typography

Is conserving printer ink and increasing environmental awareness as easy as switching fonts? So say the Dutch creators of Ecofont, a "green" typeface. The font—a modified version of Vera Sans—consists of characters that are full of tiny holes and so requires an estimated 20% less ink to print, according to research that compared the average black surface occupied by Ecofont characters to that of the source font. Ecofont is available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux. For those who want to create Eco-versions of any typeface, the creators have introduced Ecofont Professional, software that they claim "has an inspiring effect on both employees and customers." It's a hole new way to look at font choice.

Twenty-six miles. Twenty-six letters. Coincidence? Type Directors Club president Charlie Nix thinks not, and so when he decided to run this year's New York City Marathon (his fifth) to raise money for design scholarships, it was just a matter of going from A to Z. Nix, a partner in the publishing firm Scott & Nix who has taught design and typography for over 15 years, is seeking marathon sponsorships by the letter. Donors at various levels can "buy" uppercase and/or lowercase letters of their choice.

Writer, curator, and graphic designer Ellen Lupton is on board, throwing her support behind Nix and the uppercase and lowercase "E," Pentagram's Luke Hayman called dibs on the interrobang, and typographer Gary Munch has invested in both cases of the letters "G" and "M." Munch and James Montalbano of Terminal Design are among Nix's "Hot Metal"-level supporters; having pledged $104 or more, they get special recognition with the coveted Ampersand Award. Meanwhile, we're about to donate on behalf of UnBeige, as the letter "U" is proving unpopular. So far, Nix has raised a total of $2,335.97, all of which will go toward TDC scholarships. You have until race day (November 1) to be the generous type. Click here to donate.

Georgia and Verdana are getting a face lift. Commissioned by Microsoft in the mid-1990s as ideal for on-screen display, the typeface families were designed by Matthew Carter and hinted for screen legibility by Tom Rickner of Ascender Corporation. Now Carter, Ascender, and Font Bureau are working with Microsoft on a project to expand and enhance Georgia (once described by Microsoft's Simon Earnshaw as "effectively the more generous cousin of Tahoma") and Verdana (conceived as "a serif alternative to Times") for new applications, both on the screen and on the page. Look for new weights and widths as well as extended character sets. "The new additions to the font families are a natural and timely progression," noted Carter in a statement released by Ascender. "They offer a wider range of typographic versatility...while remaining consistent with the originals." The first of the new fonts will be released early next year.

"Plenty of white space and generous line spacing, and don't make the type size too miserly," wrote Giambattista Bodoni in the early 1800s. "Then you will have a product fit for a king." The royalty-ready work of Bodoni ("the king of typographers and the typographer of kings") and hundreds more lettering legends is collected in Type. A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles by Jan Tholenaar, Alston W. Purvis, and Cees De Jong. The first in a two-volume set from Taschen, the book is a lush index of type specimens dating from 1628 to 1900, accented with the borders, ornaments, and graphical flourishes of the day. The evolution of the printed letter is traced through the work of typographers such as William Caslon, John Baskerville, and Claude Garamond, who claimed he could cut printed stamps in "Cicero size" (12 point) at the age of 15. Brush up on your Victorian fonts in preparation for volume two, which will be published early next year.

We'll admit to a protracted love affair with Goudy Stout (Jason Castle's recreation of the typeface that Frederic W. Goudy admitted to having created in "a moment of typographic weakness") that endowed all of our high school papers with a festive circus air. Now typographer Goudy and his graphic designer wife, Bertha, are a few giant steps closer to immortality thanks to Goudy Fonts, a new web site that pays "tribute to two former bookkeepers who impacted American design and typography for all time."

Created by a team of Goudy fans at Ascender Corporation," the site is much more than a virtual storefront of Goudy fonts and their derivatives. There's a blog for Goudynews (including a downloadable version of Steve Matteson's recent TypeCon talk on the couple's work) and a slideshow of Goudy artifacts, among them a rather creepy plaster cast of Fred's right hand. In the collection of historical press clippings, we found a 1933 Time magazine report from a gala celebration in New York City to honor Goudy as the country's greatest type designer.

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How do you pass the time when laid up with an injury? If you're British researcher Rachel Young, you scour Google Maps for letterforms in the satellite imagery. Inspired by the Google Maps typography of Australian graphic designer Rhett Dashwood, Young searched for days to assemble map alphabets of Britain and then, New York. She created the latter set, entitled "Alphabet State," at the suggestion of her employer. "It was more challenging since I've never been there," Young told The New York Post. So next time you're home sick, skip the daytime television in favor of the healing powers of found typography.

Following in the sponsored tire tracks of artist Robin Rhode, who recently used a BMW Z4 as a 300-horsepower paintbrush, Brussels-based graphic designers Pierre Smeets and Damien Aresta have created a typeface using an iQ (pictured at right), Toyota's answer to the Smart Car. Smeets and Aresta teamed up with interactive artist Zach Lieberman and seasoned racecar driver Stef Vancampenhoudt to trace and digitally map letters and characters on the floor of an airplane hangar (watch the design process in the below video). The result is iQ Agility, a Eurojaunty typeface that reveals the iQ's incredibly tiny turning radius.

Next up for Smeets and Aresta? The pair are at work on a typeface inspired by the title sequence of Antonioni's Eclipse and another one for a club. In the meantime, they have a ongoing project to spot first names—from Adam to Zorba—in commercial signage. Both Stephanie and Steve remain elusive, but check if they've found your name here.

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You can spot Helvetica a mile away and have an entire theory as to why Woody Allen can't bear to make a film without Windsor Light Condensed, but where do you turn when flummoxed by a mystery typeface? Try Identifont, the Web's largest independent directory of typefaces. Among the site's multiple ways to sift through information from 558 font publishers and 149 vendors is by answering a series of illustrated multiple-choice questions about the appearance of a particular font, even if your sample is restricted to a handful of letters in a logo or heading. What type of tail is the uppercase "Q" sporting? Is the question mark dotted with a circle, square, or diamond? Click your choices and before you can say "ascender serif oblique," Identifont has winnowed down the set of nearly 7,000 possible fonts to your mystery font.

Lucida Sky with Diamonds. Bauhaus (in the Middle of Our Street). Rock the Caslon. I Wanna Bold Your Sans. Nope, this isn't the set list from designer/rock star Chip Kidd's latest Artbreak gig, they're fontsongs, a Twitter thread (#fontsongs) that challenges pun-loving design types to insert typeface names into popular song titles. Call it Textual Healing. The typographical phenomenon is going strong with recent gems such as Goudy My Dreams, Get into my Car and Garamond (My Wayward Son), but don't delay in tweeting a fontsong of your own today, before the trend changes cultural course. One Twitter user is advocating a switch to fontfilms. First on the list? Back to the Futura.

Finally, we finish off this writer's day in Chicago and, fortunately, no longer talking about museums. Though we aren't really, truly ending in Chicago, but more of Chicago-by-way-of-the-UK, with some interesting information about famed designer Neville Brody and Research Studio's typography work on the upcoming Chicago-based-gangster film Public Enemies. Brody and his crew came up with all of the type treatments used throughout the film and its marketing, creating a font named "New Deal" which the firm explains was commissioned straight from the film's director, Michael Mann:

'It was a fairly loose brief to evoke the era of the 1930s, with streamlined shapes of cars and trains, and the architecture of the period,' says the spokesman.