Ralf Herrmann: Wayfinding & Typography

Typography on Instagram

2013-06-03T05:20:27-07:00

You are on Instagram and you like typography, calligraphy and lettering? Here are some accounts you might want to follow. (Click on the images to get to the Instagram accounts) Andy Clymer, Type designer from New York Hand-painted signs made by Best Dressed Signs from Boston. David Wolske David Wolske runs the wood type [...]

Canapé—a cosy typeface

2013-05-13T01:02:42-07:00

Canapé by Sebastian Nagel is the latest release at fonts.info. It is based on the idea of letters with a subtly curved and slightly modulated line. Through this, the typefaces has a warm and friendly, almost haptical appearance which brings some kind of cosiness to your communication with type. Canapé Serif with its 4 fonts [...]

The Capital Sharp S in Use

2013-04-22T04:03:58-07:00

A while ago I announced on Twitter, that it is now 5 years since the Capital Sharp S was added to the Unicode. I was asked, if it has actually been used somewhere in real world situations. A valid question! A new character shouldn’t just be made to look good in type specimen brochures. So [...]

Skyfall—Urban Calligraphy by Simon Silaidis

2013-04-03T01:20:48-07:00

Simon Silaidis applied his life’s love of calligraphy in the rural, urban and suburban surroundings of Asia and Europe. You will spot his work in abandoned places, in the streets and in his studio using ink and bamboo pens. His style is a mix of Western, Asian and Arabian calligraphy and his vision of a [...]

From signs to minds—Can cartographic signs be superior to regular direction signs?

2013-03-18T06:01:30-07:00

In a scientific study, Michaela Skiles from Middlebury, Vermont has tested, if simplified maps on signs could not only get people to their destination, but also help them to construct a better mental map, which would improve the understanding of the surrounding and help with orientation and navigation in the future. In this guest article, [...]

“The Geometry of Type”, 100 typefaces explained by typographer Stephen Coles

2013-03-06T23:01:10-08:00

If you enter the field of typography today, you are very likely overwhelmed by the diversity of the available typeface. You can choose from over 20.000 type families at MyFonts alone. How should one ever get to understand the differences in style and quality and learn how to chose the right typefaces for a certain [...]

Introducing the pictogram font Wayfinding Sans Symbols

2013-01-21T05:37:04-08:00

Ever since I publicly announced my signage typeface Wayfinding Sans Pro, people kept asking me about pictograms for this type family. So finally, here they are. A full-fledged symbol font family in 4 styles, over 400 symbols and a little bit of clever “OpenType magic” to access and combine the pictograms as easy as possible. [...]

Let’s Meet Typomapp 2.0 — The Typography Knowledge Map

2012-12-20T01:56:31-08:00

A lot of typographic knowledge is available in printed books and online in Wikipedia, web forums and the like. But you can usually just access it using a certain hierarchy based on topic, history or maybe just the alphabetic order of typographic terms. But what if you are interested in typographic information about a certain [...]

Sketches by Jan Tschichold

2012-12-03T06:16:26-08:00

The German typographic society Forum Typografie arranged a visit to the type & book art archive of the National Library in Leizpig, where most of the work-related sketches and materials of Jan Tschichold are currently stored. With some other type enthusiast I had the chance to browse through this amazing collection. Here are some pictures [...]

A “modern” Print Shop

2012-11-23T02:15:47-08:00

Scans from a brochure of an old German print shop in Mainz. Enjoy! Doppelmagazin-Linotype-Satzmaschinen für Spezialsatz: Abteilung für Handsatz: Abteilung für Handsatz: Maschinensaal mit verschiedenen Schnellpressen: Maschinensaal mit Schnellpressen: Offset-Schnellpresse: Koh-i-noor-Pressen und Tiegeldruckpressen: Umdruckerei: Umdruckerei: Flach-Bronziermaschine: Moderne Hilfsmaschinen der Steindruck- und Offset-Abteilung: Schleif- und Körnungsmaschine für Zinkplatten: Stein-Schleifmaschine: Stahlstich-Schnellpresse: Lithographisches Atelier: Buchbinderei: Buchbinderei: Buchbinderei mit [...]

Typographic Myth Busting: What’s a Ligature, Anyway?

2012-11-20T06:30:28-08:00

If your work deals with typography in any way, you are very likely familiar with the term ligature. But the definition of this term is often unclear. There seems to be one problem in particular: We usually use the term when we want to talk about a certain kind of ligature, to which cases like [...]

Font Piracy at Universities

2012-11-12T00:41:50-08:00

This documentary by Danielle Hall explores why font piracy among graphic design students is so common and what could possibly be done against it. Through interviews with type designers, a copyright lawyer, university administration, type professors, and graphic design students, this documentary sheds light on all angles of this issue. Tweet

Keyboard with Capital Sharp S now in mass production

2012-10-08T02:57:20-07:00

One of the weaker arguments against a Capital Sharp S (ẞ) has always been, that such a new character cannot become widely accepted, because there is no easy input method for it on a regular German keyboard. But this point has now started to become moot. The keyboard maker Cherry has starter mass production of a [...]

Making Sense of Maps

2012-10-02T03:32:20-07:00

Map designer Aris Venetikidis is fascinated by the maps we draw in our minds as we move around a city – less like street maps, more like schematics or wiring diagrams, abstract images of relationships between places. How can we learn from these mental maps to make better real ones? As a test case, he [...]

The Work of Emil Rudolf Weiß

2012-09-24T00:07:09-07:00

Emil Rudolf Weiß (1875–1942) was a German type designer, graphic designer and painter. The scope of his work is nicely displayed in a book from 1931 called “Der Schrift und Buchkünstler Emil Rudolph Weiß” from the series “Monographien künstlerischer Schrift”. I’d like to share this with you and photographed most of the pages from this [...]