Busy, busy, busy.

December 8, 2014 at 8:41 pm

You might have noticed the post­ing fre­quen­cy here at SpareType has dropped off a bit the last few weeks. Client work has picked up and hope­ful­ly I’ll be able to share some of that soon as items get com­plet­ed. In the mean­time, here’s a huge list of awe­some things from around the Internet that have been col­lect­ing dust in my brows­er tabs. Enjoy!

The State of Web Type — Do you need to know which OpenType fea­tures are sup­port­ed in which browsers? Then here is the Can I Use for typo­graph­ic features.

Do you know how many rules, selec­tors, and dec­la­ra­tions are in your CSS? Maybe you’re curi­ous how many col­ors or font fam­i­lies are hid­den in your style sheets? Plug in your URL or raw code to CSSStats and get the breakdown.

The folks at Tower are cel­e­brat­ing OS X Yosemite with An Illustrated History of Mac OS X. The illus­tra­tions are mar­velous. I think the Lion in the space­ship is my favorite, though Snow Leopard is close too.

Turn sta­t­ic mock­ups into trans­par­ent, float­ing guides with GluePrint.

Just want to code and not worry about web servers, data­bas­es, engines, or deploy­ment? Cactus is a free, sta­t­ic site gen­er­a­tor that com­piles Markdown, SASS, and Coffeescript out of the box. It also auto­mat­i­cal­ly refresh­es your brows­er when you save changes and can deploy to Amazon S3 to make your web­site public.

Flakes is a clean, open source design frame­work for build­ing inter­nal busi­ness appli­ca­tions — think sales lead man­age­ment and inven­to­ry track­ing screens. Just look at this form for enter­ing info.

Flakes Framework Screenshot of Form Entry Screen, Admin UI, CSS framework

How to Make a Performance Budget? What should you be mea­sur­ing, how should you mea­sure it, and what should your goal be in deliv­er­ing the best web­site performance.

DeviantArt has a new brand. I love the write­up about the process, but I’m not entire­ly sold on the logo yet.

Awesome home­page and all-around awe­some web­site by the folks at Underbelly. Really nice touch­es with the URL names.

Underbelly.is - Screenshot of creative agency homepage, blue washed desktop, full screen background

‘Tis the sea­son for cute, wintery-themed hol­i­day icons. Here’s an awe­some free set on Dribbble.

Speaking of the hol­i­days, here’s a Christmas present I would have liked as a child. Typeblocks — maple wood alpha­bet blocks.

Typeblocks - maple wood alphabet blocks, font blocks, laser cut

Finally, let’s wrap the post up with a lit­tle self-promotion. Society6 — which I have some art­work avail­able on — has some great hol­i­day dis­counts going on this week. Be sure to check out my store and pick out any last minute gifts you still need to get.

Headline Heads Up — No. 22

August 19, 2014 at 8:15 am

One Tues­day every month, I’m going to round up a cou­ple (maybe a few) awe­some dis­play type­faces to show­case and give a lit­tle break­down on each one. If you have a sug­ges­tion you want me to take a look at, drop me a line. Let’s jump straight into some head­line goodness.

HWT Artz

Foundry : Hamilton Wood Type Foundry
Designer(s) : Erik Spiekermann
Cost: $24.95

HWT Artz by Erik Spiekermann Alphabet Example, wood block type, digital version, all uppercase characters

Everything old is new again. HWT Artz is a dig­i­tal ver­sion of wood type designed by Erik Spiekermann and cut by the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. It’s built for large, blocky head­line work and would be per­fect for posters and large dis­play sig­nage. Its round­ed cor­ners are a nod to the pro­duc­tion process of wood type; sharp cor­ners would require more hand-finished pro­duc­tion time. You can also feel good about your pur­chase because pro­ceeds of sales ben­e­fit the museum’s ongo­ing operations.

 

Peaches and Cream

Foundry : Fenotype
Designer(s) : Emil Karl Bertell
Cost: $35 per style

Peaches and Cream Typeface by Fenotype Lowercase, brush script, connected lowercase letters

I’m always a suck­er for a good brush script, espe­cial­ly one with plen­ty of OpenType alter­nates. Peaches and Cream has styl­is­tic, swash, and titling alter­nates for every glyph. It also has quite of few unique lig­a­tures. All that com­bines to make a dynam­ic type­face per­fect for build­ing head­lines, logos, and other cus­tom feel­ing pieces with­out pulling out the pen and ink.

 

Grandstander

Foundry : Tyler Finck
Designer(s) : Tyler Finck
Cost: $19

Grandstander Typeface by Tyler Finck Alphabet Example, handmade block letter font, numerals

Last on the list this month is Grandstander by Tyler Finck. This hand­made block type con­sists of four fonts. There is a clean ver­sion, a dis­tressed print ver­sion, the indi­vid­ual shad­ow ver­sion, and final­ly the full ver­sion lay­ered for your using plea­sure. It’s fun, boun­cy and play­ful which makes it per­fect for laid back com­mu­ni­ca­tions and chil­dren’s appli­ca­tions. Oh, and you can get the clean ver­sion for free which is awesome.grandstander_versions