Part 1 - Afterthought Typography, Blogs and Websites
Part 2 - Good Type Gone Bad, Tutorials and Tools
Part 3 - The Kerning Curve, Free Fonts and Other Resources

If pictures speak a thousand words, are the ones literally a part of the design that important? Most designers know that the answer, is a resounding yes.

Vlad Studio cleverly incorporates type into the design of their wallpaper, The GiddyUp Tree and The Bickham Script Tree.

Avoid Afterthought Typography

Afterthought typography occurs when the designer lays out the elements of their design, crafts it with their precision and skillful manner, and after completely putting the pieces together, decides that text is needed and tosses it in. Seemingly as an afterthought. This can serve to disrupt the flow and harmony of the entire piece and even distract from the original idea, rather than assist it.

Instead take time to include the text into the project from the beginning. Manipulate the layout to find the best, least obtrusive, location for the type to be placed. Carefully select, or create, a font that blends nicely into the work, while carrying the attitude intended from the whole design. Matching the tone with the type is key, don’t miss this mark and inadvertently end up contradicting the feel of the whole piece with one element.

You can see a flawless example of how the overall design can be fed by the selected typography in this design by Raphael Vicenzi.

So take care to make sure that you do not create a common font faux pas, when trying to incorporate typography into your design, by making it the afterthought and diminishing the important role this typographical tool plays in your work as a whole. If words are necessary to the design, then give them the thoroughness of thought that you would each and every other element of the piece. Dismissing the font’s function can render your designs to nothing more than an afterthought.

Typography Blogs

If you are a bit of a typography fiend, like we are here at Arbenting (and by ‘we’, we mean Angie), then we know you too can’t go a day without a little blogosphere fix from the type side of things. So here is a list of typography focused blogs to help stave off the woeful withdrawal for a time.

I Love Typography - iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that is around them. We really cannot escape typography; it’s everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online…the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so.

The best and most frequently updated typography blog we’ve come across.

Daily Type - Daily Type is a creative project run by several Russian type designers. Day by day, they create original typefaces and post their results along with routine.

Font Feed - a daily dispatch of recommended fonts, typography techniques, and inspirational examples of digital type at work in the real world. Eat up.

Font Lover - A showcase of current trends in typography

Type For You

Typographica - a journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.

They haven’t updated in a while and we’re still hoping they’ll make a comeback soon. Regardless, the archives are still a wonderful typography resource worth checking out.

So, here are a few non-English based blogs that we also enjoy quite a lot (maybe too much considering that we don’t know exactly what they are saying). Though, we can’t actually read the articles, we do still enjoy looking at the amazing typography examples they post so much that we keep going back. It’s a hard thing to admit, but we actually read them for the pictures, not the articles. (Maybe one day we will, when we learn some other languages, but for now, we’re shallow.)

Typotalk

Spatium Magazin

Fontblog

Slanted

Typography Websites

And if the blogs aren’t enough to feed your need for the time, here are some of the websites dedicated to typography that we enjoy going through, and think that you will too. Just a few more of our favorite cyberspace stops for all things typographical!

Web Typography - The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web. A practical guide to web typography.

Typophile - A great community for anyone who considers themselves a typophile

Web Style Guide’s Web Typography Guide

Typographic - An interactive experience informed by type and typography. It aims to illustrate the depth and import of type, and to raise relevant questions about how typography is treated in the digital media, specifically online.

ABC Typography - A virtual museum of typography.

Fontscape - An independent directory of typefaces organized into categories.

TypeNeu. - I haven’t joined here yet so I can’t comment on the community aspect of the site but just browsing around it can provide some amazing inspiration.

Thinking With Type - Theory + Practice, How + Why: A new approach to typographic education

Planet Typography

Typesites - A weekly showcase of websites with interesting typographic design.

Inspirational Typography

As if the rest of the post wasn’t inspiration enough, we felt that we’d throw in some inspirational typography examples we’ve come across lately. Hope you enjoy these final five, and that the rest has proven useful as well.