67 posts tagged “typography”

Following on from an earlier post about opening titles, here’s a quick examination of how things change when shows are remade.
   First up, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), with the original titles by Chambers & Partners and music by Edwin Astley:

This is as disturbing as when I began to see American publications capitalize after colons in 2001 (which is generally incorrect, according to US publishing professionals I asked, though there are exceptions; it is certainly incorrect in English).
   Carbon dioxide is written out in full or with CO, followed by a subscript 2. Technically, it is incorrect to write CO2. Normally in modern typesetting, if we do not have a subscript font, we would use the superior two (²) and move it down a few points. However, surfing today, I noticed a very disturbing C02 (C-zero-two) at both Reuter and the Los Angeles Times.
   I have no idea how this came about. There is no zero in carbon dioxide. This is as bad as those weather pages that insist that the temperature is measured in coulombs (C) and not degrees Celsius (°C).

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I have written to the creator of the WP-Cufón plug-in for Wordpress about this bug, which caused some missing characters at the Lucire website today:

It turns out that the ligatures (such as the fi character) are missing from the Javascript version of my JY Fiduci typeface family which we converted. Upon discovering this, I disabled the Cufón plug-in so that the text could display normally, albeit in whatever typeface the reader has on the receiving end.
   At least when we have bugs, I act on them (hello, Facebook?).
   But the above video is a great one. Click here to have a view of it—and watch it right to the end, if you don’t know how it finishes. I also put it here on Vox.

How embarrassing for sits vac site Seek:

No one taught the copywriter how to pluralize.
   And this may be Firefox’s fault, but when I tried to find out more about Seek, I got a page with this gibberish: It doesn’t give me that much faith in the service.

Although my most recent flight was Air New Zealand, when flying the Virgin affiliate out this way, Pacific Blue, you get to see some cool things. You are not sheltered with those poncy air bridges that the wimps use. It’s down the stairs and out on the tarmac—where I spotted this sign:

   If you run out of aprons at the airport, you need to activate the alarm. Very important. They take cooking really seriously there, even if airline food sucks.
   Or does it? Air New Zealand has heralded the return of the vegetarian chips! These were last served domestically on Qantas flights in 2003 and when I told that to the crew today, I was given three bags! Go Air New Zealand! (Yes, I was bribed with three bags of chips.)
   The distracting thing was that the safety announcements are now done in the nude on this airline. Before you get excited, it’s a video, the crew members are wearing body paint, and there is nothing revealing. The issue is you are getting the same sort of laugh you would with those gags in, say, the Austin Powers movies, where you wonder how they are going to cover various body parts up. It ties in to a campaign they are running: And in fact, you can see this for yourself (the blonde stewardess served us today, clothed): I warned her that if they ever heard the acronym NIFOC from the cockpit, then they might not want to go in. I said it stood for Naked In Front of the Cockpit, which isn’t exactly true—I learned the expression from a nudist I knew many years ago (the C stands for computer).
   But the point is I paid no attention to what they said, which defeats the purpose of the safety video.
   Finally, here’s a curiosity which I think should go on to Font Police: No, it’s not the use of “dumb quotes” that has me concerned, but why is it in quotes anyway? It’s like Christchurch Airport doesn’t mean it, and that they are merely quoting something someone else has said. Disappointingly, it is in Frutiger, which means instant anonymity as far as airports are concerned. Of airport signage, this is actually stranger than the apron emergency.

Here are some more neat finds on YouTube. I have only a vague recollection of this show, but I might be confusing with others that had fake computer messages going across the screen (The Invisible Man, The Gemini Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, etc.). Apparently, it was originally entitled Probe, but was retitled Search (possibly due to a conflict with another TV series). It didn’t last, due to a producer change and the idea of a revolving star each week (mixing between Hugh O’Brian, Doug McClure and Tony Franciosa). But the theme music and titles are great (note the use of the MICR typeface) and very early 1970s. They also hint at the optimism people had toward technology as a tool to aid mankind, in this case, an agency specializing in searches.

I have to give props to the developers of the Mimbo skin for Wordpress—it’s a very good one that takes into account the needs of bloggers. Below is one of the sites we’ve been building—it’s not ready for prime-time yet, as it doesn’t have enough entries or contributors at this point. Mimbo needed little customization and we were able to make it look more distinctive than the out-of-the-box version.
   Prior to that, we were trying a German skin called Overstand, which was quite good in appearance, but not as easy to use. That might have been down to the language barrier. Mimbo seems to use the Wordpress features better and from what I could tell of the coding, is more logically structured.