"For over 25 years Microsoft has been very focused on the development of type and type technologies. In order to fully understand the technical foundations of typography in Windows, a brief overview of some of the highlights of “typographic engineering” from the past 500 years can add some useful insight."

Originally for @fontdeck, it may be useful for typophiles: ‘Font naming conventions’ —

Paul Shaw for Imprint: "It is not a list of my favorite typefaces, nor is it a list of the most popular typefaces. Instead, it is a list of typefaces that have been “important” for one reason or another. However, I am not going to provide my reasons." (Paul ends up sharing his reasons in a comment — the comments are fantastic.)

John Downer on the processes of founding type, with thoughts on stylistic origin, imitation, and revival.

John Downer for Emigre on the semantic differences between typeface revivals, recuttings, reclamations, anthologies, surveys, remixes, knockoffs, clones, counterfeits, reconsiderations, reevaluations, reinterpretations, homages, tributes, paeans, encores, sequels, reprises, extensions, spinoffs, variations, caricatures, parodies, and burlesques.

"General type classifications such as sans, serif, and display are often too broad. Sometimes you know what kind of serif you’re looking for — a Venetian, for example. Here we break down the main classes into useful subcategories."

Typophiles discuss typeface pairing.

Try Web FontFonts on any website.

"Simply adding a glyph with a ligature to your font doesn’t mean the program you’re using knows when or how to apply it. Whether you want your typeface to change the sequence of f|f|i into the appropriate ligature or want to use old-style figures instead of tabular, you’ll need to add features to your font — glyph substitution definitions — to make it happen."

Wonderful technical insight on the process of making font files, from Karsten Luecke Type Foundry.

The Glyph Positioning table (GPOS) provides precise control over glyph placement for sophisticated text layout and rendering in each script and language system that a font supports.

Simurai: "But what if you wanna turn text into smoke? Luckily you can set the text-fill-color to transparent and that gives your text a really nice smoky blur."

James Felici: "Having spent years as a proofreader in a commercial type shop, I’ve created the following checklist of typographic details to make that final once-over easier. I’ve divided this list into two halves: problems that can be located using electronic tools and problems that require human eyes and judgments."

"A simple extraction of some of the work I've been doing with rePublish, here's an unobtrusive approach to presenting properly sized text for any reading device that might happen upon your carefully written text. Don't worry about your layout; Any approach is fine, whether fluid or fixed, grid or not."

Andy Appleton: "There is no way in CSS to specify italics for one font in a font stack and roman for another, so we need something a little bit more clever…"

Miguel Sousa: "In names like INDD or TIFF, one of the double letters would look good whereas the other would be fuzzy. This was happening because Adobe Clean is a proportional design, which meant that sometimes the vertical stems of the glyphs would align nicely with the pixel boundaries and render sharply, and other times they wouldn't. So what I had to do was to change each glyph in a way that when rasterized it would adjust to the pixel grid more gracefully. The changes consisted of using a multiple of 125* for the glyphs' advanced widths, and modifications to the outlines of the smallest size font."

Online application that presents all glyphs from a TTF or OTF font, including their OpenType alternatives (GSUB and GPOS).

Jon Black: "OpenType (OT) is a cross-platform type for mat that includes expert lay out fea tures to pro­vide richer lin guis tic sup port and advanced typo graphic con trol. Using OT tech nol ogy you can sub sti tute your char ac ters for dif fer ent glyphs using many dif fer ent meth ods; Ligatures, Small Caps, Oldstyle Figures, Fractions, Superscript/Subscript, Ordinals, Alternates, Titling Characters and many more."

John Boardley's response to Vignelli’s "We use way too many fonts."

"With serifs or sans? Handwritten or typed? Traditional or Avant-Garde? These are just some of the factors to consider when choosing a font. With a plethora of choices from Helvetica to Futura, let Hunch help you choose which typeface to use next."

Feature tags and friendly names.

"A few minutes into the session I looked around to see who was recording this historic event. Noone was, and apart from lucky participant such as myself, this spectacle has been lost for ever. That is when I decided that I would record as many conference talks as I could, in order to archive them for future generations."

SXSW presentation from Bert Bos, co-creator of CSS, on why we are where we are: "When W3C proposed to resurrect the Fonts Working Group in order to standardize the next version of EOT, the three browser makers [Opera, Mozilla, Apple] protested violently."

Flickr set by :nike. More info from Luc Devroye: "C.G. Naumann is Carl Gustav Naumann, who ran a family printing business in Leipzig. In 1901, he published Schriftproben der Firma C.G. Naumann."

Disabling ClearType with CSS filter and zoom properties.

"This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically. The contents of this specification are a consolidation of content previously divided into CSS3 Fonts and CSS3 Web Fonts modules."

Glyphs is a project to build a font-editor with usability and design in mind. Main Features: Edit text in context of words; Only necessary interface elements; Good integration in the operating system and connection to the design workflow; Plugin interface for extending the functionality; Scripting support.

"Type or paste text in any of the green or grey shaded boxes and click on the button Convert button above it. Alternative representations will appear in all the other boxes."

"In addition to being a growing directory and aggregator for wood type and letterpress works and information on the web, the EndGrain features my humble collection of wood letters. I also want to use the blog as an opportunity to do experimental printing with my type and to do a little digging into the history of the different typefaces."

"All of the fonts on Fontspring that are marked as '@Font-Face Ready' can be downloaded and used in your websites without recurring subscription costs. [...] Our best license allows you the designer to use the fonts in an unlimited number of domains under your control. Other fonts must be purchased by the number of domains you expect to use them on."

"Since it was produced in 1978, Final Marks has become a classic documentary about lettercutting, in both monumental inscriptions and on gravestones. The filmmakers were given complete access over a two year period to the work of the craftsmen of the John Stevens Shop in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest business in the United States still in continuous operation in the same colonial building. It chronicles the work of John ‘Fud’ Benson, then the owner and principal designer, and, arguably, one of the most accomplished letter cutters in the world, as he and his colleagues lay out and then execute the inscriptions on the then unfinished East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., designed by I.M. Pei."

Extensive collection of links, including type-related articles, blogs, forums, tutorials, software, organizations, movies, magazines, and inspiration. Plus type designers listed alphabetically, and foundries listed by worldly region. Curated by Donald Roos and Robert-Jan van Noort.

Jonathan Hoefler's wonderful (free) typographic history lesson at Typophile. Flash-based, which you might find annoying; However, being able to zoom in close is handy.

Michael Bierut: "Some typefaces are just perfect for certain things. I've specified exotic fonts for identity programs that work beautifully in headlines and even in text, but sooner or later you have to set that really tiny type at the bottom of the business reply card. This is what Franklin Gothic is for."

Ideas, resources, and creative inspiration from web designer Tim Brown.