Overused typefaces

[anonymous]

Of all things: a good 50% of this thread is spent fuming over the use and abuse of Hellvectica/Arial when the thread itself is in precisely that typeface. If you hate Helvectica, you could complain about it to the mods. ;)

Personally, I've seen Medusa (and other names for her) WAY too much in "designer" settings: everything from tatoo-parlor signs (in a military town, we have our share) to coffee-shop signs, to the covers of Christian Rock albums (every heard of "Third Day"?) Blackadder/Blackadder ITC is also flogged to death: witness its use on the cover of the "Harry Potter" Spanish edition paperbacks. And anything in Algerian is nails on a chalkboard.

[anonymous]

Of all things: a good 50% of this thread is spent fuming over the use and abuse of Hellvectica/Arial when the thread itself is in precisely that typeface. If you hate Helvectica, you could complain about it to the mods. ;)

Personally, I've seen Medusa (and other names for her) WAY too much in "designer" settings: everything from tatoo-parlor signs (in a military town, we have our share) to coffee-shop signs, to the covers of Christian Rock albums (every heard of "Third Day"?) Blackadder/Blackadder ITC is also flogged to death: witness its use on the cover of the "Harry Potter" Spanish edition paperbacks. And anything in Algerian is nails on a chalkboard.

[anonymous]

(sorry 'bout the multi-post, y'all! Sluggish modem means AwOL bogs down every time I try to submit: can't always tell if it posts or not.)

[dan]

Josh, about half the time you receive an error message after you post. Just go back, rather than repost, go to topics and you will see your name posted, believe me have faith.

[josegarcia82]

anybody knows how the times new roman bold typography was created
Proportions
dimensions
etc
please help me i need to know from the letter A , a and 7 i will apreciate if somebody know this

[dan_reynolds]

Walter Tracey goes into this in depth in Letters of Credit. Basically, if I remember correctly, the proportions of Times New Roman were based off of an old (original ?) cut of Plantin.

The bold, which was developed later by Monotype's drawing office (without Morison?) was designed so that each letter has the same width as the Regular. This is why the bold looks so terrible

[hrant]

Another thing about the Bold is that it has vertical stress while the Regular's is oblique (see the "o"). From what I understand this was a practical thing: the Bold was mainly intended for use for headings in The Times newspaper, and some people* think vertical stress is better for news.

* Earlier this year JFP pointed out that many people report getting uncomfortable viewing fonts with oblique stress. I think this makes sense, although it's probably confined to deliberative reading; I think oblique stress probably improves immersive reading. Same thing with serif versus sans, btw.

hhp