Type Slugs 2005-12-04

Type news in brief for the week:Scanning the newsfeeds so you don’t have to.

Microsoft Hearts Hyphens

From fontblog: Microsoft recommends turning auto-hyphenation on to improve overall type color. Wise move? You be the judge: the blog post (and comments) are at the other end of this link.

Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Esq

The renowned team of Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones are profiled in Esquire magazine, giving a glimpse of thier passion for type. Worth a quick read, available at the Keep Media website here.

It Takes A Rocket Scientist

GCN reports that NASA has developed a set of web standards for uniform presentation of websites across the agency, with the accent on readablilty and clarity. Their first choice font family? Arial. Visit the NASA web standards page by following this link.

When you want to get the feel of type

The blog Typographica reports that London’s viaLetter sells glyphs of Monotype Bodoni, Rockwell Condensed, and Letraset’s Frankfurter. Available in one size (288 pt – 4 inches, that is), they’re priced at GBP 1.80 the glyph. Good for wall signage, type demos, flinging at friends and enemies, obsessive collecting, or just holding in your hand for that good, type-in-the-han feel.

In Passing: Franko Luin

Franko Luin (1941-2005), typographer creditied with the digital revivals of Bodoni, Caslon, and Baskerville (amongst myriad other achievements), passed away 15 Sep 2005, in Tyresö, Sweden. He was 64 years old.

Segoe-ing to a new MS UI font

BetaNews reports that the new face of interface fonts in the upcoming Windows Vista and Office 12 will be a font specifically designed for it, SegoeUI. Developed after a decade of research by the MS Typography unit, it is said to be more humanistic and less “computer-like” than the font it will be succeeding, Tahoma, and was designed in particular to take advantage of Microsoft’s “ClearType” font display technology. While some have criticised it for a strong resemblance to Fruiger, others have pointed out that that SegoeUI may necessarily resemble other variable-width, sans-serif, ClearType fonts.

(Via Microsoft Typography, Typographica, and reader tipoffs)