FONTS!

[Maaik]

Z. D. Smith
Total Zen Master

Oh shit!  That'd look great on a border-embossed, naturally hued, heavily grained card in some sort of whimsical Wizard of Oz font.  I'd seriously have those printed up.

[coldforge]

Man, skip the Frank Baum shit! Border embossed, my ass. We are talking spare, simple, classy.

I want gunmetal grey text, centered,Aeilet's stick it in Trajan Pro just for mockup purposes,Aeion matte black. Like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, in your pocket.

[Maaik]

Oooooooo.  I like your idea.  You are a total zen master.

I know you're not considering it, but I gotta say, vertically typeset business cards are lame lame lame.




And I want this shirt.

[coldforge]

Ha! Man, that approaches Magritte-esque levels of brain-bendingness.

Also, why am I now actually considering spending some ridiculous amount of money on matte black business cards? I need to spend less time on the internet.


...So is it possible to get the text in relief, you know, lower than the background? That's what I'm seeing here.

[Maaik]

I don't see why not.  It'd basically be like embossing the text, just backwards.  But the card production I was party to was very simple--we didn't even do thermography--so I'm not sure how feasable it is (like, would the letter-specific relief stamping damage the ink/render printing impossible? etc.).

Matte black 80 or 90# paper with a specialty ink, embossed in a weird way...I think you're looking at $150 for 1000, easy--and I would recommend going with 1000 rather than 500 or lower as it's more practical to print and cut a lot of cards than not a lot of cards, which makes it more cost effective for them and for you.  Though I have seen folks pay more for 100 cards than they would have for 500, so go figure.

Man, maybe I need to get off the internet and stop encouraging this.

[stephanie]

You guys are INSANE

that said

Favourite:  10pt Verdana, though I've recently come around to appreciating the joys of small TNR -- timeless, really .. Georgia is really pleasing to me as well, though I inexplicably always think of myself as a sans serif kinda gal (Arial Narrow 0WNZ, so neat & discreet)

Least favourite:  Comic Sans, muthafuckin' OBVS -- though I'm nearly equally irked by Courier New above 9pt

[coldforge]

Listen. People who use monospace fonts for any kind of block text outside of manuscripts simply need to have their alphabet licenses revoked. End of story.

[Andrew_TSKS]

the only place courier new looks right is in movie scripts.

but it's very useful when you're writing a paper that has to be a certain amount of pages in length (as opposed to a certain number of words).

[the eyepatch guy]

I couldn't wear that shirt on account of how it doesn't say "This is not a TYPEFACE". I am the biggest snob! I win!

I think the Zen master cards should just be printed in varnish on black.

[coldforge]

Because one attains Zen Mastery by squinting?

Wow. Squint is one of those words that just goes funny, real quick. Squint, squint. Sounds like wet shoes.

[Greg Nog]

Coldforge, I consider myself something of a graphic design expert, so I was kind enough to design your business card for you.



You can thank me later.

[ewige]

ogodno

[Nickosaurus]

I absolutley hate courier. Looking at it fills me with a murderous rage.

My favorite all-time font is gino school script, because it's a cursive font that you can actually read and works like cursive should.

[coldforge]

Awesome, Nick! WHAT A LITTLE GIRL YOU ARE!

and also, Greg:

uh.


yeah i think that 'e' should be capitalized.

[Greg Nog]

I can see you're speechless.  That's understandable; it's not every day that one sees such a glorious, shining example of good design, pleasing fonts, and subtle illustrations.  And I won't even charge you for it.  This one's on the house!

[coldforge]

Well at least when I finally snap/escape several years from now, and embark on a spree across america to kill everyone i've ever known on the internet, i know what i'll be leaving nailed into you guys' foreheads.

[jordanmichael]

www.blamblot.com yo.

[the eyepatch guy]

yeah i think that 'e' should be capitalized.

The lowercase e, more than anything else, is the thing that made me spit-take my monitor. That is comedy gold.

[Andrew_TSKS]

Well at least when I finally snap/escape several years from now, and embark on a spree across america to kill everyone i've ever known on the internet, i know what i'll be leaving nailed into you guys' foreheads.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[Throoper]

Alright boyos. Check this shit: I no longer think you guys are dorks for this font loving stuff.

I found this through the New York Times site; there is an article up there about the problem with 'Good Night, and Good Luck' is that the CBS NEWS on the set of the studio they constructed is in Helvetica, a font that hadn't been invented yet.

[jess]

Huge typography geek here...

Emigre is one of my all time favorite foundries (they do zines and music as well). Mrs. Eaves is probably my current favorite serif (though Adobe Garamond and Caslon are always excellent) and they make a lot of great sans-serifs and decorative fonts too.

Another of my all time favorite fonts is Trajan by Carol Twombly for Adobe. It's based on Roman carved letter forms and is one of the most elegant typefaces I can think of (though it's all caps, which limits its uses). The Q is particularly fantastic. I was way too happy when I realized that the West Wing, my favorite tv show, uses it for all of its lettering. In fact, I get way too happy whenever I see any of my favorite fonts in use in the real world, but that's the legacy of once being a graphic design student.

[Em]

Jess, I may be wrong, but Trajan looks to be the font currently favored by the powers that be at the college I attended, so if you come down to NYC you'll be ecstatic to see it in use on academic materials of all kinds (and also on some building signs and whatnot). I only know this because I remember my guy mentioning it -- he has almost no graphic design experience, but is nonetheless obsessive about fonts. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but he has actually refused to try out a pizza place near our apartment because of the (admittedly atrocious, even by my inexacting and uninformed standards) font on their sign. In his defense, he doesn't like pizza nearly as much as I do, so the font thing might be his joking excuse to avoid the whole cuisine, but I never know with him.

[coldforge]

It also bears mentioning, of course, that Trajan is on nearly every other movie poster coming out of Hollywood for the past couple of years, even to the point that someone out there on the internet has made a surprisingly in-depth flash movie about the phenomenon (which I am certainly going to take no great pains to right now seek out). And yeah—I love Typecasting; Simonson has a lot of really interesting and accessible articles on that site, and his own work is pretty good too.

And pretty soon you guys will all see my next, typographically themed, tattoo.

[jess]

But at least Trajan is popular because it's good, unlike so many other fonts which are popular for reasons beyond my comprehension. Or because they are in the standard set on the Mac OS (*ahem* Papyrus *ahem*). Not that I have anything against Papyrus, I like it, but once they put it on there it suddenly was everywhere.

[coldforge]

i agree.