Category Archives: Typography

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

Kalifornia to Kowloon for Kolor

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Brian Lawler

I’m in Hong Kong this week to attend the ICC conference. I composed this en route: Kowloon via San Luis Obispo, San Jose and San Francisco A melodrama in seven acts I have been sitting in a nearly upright chair … Continue reading →

Posted in Adventures, Art, Color Management, Typography | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Acrobat Professional provides extraordinary character recognition

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Brian Lawler

Over the years we have needed to convert scanned images of text into editable text. Companies have invested heavily in the process of extracting text from printed documents, some have lost fortunes in this effort. Some have solved problems, while … Continue reading →

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The Microsoft conundrum

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Brian Lawler

On the announcement last week of Steve Ballmer’s pending retirement, Microsoft’s stock shot up seven points as investors cheered for the future of the company without him. On NPR’s Marketplace they played recordings of Ballmer shouting “DEE-VEL-OH-PERS!” over and over … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Software, Technology, Typography | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Rewiring the Linotype machine

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Brian Lawler

I’ve not blogged in quite a while, for which I apologize to my faithful readers. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything going on. It was that I had writer’s blog. I couldn’t come up with anything to say about … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Imposition and Pagination, Printing and Printing Processes, Typography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

A little kvetching, a little ballooning, and a little GigaPanning

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Brian Lawler

I organize an annual hot-air ballooning event, one that has been running for pretty close to 40 years. The event was founded by my friends Gordon Bennett and Jon Ackerman in 1974. It was conveniently located in the eastern part … Continue reading →

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Linotype: The Film

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Brian Lawler

We showed the film: Linotype: The Movie last week at Cal Poly. The movie was great! We had about 100 people in attendance, including John Werner, who was once the director of typography for the New York Times. He made … Continue reading →

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Fonts were not always universal

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Brian Lawler

We are now into the second generation of young people who have no memory of a time before PostScript and PDF, people who were not adults when we had competing font formats. I put this era into the bigger era … Continue reading →

Posted in Printing and Printing Processes, Typography | 1 Comment

Bad typography is not easy

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Brian Lawler

My friend Jim is a car aficionado, mechanic, driver, restorer and collector. His favorite cars are Fords from 1933, and he has one that is very special, a custom built street rod with some 1933 Ford parts. It is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Printing and Printing Processes, Typography | Leave a comment

My bookbinding class ends with literal works of art

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Brian Lawler

  Where have I been? I’ve been here, binding books. For the past ten weeks I have been teaching a course called Book Design Technology. It’s a senior-level course for students of Graphic Communication in our Design Reproduction Technology concentration, … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bookbinding, Imposition and Pagination, Software, Typography | 1 Comment

Bookbinding with needle and thread

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Brian Lawler

I am teaching a class in book design and bookbinding this quarter. I have 30 students in the class; they are working on their manuscripts and will soon be working on their book blocks and book cases. This involves printing, … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bookbinding, Education, Imposition and Pagination, Printing and Printing Processes, Typography | Leave a comment