Filed under: Font News
Above is a typographic display sample of a new font in progress, made entirely out of flowers. It’s a fanciful, novelty font, but I’m having a lot of fun working on it. In the above pic I’m experimenting with strokes and transparency and shadows to see how the font images behave in practical application. The OpenType version of the font is still in the works, but you can borrow the photographic images for yourself for free when you see the construction of a photographic flowerfont underway in this Flowerfont Flickr set.
First it was just flowers, then we photographed it, now we’re peeling off the backgrounds to make the images more useful for designers. Then the alphabet art will be transformed into a type-able OpenType font. Furthermore, the font, as well as the photos, will come with a friendly Creative Commons license, which is something I’ve never used before but I’m excited to try out. These floral letters were created at a workshop called “Let’s Make an Open Source Font!” during FontConf a couple weeks ago.
Below is more creative play-work that came about as the font has been developing.
Here, take these flower pictures and make something great!
Here’s something you don’t see every day: four great Midwestern type designers in one place. The pic above shows Bill Moran, Chank Diesel, Mark Simonson and Stu Sandler coming together at FontConf which took place in St. Paul, MN this weekend. In addition to this quartet, about 100 other people also showed up Saturday morning at the CoCo workspace to learn and discuss new frontiers in typography at the event, which was put together by Kernest and sponsored by AIGA-MN and A.Fruit Design.
The morning started with a light-hearted, all-inclusive tone, with the creation of a fun, farmers-market-inspired alphabet made of flowers in a workshop led by Chank Diesel (that’s me.) The flowerfont workshop yielded a beautiful collection of flower glyphs which will later be assembled into a freefont to be distributed under a generous Creative Commons license. The fontmaking workshop, titled “Let’s Make an Open Source Font!” featured talk amongst participants about what “open source” fonts are and how more open licensing allows more freedom and protection for designers. Font licensing is a complicated subject that merits its own separate discussion, but it was good to at least know that a few more people have a better understanding of font licenses are and how they affect type designers and graphic designers alike. It was good to get a font license discussion started while we worked on the new font.
There were two tracks running simultaneously at FontConf. While half the attendees were busy making their organic flower alphabet, Jon Hadden spoke in the other room about “Font Replacement Techniques”. As I was busy working on the flower font, I didn’t get to see his presentation, but I did meet him briefly and he was hot. Bigger than me, athletic, half-bearded, wow, what a good-lookin’ man! After Hadden, Kyle Meyer spoke of ways for web designers to improve their web typography with the new rules for using type with the new standards of CSS and HTML5.
After lunch, things got a little more complicated when Richard Fink of readable web talked a bit more how type implementation is changing for designers, and how old business models of selling fonts may not work much longer. Bill Moran of Blinc Publishing gave a brief introduction and broad discussion of typographic history, going all the way from Gutenberg’s first movable type, to Samuel Clemens investing in early typesetting machines, right on up to modern implementation of fonts on the web.
The day concluded with attendees’ choice of something techy or more designee. On the aesthetic tip, Doug Powell led a group discussion on web typography with group-web-browsing so people could actually see fonts on live websites and talk about what works well. In the other room, Bram Pitoyo came all the way from Portland to talk about web font optimization and how fonts can be broken into subsets using CSS to create smaller, more efficient character sets to make web pages load faster.
The best feature of all of FontConf was the promotion of open discussion of contemporary type trends by a small but focussed group of concerned individuals, graphic designers and type designers alike, talking about all the exciting changes that are currently happening in the world of type. Licensing, implementation and consequently the fundamental design and release techniques of fonts are all changing at a rapid pace, and it was good to have a venue where people could meeet face to face and discuss the questions and opportunities that are arising before them.
Petals of progress: remains at the workspace of the flower fontmaking workshop.
How about a little springtime benefit art auction to make the world a better place? Today’s good cause is charity:water and the painting I’m donating is called “A Glass of Water.” I’m selling this painting to raise money for Erica Mayer’s charity:water campaign. You could help bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects. And all you have to do is buy this neat little painting. It measures about 16″ x 22″ and is made with acrylic paint on paper, a one-of-a-kind original.
This painting is being made available directly from the artist and is available today! There’s no real structure to the auction, it’s not on eBay or anything. But if you think you might like a deep and profoundly simple piece of Chank Art, send me a tweet or an e-mail and let me know if you’d like to make a bid. I reckon I’ll let the bidding go til $250 or June 1st, whichever comes first.
The bidding is currently at $99.
How about $120? Would you pay $120 for a Chank Original painting? Let me know:) Auction ends today.
Let’s help make the world a better place with more clean and safe water!
Hey, did ya hear we’re giving away a free iPad at Chank.com this week? Yeah, we are! The drawing is this THURSDAY, MAY 20 at 8pm. We’ll be drawing the winner’s name live at the Clockwork springtime jam in Minneapolis. So please put your name in the drawing if you’d like to win it. Only about 500 people have entered so far, so everybody’s odds are looking pretty good.
The iPad is an amazing new device that connects to a wi-fi network and lets you browse the internet, read eBooks, watch videos, listen to music and play games. And if that’s not enough entertainment and information for you, there’s thousands of other apps to choose from at the Apple app store. It’s a truely revolutionary, magical device, and I’m glad we’ve got the chance to give one away to some lucky fontlover.
Best of all, Chank Fonts look great on iPads! Which is such a relief considering my font frustration with both the iPod (only one stupid font on ’em) and the iPhone (my fonts aren’t optimized for 8 pt, grrr.) Fonts can go BIG on an iPad, and they look great in websites using Typekit. I’m really excited about people using my fonts on iPad apps and websites, and want to do my part to get an iPad in the hands of at least one lucky person.
All I ask for is that you join my mailing list to receive the Chank Fonts e-mail newsletter, so I can send you announcement when I’ve got new font releases. I only send out about 10 newsletters a year, so I try to make ’em helpful and include other font-related insights. You can opt out anytime, and if you’re already receiving it, I promise you won’t be double-subscribed. I’m just a simple font salesman trying to guide some more traffic to my website.
Please tell your friends who may like fonts they should come enter for a chance to win a free iPad. I’d sure appreciate it.
Filed under: Font News
Hi, can you help me come up with a catchy, smart name for my new complete library fontpack?
The complete Chank Font library currently has over 300 fonts in it. They’re mostly display faces, but they come in lots of styles, from handwriting to retro to script to grunge to experimental. Lots of range, diversity and personality in there. Since it’s go so many fonts in it, it’ll probably cost over $1000, so I guess it’s not aimed at small business; more of a Big Business fontpack really. Past complete library fontpacks from Chank Co have been called The Legacy Collection, The ALL Fontpack, the Hot 100 and the ever-popular Dentalpak.
Don’t know exactly what I’m gonna call this one, but I’d sure appreciate some suggestions. If you’ve got a great idea for a name, send it to me via Twitter (@chankfonts) or the Facebook “Chank Fonts” group (don’t know how to link to it, but you can find it). If you come up with the name, I’m sure I’ll send you something nice. Just thought I’d reach out to you since you are so smart. Thanks!
Filed under: Font News
The difference between a mission statement and a vision statement is that a mission statement focuses on a company’s present state while a vision statement focuses on a company’s future. Every business should have a mission statement, both as a way of ensuring that everyone in the organization is “on the same page” and to serve as a baseline for effective business planning. (from About.com)
With that in mind, I put on my new glasses and updated my Chank Co Vision Statement for the new decade. Hope you like it!
Such a thrill to see the new HTML5 “@font-face” standard being adopted so smoothly. The new web standards and webfont delivery techniques are just now starting to really change the way the www works. Websites are embedding fonts in viewer’s browsers, allowing them to see a broader selection of real fonts, displayed in the html of the web pages as selectable, scalable, searchable text. So smart and simple, once you learn how to do it, and so much more elegant than saving gif or jpg pictures of words for headlines and display type. That’s kinda silly.
Hundreds of websites are now using my fonts through the @font-face font call. The biggest proponent of the new webfonts is probably WordPress, which allows their 10 million users to easily implement Typekit fonts in their blogs. I’ve seen lots of WordPress sites using my fonts, and that’s just super. And just like my traditional print and desktop fonts, there are both free and commercial versions of the fonts that available for @font-face licensing through Typekit.
Different Chank Fonts are available for web embedding from a few different service providers. SF-based Typekit is the most popular, because they’ve got some of those smart people who worked with Twitter and Google previously. Plus they have the most attractive website (designed by Jason Santa Maria).
But there’s also MN-based Kernest who offers a thoughtful and extensive selection of opensource fonts. Another newcomer is Fontspring which offers the webfont service bundled with desktop (print) versions of the fonts for you to use in your offline designs. Different distributors offer different selections of Chank Fonts, but I hope you’ll find something you like from these new webfont service sites.
The new font-embedding services don’t work so well on mobile devices and the iPad just yet, but I have faith that they will some day soon. Until then, start using webfonts now! That’ll make your web site smarter looking. Here are my pages at some font-embedding service sites:
Typekit: http://typekit.com/foundries/chank-co
Kernest: http://chank.kernest.com/fonts
Fontspring: http://www.fontspring.com/foundry/chank-fonts
My brilliant new “Land Line” app for iPad, currently under development. I keep talking to my iPad, and it just pretends like it can’t hear me. Gotta fix that.
Filed under: iPad
Sorry to gush about the new iPad, but it is the most amazing little device I’ve ever held in my hand. It’s a radio, a web browser, a typewriter and a DVD/VCR. You can play thousands of video games, load up any of millions of songs, videos or movies, or use it as an encyclopedia. I bet you could even play frisbee golf with it. Plus, pretty soon it’ll give you access to almost every book ever printed. Holy cow!
I’m so glad my little boy will have such an amazing media and entertainment center to tuck in his backpack when I send him off to school in a few years.
The drawbacks? As with the rise in popularity of all computers, the iPad will further erode the amount of time young people will have to dedicate towards perfecting their handwriting. Surely typing will be more important. So I’m pretty sure we’ve passed the golden age of handwriting. Handwriting will just keep getting worse and worse in the years to come.
And since fonts are my business, it bums me out a bit that the Safari browser on iPad isn’t making use of the snazzy new webfont embedding capabilities. But I have faith that it’ll work soon.
I also keep getting the feeling that this thing should be a video phone. There really should be a camera in there. I guess they gotta save something for the next gen model.
Secret iPad superhelpful tip: a dry microfiber washcloth makes the smudges go away, easy shmeasy.
It’s the sound effects I’m most proud of. See if you can hear the hidden golf swing.
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