U&lc Issue: 28.1.1

The nature of the type world keeps changing. And any online publication is, by definition, about change. U&lc Online began life as an online companion to U&lc, ITC’s award-winning magazine; from here on in, it will begin a new life, in a new format, as ITC’s online voice. Expect the unexpected. U&lc Online is ITC’s international journal of graphic design and digital media. U&lc Online needs no subscription; it’s part of the ITC web site, itcfonts.com. To read U&lc Online, just bookmark this page and check it out every month.

Smart Quotes One of the most irritating typographic faux pas is the use of straight quotation marks (also called “dumb” quotes).

Letter Series: H Stable and symmetrical, with both feet planted firmly on the ground, the H has been predictable in its design and use throughout much of its history.

Featured Designer: Carol Kemp Imagine an artist’s studio in an idyllic garden, with views of the rolling Sussex countryside, beautiful and picturesque. Carol Kemp works here, and seems perfectly at home.

Letter Series: G It’s not every day a letter turns 2,314 years old. And unlike most of our alphabet, the G has a birthday (all right, a birth year) to celebrate.

Hyphens, En-dashes and Em-dashes Hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes are frequently used punctuation marks that are just as frequently misunderstood.

Illustrating With Type Standing alone, a well-crafted letterform is a work of art. Set in lines of text, the same letters assume a selfless anonymity, devoting themselves to conveying the meaning of the language.

Letter Series: F In its earliest years, the letter that evolved into our F was an Egyptian hieroglyph that literally was a picture of a snake.

Register, Trademark and Copyright Symbols Register, trademark and copyright symbols are important communicators. They help establish brand identities and protect creative work from theft or plagiarism.

Book Review: Historical Scripts Stan Knight has done a great service to those of us who love letters. His revised and expanded second edition of Historical Scripts is a significant work of scholarship and a rich visual record of a thousand years of change in the forms of the written word.

Letter Series: E As any Scrabble player will tell you, ‘e’ has always been an important letter in our alphabet, used more often than any other.

Rags, Widows & Orphans Rags, widows and orphans – sounds more like a Dickens novel than type! In spite of their odd names, these concepts are important to understand if good typography is your goal.

Dave Farey: Master Craftsman “I’m a craftsman, not an innovator,” claims David Farey. “I need a vehicle to be able to express my interpretation of a typeface.” While no one would dispute Farey’s ability as a type designer, it is true that his most successful typefaces are based on the work of others.

Handwriting Fonts If you love the convenience of creating and printing documents from your computer, but miss the informal, personal touch of handwriting, here’s a handy idea!

Typographic Branding The more components a brand identity contains, the more onerous it can be. An increasingly popular alternative is a hard-working, purely typographic wordmark that speaks clearly for the brand, all by itself.

Calligraphic Fonts Calligraphic fonts provide a hand-drawn immediacy to any project. This increasingly popular category of typefaces offers a wide range of moods and styles.

Letter Series: D Much of our alphabet is built on a representational strategy called “acrophony” (from the Greek acro, meaning “uppermost; head” and phony, “sound”).