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Charles Apple: The Visual Side of Journalism

 

‘Typography’ archive

Number of comments in parentheses

May 17: Kerning is important

Just ask Charlie Furbush of the Seattle Mariners. That screencap was posted Wednesday by Paul Lukas of ESPN and the famous Uni Watch blog. — You know who else needs a copy editor? Local TV news operations. Chicago’s WMAQ-TV in particular. And Harrisburg’s Fox43 TV news. And Local 15 News in Mobile, Ala. And WBAL-TV in Baltimore. And Fox2Now in [...]

April 2: Why you need an art director who understands typography (2)

Hong Kong-based filmmaker Pang Ho-Cheung released a new movie this past Friday: Love in the Buff, a sequel to his 2010 hit — a hit in China, that is — called Love in a Puff. Here is the poster being used with the movie in its few U.S. screenings. In China, the movie is being promoted with an entirely different [...]

March 9: Today’s most interesting front page (7)

My daily stroll through the Newseum didn’t result in much to talk about today. I was captivated, however, by this front page: The Forum of Fargo and Moorhead, N.D., circulation 51,165. Seems to me that there’s an awful lot here to pull in even the most finicky of readers. For starters, there’s the lead story about a woman who was [...]

Feb. 27: Seven notable Sunday front page displays

I was on the road this weekend, so I didn’t get much of a chance to spend as much time as I’d like looking though the gallery at the Newseum. There were a number of pages Sunday, however, to which I’d like to draw your attention… — SIOUX CITY JOURNAL Sioux City, Iowa Circulation: 33,837 The most interesting package of [...]

Feb. 16: Q: Is this use of text on page one inspired? Or just lazy? (2)

Via Twitter, David Redwood — reporter, editor and the man behind the North and Agricola hyper-local blog in Halifax, Nova Scotia — poses a question: Good question, David! This comes up a lot when papers run all-text centerpieces. Here’s today’s front page, as seen at the Newseum. I don’t know if I’d call the page inspired. I’m not fond of [...]

Feb. 10: ‘If you really hate someone… ‘

Randall Munroe of the web comic xkcd today covers the bane of existence for all type geeks: Randall was all over the death of Steve Jobs and the great East Coast earthquake, as well. xkcd updates three times a week. Find the strip’s home page here.

Feb. 6: Now, THERE’S something you don’t see every day: A story about typography. On page one.

The story of the day in Chattanooga, Tenn.: Typography. A group of designers in that city have decided they want the area to have its own typographical identity. So they started work on a project to create one. The story was the centerpiece today for page one of the Times Free Press. The main headline is set in Chatype, the [...]

Jan. 24: Do they not teach kerning at the University of Minnesota? (4)

That’s the impression I get after seeing what is reportedly the University of Minnesota’s new football-specific wordmark: That’s what can happen if you forget to moor your letter “A” to the dock, folks. The school unveiled new football uniforms Friday, designed by Nike. That wordmark is part of neither the school’s official online coverage, nor is it seen in the [...]

Jan. 3: San Diego Union-Tribune makes changes to its nameplate, branding strategy (2)

The Union-Tribune of San Diego — under new ownership since mid-November — made a change to its branding strategy this morning. A note to readers today explains: We will now use one company name and logo on all of our media products and communications: U-T San Diego. This change marks a new era in our company’s history. It will help [...]

Dec. 14, 2011: Hell to the Redskins

I was delighted this morning when I ripped open my Virginian-Pilot to the sports page and found this ode to the Washington Redskins’ disappointing season. The wordplay in the headline is wonderful enough. But then that headline is supported by big-number treatments in the yellow box across the bottom. In each of the last four years — since the Redskins’ [...]

Dec. 5, 2011: Twenty-five handwritten fonts. For free.

How about giving yourself some new fonts for Christmas? No? Well, how about if they’re freeware fonts? Rachel Schallom, a grad student at the University of Missouri, found a web site — Designm.Ag — offering 25 free handwritten fonts. Designm.Ag‘s Steven Snell compiled the list but cautions: As always when you are dealing with freebies, be sure to check the [...]

Nov. 19, 2011: Gotham or Verlag? Type geeks want to know.

So, is it Gotham or Verlag? The official 9/11 Memorial trademark in New York City, I mean. Folks have apparently been debating which of the two typefaces was used in the creation of this. David W. Dunlap of the New York Times looked into it. The short answer is: Both. Kind of. The letterforms shown in red here are mostly [...]

Nov. 14, 2011: The very latest in cutting-edge typographical design… (1)

…comes to us from Japanese design student Mayuko Kanazawa. The Creativity Online blog reports that Mayuko put together this font made entirely of twisted leg hairs. Disgusting. I love it. Thought No. 1: The big drawback would be when you want to tighten the kerning. You’d pretty much have to go see a plastic surgeon. Thought No. 2: How long [...]

Nov. 12, 2011: An interesting way to preview today’s Penn State football game

Sports designer Jay St. Pierre of the Omaha, Neb. World-Herald came up with a really interesting way of illustrating this weekend’s Nebraska at Penn State football game. Click for a much, much larger view: Jay writes today on his Facebook page: The background is the text from various statements released during the week from the Penn State Board of Trustees, Joe [...]

Nov. 8, 2011: Behind Harrisburg’s full-page editorial front page (3)

Today’s the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., responded to the heartbreaking sex abuse scandal in the Penn State University athletic department with a full-page editorial Click for a readable view: Editor David Newhouse tells us: It’s a rework of the inspired 9-11 front from our sister paper, The Star-Ledger. If front page designs had credits, we would have loved to have [...]

July 20, 2011: The Boston Globe takes on misuse of the word ‘literally.’ (3)

Here’s the best Boston Globe features section front you’ll see all day. Literally. It was designed by Martin Gee, the Globe‘s features design supervisor. And the topic, obviously, is misuse of the word “literally.” Martin tells us: The headlines are set in our body copy typeface (Miller Globe Text). Here’s the inside spread. Click on either page for a larger [...]

June 5, 2011: A Q&A with typographer Nadine Chahine

T.K. Sajeev Kumar of the Indian news design site Newspaper Design published a Q&A this weekend with award-winning Lebanese type designer Nadine Chahine, a specialist in Arabic typography. An excerpt: Q. What’s the difference in the creation of a headline typeface and a body typeface? A. A text face is not supposed to be noticed. You read the article and [...]

April 23, 2011: Yet another sign of the apocalypse — Comic Sans in the Virginian-Pilot

Yes, it’s true. The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk used Comic Sans in print today. Granted, it was a very much tongue-in-cheek usage in an editorial today. At the recommendation of page designer-turned-web producer David Putney, David posted on his Facebook page today. David writes: At my prompting, the Pilot wrote an editorial against comic sans. Unfortunately, they wrote it in comic [...]

March 10, 2011: Striking a blow, perhaps, against typefaces gone wild (1)

We reported the other day about Gannett’s new corporate directive to add what it calls an “endorsed signature” to the nameplate of all its newspapers. Here was a sample aimed at the company’s largest daily, USA Today, that was given in the 100-page corporate identity guide. The typeface must be in Verlag, the guide says, and there must be a [...]

Feb. 16, 2011: ‘Magazine style’ news design spreads to inside pages (1)

When’s the last time I posted specifically to show you an inside page? That wasn’t a graphic or something, I mean. It doesn’t happen all that often. And that’s a shame. Because inside pages are our bread and butter. That’s one of my biggest beefs with my own not-so-frequent-anymore redesign posts here in the blog: Typically, I have only page [...]

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