In 2021, the Google Fonts team added all fonts included in the Noto project to the fonts.google.com website and our font service. Noto offers support for any language in any writing system, so the website needed a new specimen page design that was able to provide access to all these fonts, and that we later… Continue reading How Google Fonts Designed a Specimen Page for Any Typeface
Some of the most iconic design movements and their impact on typography. Since over a century there have been some landmark design movements which have shaped our sensibilities and visual aesthetic. These events shaped popular culture and still have a huge impact on letterforms. Chandan Mahimkar shares intimate details about their popularity and how they… Continue reading Breaking StereoType with Chandan Mahimkar
Polish artist Wojciech Sikora demonstrates the process of turning the elements into industrial typographic masterpieces. This fascinating short film demonstrates how art, science, craft, and industry merge to form stunning objects originally functional in nature, but utterly stylish in their final forms. Stay until the end, then get ready for the costume and letter-carving contests… Continue reading Steel Letters: The Movie
The Arabic script has been a long developing writing system, and its diacritics constitute a visually rich and complex in dimension. There are points that differentiate consonants that have similar forms known as niqāṭ, vocalization marks known as tashkyl, Qur’an accents to aid in recitation, and decorative marks. What is the history and relevance of… Continue reading Diacritics in the Arabic Script
The design of a typeface is a complex process, but it follows a logic that can be formalized by constructive elements, such as the module, that can respond to an appearance based on the strokes created with a tool or in standardized geometric shapes. A selection of these elements can be established by a series… Continue reading Typographic Stencils as a Creative and Didactic Tool
Over the decades and centuries, typography has evolved substantially, but rarely at the same time. In this presentation, we will be looking at conceptual and conventional typography, and how the former has affected the perception towards the latter. Since typography is a craft that everyone encounters on a daily basis, the goal of this discourse… Continue reading Conceptual Type, Conventional Type
Hanzi Graphy focuses on the history, architecture, and physical characteristics of Chinese characters while establishing a common set of vocabulary. Kanji Graphy takes it further and tells the story of how Chinese characters settled in Japan and became the root for a hybrid writing system. The book is divided into two sections. In the first… Continue reading Carrying on: Kanji Graphy and Hanzi Graphy
This is the story behind a pretty special navigation typeface designed for a city in the southwestern part of Russia, Belgorod (the name means White City) that has a long and dramatic history. Starting as a Slavic dwelling in the eighth century, and became an important fortress defending the state border from numerous enemy attacks… Continue reading An Incise for City Navigation
If you design type, you won’t want to miss Peter Nowell’s demo of Font Proofer—a powerful new tool for generating proofs. Font Proofer has an intuitive UI for creating an assortment of proof layouts, editing repetitive spacing strings, and exporting PDFs. It’s fast, highly customizable, and compatible with both Glyphs and RoboFont. While proofs are… Continue reading Font Proofer: A New Chapter in Proofing Type