Category Archives: Typography

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

Calligraphy in a Millennial world

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Brian Lawler

I’m teaching Advanced Typography this quarter to students in their 20s. Part of that course involves studying the origins of letters and letterforms, pen-drawn lettering and constructed lettering. I wrote this today with the Copic Wide pen, which uses an … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Typography | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Another GREPping drama

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Brian Lawler

My dear wife is producing a book for a local author. He has typed his own manuscript in Microsoft Word, and it’s going to be about 300 pages. The author has a habit of substituting the letter l (el) for … Continue reading →

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Resurrecting Ottmar Mergenthaler

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Brian Lawler

In 1960, John W. Reed, President of the Linotype Company, presented a bronze bust of Ottmar Mergenthaler to the students of Cal Poly’s Printing Department (now called Graphic Communication). The bust is about 2/3 life size, and is mounted on … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, People, Typography | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

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 →

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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