Category Archives: Typography

Typography, type fonts, type design, type applications and type management.

Restoring that ol’ saw – a Hammond Glider

Now that the Smyth machine is working, I decided to take on a new project. Last fall I offered to restore a 1960s era Hammond Glider TrimOsaw for the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. This machine is best described … Continue reading

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Designing a monogram font

Years ago I made a reproduction-quality proof of a type font in the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. This font is comprised a sets of three letters that can be assembled into monograms. Monograms were quite popular for business … Continue reading

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Lining Livermore, der zweite Teil

This is a continuation of a blog I wrote two days ago. To read the first part, click here. After I put all the letters (called “glyphs” In typography) into a master Adobe Illustrator document, I built the destination environment for the … Continue reading

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Drawing the Lining Livermore font

Deep in the recesses of the back room of the Shakespeare Press Museum at California Polytechnic State University is a cabinet. It contains about 20 drawers of hand-set metal type. We never use this type because it is difficult to … Continue reading

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The birth of Bauschrift

I went on a journey last week to buy some foam-core board. En route, I saw a handsome metal sign at the Technische Universität München. In English, this translates (roughly) to: MATERIAL TESTINGOFFICE FOR CONSTRUCTIONFACULTY CHAIRLARGE SCALE CONSTRUCTION The sign … Continue reading

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Excellent typography in web pages

In a previous post I wrote about the differences between typewriter quotes and real quotation marks, and how to do it right. I have received some nice feedback on that post. One person suggested that while it’s great to use … Continue reading

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From variable-frequency drives
to hand-bound books

It’s been about a month since I wrote my last blog. It was about variable-frequency-drive high voltage motor controllers and a 1935 book sewing machine. The relevance of that is cloudy, but suffice it to say that I have been … Continue reading

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Running the five-color
Pearl press postcard

In 2019 I began the restoration of an 1895 Pearl press, a treadle-powered letterpress that was donated to the Cal Poly Shakespeare Press Museum. That press was a rusty machine when we took delivery of it. I took it to … Continue reading

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Getting the Typographic Tremors
reading historic roadside signs

I just returned from a 2,018-mile journey up the coast of California, into Oregon, then back by a slightly different route. Along the way I visited and camped in National Parks, State Parks, National Forests, and private campgrounds. Along the … Continue reading

Posted in Language and grammar, Mistakes you can avoid, Typography | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

I’m sick @ tired of symbols being used in prose & running text

In addition to hearing professional news announcers use singular verbs with plural nouns (There’s thousands of reasons to do this…), which makes me very grumpy, I often see symbols like @ and & used in running text. This is offensive … Continue reading

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