Godfather of Helvetica, Mike Parker Dies at 84

When we hear Helvetica, the normal person might associate it with the standard Grotesque font that is packaged with every Windows or Mac OS (among hundreds of applications). When a typographer hears Helvetica, they think of one of, if not the most technically sound type system designed in the past century.

Originally designed in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland, dubbed “Neue Haas Grotesk” was a colab between geniuses Max Miedinger with Eduard HoffmannParker and his team took Haas‘s original drawings and began reworking them to work on Linotype‘s machines. The modified design eventually became known as Helvetica.

Under his leadership, more than 1,000 typefaces, including Helvetica, were added to the company’s library, which became an industry standard and helped guide the type landscape from hot metal, to photocomposition, and finally to digital printing.

“It is not a letter that’s bent to shape; it’s a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space, it’s — oh, it’s brilliant when it’s done well.”
—Mike Parker

Sources: CNN, FastCo

Good Practice: Regular Backups!

So, if you didn’t notice, good; but our site was down for a couple days. We lost a bunch of portfolio and blog posts which really sucks. This is a reminder to myself and all of the other people that forget to do regular backups of their websites when the work is really busy. Back it up, especially if you work with a database driven website, something can easily go wrong which is irreparable. No worries, we’ll have all the portfolio back up soon and better blog posts!

Foldy960 Responsive Grids

I ran across these Foldy960 Grids the other week while compiling data for the Microsoft Website Redesign post and found these quite useful in helping me understand the workings of Responsive Design from a couple of innovators… It’s a little kit and some extra classes to get you going on making your 960.gs design responsive.

New Microsoft Website

I was scavenging the web yesterday for new info/tools for responsive web design and came across this awesome article on Paravel’s website digging deep into their redesign of the new responsive design for Microsoft‘s homepage. If you haven’t seen this or the article by Nishant Kothary it’s definitely worth a read.

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Google Car: It Drives Itself!

I just saw this, the Google Car, I just had to re-post this… This is the future, it really drives itself!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hVESZiRcv6c

NYTE Typeface Reviews

Dino Dos Santos captured the best of both worlds in this extraordinary typeface. Really, just look at the printed pages and you’ll see, this face is not like Esta or Georgia, etc. With the originality, most noticeably stated in the “k’s” and cursive “g’s”, it’s NYTE, designed specifically for the New York Times Magazine.

I love how the italics jump off the page like it’s a script face at 10.0 points or 64 points and above. No matter what point size, It’s awesome! Biggups to NYT and the DSType Foundry for making this one freely available to the public.