That would be awesome, but i don’t have time to do it. Anyone?

dr

I’m certainly not the one to do it, but I sure like the idea.

@ David R and Koppa

Thanks for replying, I’m actually looking at it as part of my MA research, it’s involved with new and effective ways to catalogue and preserve type, but has stretched to looking at design in general and provide learning resources for students and teachers alike.

I just want to see what sort of reaction the concept gets from the type/design community before I launch headlong into it!

Any suggestions for what you would like to see included in such a tool would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Chris.

Chris that would be very interesting. Do you think of it as an open environment where others can add pictures and tags?

You might be interested in the work Eric Kindel did as Central St Martins. Typeform dialogues: a comparative survey of typeform history and description, compiled at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. It was never published, but it was set to be published at one time by Hyphen Press.

@ Miss Tiffany

I think it would be a mix of open environment, allowing freelance designers, smaller studios and students to upload and catalogue work, and maintained so that I can hopefully get some of the bigger studios and design groups involved. I’m thinking I’d have to carefully monitor it though so as to make sure it doesn’t end up breaching any copyright.

Thanks for the heads up on that one, maybe they’ll hold a copy at St Martins, I’ll have to give them a go next time I’m in.

While not a massive collection, the AIGA Design Archives tags the fonts for pieces listed:

http://designarchives.aiga.org/

Click on SEARCH in the upper right.
Type in a font name in the KEYWORD text box and click CREDITS and then SEARCH

Stephen Coles has a big listing of fonts linked to examples. I will try to find a link.

Sharon

Here it is on the right side of the page:

http://del.icio.us/stewf/organic-fonts

Sharon

@ Sharon

Thanks for that Sharon, that’s really interesting to see and along the lines of what I’m looking at, however I want to create something more intuitive, with a nice GUI, with as Tiffany mentioned an open environment area that people can access to upload their own work, kind of encouraging design community collaboration and sharing.

@ Aluminium

Definitely along the lines of what I want to do, really nice layout and usability, but I want to create something independent (or maybe linked with multiple design groups) but AIGA being an American-centric association, I think possibly loses to some extent it’s international appeal that an independent body might have? What do you think?

I think it’s a great idea.

The challenge, as always, will deciding if/how/when you decide to start moderating the submissions. For ’open call for uploads’ sites to work, you tend to have to take the bad with the good.

I believe there are specific, objective criteria that could be used to judge anything “good” or “bad.” Or, more objectively, “correct” or “incorrect.” Surely there is a lot of subjectivity involved in style, but I do believe there is a right and wrong...surely many of you Typophiles with more experience and knowledge than I can back me up. We do follow “rules,” don’t we?

Would the forum allow for us designers to be judged by our peers...or for designers to be judged by typographers? Wiki-ish? That would be interesting.

This sounds like a great idea to me.

@ Koppa and Aluminium

I really like the idea of a wiki style section for feedback, I think possibly having a section like wikicommons for uploading of pictures where they can be linked to maybe a wiki article on the typeface itself, therefore reinforcing the emphasis on the type?

The actual judging of a piece and being able to moderate raises all sorts of issues, as I agree, how do you say what is good/bad, etc. when design and style is so subjective?

And to everyone, thanks for all your feedback, this is really helpful and appreciated.

You could always incorporate a voting system. Using stars for instance. And what it displays is the average of the votes.

Chris,

Not sure which direction you want this to come from: Is it about typefaces, and examples of them in use, or is it about graphic design, with extra info about typefaces used? The first is a resource I think everyone would welcome, and the rights and permissions of that shouldn’t be terribly restrictive. The second sounds like a portfolio site, with lots of feedback, bickering and contention, and also doesn’t sound like something people need. I see no need for “judging” or other ratings or feedback; that sounds like it goes against the intention of a resource that helps people understand how typefaces perform. Who cares which one is your favorite? I think what people need is a place to see how type looks in various settings, and what it can do for them, before they buy it. Is that what you’re thinking of?

If it’s about the typefaces rather than the products using them, then you do have the challenge of selecting faces to feature. Over time, you could have a lot of typefaces in the library. But every free, grunge, and rip-off face doesn’t need a page of examples. Newer designs without a lot of popular exposure could very much benefit from this kind of demonstration/example site. People are always asking for specimens, and asking if anyone has used a particular face, and how well it works.

Something as simple as a 5-star system, suggested by Miss Tiffany, is precisely what I had in mind.

Regarding “judging” and subjectivity...this goes back to my previous post. It’s not about favorites or style...the proposed star ratings would be about “this is a good (as in the type is approriate and set correctly) example” and this example is “not as good.” This would only be necessary if it was an open portfolio like Flickr, which would undoubtedly attract posters of varying skill, knowledge, and experience, and likely be heavy with lesser experienced students and amateurs who cannot wait to see their work posted on the site.

I’ll assume that people who know what they’re doing wouldn’t need this resource and wouldn’t have much time to dedicate to it.

All of a sudden this is beginning to sound like a train wreck.

But maybe if it was typographers rating the use of type in work done by designers, there’d be some shared interest among both professional communities.

“All of a sudden this is beginning to sound like a train wreck.”

There’s a trade off. Any community site depends heavily on the community that participates on it. The more open you want the community, the more open you have to allow submissions to be. The more closed, the more administrative time and effort that would go into maintaining it all and filtering the submissions in some objective fashion.

Remember that a rating system is only as good as the knowledge of the raters. ;o)

In terms of judging, I think it would be closer to moderating, more of whether a piece is a suitable example of that typeface in use as opposed to the personal preference of the viewer. If means and time allowing there was a want for it to open up to provide extra resource for other disciplines, then that is something that I would have to consider.

The main idea for now is to have a central reference for design, focusing heavily on the typography and how it is used in context, not just to help judge the suitability or the usability of a typeface you might be considering for a piece, but also as a permanent record of that typeface and a research/teaching resource for students and academia (although I could see it open to all sorts of ’find this typeface’ assignment abuse). I wouldn’t want it to end up purely as an extended marketing tool for the type foundries, although I think if they were interested they could be invaluable to enriching the user experience.

I would like the focus when concerned with submissions to be more towards established studios/designers/typographers/etc. but I don’t see it as unfeasible to have an ’education’ section that works with universities to provide coverage of their degree shows, this way I would hope that the students might use the resource and then be showing, hopefully work that in some way has benefited from it. Also bearing in mind that todays students are tomorrows designers and with luck they would as they progress add to the library and essentially be giving something back to the design community.

I like this idea a lot! I can easily see font foundries, design studios and other players jumping on the bandwagon (à la Facebook) if the concept matures well. Right now we have many resources scattered around*, but none of them really lends it self to aggregate all the information about a typeface, and discuss its usage at the same time. So, having a site for this purpose sounds quite interesting, IMO.

*Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/fountaineer/408623655/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/fonts-in-use/
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myriad_%28typeface%29
Delicious http://del.icio.us/stewf/book-cover
Typophile http://typophile.com/forum/7
Typographica http://typographica.org/001124.php
Font ID Guides http://bowfinprintworks.com/SerifGuide/intro.php
http://bowfinprintworks.com/Script01Pg1.html
Identifont http://www.identifont.com/find?font=times&q=Go

Miguel,

Thank you very much for providing all those links, it’s much appreciated.

Miguel,

Thank you very much for providing all those links, it’s much appreciated.

There is also Global Type:
http://www.global-type.org