ILT

by Lauren Lucille

I found a few interesting things this week.  I stumbled upon a blog called "I Love Typography"  (ILT) which has a great amount of links to great type websites and plenty of interesting posts.

One of my favorite posts was "On Choosing Type" where the author explained that Typography was not a science and couldn't exactly be and that it was an art.  The author related new fonts to babies: "A new typeface is something like a newborn baby (though it doesn’t throw-up on you): don’t drop it, squeeze it too hard, hold it upside-down; in other words, don’t abuse it, treat it respectfully, carefully."
They continued to set up certain guidelines as to how to choose type.
The guidelines are:

1: honor the content (what is the text describing?  is it for a website?  print?)

2. read it (is it actually easy or is it almost exhausting to read through?  the author gave a blackletter font as an example).

3. the audience & canvas (consider the readers and the setting of the text.  who is reading your text?  is your text going on someone else's cramped design page?)

4. does it look right? (if it's going on paper, print it to check!  if it's for the screen, check both pc and mac.  it could be amazing in one area and a trainwreck  on the other.)

5. typography is an art and therefore subjective.  (if you're unsure about your own work, ask other designers and typographers for their opinions!)


Another one of the posts that I read led me to "The Type Director's Club" which is an organization based in Manhattan.  Founded in 1946, "The Type Directors Club is the leading international organization whose purpose is to support excellence in typography, both in print and on screen."  They hold competitions every two years and the participants come from all over the world.  I was looking through some of the winners from last year and found some interesting images:

for the category "books:"

for the "clocks" category:

for the "typelogo" category"