You just can't exaggerate the importance of D&D to all of the many storygames that have followed it. It really did revolutionize the way we look at stories and games and the combination of the two in a way totally out of proportion to the number of people who have...
Typographic Topography
Before getting to where the Typography Team's™ cartography project has ended up, it might be a good idea to put these maps in context and point out how we got started down this particular(ly strange) path in the first place. It begins, as so many things do, with a slip. It was...
Cool Tools: Podcasting with Audacity (and beyond)
At the beginning of this semester, I gave a little lab-internal introduction to audio recording and editing. Since then, a number of people have asked me to share the materials from this workshop or come to their class and get their students going on podcast projects. (more…)
What’s the Matter with Helvetica?
[x_section style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 45px 0px 0 0px; "][x_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="true" bg_color="" style="margin: 0px auto 0px auto; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; "][x_column bg_color="" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; "][x_text]Throughout this semester, anyone who hears that I am researching typography will sooner or later ask me what...
Does this font make me look amateur?
Designers have strong feelings about fonts and will spend hours picking out a font, making it the right size, moving it around to the right place. There are font that should never be used—Papyrus and Comic Sans always seem to make the list. Whereas other fonts are considered top notch—Times...
For the Love of the Ampersand
[x_section style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 45px 0px 45px 0px; "][x_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="true" bg_color="" style="margin: 0px auto 0px auto; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; "][x_column bg_color="" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; "][x_image type="none" src="http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Screen-Shot-2015-10-27-at-4.21.30-PM.png" alt="Anatomy of an Ampersand, a Vitruvian sketch of an ampersand" link="true" href="#https://www.flickr.com/photos/snapfus/9541189831/" title="A Vitruvian...
X Marks the Spot
[x_section style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 45px 0px 0 0px; "][x_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="true" bg_color="" style="margin: 0px auto 0px auto; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; "][x_column bg_color="" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; "][x_text]"Where is your group?" Considering our project's cartographical component, it's a particularly apt question to wonder where...
Picking Software for Font Design
Everyday we encounter fonts and maybe some people think about them, but it doesn’t cross my mind unless the font is hard to read or when I actually design something it comes up. So why might someone design a font? To capture the spirit of their organization in a why...
Two Types of Type: Part II
Previously in this space, I used the work of the late Adrian Frutiger to illustrate a particular way of thinking about typography. According to that view, a typeface is best when it goes unnoticed. Font is meant to invisibly transmit an writer's point, without the letterforms interfering with either the author's intent or...
What Does the Font Say?
We are writing more than ever before—in the US we send 6 billion text messages a day, while every minute Facebook users share nearly 2.5 million pieces of content, Twitter users tweet nearly 300,000 times, and email users send over 200 million messages. How often are we trying to convey...