hrbrmstr's Daily Drop

  • Drop #674 (2025-07-01): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s typography-centric edition of the Drop highlights the significance of small symbols like reference marks in typography, which aid in guiding readers while maintaining text flow. It features Gentium Plus, a versatile font with extensive multilingual support, and reveals how Apple’s historical design elements reside in its Symbols font, showcasing a nuanced connection to technology’s…

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  • Drop #670 (2025-06-24): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s typography-centric edition of the Drop features 3 monospaced fonts: Wumpus Mono, a freemium font designed for programming; Annotation Mono, a customizable variable font; and 🍁 Mono, a multilingual offering. Each font caters to specific needs in coding aesthetics and functionality, with a focus on legibility and innovative design.

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  • Drop #666 (2025-06-17): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s ominously numbered typography edition of the Drop explores the darker aspects of typography, focusing on Zalgo text, a chaotic representation achieved through Unicode, and Hellvetica, a subversively broken Helvetica font that distorts readability. It also discusses the Seven Deadly Sins of Typography, named after common mistakes, emphasizing how design can influence communication and provoke…

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  • Drop #659 (2025-06-03): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s typography-centric edition of the Drop again discusses the risks posed by modern printer surveillance, which can trace printed materials back to their sources, highlighting the importance of returning to analog methods like letterpress printing for security. It also features two free fonts: Comic Shanns Mono and Empty Marker, suitable for coding and creative uses,…

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  • Drop #652 (2025-05-13): Typography Tuesday

    Today’st typography-centric edition of the Drop covers recent typography controversies that include the improper kerning on Pope Francis’ tombstone, which highlighted the importance of precise letter spacing, and the criticism of Nebula Sans for mislabeling itself as “humanist.” Both incidents reflect how typography shapes perceptions and can evoke strong reactions from communities, surpassing mere decorative…

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  • Drop #650 (2025-05-06): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s typography-centric edition of the Drop discusses typography’s impact on design, emphasizing advanced OpenType features like variable fonts, alternates, and swashes to enhance visual appeal. It highlights the importance of choosing bold sans-serif fonts for thumbnails to attract viewers and encourages exploring curated minimalistic web designs at Dead Simple Sites for inspiration on clean aesthetics.

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  • Drop #646 (2025-04-30): Web-Slinging Wednesday

    The midweek Drop covers advanced CSS features, including the CSS text-box-trim for precise vertical text spacing control, Kate Morley’s 12-bit rainbow palette for improved data visualization using the LCH color space, and the CSS Shapes Module which enables non-rectangular content flow, enhancing layout and design flexibility.

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  • Drop #645 (2025-04-29): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s edition of the Drop explores typographic infrastructure, highlighting IKEA’s journey from traditional fonts to modern self-hosting solutions. It also presents FontDiffuser, a framework that enhances font generation through innovative diffusion techniques. The featured free font, Costaline, balances contemporary elegance with classic elements, offering diverse styles and multilingual support.

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  • Drop #643 (2025-04-22): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s typography-centric edition of The Drop highlights new developments and challenges in font design. Key points include Microsoft’s Kermit typeface aimed at aiding children with dyslexia, the issues related to thin fonts causing accessibility problems, and the declining status of the em dash due to AI overuse in writing, threatening typographic culture.

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  • Drop #639 (2025-04-15): [Tardy] Typography Tuesday

    Today’s [tardy — due to DOGE] Typography Tuesday covers a study questioning I-beam designs using typeface cross-sections, the manicule’s historical significance as a symbol, and a modern sans serif font, Ronzino, contrasting with Arial in design and functionality.

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