Typography as satire

I like a keenly-crafted satire. I also like typography. So, when I came to the realisation that I have most (like 90%) of the typefaces used by the logos of corporate america, I decided to put them to good use and make them into satirical, yet honest, slogans. I have to admit, this isn't a new idea... there's a tumblelog called, oddly enough, Honest Slogans that specialises in this type of thing, but I gave it a go anyway. Here's what I came up with.

CasaleFinale is done -- so is TFG

I decided that "CasaleFinale" was a better name because it rhymes that way. Like I said, it's my 3rd and final draw of my first typeface, Casale NBP. I think the metrics are a bit nearer to the cover of Shout. It has full ASCII support as well as some accented Latin (everything you need for Spanish, French, German, and that lot) Greek and Cyrillic.

And with that, total FontGeek Digital Type Foundry is officially on hiatus.

If I ever decide to start it back up again, I would prefer a better platform than Fontspace. The rating system is massively fucked up from all the trolls who spend their day watching new fonts come in and then rating them as low as possible. While it may be all fun and games to them, if you happen to stumble across Fontspace as a designer looking for a decent font, you're probably going to immediately put out of your mind anything that has less than 3 stars. That's representative of 87% of my own work, to say nothing of all the hobbyists who get scared away or convinced their work is rubbish by 4 trolls clicking BAD all at once.

Oh well. Anyway, I would welcome suggestions on where else I could release new material and re-post some of the old stuff.

"Until we meet again, this is General Boy for DEVO, INC. Duty now for the future!"

--General Boy

And now, a public service announcement

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing I like better than to see one of my designs in public, and BrightonTwo is one of my most popular typefaces (behind ErbosDraco)

That having been said, one of the most recent public encounters I had with an NBP font was on a teeshirt where it was being used to render a very sexist motto. I'm not going to mention what it was or where I found it because, as I've recently come to find out through Tumblr, there are Jack Thompson-types who will assign blame to anyone they can find. I don't need them demanding a boycott of total FontGeek DTF just because some pseudohuman used one of my fonts on a bad shirt.

Obviously, I can't control how any of my designs are used. That's the nature of "free"--free to download, free to use, free to display. I would ask, though, that you use them responsibly. Don't be that guy. If you're going to be that guy, use Comic Sans.

And now, a disclaimer:
total FontGeek Digital Type Foundry, Ltd. (“TFG”) is not responsible for any messages which are rendered in its designs, beyond the official typeface specimens and design examples made by TFG staff. All fonts made by TFG are free for commercial use and TFG is not, as a general rule, informed about the public display of any of its designs, nor does it have any control over how the design is used. TFG cannot be held responsible for any offence taken by an individual or group over the content of messages rendered in TFG-designed typefaces and will not make any attempt to stifle the creative freedoms of any graphic designer who uses them.
While not explicitly implied in the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 3.0 unported license used by TFG for its designs, the disconnect between foundry and third-party designer is, in our judgement, necessary to encourage free creativity and will not be reconsidered.

AWODEX: Absent without a decent excuse

I haven't been doing much FontGeekage lately. Mostly we can blame Tumblr for this. I discovered recently that Tumblr is a much more exciting place than Fontspace or Fontstruct. Not only are there fellow FontGeeks there but representatives of all my other interests too. Poetry, visual art, stickfigures, Devo, that kind of thing. Beyond that, I've been busy making my Fantom X sound like a Fairlight CMI rhythm sequencer. So I guess I've been busy with other things is what I'm trying to say. Just to show that I haven't totally abandoned typography, here is some of the type-related stuff I've been posting to Tumblr.

Why Swansea, Mytupi, and Helvetica can co-exist

You see it all the time. There's a Monotype version of Helvetica and a Linotype version. There's a URW version of Balloon and a Letraset version. There's a Monotype version of Trade Gothic and a Bitstream version. Why is this? It never looks like anything's been changed. If it has, it's so infinitessimal that you can't tell the difference without computer software. In the United States (a.k.a Planet Earth's ministry for de-evolution) there is a little blurb in the Copyright act that makes font liberation possible.

In a computer display font, only the source code can be protected under US copyright laws. The abstract letterforms are uncopyrightable.

Even though the entire institution of copyright is in serious need of a major revision, there are still little places like that where people can snake through the chaos.
In effect (if I had the right software) I could copy the letterforms from GE Inspira into a seperate TTF file, call it something (like maybe "EcoLogic NBP") and then I could release it into the public domain. Depending on how many boobytraps GE comissioned, I might have to redraw the entire typeface. But the point is that unless the monkeymen in business suits are hell-bent on proving that "EcoLogic NBP" is an infringement on Inspira's copyright.... more likely than anything is that it would just slip by unnoticed and work its way into publishing houses all across america as a free and highly legible typeface.

Erbos Draco goes viral!

This is a screenshot of http://countdown.depechemode.com. It clearly shows the use of Erbos Draco Open NBP! Cool! I'ma have to listen to them now.... I think they did some Simlish stuff for The Sims 2.
So even though this is only the second time I've ever seen one of the fonts I made in use... they used the OLD VERSION! Like last week sometime I redrew a few characters in the Erbos Draco family to make it less similar to other LED screen styled types on Fontspace (like LED Phone and TPF Display). Plus, I drove past a real actual LED sign that had been there for years that had the exact same upper G as Erbos Draco has. So that's why I messed with it. Then, someone points out to me that Depeche Mode is using v.1.0 (version ONE-point-freakin-ZERO!) @_@ So I decided that, since its being used now, I'd bring back ED Open and ED Regular from the old version. And I did. Because I'm a nice guy :)
Well anyway, it's cool that somebody out of the 2100+ people who've downloaded it decided it was nice enough to use for something. 

So what exactly is DIFFERENT about Erbos Draco from other LED types on Fontspace?
For one thing, there are symbols and lowercase letters. The lower letters don't go below the baseline (because there isn't a "below the baseline" on a scoreboard display). Most other uppercase Rs look like Arial or Interstate. ED's looks more like Univers or Helvetica. The 7 is based on Akzidenz-Grotesk.

You can o/c download Erbos Draco from Fontspace.
http://www.fontspace.com/total-fontgeek/erbos-draco-monospaced-nbp

Oh FYI. The name "Erbos Draco" has nothing to do with dragons. It's an anagram of "score board" ;)
Let's hear it for pixely LED styled typefaces!

BTW I had an interview today for a graphic design position at a local advertising agency so you might see alot more typefaces of mine showing up in places!