I always like a great deal when it comes to fonts – and this 75% off sounds pretty good to me. Offer code is TNB7563 and is sold at The Northern Block – sale runs until christmas.

The font itself seems at first sight very similar to Helvetica, so it can be used as an alternative to that, but it has an edge, so it will get more attention – stick out and have people look at it twice … and sometimes we just want that, don’t we.

#font #type #helvetica #alternative #sale

Reshared post from +Ian Hex

Like me, I know that +Graham Smith has a love for neo-/grotesque typefaces. Today, I was alerted to Jonathan Hill’s (thenorthernblock.co.uk/heltar.htm) redrawing of the elusive Haas Unica typeface; it’s called Heltar -> http://goo.gl/9Ilx6

“Having grown up in Sheffield and been completely immersed in the work of The Designers Republic I became very drawn to their treatment of Helvetica, especially the close tracking of the letter space. This visual investigation led me to the study of the font Hass Unica, a so called improvement to Helvetica. In-order not to replicate and become a clone of Unica I redrew all the characters from scratch improving optical appearance, developing subtle corrections and reshaping individual letterforms. The result is a remixed neo-grotesque font that has strong general optical balance with great rhythm under close tracking.”

The lowercase italic e is… interesting.

And, until Christmas, you can purchase the entirely family at 75% discount.

#hex_typography

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After more than a year I continue the successful series of alternative fonts of classics. A generally hated typeface is Comic Sans, mostly because of it’s misuse. There are even hate/love blogs about this font (http://bancomicsans.com/) and they try to raise money for a documentary.

The font was designed Vincent Connare in 1995 and most designers wouldn’t touch the font in a professional work, but with sometimes we need something similar.

Top Alternatives

Comic Jens

Not only is Comic Jens from Jens Kutilek a high quality opentype font, with ligatures, context sensitive letters and symbols, but it’s also free. (www.kutilek.de/download/comic-jens.zip)

Joker

Joker is a typeface designed by Jerry Inscoe  and it’s based on his handwriting. A great font with alternative letters and additional letterforms (www.handselecta.com)

Runners up

Jump (www.linotype.com)

FF Layout (www.fontshop.com)

FF Soupbone (www.fontshop.com)

MVB Calliope (www.mvbfonts.com)

Burbank (www.houseind.com)

Email Oracle, a nice service and extension for Google Mail (Gmail) to track your emails. It’s a great way to see if your recipient opens your email. Unfortunately the service is shutting down. So I’ve found an alternative. More after the break.The alternative site is called http://email-tracking-with-google-analytics.com and is not as comfortable as Email Oracle, but for the advanced user it’s easy to use. You need to have a Google Analytics Account and a site where you use this Account (normally your self hosted website).

No special setup is actually needed, you just have to insert the site url and the parameters for the tracking. After that you get a image url to insert in your email. This iamge is actually a transparent gif, so it is even better than the free Email Oracle Service.

The tracked email will show up in your Google Analytics report – goal reached.

This works with all email clients. For Gmail though you have to activate a Google Labs feature to insert images in the message body. Just click on the green “Google Labs” icon on top of your Gmail Window and activate the “Inserting Images” feature.

On the site you will also find some tutorials and a complete description on how the service works. So enjoy tracking.

Facebook has with its over 500 million Users a nice potential readership if you (or your client) plan to start a blog or website. To publish a Facebook page you just need a few clicks and the tools offered (for the one who likes to learn FBML – the Facebook Markup Language) are not too bad – especially the feature that people who “like” your page get automatically updates is compelling. The design is given by Facebook and if you (or your client)  just want to get the “message” to your readers you might don’t care as much. But wait, here are a few aspects to consider before you put your effort into a Facebook page:

• Facebook can disable pages at will – its their platform
• The content is not yours once posted on Facebook – they can use it as well and at will
• You cannot export the contents in a convenient manner (you are locked in)
• Your can never turn your page into a business
• Facebook shows advertising on your page
• You are tied to facebook – bad reputation can backlash on you
• Facebook is seen as a private space (lol) and not as a serious place

These are a few aspects – there are for sure many more. But there are good arguments for having a Facebook page as a promotional tool for your website. You can boost the number of visitors to your site through Facebook pages. Here are some resources I’ve found helpful and inspirational.

• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/07/designing-a-facebook-fan-page-showcases-tutorials-resources/
• http://designm.ag/design/designing-a-facebook-landing-page-12-of-the-best/
• http://icetemplates.com/blog/134/absolutely-free-cool-facebook-template/

Foto by Ray-Franco Bouly

Next up in the series of font alternatives for popular fonts is Thesis – or better known as TheSans, TheSerif, TheMix, TheSans Mono. I’ve found 7 interesting alternatives – from huge and expensive to very big and resonable priced.
Thesis is maybe one of the most used font systems in the world. Most non graphic designers don’t recognize it, but be assured it is used a lot. I’m speaking about a font system because the variety Thesis offers is almost uncompared. I like to use it especially in corporate design for corporations with many different departments as I can use different speciments for different resorts.

But if you are sick of using Thesis I have here quite a few alternatives for you.

Top Alternatives

• Compatil (www.linotype.com)
  
• Fedra from (www.typotheque.com)
  

Runners up

• Leitura (www.dstype.com)
  
• Absara (www.fontshop.de)
  
• Generis (www.linotype.com)
  
• Nexus (www.fontshop.de)
  
• United (find it at www.houseind.com)
  

The font DIN typeface family is inspired by the classic industrial German engineering designs, DIN 1451 Engschrift and DIN 1451 Mittelschrift. This font comes since 1995 from two different foundries. While Linotype has the original designs Fontshop made their interpretation with the aid of Albert-Jan Pool under the name FF DIN. FF DIN became quite popular because it had a few more widths and was optimized for graphic design.

Linotype on the other hand just launched their new DIN interpretation called DIN Next under the direction of Akira Kobayashi. In this new interpretation you find 25 fonts and 7 weights. An impressive re-work with many additional features. Find out more on the official website of Linotype.

While this are good news in the tradition of this series I’ve looked around the foundries to find some other alternatives and found some interesting ones. So enjoy.

DIN

from Linotype (www.linotype.com)

Top Alternatives

• Konsens (www.hubertjocham.de)
  
• Gotham (www.typography.com)
  

Runners up

• T-Star (www.gestalten.com)
  
• Flama (www.vllg.com)
  
• Apex Sans (www.vllg.com)
  
• FF Utility (www.fontshop.de)
  
• Brauer Neue (www.lineto.com)
  
• FF Netto (www.fontshop.de)
  
• Notes (www.primetype.com)
  

Back again with some more alternative fonts for your graphic design pleasure. This time I want to show you some very fresh fonts, none of the presented fonts are designed prior to 1999. This is partly because Interstate itself is quite new (1993) and it would be strange if I found an alternative that is older than the original. A bit of history – Interstate is based on the font used by the Federal Highway Administration and was one of the most popular typefaces in the 90s. Used often for corporate design and quite flexible enough for a broad range of “topics”. Enough bla bla, lets get started.

Interstate

Top Alternatives

• Proxima  Nova (www.fontshop.de)
  
• Stag Sans (www.vllg.com)
  

Runners up

• Voice (www.hubertjocham.de)
  
• Ministry (www.fontshop.de)
  
• Parisine (www.typofonderie.com)
  
• Skopex Gothic (www.primetype.com)
  
• Reykjavik (www.psyops.com)
  
• ITC Conduit (www.linotype.com)
  

Let’s get fashionable. Gill Sans is for sure one of the most used fonts for corporate design in the fashion industry. Whe a brand claims elegance and self confidence this font is a sure shot. But with the wide use (since Mac OSX it’s even a standard system font) one brand looks like another, so let’s get some alternatives.

Gill Sans

from Monotype (www.fonts.com)

Top Alternatives

• FS Ingrid (www.fontsmith.com)
  
• Priori Sans (www.emigre.com)
  

Runners up

• Bree (www.type-together.com)
  
• DTL Prokyon (www.dutchtypelibrary.com)
  
• FF Milo (www.fontshop.de)
  
• DTL Argo (www.dutchtypelibrary.com)
  
• Whitney (www.typography.com)
  
• Bliss (www.typography.net)
  
• Auto (www.underware.nl)
  

Next in our series of alternatives to classic fonts comes Garamond. Garamond is available from nearly every bigger font vendor as you font geeks know. There is no “the Garamond” and even at the time Claude Garamond lived, the font name Garamond indicated a style of type. But if you like to choose a Garamond I will recommend you the edition of Adobe, designed by Robert Slimbach. And now lets see the candidates.

Adobe Garamond

Top Alternatives

• Sabon Next (www.linotype.com)
  
• Athelas (www.type-together.com)
  

• Eason (www.fountain.nu)
  
• Maiola (www.type-together.com)
  
• Marat (www.ludwiguebele.de)
  
• FF Parango (www.fontshop.de)
  
• FF Reminga (www.fontshop.de)
  
• MVB Verdigris (www.mvbfonts.com)
  
• Lexicon (www.teff.nl)
  
• FF Scala (www.fontshop.de)
  

Fonts are the key to bringing the message to your reader. I will not bore you with explaining you the importance of typography, but I can tell you that I love well designed type and even though I’m not obsessed (ok, a little bit) with fonts and typrography, I hate working with poor “developed” fonts…you read right, fonts are not only designed but must also be developed just like software.

Fonts are SOFTWARE

I’m using the term development on purpose because not many graphic designers know, that the fonts they are using are not “stamps” or “brushes” but are programs – actually written software.

In the credits shown in the font preview you will find not only the foundry and a the year of the release, but also a version number. Don’t think that your font once it is designed is not updated any longer. There is much more behind the characters you see on your screen and paper. I’m talking about kerning, kerning pais, codepages (if not opentype) and much more. Especially opentype has a lot functionality build into the fonts – variants to name just one.

Free fonts = do nothing you don’t need

The available tools for designing fonts spread more and more through the internet in the last years and bringing the self made fonts to a large audience without a foundry is as well possible with little effort. Many of the type designers focus on the graphical aspect, not on the technical – they still produce TrueType and Postscript fonts. They limit themself to the restrictions of this fonts types, because they are easier to build.

The other problem I have mainly with free fonts is the lack of glyphs. I work internationally, that’s nothing unusual this days, and therefore my publications are made in various languages. Sometimes languages I cannot even read. Nearly every language has special characters and you are already guessing it – most free fonts come with the minimum set of extra-English glyphs. Some come with extra glyphs, but you can be sure that you find the glyphs useful for the designer and the language he speaks.

You cannot blame them, designing a font with whole character sets is a tedious and hard job – you want for sure sell a font you spend so much time on it. You put as much work into the font as you like and you need, then you go on to the next project. The same is true for the technical aspect. As long as it works for the designer, it might as well work for the rest of the world.

Why I prefer commercial fonts

So while I understand the viewpoint of the free fonts I do not rely on them in my professional project. I cannot tell you how often I run into strange postscript errors because of some strange fonts. I lost time and money, and my client as well. I had also problems with commercial fonts, but professional foundries have a “hotline” – I called them, send the files and they “fixed” the font. I installed the new version and the problem was solved.

Same thing for the glyphs. A client of mine uses the Helvetica as corporate font. I know some hate Helvetica, but in this case there where no alternative. My clients operates in 70 countries, mainly Europe and Russia, and produces brochures in 17 languages. You  don’t want to have 17 different fonts – you want one that covers all. So they took a special variant of Helvetica from Linotype offering the whole range of glyphs they needed. This font could be used from Portugal to Russia, in Microsoft Office and Indesign. The cost for licensing was little compared to the time “not spend” on changing font, rearranging layouts, codepage issues and much more.

And since it was a commercial font, we could contact the foundry and ask them to make a special “condensed” version for my client. They made it tailored to the needs in little time. This tailor made fonts are interesting and I will cover it in the future in a more detailed fashion.

Conclusion

There are plenty of well designed free fonts out there, some of them are even technically ok. You can use them for your webdesign projects if you don’t need special glyphs. If they show up on your screen they are ok. If you need to do print jobs or want to use a special font for a corporate design project stay away from free fonts. The only exception is, when the free fonts come from commercial foundries and are give-away’s.

Foto by *_Abhi_*