Monotype Imaging is a leading global provider of text imaging solutions. They have recently added the eight-font Tanseek Arabic typeface family as an exclusive selection available from the Monotype library. Each font also features the Latin alphabet and combines Arabic and Latin designs into a single typeface solution.

Monotype Imaging believes that Tanseek is the first “system” of its kind designed purposely to combine “serif” and “sans serif” faces to achieve a balanced, visual relationship between the Latin and Arabic alphabets. They claim that the design answer to the challenge of how to succeed typographically when using both Arabic and Latin fonts. The problem lies in the extreme differences between the two alphabets and also that Arabic and Latin fonts have not been traditionally designed to work together.

Tanseek brings harmony between Arabic and Latin-based texts across serif and sans serif styles and a variety of weights to provide a typographic palette for graphic designers. The typeface was designed toward balancing character shape, stroke, width and text color between the two alphabets. The Arabic design provides calligraphic elegance and the Latin counterparts lend aesthetic compatibility and legibility. Tanseek fonts are being used in various industries and world markets, including television channels in Saudi Arabia.

Tasman District Council has decided to simplify its “Tasman District it’s the lifestyle that counts” logo to just the words, ‘Tasman lifestyle” in an effort to have a more relaxed and less busy logo. According to Tasman’s mayor, the new-look two-word logo illustrates the district as a rural area with a good environment, and a nice place to live.

The new logo was replacing one that was too busy, with a lot of colors and outlines, and too many words in an outdated typeface. When the old logo was on a moving background, like a flag, it was diminished. On a small scale, like a business card, it was too small to see and on a window it lost clarity. Minor changes were made to the style of the logo, mostly to aid with reproduction, and irrelevant words were removed, leaving just “Tasman lifestyle.”

The typeface was updated as it was not in keeping with the region’s relaxed, nature-lifestyle image. The new logo has been gradually rolled out, replacing the old one in stages. Big brands with lengthy logos often struggle to get recognized and this is even more of a challenge with destinations because people are more focused on the place and not the advertising. According to the Tasman Deputy Mayor, there was no real cost involved in changing the logo.

The custom-made font for Google’s mobile platform, Android, took almost as long to make as the device itself. Dubbed the Droid, the font is a product of a two-year collaboration between Mountain View, a California-based Internet giant, and Ascender, a digital typeface company based in Elk Grove Village.

Ascender has created fonts for Microsoft, Motorola and others. It got the assignment because its workers knew people on Android’s design and development teams. The company is also a member of Google’s Open Handset Alliance, a coalition of 34 companies working on Android projects. For the Android Google, Ascender wanted a font with “common appeal” and Google requested a design that was friendly and approachable. The first design was “bouncy”: a look in line with the Google logo’s angled lowercase “e.”

Google passed on the design and another proposal featured squared-off edges reminiscent of early computer typefaces. This and several others were rejected in favor of a more neutral design that was useful and comfortable to read. Applications written for Android will also feature Droid as the font and is built into the platform’s software development kit.

The question of what we understand as real and substantial was at the heart of the 1960s avant garde and at the core of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow Up, which deconstructed the world of appearances. His film was a serious part of a process that dismantled the long-standing agreements about money, power and prestige in Britain.

The poster for Blow Up is a rough, mechanically-produced piece of photolithography and is designed to look like a screen print. The image of the model and the photographer in mid-shoot is enlarged to the limits of half-tone photomechanical reproduction. Reduced to a series of dots, the image has begun to lose definition. The visible half-tone effect also positions the image among those associated with documentary and press photographs.

The titles and credits are presented in a typographic style associated with the workaday functionalism of 1960s modernism. The typeface is a condensed sans serif of the kind normally associated with newspaper advertising, headline texts, and information graphics. The relative shortage of letters in big sizes forced the designers to adopt a typographic eclecticism in the arrangements of titles and information.

Terms like “font” and “typeface” have evolved over a considerable amount of time and have seen several transitions in technology. As a result, these terms can sometimes be interpreted in various ways. This produces a terminology that can be seen as esoteric at best and confusing at worst.

To begin, it must be agreed upon the terminology in which situations where font and typeface are used. Mark Simonson over at Typophile says that “the physical embodiment of a collection of letters, numbers, symbols and so on is a font,” while “the design of the collection (the way it looks)” is a typeface. The specific origin of the word font is not entirely clear. Type designer David Berlow believes that it originated in France where “the idea of a spring of water (fontaine) was close enough to the ideas that spring from words.” Another theory says that the term font came from the word fount meaning a source from which words gushed.

Yet another theory suggests that font came from fount and foundry, dating back to the manufacture of type using molten steel. When type were still little blocks of metal or wood and only fit for a specific size, a font was a single point size of a complete set of characters for setting text. With the advent of film type and scalable outlines, the term font became size-independent.