Wow! I’m looking forward to all the quirky, asymmetrical creations that people will come up with. This’ll be a fun one!

Yay! First entry. Ever.

—æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ—
“Wishers and woulders be small householders.”
—Wynkyn de Worde

nice beans!

That’s my first attempt... ever...
i hate the “a”

why is it so big? and why is the color different from yours?
:(

are you sure you made it black?

I see black on white, 600 pixels wide.

Ah, well: other people seem to have actually set a word - I just did “loose” letters, and stuck within the cap-to-baseline height. Still, here it is (note the instructions didn’t say it had to be the Roman alphabet):

(Upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega)
I realised only afterwards that I’d only done (more or less) symmetrical letters: no cowardice intended, honest guys. Let’s see someone give us some Cyrillic though...! (or, hey Hrant how about some “MICRmenian”?)

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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.

i am sure it’s black on illustrator but then i copied it to photoshop :/ did i do anything wrong? + the size is too big (?)

The “gloves” are very nice!

Alia,

It has to do with how Illustrator deals with CMYK black versus RGB black. One of the black defaults in Illustrator is a “rich black” composed of different levels of C, M, Y, and K. The other is C0 M0 Y0 K100, and shows up as a very dark grey. In the most recent version of Illustrator, you can change how it handles black as far as displaying, printing, and exporting to other applications.

Alternately, you can always just save the image from Illustrator using the “Save for Web” feature; it is extremely handy. Just set your crop marks in advance.

- Josh

—æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ——æ—
“Wishers and woulders be small householders.”
—Wynkyn de Worde

Tim

Ha ha, like it, Tim.

_________________________________________
Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.

Please help!- answer - how to post a pictures on forum messages?

The Flash 8 player plug-in must be installed. When it is, you will see an “Insert Image” link just below the comment box.

Mark, thank you.

Everybody went straight for the lowercase! I was gonna get to that later, but here’s my opening salvo:

Josh, thank you

Another quick&dirty way is to copy and paste your paths into a shape layer in Pshop...

can anyone read my submission up there? Hope it’s not mistaken as “gloves”

...that’s in reply to Alia, right? Don’t worry, I read “flavor” Ok.
(He said, holding his breath...)

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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.

Koleslaw, I definitely see “gloves.” The r and o is very apparent, however, it’s the f that throws me off. It looks just like a g.

I read flavor the first time but now I’m all confused.

In that spirit, I’m gonna pull a page from Week 1:

flavor is right. thanks! nice travel- bonus points for the ambigram ..

Here for the second time and here´s something for the first time

I definitely read flavor and I really dig it, it fits in every way that is good. The structure of the ’f’ totally rocks my world.

note the instructions didn’t say it had to be the Roman alphabet

Indeed. Quickly and strangely:

Ah that will be tought to beat. :^)

Aye. Can anyone explain the function of the wide chunks hanging off the MCRI numerals? My first thought was that the verticals with the lighter stroke weight would be too thin for the magnetic readers, and the ’chunks’ serve to distinguish characters from one another... but look at the 2 and the 5; they’re almost exactly alike without the vertical strokes, so the reader must be able to perceive strokes that thin.

John, that is very cool. What does it say?

Dan — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MICR

There’s quite a bit there, although they don’t explain exactly what the rationale of thick and thin pattern is.

Dan & Mark - http://www.printerm.com/micrdef.htm

This page may explain the purpose of the thick/thin patterns.

It seems that the MICR readers detect the presence of the magnetic ink over time. I suppose the thin/thick patterns of the E-13B helps differentiate each figure in order to increase the speed and accuracy of the face. The page I linked above seems to provide a technical explaination for the varying widths of the characters.

Also, it is interesting to see how different the other MICR typefaces are, especially the CMC-7 below. It even has an accompanying alphabet !

Image from www.morovia.com

John i am assuming you read Arabic, right? it’s a very good one in terms of readability.
Mark, it says: i created tension

Why so few entries this week?

I don’t actually read Arabic. I know how to pronounce the individual letters, but without vowels I can’t pronounce words.

I just selected three words at random from a BBC Arabic news story. They were not even consecutive words, so if they do express anything meaningful it is entirely by chance.

I liked Delicious; I could see a face based around that consistent black blob hanging out in the lower-left corners of the characters. I have a feeling, though, that if I read Arabic John would get my vote for top honors. Wonder how a magnetic reader would do with that puppy...

I feel so out of touch with the type battle this week.

There have been some very cool entries, kudos to all.
John definitely gets my vote this week. Those are some lovely characters and much credit for submitting something non-latin. The same goes for Dave (dtw) — it is very refreshing to see other alphabets!

Any ideas for future battles?

> Any ideas for future battles?

of course

Care to share your ideas?

typophile@punchcut.com

of course....

Thanks Zara. I’d second Dan(pica pusher)’s comment about feeling that John’s Arabic gets top vote for originality, despite not knowing whether Arabic readers would find it legible or not!

I finished the rest of the Greek during the week, btw if anybody’s interested:

Await the new week’s challenge with baited breath...

Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.

whoa. my vote’s for dtw’s greek alphabet...very cryptic & cool.

They are all brilliant. Why don’t we spec. actual jobs here so I can spend more time at the beach!?

Is there going to be a new battle?