some users have had problems saving because so much information needs to be sent to the server. I’ve written a little FAQ article about this problem. We will continue to try and optimize the saving process, but if you’re working on a very large FontStruction, often the best strategy is simply to split your creation into two or more parts. An excellent example of this strategy is the masterly Prometheus Shadow Basic and Extended set from SquarePeg. The FontStruction is built on a high resolution matrix and contains 388 glyphs. It needed to be split not only to get around saving problems, but also to make downloading as a TrueType font possible.
Optimized Gallery Previews and Illustrated RSS feeds
Another issue with large FontStructions has been the relatively long load-times for previews in the Gallery. We put some new code online today which speeds things up a lot. A nice side-effect of this work is that the RSS news feeds from the gallery now also contain images, just like Flickr photostream feeds.
The Joy of FontStruct
Of course aside from technical improvements, excitement and novelty is always to be found at FontStruct in the boundless ingenuity of the FontStruct community. It’s wonderful to see the ever-expanding range of complex, beautiful and funny designs being built within the limits imposed by the application. Thank you, and carry on FontStructing!
Posted in News | 2 Comments »
August 15, 2008
We’ve released an updated version of the FontStructor. Clear your browser caches, reload and enjoy. Here’s a quick rundown on the new features:
New “Current Letter” Window
There’s a new window in the interface titled “Current Letter”. This contains an example character for the letter you are currently editing and underneath, the name of this character. The universally-despised, floaty, sticky “Next Letter” and “Previous Letter” buttons are now more sensibly integrated into this new, moveable window.
Rollover examples in the Character Selector bar
Rolling over any character in the Character Selector bar will now give you a larger tooltip containing a larger example character and the character name.
Better and wider range of Fonts used in the Character Selector bar
Many of you have noticed that many characters have not been displayed properly in the Character Selector bar. Slots have either been empty or the “null” glyph, a placeholder has been displayed. This has been especially problematic for non-latin characters.
It’s difficult to solve this problem completely because the FontStructor uses the fonts installed on your system to display these characters, and these fonts vary greatly, but we have made some changes which should improve matters. People using OSX and Windows should notice an improvement immediately. Coverage should improve further if users (on any platform) download and install the public domain fonts DejaVu Sans, and/or the very extensive GNU Unifont.
Expert Info
If you choose “Expert Info” from the “View” submenu under “Advanced” you will see the unicode codepoint values for the relevant character, both in the Current Letter Palette and when rolling-over letters in the Character Selector bar. If we add any further such expert features they will probably also be toggled on and off using this option.
Optimized Saving
Saving should now be noticeably faster, in particular for FontStructions which use many bricks or have many characters.
Posted in News | 14 Comments »
August 6, 2008
Just a quick note about ways of contributing to, and keeping abreast of current discussions and changes at FontStruct.
For RSS junkies there is a plethora of different feeds available. (If you don’t know what RSS is, take a look at this BBC page).
We haven’t actually put any extra RSS buttons on the relevant pages, so just use whatever standard mechanism your browser provides to subscribe. In Firefox for example, you’ll always see the orange RSS icon in the location bar when a feed is available. Click on it to subscribe.
So first of all there is a pooled RSS feed for all comments. Subscribe to this feed and you can keep up with what’s being said about all FontStructions. I like the empty entries in this feed — that usually means someone has uploaded some Artwork.
Secondly, there is a feed for every gallery page. Just set up the gallery the way you want and then subscribe. You can subscribe to a general feed like What’s New to see the latest Top Picks, or you can follow a particular category like Script FontStructions, or even track developments for a specific search term like “Western”.
If you’re particularly interested in one FontStruction or the discussion about it, every FontStruction also has it’s very own RSS feed. Just go to the respective FontStruction’s home page and subscribe.
Last but not least there is of course the feed for this blog.
Other than commenting on FontStructions, there are two places where you can participate in discussion on FontStruct. Commenting on blog posts like this one is one option, and there is also the FontStruct Flickr group. So far, people have used the Flickr group exclusively for sharing artwork made with, or related to FontStruct, but there’s also a fully fledged Discussion forum.
Posted in News | 8 Comments »
