Tag: design
0. Introduction So, yeah, I’m a type designer. And there are numerous situations where I end up stating that “I make fonts”, so that people can have an idea about what I do for a living. But drawing letters and packing them into working fonts is just a slice of it: I very often find […]
0. Introduction What typeface should I use? I’ve lost track of how many times I get this asked. Probably twice a week, maybe more. Even in projects where I work as a consultant, this question is usually the first step — even with amazingly skilled graphic designers. Heck, when Michael Paul Young asked me to […]
Part I: Introduction | Part II: Learning To See | Part III: Overshooting | Part IV: The Stroke (Optics) 0. Introduction Welcome back! I’ve been rewriting this article for ages now, so I’m glad to finally share this with you! Today we’re going through a subject that it’s apparently simple, but the degree of complexity and abstraction can escalate pretty quickly, […]
If you’re following me on Facebook, you probably know that I’ve recently asked for suggestions on what should I write about. Michał Jarociński suggested that I should do something about legibility, wayfinding and signage. Curiously enough, not so long ago, I’ve started a thread on Typophile (and a discussion on Reddit’s Typography board) about the function/use of […]
Index Introduction | Learning To See | Overshooting | The Stroke: Optics This is the first article of three, in our series, to talk about the stroke. We briefly introduced the idea (in the previous article) that the stroke width has an effect on perception and, for this reason, should be adjusted. So, this article is just about that: optical […]
Index Introduction | Learning To See | Overshooting | The Stroke: Optics You probably heard about overshooting, specially if you came from a visual arts background. If you haven’t, welcome! And if you have, well, it doesn’t hurt to refresh our knowledge and explore what we know in a more in-depth way. 1. Definition So, what’s overshooting? If you search […]
Note: This series of articles are a work in progress. It’s in the process of being written, so there might be corrections along the way, as well as new articles. Index Introduction | Learning To See | Overshooting | The Stroke: Optics I own a lot of books. It’s my consumerist pitfall: whenever I go to a bookshop and don’t […]
[2026/09/18] Very old article, rewritten. The overall corpus is preserved, with added notes and edits. As the title suggests, this is a brief collection of quick tips on kerning and metrics that I find valuable. Although aimed at type designers, this article might be valuable for kerning in DTP software or for logo designers. Anything […]
[2026/09/14]: This article became the most popular I’ve ever written. Since it was written a long time ago, I decided to rework it: polishing the wording to facilitate comprehension, fixing dead links and typos, and adding interactivity. Still, it remains faithful to the original — a lot of people discussed it and helped me flesh […]