“Today we’re pleased to welcome DSType’s Leitura News to the Typekit library. Designed for editorial use, it comes in eight styles (four weights with matching italics), four of which have been manually TrueType hinted to render well at text sizes.

Top to bottom: Acta Display Black Italic, Leitura News Roman 3 (with italic ampersand), Roman 4, and Roman 2. (source text)

At larger text sizes Leitura News feels studious and bright. Its bold (Roman 4), with a bit of letterspacing, can be successful in short bursts at these sizes.

Velino Poster with Leitura News Roman 4 (subhead, sidebar) and Roman 2 (text). (source text)

At smaller text sizes Leitura News feels crisp and active, but also quiet. Even its more outgoing letterforms buckle down and do their jobs for the sake of the text.

Upgrade to a Personal Plan or higher to use Leitura News. If you’re already a paying Typekit customer, enjoy the new fonts! If you’ve never given Typekit a try, sign up (it’s free) and upgrade whenever you’re ready.

(Via The Typekit Blog.)

“Today, we’re excited to release the first of many improvements to the Typekit website. We set out to make it as fast as possible to browse thousands of fonts. Just a few clicks, in a few seconds, to get to what you want.

The new browsing interface.

To start, we completely revamped the tagging system, ditching the plethora of unorganized, and often confusing, tags, and replacing it with a much more robust system designed around font classifications (i.e., serif, monospaced, etc.) and properties (i.e., x-height, width, weight, etc.). This means the new tagging system is derived from the physical characteristics of the fonts themselves — a much more useful means for discovery.

Additionally, we’ve added two new categories of recommended fonts: headings and paragraphs. These categories are handpicked by Typekit’s staff and feature fonts that are both aesthetically and technically exceptional. (All of the paragraph fonts have been manually hinted, and many of the headline fonts are served with PostScript outlines.) If you’re looking for the best fonts in Typekit’s library, start here.

The look of the tags has also changed, trading text links for a visual presentation of each tag. This also aids in browsing fast, and it means you can successfully browse by font characteristics even if you are unfamiliar with the terminology. Helpful tips are tucked away for those looking for more information about the tags themselves.

A new visual design for the tags makes it easy to understand at a glance.

Helpful tips are just a click away.

We consulted with type designers and typographers on the new taxonomy, and our type team then reviewed and retagged every single font in the library. The result is a browsing experience that’s much more intuitive, and fast. Try it and see for yourself.

Under the hood, we’ve worked incredibly hard on performance, taking advantage of the capabilities of the latest browsers, while gracefully degrading in older ones. You can now see many more than nine fonts per page (an oft-heard request, and one we’re very happy to deliver on). In modern web browsers that support pushState (such as the latest versions of Chrome, Safari, and Firefox), we update the url as you browse, so you don’t have to wait for the entire page to reload. As you click around, the browser progressively loads only the necessary information. (In older browsers, we fall back to the standard behavior of links and reload the page each time.)

There’s a lot more to this new interface on the technical side. We’ll have more to share about the process of creating it in the coming weeks.

And there’s more coming down the line: better search, improved detail pages, favorites (at last!), and new ways to preview fonts — plus even more help finding the perfect font for your needs. Stay tuned!”

(Via The Typekit Blog.)

“So what’s in store for 2010? Have you set any goals? Any milestones you want to hit? Anything that would make 2010 extra super spectacular and mega cool?

A lot of people I know don’t even like to think ahead in fear that they will reach too high and then be disappointed – like all the other times before that they strived for bigger and better things and fell short.

Well – SO WHAT! – so you came up short LAST time – doesn’t mean you will come up short this time – does it? The issue is we link all these ‘disappointments’ together over time then make up some cockamamie story as to what it means – it mean ‘I’m not good at X’ or ‘What the bother . . ’ blah, blah, blah.

After you tell yourself this story, you will then have to buy a book or a course or a seminar to solve what you believe is ‘wrong’ with you. It’s got nothing to do with any perceived faults in you. That’s just a story. It’s JUST information. Let it be just that and nothing more.

Well, the secret is to just ‘drop it.’ Just drop it like you drop a pencil or anything else. It is something you no longer need on your new journey. You are, instead, going to replace it with focused action based on your goals.

And, as I mentioned in A Project versus a Dream article, we are going to drop dreams and goals and create a few projects. Projects is a bit less intimidating a word and has a type of action associated with it.

So, the assignment I am giving you is in the area of creative career/earning or, better yet, let’s just call it ‘money-making’ projects based on your art.

I recommend coming up with 2-3 major projects you would like to undertake for 2010. This is no hard and fast rule but I have found over 3 projects to diffuse your focus whereas just one might not be enough – or I have found that if you get stalled a bit on one project you can work on the other.

Example projects might be: licensing your art, making $40,000 selling on Ebay in 2010, creating a kick-butt artist website with e-commerce included, creating an art related DVD, etc. etc. but make it bold – something that will make you stretch (and grow) a bit. And something that will make you a measurable amount of money.

A couple final thoughts. The first is, you don’t need some fancy-shamncy project management system. If you have found something that works for you great but if not, don’t fret, just grab a cheap notebook at CVS.

You will need to sit down in a quiet space and give some thought to the project as a whole. How long it might take, do I need further materials, how much can I do per month/week/day. But start to PLAN things. The don’t have to be set in stone but make it clear to yourself what you are up against and what you need to do.

More about Doug Farrick’s Creative Career Journey:

The second is, try to make this simple. Don’t map a whole mess of angst against it. You’ll wear yourself out. And, this sounds counter-intuitive, but don’t think that much about it. You don’t need to. You have your plan and your map – now just follow the directions (like a good cook does)

And one final thing (that goes along with the last point) – try to live in the land of doing (of action) – this is where you’ll get additional ideas and direction. You won’t get them by hemming and hawing and thinking – just do. Keep your hands busy – that is always sound advice, even if nothing is apparently happening- it will.

Let me know if you are willing to take on this challenge. I would love to hear what you are planning or if you need help or support along the way. 2010 will be over before you know it. Will you have completed your projects? Will your life be headed in a bold new direction? Somehow, I bet it will.

*check out more of Malei’s gorgeous work at: MaleiYoung.com“

(Via ArtBistro.)

* submission receive deadline: April 3, 2010 *

The BECA Foundation is pleased to present the ‘FUTUREFORWARD’ exhibition of international works of new art + new design at BECA ICAD. This call to artists and designers will remain open through April 3, 2010. Exhibition dates: May 1 – 29, 2010. From the submissions received, 4 to 8 artists and designers will be selected by BECA Foundation directors to participate in the group exhibition highlighting works that reveal an idea, message, contribution, warning or solution that if carried forward may profoundly impact the future – be it positively or negatively.

With a growing international BECA network now approaching 30,000, it is more important than ever for BECA to ensure that in addition to hosting the physical exhibition at BECA ICAD at 527 St. Joseph Street, New Orleans, LA across from the Contemporary Arts Center, the exhibition also be made available online at www.BECAICAD.org for those who are unable to attend in person.

Exhibiting artists + designers will have their work published in both soft cover and hard cover editions of the upcoming publication, ‘FUTUREFORWARD’.  Artists + designers will also receive Feature coverage in a special edition e-publication covering the exhibition which will be distributed to over 19,000 journalists, writers, curators, collectors, gallery and studio directors in the US and abroad.
Complete info. may be found at: http://www.becaicad.org/artist-designer-submissions.php

“I’m going to admit that I’m excited about the iPad. And from the buzz it seems I might be alone on this one. I’m seeing comments that range from, ‘That’s it?’ to ‘This is an iPhone with a larger screen.’ Adding to the thoughtful sentiments are calls for the heads of AT&T executives for their sub par network service. I’ve got my pitchfork and torch in hand and am ready for the AT&T witchhunt, but I’m putting them down to use an iPad first.

My excitement doesn’t brew from iPad’s functionality out-of-the-box but from its potential in changing how we design dense information Web sites. I remember 15 years ago the utter confusion publishers were going through to understand the impact of the Internet on publishing and how they would take their paper or magazine and ‘put it on the screen.’ As designers, we didn’t know much in the ways of user experience, site usage, and reality. So the result was years of designers figuring out how to convert Quark layouts to look exactly the same on a screen as they do in the finished print publication.

Sports Illustrated’s pre-Pad effort

I’ve seen it all, from demands to provide printable PDFs of publications as downloadable links (nobody cared that the publication scaled down to print on an 8 1/2 x 11 with an amazingly legible font size of -1), to calls to make ‘pages turn.’ As designers, we put on our flash skills to create wonderful page curls that allowed users to click and drag ‘pages.’ This, too, went down as a nonstarter (none of this accounts for the hell we put our database administrators through to feed content in appropriately).

So print designers started to learn differences in Web design and suddenly we started to see a new breed of designer. One who understood the concept of search engine optimization, meta data, code, interaction, user experience, Web standards, and dare I say it, RGB over CMYK.

We learned, but we always yearned for the day when we would be able to create a print quality publication online that could still hold up to the minute-by-minute content changes and demands of an enterprise publisher.

Let’s take GQ, for example. GQ has gone right for the jugular and is providing hope for what may be the design approach of the future. With monthly publication cycles, ad requirements, enterprise-level content management needs, and an established brand, they are in my definition an enterprise publisher.

GQ has found ways to design their print publication, feed the content into their Web presence, and (here’s where it gets interesting) create a branded subscription product for the iPhone, that allows many elements of the print magazine to come through as it was designed for print! And it doesn’t look…well…stupid!!

Don’t get too excited yet! GQ is likely not getting an enormous subscription push on its iPhone app, and I’ve found the issue takes a bit too long to download in increments even with wi-fi. When held vertically, the magazine produces a clean but predictable experience. Turn the iPhone horizontally and voila, the full magazine displays in print layout. It even overlays buttons to visit advertiser Web sites and buttons to view video content. Navigating from spread to spread is a breeze but still requires zooming for better legibility.

Will the iPad perform any better? We’ll have to see.

Screenshots of the GQ pages on the iPhone

Simply by giving me more screen space I may have the ability to see GQ in two, three, or, dare I say, six column layouts without turning the device!? This can get crazier. The iPad could allow readers to flip through content as they would the magazine by turning pages or in more sophisticated ways. (The main difference being, you’ll use your fingers rather than the bar of soap, a.k.a. the mouse). Once again, out-of-the-box this won’t be possible with the iPad, but thumbing through content could be a near-term enhancement with the device.

So why won’t we see fantastic ‘iPad only’ publications tomorrow? Ahhh, the trifecta which business, technology, and design all have to sit together to plan and invest. It seems so simple but planning is amazingly overlooked. Who are we trying to reach, how will we measure success, and will we have the flexibility to change on every device? Lastly, can we learn about our audience and use the knowledge to better each experience?

Adding to the cacophony of roadblocks there are various technical issues waiting to confront us. More complex business knowledge is becoming a prerequisite for multi-device designers. Font and layout handling cross device is also increasing in complexity. Staffing a creative department that can design to all of these devices when mastering one is an art unto itself. And getting technology in place to manage the content flexibly across all devices is a challenge–when (or if) the hell will Adobe and Apple make nice and get Flash working on Apple’s OS? The list goes on and on.

Yet, if all goes well in a year I’ll be fireside, with a beautifully mounted AT&T executive’s head on my wall, and some relaxing music playing. And I’ll be thumbing through a Feb 2011 issue of GQ on my iPad.

Related: Will Magazine Design Flourish or Fizzle on the iPad?

Read Giovanni Calabro’s blog Design PragmatistBrowse blogs by other Expert Designers

Giovanni Calabro has over 13 years of experience leading
interactive research and design efforts for a wide range of business sectors.
At Siteworx, Giovanni leads the design team responsible for user experience
strategy, brand analysis, search engine optimization (SEO), search and
analytics integration and social media strategy. With clients as diverse as MTV
Networks, USATODAY.com, NPR, and JPMorgan Chase, Giovanni provides
expert strategy and advice in the areas of stakeholder and staff alignment and
new publishing models for emerging platforms such as social media and mobile
channels.”

(Via Fast Company – Design.)

Art Works Logo Design

Request for Proposals

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) invites contractors to submit proposals for a design for a new “Art Works” logo for the National Endowment for the Arts and then produce a finished design that may be reproduced by the Agency in print and online, as described in the attached solicitation.

* You must have the Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to read PDF documents.
If you do not already have Acrobat Reader, you can download it for free from the Adobe web site.

“The history and future of airport design.”

[more ...]

(Via Slate Magazine – Architecture.)

Collapsable Milk Jug Makes Milk Last a Week Longer:

“A young designer solves the eternal problem of making the milk last as long as you need it.

The James Dyson Awards, a sprawling event that garners thousands of entries from design students the world over, is a pretty phenomenal wellspring of ideas–the short list runs into the hundreds. Treehugger points us to one concept we hadn’t seen: A collapsible milk jug that makes the milk last longer.

The designer–who has to remain anonymous for now, since the contest isn’t over–points out that plastic milk jugs basically foment milk spoilage, because they trap air in the container. And that’s what the concept, Fresh, fixes. As the milk level gets lower, you collapse the container bit by bit, to
prevent undue air exposure. The designer claims that experiments show that the milk lasts a week longer as a result.

A product like this could be a huge boon to other countries: To save plastic, Canada and parts of Europe require milk to be sold in plastic bags, which the users take home dump into permanent containers. And that, apparently, makes the milk go bad even faster than it would in a plastic container.

We wonder: Couldn’t designs like these be built into the design of a standard milk jug itself? Why couldn’t we design accordion-style ridges into milk containers, so that we could collapse those as well?”

newsletterPromo(‘Design’,
‘right’);

[The Design Blog via Treehugger]

Related:
A Universal Gym for Both the Able-Bodied and the Wheelchair Bound

(Via Fast Company.)

“As a designer, it is important to be aware of the trending colors, and how they are being applied in products and work produced today. What really isn’t being discussed by the design world at large though are the limitations being set on color. Color is as free for us to use as the air we breathe… or is it?

The color palette is shrinking. It could affect the foundation of design for everything from websites to fashion. The fate of businesses and billions of dollars ride on choosing the right one. We’ll take a look at how color is becoming the next limited resource.

Limit: One Spectrum per World

Color is limited by what our eyes can see. It’s the visible light spectrum (wavelengths of light) our eyes can detect.

On one end of the spectrum lies red (longer wavelengths) and on the other blue (shorter wavelengths); everything in between those are the colors we find in nature.

The visible spectrum.

Although this spectrum we have available is limited, we still do have a lot of choice when it comes to color. We attempt to reproduce this spectrum in printing, monitors, paintings, and so on. The difference in the way a monitor displays color versus a printed brochure is a world away and more technical than most people would want to worry themselves with.

One company is responsible for connecting this vast chasm of color. Pantone.

Color by Any Other Name Would Be Pantone

If there is anyone that could say they own color, it would be Pantone. They have a monopoly on it in the truest sense. Every color you have ever seen used has been indexed and named by Pantone.

What Pantone has done is not a bad thing; in fact, it has done the world (especially designers) a favor. They have taken color from a chaotic Tower of Babel scenario with everyone talking about colors in very different ways and brought us all on to the same page. Literally. Their paint chip and fabric swatch books sit on the desks of designers everywhere.

Pantone’s system allows for a design agency in Chicago to make sure the color they specified for a brand is printed accurately in a magazine by publication in Europe, and looks the same in television spot being created by a firm in Los Angeles.

As J.C. Herz of Wired put it, ‘If color is a language, Pantone is the Oxford English Dictionary.’

The Battle for Color

For companies, color has become one of the most important identifiers. More often than not, colors are how you recognize and associate products to that brand.

Marketing research has found 80% of visual information is related to color. It’s not just a green, a red, a blue, or a magenta. It’s ‘Starbucks Green’, ‘Coke Red’, ‘Gap Blue’, and ‘T-Mobile Magenta.’

Separating colors from their brands is close to impossible.

The inseparable color and brand association (above) have become a legal reality. Brands are putting a stake in the spectrum and claiming that color for their own use. An infographic of what this looks like was in Wired magazine in June of 2003.

Wired infographic showing the ‘color location’ of the world’s biggest brands.

T-Mobile owns the color Magenta

The most interesting and polemic story of a brand buying and claiming a color space is with T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom). They have trademarked the color magenta.

Yes, T-Mobile owns the rights to magenta.

They have been enforcing this over the years suing companies like a book-on-demand publisher, and most recently, in the blog Engadget Mobile.

To clarify, companies like T-mobile can only trademark in the industry sector that they are registered in. So T-Mobile has trademarked the color magenta in telecommunications. The blog COLOURLovers says that this means, ‘you just can’t use the color magenta around anything to do with phones, digital media… oh and just about anything on the internet.’

What’s in a name?

In addition to a trademarked color, some companies are also trademarking the actual name of the color.

The insulation company Owens–Corning, known for their The Pink Panther commercials, have registered the term ‘PINK‘ (in capital letters only) in reference to its insulation.

UPS is one of the best-known companies of the world, shipping us our goods ordered from across the world to our doorstep. They trademarked the slogan ‘What can Brown do for you?’

The Europe-based mobile network operator and internet service provider, Orange, uses the color Orange both in its logo and as the trademarked company name.

The Color of Money

Not only are companies trademarking existing colors, but they are producing new colors, naming them, and trademarking them.

Jay-Z, the hip-hop artist and entrepreneur, collaborated with the car company GMC to do just that. Together with GMC’s Global Color Studio, they produced a blue hue called ‘Jay-Z Blue.‘ It was used on the 2007 GMC Yukon Denali.

Jay-Z debuts the 2007 GMC Yukon Denali painted with his ‘Jay-Z Blue‘ color.

This idea of mixing a color and patenting it is not entirely new. The French artist, Yves Klein (known for minimalist monochromatic paintings), primarily started using his signature mixed blue in 1958. It is called International Klein Blue (IKB) and has been used in the fashion world.

Who owns color?

These trends in limiting color usage and the rights that brands have to trademark colors is a difficult road to navigate. Not everyone is well versed in trademark laws and intellectual property rights.

On one side, companies need to protect their brand identity, which they’ve invested much capital into. On the other side, there are designers and artists trying to create great work with a limited color palette.

There of course is a fear that at some point, the best color hues will have been claimed and there would be no other good colors left to design with. How likely is this scenario? As likely as anyone would have imagined being sued by T-mobile for using the color magenta.”

Credits

• spectrum #2 used in the leading image by Ole Martin Buene.
• Skylights used to illustrate the color spectrum.
• pantone_7oct2009_0995 by Patrick Lauke.

Related Content

• 14 Brilliant Tools for Evaluating Your Design’s Colors
• 25 Great Examples of Using Gradient Effects in Web Designs
• Creating a Timeless User Experience
• Related categories: Web Design and Usability/Accessibility

About the Author

Francisco Inchauste is a web and interaction designer whose work you can find over at his online presence – Finch. By day, he works as a UX specialist for Universal Mind. He’s written for various design weblogs such as Smashing Magazine. Connect with him on Twitter.

(Via Six Revisions.)