Typographic Cleanup Routines; Typography In Modern Design; Dash

Two thinkpieces and a super cool font await your perusal!

TL;DR

(This is an AI-generated summary of today’s Drop.)

• Typographic Cleanup Routines: This section emphasizes the importance of meticulous typographic cleaning to enhance the visual appeal and effectiveness of text communication. It highlights the process of eliminating common errors like double spaces and using the correct form of apostrophes to refine text, as detailed in Bruno Bernard’s post on Café Typô. https://brunobernard.com/en/my-typographic-cleaning-routine-of-a-text/
• Typography In Modern Design: Discusses the critical role of typography in modern design and its impact on crafting visual narratives. The article by Viral Mehta on LinkedIn provides insights into the use of fonts, size, spacing, and color in making written language legible, readable, and visually appealing. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/typography-modern-design-crafting-visual-narratives-viral-mehta–5txhf/
• Dash: Introduces Dash, a connected script typeface with four “speeds” or styles, offering a unique way to add personality and expression to digital text. This modern typeface allows for the adjustment of the ‘speed’ of digital handwriting, adding a layer of emotion or urgency to the text. https://www.typotheque.com/blog/dash-a-typeface-with-different-speeds-and-expressions

---

Typographic Cleanup Routines

Since you read these Drops and are reading this regular Tuesday edition, you are keenly aware that typography can either be a force multiplier or a significant detractor of effective communication. It’s not just about selecting appealing fonts; it’s a focus on detail, making sure each letter, and every punctuation mark, along with every space aligns harmoniously to deliver a message not just with clarity, but with beauty and, dare I say, class? A great deal of that focus means rolling one’s sleeves up and doing the hard work of typographic cleaning, a meticulous process that transforms cluttered, awkward text into polished, professional content. Let’s take a look at this process through the lens Bruno Bernard created in this post on Café Typô.

Fundamentally, typographic cleaning is about refining text to meet the unrelenting standards of excellence. This involves a series of steps designed to eliminate common errors and inconsistencies that can mar the visual appeal of any given text. One of the first steps in this cleaning routine, according to Bruno, is addressing the issue of double spaces — an artifact of the typewriter era that persists in the digital age. These extra spaces, though seemingly minor, can disrupt the visual flow of text. And, there’s really no excuse for letting them slip by, given it’s a simple find-and-replace operation (that one might even be able to toss in a script/macro).

The post posits that another core aspect of typographic cleaning is the correct use of apostrophes. The standard typewriter apostrophe, while functional, lacks the elegance of its curly counterpart. This distinction might seem trivial to the untrained eye, but it can make a difference (I confess to neglecting to heed LanguageTool’s suggestions for this when I am in a hurry, even though it can fix them with one click). Thankfully, many markdown editors can do this for you (along with tools like the aforementioned LanguageTool).

These, and other assertions by the author, may seem like mere minutiae. But, you’d be surprised at how this attention to details can help your creations stand from the multi-metric ton of content that is birthed every day. Think of the task of typographic cleaning as what a lapidarist (fancy word!) does to make a fine gem; it’s — literally — the final touch that can make the ordinary extraordinary.

The piece is a quick read with some great advice that I need to heed more often.

Typography In Modern Design

I’ve found useful typographic knowledge in many, er, odd places, but I never expected to find any on the world’s most toxic positivity site (LinkedIn). Yet, Viral Mehta’s piece on Typography in Modern Design: Crafting Visual Narratives is pretty darned solid. So much so, that we’ll only poke around the edges of it so you tap over there to read the whole thing (don’t linger! Microsoft has some evil JavaScript on that site).

Typography can be described as the art of arranging glyphs and text to make written language legible, readable, and visually appealing. Modern design relies heavily on typography, and it’s use in what we see around us influences how we perceive and interact with each of these creations.

We’ve come a long way from ancient scrolls and have far more choices of font, size, spacing, and color. Each plays an important role in helping us craft compelling messages.

As you dig through Mehta’s quite digestible tome, I think you’ll find some ace assertions, and to-the-point posits, that might help you (and me) as we work to get better at our typographic endeavors

Dash

Thinkpieces are great, and all, but sometimes we just need some new fonts to play with.

Dash is a connected script typeface, but to call it just that would be an understatement. It comes in four “speeds” of writing, each adding a layer of personality and expression that’s still pretty uncommon, even in variable font land. Imagine being able to adjust the speed of your digital handwriting, from a slow, thoughtful scrawl to a quick, energetic dash (pun, intended — though mine would still be illegible). This can help infuse the words presented in our glowing rectangles with a sense of urgency, emotion, or calm.

Go! And, play with this pretty neat and modern typeface.

FIN

Remember, you can follow and interact with the full text of The Daily Drop’s free posts on Mastodon via @dailydrop.hrbrmstr.dev@dailydrop.hrbrmstr.dev ☮️