Category Archives: Typography

Silly me! Found a new shortcut in FontLab

Skilled Workman Posted on by

It really helps production efficiency and speed. Great find! Command+Arrow Key on selected pieces moves 100 units This shows my ignorance of things like this, but I just discovered a great shortcut built into FontLab. As I have mentioned many times, moving selections right or left is a constant thing—especially while building composite glyphs and letterspacing a new font. One of my irritations over the years has been the internal debate over whether it is more efficient … Continue reading →

Making an essential anchored object style

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Adding anchored objects can be a little tedious. One of the most painful aspects of making anchored frames to hold illustrations, sidebar notes, or headlines is the tediousness of the repetitive filling out of the anchored object dialog box. The simple solution is to make those settings in an object style. Then all you do is place the object as an inline graphic and hit the shortcut to convert it to an anchored object and to offset it where you need it. Or … Continue reading →

Converting book sizes easily

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The other day I went through a common scenario> I had a 408 page book set up at 6×9. I found out that I needed it formatted to 4.25″ x 6.88″ for a different printer. How long do you think it took me? It became a 540 page book. It took less than an hour. How did it go so quickly? Everything was formatted with styles including all the graphics. The graphics were all formatted as anchored graphics and … Continue reading →

Web 2 Digital Bible: Glo from Zondervan

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I ran across this in my Christian professionals group at Linked In this morning. It is a visually exciting presentation to be sure. My only question is: Can it really be used? I saw no place to add notes, new crossreferences or any of the other things necessary for a real study bible. I’ve included a scan of one of the pages in one of my bibles to show you what I mean. It may be that … Continue reading →

A List Apart: Articles: Reading Design

Skilled Workman Posted on by

A List Apart: Articles: Reading Design. I read this last night. It’s an excellent article on the importance of the content and its presentation. Of course, I like it because I agree with it. But you should find it an entertaining and thought provoking read also. Among other things, Dean discusses the pressures to focus on the design without ever reading the copy. Don’t do that. Read the article.

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A new book release: Practical Font Design: FontLab 4.6

Skilled Workman Posted on by

A journey with an experienced font designer through the creation of a new OpenType font developed for release. This is also part of the training materials for the apprentices of the Hackberry Font Foundry. That’s the blurb on Lulu. This is the first limited release on my Practical Font Design book. It is limited because it’s done on FontLab 4.6 and FontLab 5 has been out for quite a while. As you know, Hackberry Fonts is a … Continue reading →

If you get involved in a large signage project, here’s help

Skilled Workman Posted on by

For some reason, I’ve gotten on mailing lists to look over books for publishers with the hope, on their part, that I’ll blog on their books. One of the books I received recently is another one from Princeton Architectural Press. At first glance it seems to have little to do with what we do here at Radiqx. But I think I should mention it, because I enjoyed reading it, and because you may need it at some … Continue reading →

The Hackberry Font Foundry forms under a huge tree

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Some of you may have heard: David’s retired from teaching and is now focusing on font design. He already has an apprentice with more making plans to join the foundry. Obviously, it was time for some changes. The name comes from a huge hackberry tree on the boulevard outside the front door of the foundry. As they add workers Hackberry fonts will be offering fonts from a variety of people. Radiqx is looking forward to the future … Continue reading →

Apprenticeships are arriving… (have arrived)

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I just posted the following on my Font design and typography blog. I wanted to make sure that you who read this one are aware of it also. As of today, you can email me if you are interested in one of the apprenticeship positions at either Bergsland Typography (the font foundry) or here at Radiqx Press. Bergsland Design is gone! Your bookmarks to the old site will still work, but things have changed a lot. It … Continue reading →

Scientific study on the effects of good font use

Skilled Workman Posted on by

A Recipe for Motivation: Easy to Read, Easy to Do: Scientific American Of course, they used two horrible fonts. Their good font: Arial is really very poor. It is just good when compared to Brush. What if they had used Amitale, which is designed for readability or even that old standard Garamond or Caslon, or Bembo, or even Baskerville? Imagine what would have happened if they not only used readable fonts, but a layout designed for readability? … Continue reading →