Links

Various articles and talks

• The Myth of Neutrality

  Why nothing in design can be “neutral”.

• Pluralism and Power Dynamics in Indian Design: November

  November is a small, India-based type foundry and design agency. This interview explores the impact of European modernist design teachings on Indian education, and what it means to explore diversity in design.

• 10,000 original copies

  A thoughtful piece on the subject of originality in typeface design.

• The Problems of Adjacency

  PDF slides available. Required watching for anyone who wants to consider building their own font format. You may not realize that today’s font technology is inherently built to technologically favor European writing systems. This talk explores the problems that can be encountered when using today’s Eurocentric font formats for writing systems that work differently.

• The Politics of Arabic Type Design

  Her PhD on the legbility of the Arabic script is astonishingly well-written and incredibly insightful, especially for those who know nothing about Arabic.

• Reading Nasta‘līq: from print mastery to web failures

  A case study of what is considered one of the “hardest” writing systems to adapt to today’s common font formats, its deep ties to its users’ culture, and how the script and its culture have responded to the evolution of typesetting technology.

• The Weight of the Ink

  Interesting facts on the impact of ink (printed or written) on the world.

Typeface design resources

• Typefacts

  Older resource with some outdated links but still contains a lot of relevant information (type design principles evolve exceptionally slowly). I’d post this link whenever someone was curious about type design.

• Type Design Resources

  Newer and far more comprehensive list of resources on type design.

• Typeface Mechanics: 001 — Frere-Jones Type

  Good article on overshoots and undershoots, a critical component of making quality fonts.

• Typeface Mechanics: 002 — Frere-Jones Type

  The second part to the previous article, which focuses on proper weight distribution across letters.

• FontForge

  I used this briefly in 2020 before switching to Glyphs in mid-2021. In my experience, I would recommend FontForge for those who want to try out typeface design and see if this is something they want to continue with. FontForge has many similarities to the industry-standard font editors but also lacks a number of features and conveniences that prevents it from adoption by professional type designers.

• Glyphs 3

  I personally use this for all of my fonts. Mac-only, $300, perpetual. They also have Glyphs Mini for $50, which I haven’t tried but would be a better value for those dabbling in type design that have no plans to make large, multi-style typeface families.

• Remix Tools

  Useful Glyphs plugin for quickly adjusting and scaling letterforms in a way that requires much fewer corrections to the outlines.

• Kern On

  A very good semi-automated kerning plugin for Glyphs which saves a huge amount of time. From the same creator as Remix Tools.

Free fonts that I like

A note about using Google Fonts: I would recommend against using the Google Fonts services if at all possible. It’d be nice to go to a website and not tell Google that I visited a particular site, and they can easily do that if your site’s fonts are served through Google Fonts. Instead, download the woff2 files and put code in your CSS to include them.

• Literata

  My favorite open-source serif typeface for sure. I wish it didn’t have a ‘Th’ ligature though, but that’s a small price to pay.

• Commissioner

  My favorite open-source sans-serif typeface for sure. This and Literata are my go-to pair of webfonts for projects where the Melvian fonts aren’t a good fit.

• Newsreader

  A nice old-style serif family that comes in multiple sizes.

• STIX Two

  Times New Roman but it actually feels nice to read.

• Piazzolla

  A slightly more expressive serif family, but not too expressive.

• Source Serif 4

  Really can’t go wrong with Source Serif.

• IBM Plex

  Extremely comprehensive and well put together.

Free fonts that I’m not personally a fan of

• Inter – Nicely made (though the italics could use a little help), but I’m a bit tired of neogrotesques.
• PT Sans and Serif – Really nice family, except for the fact that Paratype, the foundry behind these fonts, supports the war on Ukraine. So I would avoid it.
• Manrope – Barely alright at text sizes in regular weights, I’m not a fan of its concept or execution.
• Atkinson Hyperlegible, or most “accessible” typefaces for that matter. This is the subject of a very extensive article that’s coming soon. Intel One Mono is good though.
• Pretty much most of the free fonts I haven’t already mentioned. – I don’t even bother looking at places like Dafont, Fontspace, etc. because I don’t like most free fonts. The entries on the list are just ones that stick out to me in particular because I see them frequently.

Note that I assess these typefaces from the perspective of someone who is primarily interested in typefaces that can be used in a lot of places and that are built well enough for most readers to be used at text sizes. It doesn’t mean that I find other typefaces to be “crap”, these lists are just a reflection of my personal tastes.

Software that I use

Design

• Glyphs 3

  Typeface design

• Affinity Designer v2

  Formerly used Inkscape. Vector graphics beyond basic lettering pieces (otherwise I use Glyphs).

Animation & Video

• Blender

  3D animation, editing

• Krita

  2D animation and illustration

• OpenToonz

  2D animation and illustration cleanup

• OBS

  Recording and streaming

• DaVinci Resolve

  Editing

• FFmpeg

  Primary tool for encoding videos

• Compressor

  Secondary tool for situations where FFmpeg gets colors wrong sometimes (particularly when going from image sequences to videos)

Miscellaneous

• Sublime Text

  Primary text editor (sometimes I use nano when accessing something over ssh)

• (pre-AI) KeePassXC

  Password manager, using an older version since reportedly they jumped on the AI bandwagon.

• LibreWolf

  Primary web browser, although sometimes I will use Safari

• mpv

  Video player

Personal sites

If you’d like to add my website, download the image below, put it on your own site, and link it back to my site.

Caution: Some sites contain mature content, but I have only chosen sites either don’t have it, or have hidden it by default. I hold no responsibility for other people’s stuff.