I read this great arti­cle the other day over on Smashing Magazine and it’s pushed me to work hard­er on some projects I’ve had in the pipes. Here’s a lit­tle update on what I’m making.

I’ve been pick­ing at FontLab — learn­ing the basics and start­ing on some advanced OpenType pro­gram­ming. I’m begin­ning with my very own hand­writ­ing, as I’m pret­ty famil­iar with it.

The idea is to end up with six to eight glyphs for each let­ter, three or four vari­a­tion glyphs for numer­als, and maybe two or three vari­a­tion glyphs for punc­tu­a­tion marks. Along with some cus­tom lig­a­tures and nifty OpenType pro­gram­ming, the con­cept will be a very nat­ur­al hand­writ­ten font with a lot of fluc­tu­a­tions and ran­dom­ness to best mimic real hand­writ­ing. As you can see from the screen­shot above, I’ve got a lot of work to do and holes to fill in.

The Other Thing I’m Making

My other awe­some project that I’ve put into action is some fun but­tons that I think are pret­ty cool and witty. I’ve put togeth­er a quick online shop­ping cart if you think they’re neat enough that you want to give me some of your hard earned money and get a set. *hint hint wink wink* There’s four reg­u­lar pin-back but­tons and four mag­nets to a set.

Right now, I’ve got the typog­ra­phy relat­ed set and a set with some skull designs. I think I’m going to work out a plan where I release new sets on a reg­u­lar basis and build a big­ger cat­a­log. And of course, some more styling tweaks to the shop­ping cart for more cohe­sive branding.

But as the arti­cle says…

“I’m a true believ­er in per­fect is the enemy of good. I could per­fect the design until every pixel is exact­ly how I want it, until every fea­ture and fil­ter is live on the site, but for what? My own per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion? That’s just silly. Launch now, pro­vide value now, and sweat the details later.”

- Michael Aleo

I would like to add to that — “Everything is a work in progress, just like life.”