Technabob » font

Boba Font: the One Star Wars Font Print to Rule Them All

Range — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:09:42 +0000

After those great Star Wars font posters, Fabian Gonzalez came up with his own version with one of the coolest characters in Star Wars, Boba Fett. The poster is complete with his blaster and jet pack, created entirely out of typography.

The above image is available in a variety of formats, from art prints in different sizes, 17×22″ to 28×38″, to iPhone and iPod cases, as well as laptop and iPad skins over at Society6. The only thing that’s missing at this point is t-shirts, though it looks like Fabian submitted this design to Threadless, so maybe we’ll see one soon.

[via Laughing Squid]

May the Fonts be With You

Range — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:45:24 +0000

I love these simple posters of epic Star Wars characters that were simply made by through the clever use of typography.

They were created by the H-57 advertising agency in Milan, Italy. If you look at the bigger versions of these posters, you can see that there is a small legend at the bottom, which details exactly what fonts were used to create the image.

It sort of reminds me of ASCII art, but better. I would like to say that the Darth Vader poster is the best, but the Stormtrooper one is a lot more accurate, in my opinion. All of the details are revealed once you look closer.

[KMBA via Swissmiss]

Pilothandwriting Creates a Custom Font From Your Handwriting, Whether or Not It’S Legible

Range — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:41:13 +0000

Some say that doctors have the most atrocious writing. I think that anyone who has to write day-in and day-out will try and optimize their hand strokes to the bare minimum, which is what a lot of doctors do, with their squiggly writing. No matter what your writing looks like, you can turn it into a font using a free website from Pilot.

Pilothandwriting is an online service that will turn your handwriting into a font. You first have to print out a template, write out all the letters in the alphabet, then Pilothandwriting will use your webcam to digitize your handwriting. You can adjust the letters with the font editor and use it to write emails.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

It’s all very cool, however there’s one big problem: at this point, you can’t download your custom font and use it on your computer, you have to use it on their website. This seems strange, since you’re basically putting a lot of effort into creating a font that you can’t use anywhere but on Pilot’s site or in an email.

If you’d rather have a font you can use in your own apps, there’s an older service out ther called Your Fonts. Although Your Fonts is a little harder to use, at least you can download the fonts you create.

[via Lifehacker]

Console Font 1-Ups Arial

Technabob — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 02:31:31 +0000

I’m really not a fan of fancy display typefaces. Maybe it’s my early eye-scarring experience with the San Francisco font on my original Macintosh 128, but I really prefer fonts that are readable over cool looking. That said, I’ll make an exception here.

ConsoleFont was designed by artist Varun Vachhar, and he’s managed to figure out a way to take a bunch of gaming’s most iconic controllers and turn them into letters in his font. While many of them work perfectly with a single controller (i.e. the N64 controller “E”, “W”, and “3″), others are a bit more of a stretch. (He’s actually looking for advice on a new “G”). Still, bonus points for the Atari 2600 “Q”.

And extra, extra bonus points because Varun plans on making a version of the font available for download soon. I plan on writing all of my business correspondence with it.

[via Albotas via Geekologie]

Oh, L’Ironie: French Anti-Piracy Group Pirated Font for Its Logo

Lambert Varias — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:37:47 +0000

Last year, a law was passed in France that, simply put, allows the government to screen the Internet usage of its citizens (supposedly) to watch out for copyright infringement. Using a three strikes rule, French citizens who are accused of online piracy for a third time will be sent to court, where a judge can give them a fine, or even disconnect them from the Internet. It’s freakin’ scary right? And just to show you how serious the French government is about this whole thing, they set up the Hadopi agency, an organization dedicated solely to enforcing this new law. Here’s the agency’s logo, which was unveiled last week:

Remember those logos pirates! For they will be the last thing you – nah. Here’s le kicker in all of this serious law and order shit: turns out the font used in the logo was unlicensed. The font, called “Bienvenue”, is an “exclusive corporate typeface” meant only to be used for France Telecom-Orange products. In other words, the anti-piracy agency just committed piracy.

Hadopi has already apologized, and France Telecom-Orange said that they won’t sue, but the creator of the font, Jean-François Porchez, is considering pressing charges. Also, Hadopi, that’s strike one.

[via TorrentFreak via Boing Boing]

Cmod Subotron: the Ultimate 8-Bit Gamer Font

Technabob — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:26:40 +0000

Just load this font on your computer, and you’ll be able to make your own fun scenes using a variety of 8-bit pixel characters and mini video game systems.

Designed by Paul Busk for SUBOTRON -a Viennese video game fan store, CMOD SUBOTRON includes not only a all of the regular alphanumeric characters you’d expect in western and eastern European languages, it’s loaded with wonderful pixel art in the Bonuslevel version of the font.

You can grab a free copy of the Opentype font for yourself by clicking here. If you end up creating something cool with the font, drop us a link in the comments below.

[via INVADERS.COM]

Carwriting: Designers Track Car’S Movements to Make Iq Font

Lambert Varias — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:50:15 +0000

Graphic designers Pierre Smeets and Damien Aresta, known collectively as pleaseletmedesign, teamed up with professional race car driver Stef van Campenhoudt to…create a font. But hey, if you were given the choice between sitting in front of a computer all day and watching a pro racer trace Qs and Zs to make a font, you’d choose the latter too. The resulting typeface was called the iQ font. I’d name it ‘skidmarks’, but I didn’t make it. So.

As you can see Campenhoudt did the “writing”. The 4 dots on the roof of the car was tracked in real time using a camera and a custom software designed by fellow artist Zachary Lieberman of openFrameworks. Here’s the video of the one-of-a-kind creation of the iQ font:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

And here’s the iQ font!

You can download the font here; stills from the video can be found at theokguy’s Flickr page. If you were to make a font, what would you use? Subatomic particles? Tornadoes? Turtles?

[thanks to Ramin for the tip!]

Typographic Synthesizer Makes Fonts Like Music

Technabob — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:40:32 +0000

This unconventional design tool provides a unique way to create new typefaces. Working somewhat like an analog music synthesizer, knobs and button pushes influence the shape of your font characters.

Designed by Rob Meek and Frank Müller, the Meek FM Typographic Synthesizer uses a custom controller device along with special software to allow manipulation of typography as you adjust the controls. The system reads in a standard PostScript typeface, then lets the “musician” dynamically adjust parameters to create new fonts.

The controller lets users adjust parameters such as the size of font serifs, horizontal/vertical scale, add distortion and a number of other attributes, all guided by audio feedback to get you in a creative mood. Check out the video clip below to see the Meek FM in action.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Once you’ve applied modifications to a single character in the typeface, the same parameters can be instantly applied to all the other characters, and then the font can be saved for future use.

Very cool stuff indeed. After all, what was the last time you saw a synthesizer with knobs that say “Serif Length” or “Glyph Rotate”?

Zetalink Nixie Tube Clocks Offer Funky Fonts

Technabob — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:45:41 +0000

This wouldn’t be the first Nixie tube clock I’ve ever seen, but it sure offers some different display options than the typical numeric display they usually feature. Raymond Weisling’s GeekKlok not only can display time using traditional digits, it offers custom “fonts” which can tell time using special characters.

The GeekKlok comes in kit form, and can display 50 different character sets including everything from Roman numerals to Arabic to Chinese, Japanese and even Klingon. Time can even be displayed using special animated digits.

Kits range in price from $124 to $169, depending on the version, and if you want the parts already soldered on. Keep in mind that the kits only come with the PCB and electronics to drive the clock. You’ll need to dig up your own Nixie tubes and sockets (with a little guidance from the Zetalink guys), as well as a power supply.

And for those of you who want to know the current time in Klingon...

[via MAKE]

Typography + Google Maps = Geogreeting

Technabob — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:01:12 +0000

In a world full of Google Maps mash-ups, it’s always fun to stumble across one that is truly different. The guys over at geogreeting.com have done just that.

Geogreeting takes carefully selected Google satellite images of buildings and landmarks that happen to look like letters of the alphabet, and creates custom typography from them. You can even send your friends a special URL that animates the locations that form your words.

[via core77]