[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4cast #480: Stylish words

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OPLIN 4cast #480: Stylish words
March 9th, 2016

[image: fountain pen] Last Friday's article in the *New York Times* (first
link below) about the death of Robert Palladino prompted some thoughts
about the relationship between the art of lettering and computer
technology. The words on the screens of early computers were composed of
letters that were easy for a computer to display without much regard -
other than screen colors - for the person looking at the computer. Rev.
Palladino may have inadvertently flipped that idea, as a young Steve Jobs
left his calligraphy classes with the notion that it was important for
computers to use fonts that made the user comfortable. Today, web designers
are very careful when choosing fonts for the words they put on screens,
staying mindful of the lessons learned over the centuries about words on
paper.

   - Rev. Robert Palladino, scribe who shaped Apple's fonts, dies at 83
   <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/arts/design/rev-robert-palladino-83-scribe-who-shaped-apples-fonts.html>
   (New York Times | Margalit Fox) "An authority on the history, structure and
   aesthetics of scripts from antiquity to the present, Father Palladino
   taught calligraphy at Reed College in Portland, Ore., from 1969 until his
   retirement, in 1984. [...] Mr. Jobs briefly attended Reed in 1972 before
   dropping out for economic reasons, but hung around campus for more than a
   year afterward; during that time, he audited Father Palladino's class.
   After helping to found Apple in 1976, he often credited the company's
   elegant onscreen fonts
   <http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=World_Class_Cities.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium>
   - and his larger interest in the design of computers as physical objects -
   to what he had been taught there."
   - Design reductionism <http://fadeyev.net/design-reductionism/> (Essays
   & notes | Dmitry Fadeyev) "We recognize letters via a process of pattern
   recognition. Letters will be recognized as letters irrespective of their
   style or their weight. As long as the shape falls within certain
   parameters, as long as we catch and recognize certain cues, we can identify
   the pattern of a letter, we can tell it apart as such. The precise form of
   a letter is a question of style, and style is a reflection of our own
   nature, not an objective quality."
   - The science behind fonts (and how they make you feel)
   <http://blog.crew.co/the-science-behind-fonts-and-how-they-make-you-feel/>
   (Crew blog | Mikael Cho) "Because fonts are designed by humans, there is
   usually some meaning attached to them. You don't want to choose a font that
   is easily associated with something in our culture that's markedly
   different than the vibe you're trying to give off. The quality of your
   content is the most important thing but how you present that content by
   choosing the right font and layout still has its place."
   - What it's like to design a font from scratch
   <http://www.fastcompany.com/3028881/most-creative-people/what-its-like-to-design-a-font-from-scratch>
   (Fast Company | Rebecca Greenfield) "Despite drawing much of his
   inspiration from what he calls 'old-school' Goudy-style fonts and the book
   arts, [Steve] Matteson would go on to create some of the most lasting
   typefaces of the computing age. And, as we enter a new mobile-first,
   digital-exclusive era of reading and writing, Matteston is also at the
   forefront of that typeface revolution, designing for major tablet and
   e-reader makers. While recreating the alphabet from scratch sounds like an
   increasingly difficult task-by now, you'd think that every possible
   permutation of legible letter shapes has already been created-Matteson sees
   more opportunity than ever to design new, better fonts."

*Articles from Ohio Web Library <http://ohioweblibrary.org>:*

   - Evaluating the efficiency of typographic design: Gender and expertise
   variation.
   <http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=94720254&site=ehost-live>
   (*Cartographic Journal*, Feb. 2014, p.75-86 | Rasha Deeb, Kristien Ooms,
   Valerie Vanopbroeke, and Phillipe De Maeyer)
   - Helvetica as a type convention for the youthful and trendy image: A
   consumer response to designer safe option.
   <http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=97058526&site=ehost-live>
   (*Marketing*, 2014, p.50-62 | Uroš Nedeljković, Dragoljub Novaković,
   Irma Puškarević, and Ivana Tomić)
   - The life of <p>.
   <http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=111020795&site=ehost-live>
   (*Print*, Fall 2015, p.24-26 | Jason Pamental)

------------------------------
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