#45 — Kern Flakes for Breakfast

By Coffee Table Typography • Issue #45 • View online

What’s great about maintaining this newsletter is how broad of a scope I can get away with what I mean by “typography”. The more I try to focus the scope into typefaces per se, the harder it becomes to decouple them from everything else that shapes them: languages, words, the medium they’re delivered in, graphic design… technology. And so, indulging in a bunch of disciplines, briefly forgiving myself for being a generalist, typography became both the receiving and the connecting end of a plethora of communication fields.

In actual news, you may have noticed The Guardian recently changing their entire Masthead, with a brand new redesign for their logo as well. Under Consideration wrote a very thorough review of the changes they’ve made, and I highly recommend a read.

Coca-Cola also revealed their new, custom made, typeface entitled TCCC Unity, an interesting geometric sans-serif that will be used for the company’s future design work. And don’t miss this beautiful roundup of the most beautiful and quirky numerals in typeface design, compiled by the good people at Typekit.

Last but not least, check out the gorgeous and refreshing work done at Modern Penguin Books, by Mathieu Triay.

Enjoy this week’s selection ☕

Designing a Font From Scratch — In 24 hours

James Barnard set out to do what seems to most like an impossible mission: creating his own typeface, Odibee Sans, in just over 24 hours, given his already existing conceptual work for it. And boy, should you stick around for this one.

If you’re curious about the thinking and process that goes into creating a typeface, James provides a good amount of detail to wet our appetite:

I went straight to Adobe Illustrator with the two or three letter styles I had sketched out. I set up five grid lines on my artboard, one each for the descender line, baseline, x-height, cap height and ascender line. I then decided on a width for the capital letters, and from there, the thickness of the stem (e.g. the width of the letter I).

X-height = 2 × height of ascender/descender.
Stem width = ¼ capital letter width
Lowercase width = ¾ capital letter width

Given these constraints, he chose to start designing (as in, on vector) the letters O and B, first. Why? These letters allowed him to focus on the rounded shape of the corners he intended for the type design:

The outside corner would have a 12mm radius, and the inside had 6mm. With these rules agreed, plus a height for my crossbar (across the letter H) I started churning out my capital letters.

(and you should really be reading this article on its original form, as he provides graphic descriptions of what’s happening at every stage).

With the uppercase letters done, he had a good overall shape for what the lowercase letters should look like. As usual, the f, g and a prove to be the hardest as they often require their own set of new rules.

With the vector work done, he moved onto using Glyphs, a well known application to create the actual fonts from the designs. James provides a good bunch of video tutorial links, so you can stick around for that if you’re curious. A good amount of time is, of course, spent tweaking the kerning between certain pair matches; just think about the extra white space you’d end up having between a V and and A (VA)!

Of course, it is impossible to design a complete character set (think about the thousands of glyphs needing design, as well as diacritics) in just a day, so James only focused on a basic set.

I have since added all the extra glyphs (I think) required for extended latin support. I also made some major changes to around 30 of the glyphs, including new styles for the letters (caps) S, B, R, and lower case s, c, y, a, e, r, f, t, p, q and j, as well as a couple of number tweaks.

All in all, a great insight into what goes on when creating a font file. Jump the link for the full article, with visuals.

medium.freecodecamp.org • Share

The Scientific Case For Teaching Cursive Handwriting to Your Kids Is Weaker Than You Think

One of my favourite articles on handwriting—ever. Philip Ball compiles the findings of recent scientific research which shows that the link between cursive handwriting and performing well in school may not be as strong as we are often told to believe. Parents and teachers, this is one for you too:

Often we teach them how to form letters based on the ones they see in their earliest reading books. And then we tell them that they must learn this hard-won skill all over again, using “joined-up” script. Yet there is no evidence that cursive has any benefits over other handwriting styles, such as manuscript, where the letters aren’t joined, for the majority of children with normal development.

But let’s start with something important: this doesn’t dismiss the fact that plain and simple handwriting is more efficient to memory and cognition purposes than typing; this, apparently, still holds true (so feel free to keep your notebooks!). Nor does it strip the beautiful and creative value of cursive handwriting. But… is cursive a mandatory education tool?

What I love about these studies is that they were done on the same language (French), but with very different methodologies being applied in Quebec and France itself. It’s also an interesting insight into how different cultures approach and deal with cursive:

In France, children are expected to use it as soon as they start to write in kindergarten, but in Mexico only manuscript is taught. The U.S. and United Kingdom leave some discretion for when cursive is taught, but there is the assumption that it will become the pupil’s normal mode of writing. When cursive is taught, it may become compulsory, so children may be marked down if they don’t write this way. In France, the cursive form is virtually universal and highly standardized, and children are discouraged from developing their own handwriting style.

The results of the studies (which you can read more about on the original article, and I highly encourage you to) are very clear:

[Cursive] It has consistently failed to find any real advantage of cursive over other forms of handwriting. “There is no conclusive evidence that there is a benefit for learning cursive for a child’s cognitive development”

And what about the cultural differences on how cursive handwriting is approached, even in the same language? Again, France and Canada have adopted completely different approaches over the years: while cursive is quite rigidly enforced in France, teachers in Canada are more free to decide which style to teach, and when. Some Canadians teach manuscript first and cursive later; some introduce cursive straight away in first grade.

In other words, teachers who are recommended by their education ministry to teach cursive, as in France, seem to become convinced that there are sound reasons for doing so, despite the lack of evidence. And teachers in Canada who decide for themselves to introduce cursive as soon as possible seem likewise to believe that there are advantages that justify this decision.

There is of course, a place for cursive in our lives. The emotional attachment, those love letters, recognising the quirky details of our loved ones in their characters on the paper. There may still be some cognitive benefits, but they’re not necessarily attached to the act of learning how to write cursive itself; in that fashion, education seems to still come from heritage and parental demand.

And if you’ve made it this far, here’s a dinner-party piece of trivia for you, directly from the article on Cursive on Wikipedia:

The term cursive derives from the 18th century Italian corsivo from Medieval Latin cursivus, which literally means running. This term in turn derives from Latin currere (“to run, hasten”)

The article is long, but if you’re vaguely interested in the topic, I highly suggest you saving it for a weekend read.

nautil.us • Share

The Design of a Signage Typeface

“Approaching the signs, I would often test myself: which typeface works best from a distance, and which of its features or details might be responsible for its performance. Should the design be somewhat condensed to permit more information on a sign, or rather should it be relatively wide so that individual letters are more easily differentiated?”

That is the premise of a brilliant roundup of what constitutes a good typeface for transit signage, written brilliantly by Ralf Hermann, who, 6 years ago, was on a dedicated mission to understand the little details of this challenge. Ralf mentions something interesting: for the sole purpose of readability and legibility on the road, there isn’t a lot of consistency in terms of style, and even type choices, that allows us to trace a pattern for the perfect traffic signage typeface. So, why is there so much inconsistency across countries, especially?

Some road signs used grid-based typefaces, some were extremely wide geometric typefaces with the simpler forms of a and g, some very thin, and some very heavy. These days, with digital sign production, we see more and more print typefaces (like Helvetica) and even system typefaces (like Arial) on signs.

It’s crucial to first understand that a typeface which is meant to be read at 200 meters will require different features than a typeface that’s meant to be read on your desktop screen. According to Ralf, most traffic typefaces used in the U.K. work brilliantly for British road names, but would give hell to everyone reading it for German names, which are quite often twice as long. And then there’s, of course, non-latin typefaces for non-latin names, which also require their own special set of features:

Another example is the Clearview typeface with its extreme x-height, which works on American road signs, but not so well for languages using numerous diacritical marks. So in the end there was not a single typeface that I could recommend for signage in every situation.

Ralf eventually set off on a mission to build his own “ultimate” traffic typeface, and he certainly did a remarkable job creating Wayfinding Sans. It’s a very thorough and visually rich article, so please dig into its own details. Curiously, Ralf suggests defining the stroke width and the x-height of the boldest style, based on crucial letters such as a, e, and s, which have up to three strokes within the x-height. When the strokes of these letters are still clearly visible — even under the halation effect of retro-reflective or back-lit signs — then the typeface will perform well for signage.

ilovetypography.com • Share

An example of character differentiation, note the little serifs on the bottom

And when the sign is hit by a car's headlights?

You can even check out the photos Ralf himself took for his research, on signs all over Europe. The specimen of his Wayfinding Sans typeface is also a good showcase of some of the details he took into account when crafting it, don’t miss it.

Printmaking, Typesetting, and the Space Between Words

Lindsay Lynch opens this fantastic essay on space (and spaces) beautifully:

“In typesetting, the spaces between words, lines, and letters are never really empty.”

In a short but packed article, we’re taken through a journey of typesetting that easily spans through several centuries—and how the space got to play an active role in the way we write and read.

Starting with the good old world of moveable type, an en space is a physical block of metal used in type setting whose sole purpose is to create spaces between the casts for words, not catching any ink in the process. More than just providing blank space, it also has to fit the overall grid. And yes, good luck adjusting several blocks of different width spaces if you’d like to have justified text on those pages… can you imagine tweaking the spaces individually so it would be justified to perfection?

But did you know there was a time where there was no need for spaces?

In the Middle Ages, the Bible was only reproduced in its original Latin scriptura continua, meaning there were no spaces between the words. To differentiate between words, readers had to read them out; loudly, as no one read silently in those days (it really wasn’t a thing people did, at the time. Reading aloud was the only way to give meaning to the written word).

Lindsay then moves on to the beauty of the inefficient art of letter pressing, and how typewriters and modern word processors got some of the defaults we don’t even pay attention to today. It’s a beautiful read in its entirety.

Since then, blank space has become a unique commodity in print. Minimalist design responds to the scarcity of emptiness, making a point of using as little material to say as much as possible. In the wake of national tragedy or political strife, it is not uncommon for entire pages of The New York Times to be bought out and feature only a few words, a short letter, or a list of names. The negative space indicates that this concise message is more dear, in both its meaning and its cost, than whatever would otherwise occupy the page.

www.theatlantic.com • Share

Typeface Du Jour ✍️

Apolline, from Jean F. Porchez

Apolline — Typofonderie

Apolline, by Jean François Porchez, is a Venetian serif font in 10 series & ornaments, which has been around for a while and has made me drool over it like it is ice cream. It was created as a means to study the transition from Renaissance writing into the first printing types.

Initially Jean François made drawings modelled after his own calligraphy. They were done at a very small size on tracing paper (2 cm high for the capitals) to preserve the irregularity of human handwriting. Besides emphasising the horizontal parts of the letter forms, the serifs were designed asymmetrically to reinforce the rhythm of the writing. The final drawings were produced at a large size (10 cm high for the capitals) to allow for subtle optimisation of specific details.

Would you just look at those delicious diacritics strokes? It’s also available from Typekit, and you can be sure I’ll soon find a use for it. Just because, beauty.

typofonderie.com • Share

On the Coffee Scene ☕️

Honoré de Balzac’s Fifty Cups of Coffee

In a hilariously creative writing assignment, Brendan O’Hare imagines what Balzac was thinking after he drank all that coffee each day (who famously drank 50, fifty, cups of coffee per day).

No. 4: Rats! Put too much cream in that one. Luckily I have forty-five opportunities to right this wrong.
No. 5: Too much cream again. I will learn from this.
No. 6: Yikes. This time I didn’t add enough cream.
No. 7: Nailed the cream ratio, baby!
b I should have written down the ratio.

[…]

If you’re now wondering about how much caffeine is too much caffeine, there’s a handy calculator with some information that you can use to calculate your own limit. Typically, 300mg of caffeine (about 3.5 espressos) is a good number, but realistically, if you’re finding yourself screaming at your neighbour for saying ’morning too loud, you may want to cut back a little.

www.newyorker.com • Share

— Until next time 🤞,

Ricardo

Did you enjoy this issue?

By Coffee Table Typography

A love for words, letters, language—and coffee.
A digest of curated resources, articles and knowledge sharing about the beauty of typography; in design, on the web, or books.
You will read these over your morning cup of coffee, while the aromas of freshly ground beans are still in the air, quickly realising that words are beautiful and that you might need that second cup after all.

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With 💙 from Montreal, Canada