Type design is equal parts suffering and euphoria. It is a walk along a winding road that goes on for many weeks and months before it’s done. A type design brief is like a charter path: It asks you questions, and the answers will guide you to where you want to be.

It will not make the walk much shorter, but the chances of getting lost will be much lower. Below are six questions that will shape the typeface through its first moments of creation and serve as guiding principles through the various stages of the design.

1. What Is The Intended Function Of The Typeface?

A typeface is a group of symbols destined to be rendered as words. The purpose of all letters is to communicate a visual or linguistic message to you, the reader. Sometimes they tell a story in a novel, sometimes the news of the day. At times, they direct you on the highway, while other times they update you on what your friends are having for dinner.

A typeface is a bunch of drawings that come to life when used as text. The words and their context will differ, and, therefore, the function of the typeface will vary according to the intended usage. A typeface designed to shout news headlines at people rushing about to get to work will be different from a typeface designed to capture the delicacy of a French wine.

Deciding on the function of a typeface is the first question that needs to be answered in a design brief. It will be the principle that guides you (the reader and, here, a designer) to judge whether the design works. It is similar to deciding what to wear every morning. Are you going to the beach or the office? Are you going to a party or the gym?

The thing is, even the most gorgeous high heels are not suitable for a treadmill. In the course of designing, you might draw letterforms that look great but do not perform well when put to use. If you’ve already decided on the intended function of the typeface, then the dilemma of choice is less scary.

Gebran2005 is a newspaper headline typeface meant to have a bold and strong visual presence. (View large version)

2. In What Sort Of Media Will It Be Used?

There was a time when all books were printed, and the main use of type was either for text or display. Today, we have added one word that modifies how we read and how we design typefaces: text or display, and where? The nature of ink, paper and the pressure needed to imprint the former onto the latter is very different from the nature of the light emitted from a glowing screen.

The way this affects a design is either subtle or pronounced, depending on how small the text size is and how high the resolution of the screen is. In either case, one needs to know whether the typeface is to be read in print, on screen or both.

Another qualifier quickly presents itself: and in which country? There are regional variations in typographic trends and visual language. Some typefaces are meant to be universal in appeal, and some dedicated to particular regions. Knowing where it will come to life will help you to design a more robust typeface.

Neue Helvetica Arabic for SKY was custom modified to be used in SKY News Arabia’s TV broadcasts and websites. The height of the font has been restricted in order not to require a tall space. (View large version)

3. What Language Does It Speak?

For many years now, typefaces have been conceived to speak in many different scripts and languages. Some design concepts are quite difficult to translate across script systems. With this in mind, map out your character set in order to plan how the design will extend across various scripts. This is also important for managing time, projecting costs (for the client) and collaborating with other designers.

SST was designed as the corporate typeface for Sony, and it supports several scripts, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Thai and Japanese. (SST Arabic by Nadine Chahine, and SST Latin by Akira Kobayashi.) (View large version)

4. What Personality Does It Convey?

If the typeface were a person, who would it be? Would it be male or female? Young or old? Hip or conservative? Sometimes it’s not about the personality, but rather the behavior. Formal or informal? Relaxed or tense? And sometimes it’s about the voice. Loud or soft? Confident or shy?

Determining these traits will help you to visualize the kind of impact the typeface should have, and these are usually connected to function. A typeface meant for newspaper headlines will be loud and confident, rather than shy and soft.

Baraem is the corporate typeface of Baraem TV, targeted at children between the ages of 3 and 6. It’s personality is fun, informal and childlike. (View large version)

5. What Design Characteristics Are Needed Or Desired?

Finally, it is time to talk about the design. Does the intended function call for a serif or sans serif? A handwriting script or all-caps wood blocks? High contrast or mono-linear?

Starting with these questions and staying within the realm of curves and outlines is possible, but a typeface that is strongly tied to a particular function or environment has a better chance of transcending the boundaries of black and white and representing more than just letters and words.

Afandem Dynamic’s is intended as a full-fledged text face in the style of Ottoman Naskh calligraphy. (View large version)

6. Which Calligraphic Or Typographic Style Are You Referencing?

This is where the design engine starts running. If you are designing a sans serif, will it be a humanist or grotesque? Each style has its own conventions of structure, proportion and modulation of strokes.

A typeface is like the human body. The skeleton is the structure underlying the letters. You will see it by drawing a line in the middle of the inner and outer edges. The structure conveys proportion and movement: fast or slow, energetic or relaxed, wide or narrow.

Palatino Arabic and Palatino Sans Arabic have the same skeleton, but the modulation is different. (View large version)

Then you have the flesh. This is the weight around the skeleton. Where you put the thins and thicks will largely be determined by the tool you use to trace the skeleton. Now that you almost have a full body, you must think of the head and feet. Will you have serifs, or do you prefer flats? This is where the design brief splits from a single path into many. If you were to present the first five questions to five different designers, you would likely get different answers to the sixth question and, by extension, different designs.

As such, the sixth question is more of a transitional phase between the conceptual definition of the typeface (i.e. what it is supposed to do and represent) and what it will actually look like.

This is when the real fun begins.

Note: All typefaces included this article were designed by Dr. Nadine Chahine herself.

(al, il)

© Nadine Chahine for Smashing Magazine, 2014.

The idea that the Twitter stream is a window into the future is persuasive. But is it true?

The idea that social media sites such as Twitter can predict the future has a controversial history. In the last few years, various groups have claimed to be able to predict everything from the outcome of elections to the box office takings for new movies.

Open Labs, Engaging Research

UMBC partnership with U.S. Army Research Lab creates new opportunities for teaching and research collaboration.

On January 14, UMBC signed an Educational Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the U.S. Army Research Lab (ARL), the Army�s premier laboratory for basic and applied research and analysis. The agreement provides a framework for collaborations between UMBC faculty and students and ARL researchers.

Tony Moreira, vice provost for academic affairs, says, �Building on the two institutions� shared research interests and strengths, the EPA expands on the opportunities UMBC already offers for teaching and research in and out of the classroom and lab, and provides important new connections for our faculty and students, as well as for ARL researchers.�

This EPA is the latest example of UMBC�s history of developing successful partnerships with federal agencies, while helping to build a skilled workforce and stimulate STEM education and research in Maryland. Don Engel, assistant vice president for research, says, �The ARL mission is reflected in UMBC�s research and education portfolio. ARL is located in Adelphi, Maryland, and at Aberdeen Proving Ground, with UMBC in the middle. We are natural partners, and this new agreement helps to formalize a long history of collaboration, making our shared future even brighter.�

The impetus for the EPA came out of conversations between Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor and chair of information systems, and Barbara Broome �01 M.S., �05 Ph.D., information systems management, ARL�s division chief of information systems. Gangopadhyay approached Tony Moreira about a formal partnership, and the two worked with campus leadership and ARL to establish the agreement.

ARL Director Thomas Russell�s goal is to facilitate more engagement between ARL and universities, and ARL now has similar agreements with 10 other universities across the U.S. �My vision since arriving at ARL has been to open up our laboratories and to create a more open campus feel,� says Russell. �This partnership will give university students who have a strong interest in science, mathematics, engineering and technology the chance to be mentored by our researchers and give them the opportunity to develop their skills. This is a great opportunity for them and for our researchers.�

Initial meetings will enable UMBC and ARL researchers to meet on each campus to learn about similar interests and begin conversations regarding potential collaborative work. In the next few years, Moreira says, he hopes UMBC researchers will be able to take sabbaticals that allow them to conduct research at ARL.

The collaboration also offers the potential for joint funding and publications, potentially in ARL research focus areas such as information systems, computer science, cybersecurity, networks, sensors, communications, mathematics and statistics, human dimensions, human systems integration, synthetic biology, power, quantum information processing, natural language processing and robotics.

At the same time, UMBC students will participate in internships at ARL and learn from ARL guest lecturers on campus. Future plans include bringing in ARL scientists as graduate mentors and advisors, and creating post-doc appointments at ARL.

An advisory committee comprised of UMBC and ARL staff will meet regularly to monitor and develop EPA initiatives.

For more information on the UMBC-ARL EPA, email Tony Moreira. Read more about the specifics of the EPA agreement at the U.S. Army website.

(02/18/2014)

With Squarespace (and similar platforms) out in the market, Do-It-Yourself website design just got more powerful.

Here’s what it means for website developers in terms of leveraging Squarespace as a development tool and in terms of adding value to what Squarespace cannot do.

The web development pie, did it just get smaller?

Back in the days when organizations used to spend oodles of dollars just for a CMS system and licensing alone (and this was on top of the cost of CMS set-up or customization) the breakdown of time invested on different parts of the “web development effort” looked something like this:

• ~1/3 development – consisting of theming, commoditized development (i.e. anything you can get a plug-in or 3rd party library to just “do”), and custom development.
• ~1/4 project management and communication (depending on size of project).
• ~5/12 was vision & visuals (e.g. brand strategy, visual design, usability, content).

In this era, open source platforms like Drupal and WordPress were in their infancy. They existed, but they didn’t have the market penetration they do today.

As time passed, the Drupals, the WordPresses, and the like, did become mainstream. In fact, they dropped the bottom out of what developers could charge for a CMS. In fairness, they also dropped the bottom out of the work involved to set up a site with a CMS.

So we see a chunk of the development pie, goes away:

Today, platforms like Squarespace have “widgeted” the theming part of development. So now the development portion of the pie (sometimes) looks like this:

And five years from now? A reasonable prediction is that the custom coding needs (in the general sense) will drop out of the picture.

Is the web development pie getting smaller?

The answer is a resounding, “Sometimes!”. Basically, modern CMS’s and Squarespace have diminished the need for programmers having to do things that they had to do in the past.

Depending on the project this can mean:

1. The programmer’s role is very small or almost nil
2. The programmer can now be tasked with bigger, better, and greater custom things that are business relevant
3. The project is such that a Squarespace type solution won’t suffice anyway, so nothing much has changed.

What does Squarespace do really well?

Squarespace, essentially, removes the need for a programmer to be very involved in the main stream production of a website (of a certain scale and complexity).

Squarespace provides

• A powerful and easy-to-use CMS
• Very flexible page layout control
• It’s responsive and mobile friendly out-of-the-box
• It has some current trendy features such as parallax scrolling
• A wide feature set including menus, blogs, commerce, etc.

The learning curve isn’t too bad. In terms of Squarespace’s controls for styling, layout, and page controls, a web designer / developer of some reasonble ability level can become a “power user” within an hour or two.

Squarespace makes it easy to iterate and rapid prototype ideas

I’m a designer with a knack for content, branding and strategy. So when I’m working a site whose eventual destination is Drupal or WordPress (or similar), I start designing in Photoshop. Then a programmer takes my work into the CMS of choice.

However, on a Squarespace project, I do my design, development, architecting, content development and experimentation with photos right on the site. I will admit, that at first, I was daunted by this approach. But pretty quickly, I got comfortable with it. Being able to (without going to a programmer) iterate through branding, messaging, content & copywriting, navigation & architecture, design, colors, layout, photos, etc. to develop a complete website is a heady feeling.

What people & roles do you need to rock a Squarespace project?

Branding & messaging experts

Your clients will still need help identifying, articulating and presenting key ideas to their audience. No technology out there can do this kind of thinking, strategizing, asking of pointed questions, gathering of insights and aha’s, and drawing of key conclusions. Web development houses need to make sure their people have got good chops for this key piece.

I love this quote from one of my favorite clients, who’s the Director of Communications & Marketing at a reputable private school in New England:

Branding isn’t about re-inventing who you are. It’s about REVEALING who you are.

- Cheri Cross, Director of Communications & Marketing, Northfield Mount Hermon

Designers (with the right attitude)

I’ve observed cases when a designer feels discouraged that they’re put on a Squarespace project, because they feel like too many design choices are beyond their reach. However, the designers who get creative with how to master those tools, and still create unique feeling designs, will have the most success. And the most fun!

For example, one of our clients is a unique studio gym, tucked away in a small-town of Western Massachusetts. Unlike their big-box competitors (that often have less experienced or “clock punching” trainers), Fitness Fusion offers creative and intense group training and 1-1 personal training delivered by committed experts who know their stuff. They differentiate from the crossfits out there by serving all fitness levels through a customized approach (unlike Crossfit’s nationwide “workout of the day”) and through emphasis on fundamentals in form (for better results and injury avoidance).

The key messages garnered from branding and strategy conversations were:

1. This is a gym for all levels who want to give 100%
2. You’ll get creative and interesting workouts
3. It’s a supportive, judgement-free atmosphere

We customized Squarespace’s “Marquee” theme to create the site. But instead of a full-screen image on the home page (which is an option in this theme), we wanted it to do a little more. Squarespace doesn’t yet support full-screen video as an interface design element. But that’s what we wanted, so here’s how we worked around it.

We hired a kick-ass videographer, Kirby Productions, to shoot video of “all levels” of people doing sprints. Then we took the raw video, compressed it, made it grayscale, and converted into an animated .gif. (Black & White is better for loading, even in today’s high bandwidth environments). And it has an intentionally gritty feel that works for the gym’s brand while feeling “cool” and conveying all levels. As an added bonus, we used parallax scrolling on the home page too (another feature of the Marquee theme).

Good copywriters

I’m assuming that it’s a given that good web copywriting will incorporate best practices in terms of:

• Making content digestible and scannable with multiple entry points
• Use of headings and sub-headings
• Use of negative space
• Pictures, icons, video, diagrams
• Minimizing “happy talk” (The term “happy talk” was coined by Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think.)

But, designers and copywriters would also do well to remember that figuring out what to say and how to deliver the message is about being an actor and playing a few roles simultaneously:

Role #1: Outside consultant: with industry expertise, perspective, savvy

Role #2: Client stakeholder(s) perspective: Be it the owner, CEO, Director of Marketing, etc. or some combination of these roles.

Role #3: The end customer

Also, web content professionals who understand the convergence design and content being developed in concert with one another, will have an edge.

Some developer support

To make little customizations and help with any items that are more technical, it’s helpful to have access to a programmer for a Squarespace project. But in general, the programmer’s role would be minimal.

When is Squarespace not enough?

The “Squarespace’s” out there do gobble up the theming component from the pie, but is Squarespace the answer all the time?

Absolutely not.

When is something more like Drupal or WordPress the right choice?

• When you have more than a couple of editors.
• When you have custom workflow (e.g. Squarespace plain and simply does not have versioning of a page, and does not support an approval process).
• When you have specialized permissions in terms of who can edit what.
• When your layout needs are more specific or specialized than can be covered by the controls that Square Space has to offer.
• When you start to need to custom funtions. If this is the case you want the developer to the hooks and the control at their fingertips (e.g. searchable, sortable staff directory, course catalog, integration with certain payment gateway, special security needs, password protected areas, LDAP integration, sub-sites, etc.)

We recently worked with Smith College to redesign the website for their libraries. The tool of choice for this project was, hands down, Drupal. Why?

First, organization-wide, Smith College was already making a conversion to Drupal. From the college’s point of view, having all of their major sites using the same platform just makes sense.

Second, a “Squarespace” type platform would not be able to gracefully handle the level of custom content, display, and integrated features that this project required.

To offer another example, we collaborated with the team at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to create the museum’s blog rollup (a site that was nominated for a Webby Award). The Museum identified WordPress as their blogging platform, as internal and external requirements clearly pointed to a need for a platform more robust than a Squarespace type CMS.

Words of wisdom for the web professional

Letting some projects pass you by isn’t always a bad thing.

For web development firms that really focus on “heavy lifting” in terms of development and programming, then there may be new projects that come under their noses that they pass on. That said, the Guggenheim’s and the Nike’s of the world will always need more custom solutions with more horsepower and developer control.

Be ready for your development teams to take a different shape.

We’re a small design shop working on projects of varying size from low to mid 5-figures on up into the 6-figures, typically everyone on our team is contributing to multiple projects simultaneously.

As we assemble teams, allocate resources, and manage “traffic” (e.g. who’s working on what projects) we are seeing projects that are more developer heavy (not Squarespace) and those that are less so (yes Squarespace).

Do you work with Squarespace, or a similar tool? Do you think Squarespace threatens the design industry? Let us know in the comments. 

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Isolator++ mocking framework enables testing C/C++ code written on Windows, including legacy code.

They’re not just disruptive—these 50 companies are also intelligent in the way they build their businesses.

The 50 companies on our annual list of the “smartest” businesses in the world make disruptive technologies. The phrase is much abused by technologists. Mostly, it just means “new and good.” Insofar as it can be used precisely, it must be employed as Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who coined the phrase, intended: he wanted to convey the idea that certain innovations possess “attributes” that create new (initially low-end) markets and displace existing businesses.

These businesses are setting the pace of innovation. They’re shaking up markets or creating new ones.

It may have finally found the missing piece it needs to move beyond relying solely on advertising.

When it comes to developing software, few companies can match Google’s prowess. It doesn’t just have the most popular search engine. Chrome is the most widely used Internet browser. Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheets, Docs, and Presentations are legitimate alternatives to Microsoft Office. Picasa, Google’s free photo management software, might be as good as anything from Apple. Android dominates the phone and tablet landscape. Google Maps is becoming the best navigation program on any device.

You won’t believe how these guys redefined viral content on the Web.

Upworthy is one of the fastest-growing websites ever, despite producing only minimal original material. Instead, Upworthy highlights videos that people have posted online about gay marriage, health care reform, racial prejudice, gender equality, and other subjects that interest the site’s liberal curators. The founders—Eli Pariser, who had led the left-wing political group MoveOn, and Peter Koechley, former managing editor of the satirical publication the Onion—started the site to help progressive-friendly content spread virally online, even if that means coöpting some sensational tactics from sites that propagate videos of cute cats. They spoke to MIT Technology Review’s deputy editor, Brian Bergstein.