Please visit the active Ultrasparky blog to browse the for the content that has accumulated since this all began in 1996.

MATD Print Resources

Entries in bold are items I own. I'll link to any comments about each as I work my way through the list...

Type Design: General

[Anon] & Carol Twombly, "Becoming a type designer." Designer Graphics, no 4, 1994, pp 9–27

[Anon] "How to design a typeface". Graphics World 32, September, 1981. pp 58–59

Adams, Debra & Richard Southall, "Problems of font quality assessment." In Jacques André & Roger D Hersch (eds) Raster Imaging and Digital Typography. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp 213–222

Anderson, Donald M, Calligraphy: The Art of Written Forms. New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1992

Baudin, Fernand, "Handwriting and type-design from Pierre Hamon to Emery Walker." Quaerendo, vol XV, no 2, 1985, pp 103–114

Black, Alison, Typefaces for Desktop Publishing: A User Guide. London, Architecture Design and Technology Press, 1990

Bringhurst, Robert, The Elements of Typographic Style. (2nd ed), Point Roberts: WA, Hartley & Marks, 1996

Carter, Harry G, "Letter design and typecutting." Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts, no 4935, 1.10.1954, pp 878–895

Carter, Matthew, "Theories of letterform construction: Part 1." Printing History, vol XIII, no 2, 1991, pp 3–16

Catich, Edward M, The Origin of the Serif. 2nd ed. Catich Gallery, St Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa, 1991

Dwiggins, William Addison, WAD to RR: a letter about designing type. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard College Library, 1940

Gaskell, Philip, "A nomenclature for the letterforms of roman type." Visible Language, vol X, no 1, 1976, pp 42–51

Goudy, Frederic W, Typologia: Studies in Type Design and Type Making. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977 (1, 2)

Gray, Nicolete, A history of lettering: creative experiment and letter identity. Oxford, Phaidon, 1986

Hartz, Sem, L, "An approach to type designing." Penrose Annual, vol 52, 1958, pp 39–42 [reprinted in: Sem L Hartz, Essays. Amsterdam, Serifpers, 1992]

Harvey, Michael, Lettering Design. London, The Bodley Head, 1975

Harvey, Michael, Letters into Words. London, William Clowes & Sons Ltd, 1973

Hochuli, Jost, "Review of Edward M Catich, The Origin of the Serif." Visible Language, vol VII, no 1, 1973, pp 73–91

Jammes, André, "Académisme et Typographie: the Making of the Romain du Roi." Journal of the Printing Historical Society, no 1, 1965, pp 71–95

Johnson, Alfred Forbes, "The Goût Hollandois." The Library, 4th series, vol XX, 1939, pp 180–196

Johnson, Alfred Forbes, Type designs: their history and development. 3rd ed. London, Andre Deutsch, 1966

Kaech, Walter, Rhythm and proportion in lettering/Rhythmus und Proportion in der Schrift. Oltren & Freiburg in Breisgau, Walter Verlag, 1956

Kindersley, David, An essay in optical letter spacing and its mechanical application. Wynkyn de Worde Society, London, 1963

Kinross, Robin, Modern Typoraphy. London, Hyphen Press, 1992 (1)

Krimpen, Jan van, A letter to Philip Hofer on certain problems connected with the mechanical cutting of punches. Boston, David R Godine, 1972

Krimpen, Jan van, On designing and devising type. New York, The Typophiles, & London, Sylvan Press, 1957

Lawson, Alexander, Anatomy of a typeface. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1990

Luna, Paul, Understanding type for desktop publishing. London, Blueprint, 1992.

Mandel, Ladislas, "Developing an awareness of typographic letterforms." Electronic Publishing, vol 6, no 1, 1993, pp 3–22

Meier, Hans Eduard, Die Schriftentwicklung/The development of script and type/Le développement des caractères. Cham: Switzerland, Syntax Press, 1994

Morison, Stanley, Type designs of the past and present. London, The Fleuron Ltd., 1926

Morison, Stanley, Typographic design in relation to pantographic composition. Book Club of California, 1959

Mosley, James M, "French academicians and modern typography: designing new types in the 1690s." Typography Papers, no 2, 1997, pp 5–29

Mosley, James M, The nymph and the grot: the revival of the sanserif letter. London, Friends of the St Bride Printing Library, 1999

Noordzij, Gerrit, The stroke of the pen, The Hague, Koninklijke Akademie, 1982

Smeijers, Fred, Counterpunch: making type in the sixteenth century; designing typefaces now. London, Hyphen Press, 1996

Southall, Richard, "A survey of type design techniques before 1978." Typography Papers, no 2, 1997, pp 31–59

Southall, Richard, "Character description techniques in type manufacture." In Rosemary Sassoon (ed) Computers and typography. Oxford, Intellect, 1993, pp 85–100

Southall, Richard, "Shape and appearance in typeface design." In J H Miller (ed) Protext III: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Text Processing Systems. Boole, 1986, pp 75–86

Spencer, Herbert, The visible word. Lund Humphries, London, 1969

Spiekermann, Erik, Rhyme & reason: a typographic novel. Edited by Paul Stiff. Berlin, H Berthold AG, 1987

Tracy, Walter, Letters of Credit: a view of type design. London, Gordon Fraser, 1986

Wallis, Lawrence W, "Technology determining aesthetics." Professional Printer, vol 38, no 1, 1994 (?), pp 17–18

Wallis, Lawrence W, A Concise Chronology of Typesetting Developments 1886–1986. London, The Wynkyn de Worde Society & Lund Humphries, 1988

Zapf, Hermann, "Future tendencies in type design: the scientific approach to letterforms." Visible Language, vol XIX, no 1, 1985, pp 23–33

Type Design: Case Studies

Baines, Phil & Catherine Dixon,"Times Classic: design analysis." Eye, vol 10, no 40, pp 60–61

Baines, Phil, "Face lift: new cuts at the Times." Eye, vol 10, no 40, pp 52–59

Carter, Matthew, "Galliard: a modern revival of the types of Robert Granjon." Visible Language, vol XIX, no 1, 1985, pp 77–97

Frere-Jones, Tobias, "Experiments in type design." AIGA Boston Journal, no 2, 1997

Frutiger, Adrian (Collaborators: Nicole Delamarre & Andrè Gürtler), "OCR-B: A standardized character for optical recognition." Journal of Typographic Research, vol I, no 2, 1967, pp 137–146

Gibbons, Charles, "Zealand, reflections on developing a typeface." Visible Language, vol XXXIII, 3, 1999, pp 254–283

Holmes, Kris, "Lucida: the first original typeface designed for laser printers." Baseline, no 6, 1985, pp 12–13

Jammes, Andrè, "Acadèmisme et typographie: the making of the romain du roi." Journal of the Printing Historical Society, no 1, 1965, pp 71–95

Weidemann, K, "Biblica – designing a new typeface for the Bible", Baseline, no 6, 1985, pp 7–11

Knuth, Donald The & Hermann Zapf, "AMS Euler – a new typeface for mathematics." Scholarly Publishing, vol 20, no 3, 1989, pp 131–157

Mathews, M V, Carol Lochbaum, & Judith A Moss, "Three Fonts of Computer-drawn Letters." Journal of Typographic Research (Visible Language), vol I, no 1, 1967, pp 345–356

Meier, Hans Eduard, "On the design of Barbedor and Syndor." In Roger D Hersch (ed) Visual and technical aspects of type. Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp 148–64

Schulz-Anker, Erich, "Syntax Antiqua, a sans-serif on a new basis." Gebrauchsgraphik, August 1970, pp 49–56

Stauffacher, Jack, "The Transylvanian Phoenix: the Kis-Janson types in the digital era." Visible Language, vol XIX, no 1, 1985, pp 61–76

Stone, Sumner, "Hans Eduard Meier"s Syntax-Antiqua." In Charles Bigelow; Paul Hayden Duensing & Linnea Gentry (eds) Fine Print On Type. London, Lund Humphries, 1989, pp 22–25

Stone, Sumner, "The Stone family of typefaces: new voices for the electronic age." In Charles Bigelow; Paul Hayden Duensing & Linnea Gentry (eds) Fine Print On Type. Lund Humphries, London 1989, pp 136–139

Unger, Gerard, "A type design for Rome and the year 2000." Typography Papers, no 3, 1998, pp 61–73

Unger, Gerard, "Experimental No 223, a newspaper typeface, designed by W A Dwiggins." Quaerendo, vol XI, no 4, 1981, pp 302–324

Unger, Gerard, "The design of a typeface." Visible Language, vol XIII, no 2, 1979, pp 134–149

Zapf, Hermann & Jack Werner Stauffacher, Hunt Roman: the birth of a type. Pittsburgh: PA, The Pittsburgh Bibliophiles, 1965

Typeforms: Description

Atkins, Gordon, The classification of printing types. Oadby: Leicester, Apple Barrell Press, 1975

Bastien, Alfred, The 1953 classification of type design. West Drayton, Bastien Brothers Ltd, 1958

Bauermeister, Benjamin, A manual of comparative typography: the PANOSE system. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1988

Boggan, Scott & Michael de Laurentis, "The Panose typeface-matching system: a system for matching static or distortable fonts." BYTE, May 1994, pp 187–192

Dixon, Catherine, "Why we need to reclassify type." Eye, vol 5, no 19, 1995, pp 85–6

Gaskell, Philip, "A nomenclature for the letterforms of roman type." Visible Language, vol XX, no 1, 1976, pp 42–51

Ghosh, Pijush K & Charles A Bigelow, A formal approach to lettershape description for type design: Report STAN–CS–83–966. Stanford: CA, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, 1983

Hoefler, Jonathan, "On classifying type." Emigre, no 42, 1998, pp 55–70

King, Emily, "Compare and contrast." Eye, vol 7, no 25, 1997, pp 36–39

Morison, Stanley, "On the classification of typographical variations." In Stanley Morison, Letter forms: typographic and scriptorial. Two essays on their classification, history and bibliography. London, Nattali & Maurice, 1968, pp 1–132

Mosley, James M, "New approaches to the classification of typefaces." British Printer, no 3, 1960, pp 90–6

Mountford, John, "A functional classification." In Peter T Daniels & William Bright, The world's writing systems. Oxford University Press, 1996, pp 627–632

Noordzij, Gerrit, "A program for teaching letterforms." In Ferdinand Baudin & John Dreyfus (eds), Dossier A–Z: ATypI 1973. Andenne, Rèmy Magermans, 1973

Noordzij, Gerrit, "Broken scripts and the classification of typefaces." Journal of Typographic Research, vol VI, no 3, 1970, pp 213–240

Noordzij, Gerrit, "Typeface classification." In: Bernd Holthusen & Albert Jan Pool, Scangraphic digital type collection: Edition 4. Mannesmann Scangraphic, 1990, pp 65–81

Southall, Richard, "A new index of typefaces." Penrose Annual, no 74, 1982, pp 255–8

Thorp, Joseph, "Experimental application of a nomenclature for letter forms I." Monotype Recorder, vol XXXI, no 246, 7–8.1932, pp 3–6

Thorp, Joseph, "Experimental application of a nomenclature for letter forms II." Monotype Recorder, vol XXXII, no 294/new series no 1, 1933, pp 15–20

Thorp, Joseph, "Towards a nomenclature for letter forms." Monotype Recorder, vol XXX, no 240, 4–5.1931, pp 7–19

Tracy, Walter, "Type design classification." Visible Language, vol V, no 1, 1971, pp 59–66

Wilkinson, Timothy, "A practical approach to typeface classification." British Printer, November 1965, pp 86–89

Description II

Knuth, Donald E, METAFONT: A system for alphabet design: Report STAN–CS–79–762. Stanford: CA, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, 1979

Knuth, Donald E, "The concept of a Meta-Font." Visible Language, vol XVI, no 1, 1982, pp 3–27

Hofstadter, Douglas R, "Metafont, metamathematics, and metaphysics." Visible Language, vol XVI, no 4, 1982, pp 309–338

[various] "Other replies to Donald Knuth's article, "The concept of a MetaFont." Visible Language, vol XVI, no 4, pp 339–359

Sampson, Geoffrey, "Is Roman type an open-ended system? A response to Douglas Hofstadter." Visible Language, vol XVII, no 4, 1983, pp 410–412

Hofstadter, Douglas, "A reply from Douglas Hostadter." Visible Language, vol XVII, no 4, 1983, pp 413–416

Knuth, Donald E, "Lessons learned from Metafont." Visible Language, vol XIX, no 1, 1985, pp 35–53

Knuth, Donald E, Digital typography. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1999

Leonidas, Gerry, "In search of the digital Cresci: Don Knuth's Digital typography." Information Design Journal, vol 9. no 2&3, pp 111–118

Type Design: Digital

[Anonymous] Ikarus. Baseline, no 3, 1981, pp 6–11

[Brady, Fred, Robert Slimbach, Gail Blumberg, et al] [Adobe type specimen booklets] Mountain View: CA, Adobe Systems Inc., 198x–199x

Adobe Systems Inc, Adobe Type 1 Font Format. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., Reading: MA, 1990

Andrè, Jacques & Roger D Hersch (eds), Raster Imaging and Digital Typography. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989

Bigelow, Charles & Donald Day, "Digital typography." Scientific American, August 1983, pp 94–105

Bigelow, Charles & Jonathan Seybold, "Technology and the aesthetics of type: maintaining the 'tradition' in the age of electronics." The Seybold Report, vol 10, no 24, 1981, pp 3–16

Bigelow, Charles & Kris Holmes, "The design of a Unicode font." Electronic Publishing, vol 6, no 3, September 1993, pp 289–305

Bigelow, Charles, "Font design for personal workstations." BYTE, January 1985, pp 255–270

Bigelow, Charles, "The principles of digital type: quality type for low, medium and high resolution printers." The Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, vol 11, no 11, 8 February 1982, pp 11-3–11-23

Boag, Andrew & David Saunders (eds.), Classic revivals: the Monotype Conference Exhibition 1992 & Back to basics: Stanley Morison and old face. Redhill: Surrey, Monotype Typography Ltd., 1992

Boggan, Scott & Michael de Laurentis, "The Panose typeface-matching system: a system for matching static or distortable fonts." BYTE, May 1994, pp 187–192

Daines, Mike, "Some aspects of the effects of technology on type design." In Rosemary Sassoon (ed) Computers and typography. Oxford, Intellect, 1993, pp 76–84

Dawson, Martin, "Can classic, remastered fonts retain the spirit of the 'authentic' original?" Eye, vol 11, no 41, 52–57

Day, Donald, "Donald Knuth's TEX & METAFONT: New Directions in Typesetting." In Charles Bigelow; Paul Hayden Duensing & Linnea Gentry (eds) Fine Print On Type. London, Lund Humphries, 1989, pp 35–36

Dreyfus, John & Renè Murat (eds.), Typographic opportunities in the computer age: papers of the 11th Congress of the Association Typographique Internationale. Prague, June 1969. Typografia Prague, 1970, pp 52–55

Flowers, Jim, "Digital type manufacture: an interactive approach." IEEE Computer, May 1984, pp 40–48

Hersch Roger D (ed), Visual and technical aspects of type. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993

Hersch, Roger D et al (eds), Electronic publishing, artistic imaging, and digital typography. Berlin, Springer, 1998

Karow, Peter, Digital formats for typefaces. Hamburg, URW Verlag, 1987

King, Emily, "Digital type decade." Eye, vol 10, no 40, pp 40–47

Kinross, Robin, "The digital wave." Eye, vol 2, no 7, 1992, pp 26–39

Lofting, Peter, "Managing Complexity in Font Design." Didot: First European Summer School in Digital Typography, Lausanne, 1991

Lommen, Mathieu & Peter Verheul (eds), Haagse letters. Den Haag, Uitverij de Buitenkant, 1996

Maag, Bruno, "Don't 'U' turn — New problems demand better solutions." Baseline, no 21, 1996, pp 17–20

McQueen, Clyde D III & Raymond G Beausoleil, "Infinifont: a parametric font generation system." Electronic Publishing — Origination, Dissemination and Design, vol 6, no 3, 1993, pp 117–132

Miller, J Abbott, Dimensional typography: case studies on the shape of letters in virtual environments. Kiosk: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996

Porchez, Jean-François & Philippe Millot, Lettres Françaises: spècimen de caractéres français. Paris, Association Typographique Internationale/association pour la diffusion de la pensèe française, 1997

Seybold, John W The world of digital typesetting. Seybold Publications, Inc., 1984

Unicode Consortium, The Unicode standard: version 3.0. Reading: Mass., Addison-Wesley, 2000

Wallis, Lawrence W, Electronic typesetting: a quarter century of technological upheaval. Gateshead: Tyne & Wear, The Paradigm Press, 1984

Yefimov, Vladimir & Maxim Zhukov, Kyrillitsa '99: international type design competition. Moscow, 1999

Zapf, Hermann "The designer in the world of Metafont." In Hermann Zapf, Hermann Zapf & His Design Philosophy. Chicago, Society of Typographic Arts, 1987, pp 93–8

Zapf, Hermann, "The changes in letterforms due to technical developments'. Journal of Typographic Research, vol II, no 4, 1968, pp 351–368

The Prettiest Picture

A good pal of mine — a fellow blogger whose identity I dare not reveal — recently hired me to photograph him for a project he's working on (and probably not the project you might expect from looking at the photos), and he and I are both very pleased with the results. This wasn't the first time I’ve taken...um, let's say "daring"...pictures of someone I’ve met over the internet, nor was it the first time I’ve taken nude photos of a friend, but this was the first time I’ve tried to take daring photographs of a friend, so I was a little apprehensive about how it would go. Luckily neither of us found it awkward, but now I have the dilemma of an excellent series of photos that I would be proud to show as examples of my work, if only for the fact that I feel funny about showing off my friend's pee-pee in my portfolio (particularly in an online portfolio, since this site is already naughtier than it probably should be).

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to hope his project goes well enough that you can see the pictures everywhere but here, so the conundrum will be his and not mine.

Teeny Houses

Even though I know I’m a bit nomadic, from time to time I still entertain the fantasy of owning a home of my own someday. Of course, my vision of owning a home is a fusion of various thoughts I have about mobility, thriftiness, craftsmanship, ecological worries, and an aversion to suburbia. Pretty much, that leaves me salivating over fantasies of tiny, prefab, loft-like houses that can be dropped in unusual places. This page of teeny houses, for instance, makes me tremble with delight.

I consistently forget to jot down these various house kits that catch my fancy, so I finally went on a hunt this evening to find links to various projects that have caught my eye over the years. (Most of what I found came from Treehugger and Max at lotsofco.org.) My favorites:

• The Wee House is definitely a favorite — teeny, sleek, and flexible

• The miniHome is not just sexy, but it also seems to consider the cost and land-use issues for a li'l prefab house, as this Treehugger post notes

• The various schemes from BlueSky Mod are also magically delicious, but sadly they don't show as much of them on the web site as I would like

• These groovy Floating Homes from Germany

  rock me

• The Micro Compact Home is lovely and tiny, especially in this idea for a tree village made of of the little cubes attached to vertical supports

• The Zenkaya would be delightful for a little warm-weather getaway somewhere

• I love the Boase concept from Studio Force4, which I first read about in Metropolis a while back — a cluster of sort-of-treehouses built into groves that actually decontaminate polluted soil

• The Flatpak House is a great idea for beautiful little modular houses, but the website is a bit of a flash-intensive horror

• The Loftcube is sexy and futuristic, but a bit too posh all in all

• A few different models from the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, especially the XT house, seem really darling

Subway Flashback

Wow. this photo of some guys riding the subway in the early 80s sends me hurtling right back to what it was like when I start commuting up to high school back in 1984. In retrospect, I guess I can see why my mother was so nervous about setting her scrawny baby loose for a daily commute from Staten Island to the Upper East Side. The picture really captures how dim and grimy most of the trains were.

Of course, it was all incredibly exciting and liberating for me. "Anyplace but Staten Island" was (and still is) a key motivation for me. I really preferred cars that were covered with graffitti like that: it was so much more fascinating than the endless ads for laser hemorrhoid removal, Lotto, and cosmetic surgery for torn earlobes that typified subway ads of the day. (The splashy full-car ad campaigns from major companies didn't appear until some time when I was in college, as I recall.) A palimpsest of tags on the subway wall was an awesome, absorbing puzzle that easily kept me occupied for the trip between Bowling Green and 86th St., especially on those mornign when I’d be smashed up against the sides of the car by the crowds. (Photo from this amazing Flickr set by Ken Stein.)

Let It All Hang Out

Where does the time go? Another one of those anxious e-mails from Mom reminded me that my posting has slacked off once again, and the question of whether or not I’m still alive has once more come up. Yes, I live. Life is a seemingly endless cycle of work, dentist appointments, and errands, but I live nevertheless.

As much as I adore Teen Dentist and hate the idea that I'll be passed onto another DDS-in-training when he graduates in a couple of weeks, I am sick to fucking death of going to the dentist once or twice a week after work. The clinic at NYU only doles out appointments in two-hour blocks, so something complicated like root canal can't be done in one marathon sitting. That means that not only do I get drilled and filled over and over again, but then I also lose a couple of days afterward feeling crummy from all the lingering discomfort. Zero fun. (Plus, I’m pretty sure I won't be passed on to the other super-cute dental student so I won't even have that small bright spot to cheer me up.)

Work is work, of course. Work is also any and all of my assorted part-time jobs and freelance obligations, so I lose giant chunks of time just hauling ass from one end of the city to another when I’d rather sit in one place and concentrate for an effective amount of time on each of my projects.

Not everything sucks, though. Special Agent Josh continues to keep me from descending into full-on workaholic hermit mode, and that’s good for both my overall morale and the relative cleanliness of my apartment, which would surely become a full-on pit of filth if I didn't have someone over to keep me company and shame me into tidying up once or twice a week. (He doesn't nag, I just can't bear the thought of having him see how truly sloppy I can be when no one is around.)

The last couple of weekends I’ve also had the pleasure of spending time with my old pal Dave and his girlfriend, who have recently returned from an ill-conceived year in L.A. that made them realize how much they love living in Boston after all. I was able to offer them last-minute accomodations one week, and then they were able to repay the favor this past weekend, which means that I got to see more of Dave in the last two weeks than I have in about the last five or six years. Seeing as he's my bestest pal, that’s a really good thing.

I wish I could say the rest of my far-flung social network was in such good shape. It used to be a mild technique for avoiding stress and finding time to work, but my tendency to fall out of touch with people I care about has blossomed into a full-on shame spiral that I can't quite fix, and that makes me feel shittier and shittier all the time. A mild aversion to spending time on the phone has become an almost pathological avoidance of telecommunication. I stopped socializing much as a concession to the Rooster's aversion to crowds and bars, but it eventually became my own bad habit of never getting out that much and then never wanting to talk about how unhappy I was becoming. My irregular, hectic work schedule has sucked up most of my time, leaving me clinging to the restful solitude of the occasional hours I get to myself, and pretty much totally unable to make plans for any actual leisure time.

As a result of all this (and varying amounts of guilt, embarrassmant, exhaustion, self-consciousness, etc.), I am surrounded by the rotting corpses of many a dear friendship. People I love and long to see assume I hate them and have stopped keeping after me. My neglect has become so shameful that I can't really blame them, and I don't know how to repair all the damage without a whiney fistful of excuses and explanations that sound lame even to me. Feeling lonely has become a bit of a guil-inducing crutch. It's a sucky feeling to carry around, but at least it's safe, familiar territory by now. After all, why should anyone bother when I’m such a wet noodle so much of the time? The truth is, though, I’m better company when I hate myself less, and I hate myself less when I have good company. I just wish I’d done a better job of remembering that during the last few years.

Bleah. Sorry for all the crabbiness, but it's the mood of the day.