Geek Perspective

I switched to Fontcase a few weeks ago, and I’ve been very happy with it. I feel like it’s more of a pleasure to use than the other font management programs I’ve used. It just feels like more love was put into the design of the interface itself.

I’ve begun the long process of adding things like ratings and tags to all my fonts. While doing so last night, I rounded up 30 sans serif typefaces that I think are pretty good. Being able to print out a sample page for a typeface is pretty standard for font management programs, so I went ahead and made a PDF for those 30 fonts from their sample pages.

Enjoy.

Just look at those fonts. Aren’t they beautiful? They’re my favorite 30 sans serifs right now, but I keep changing my mind. They’re in alphabetical order since I keep flip-flopping about how I’d rank them against each other. Five that would definitely be around the top though are Interstate, Din, Puritan 2.0, Droid Sans, and Trade Gothic.

I uploaded the file for anybody who likes typography, but for people who also need professional font management programs, I think it’s also a good example of how Fontcase just has a more polished, attractive way of presenting everything. The sample pages are meant to be printed out, but I still think they’re beautiful on the screen. And obviously there’s a boatload of other ways to look at fonts.

Anybody who says typography isn’t super interesting  is full of baloney.

I just got back from registering for my next classes at AAU, and here they are.

Winter Intercession
January 11 to 29

1. Art History Through the 19th Century – Monday through Friday, Online

I’m taking a class during the intercession to get more credits out of the way, and it’s going to be tough because it’s compressing a 15-week class into 3 weeks. To put it another way, that’s a 1-week module of art history per day, so I’m going to hate my life for a while but it should be over pretty quickly. And since it’s online, I can still come home at least.

Spring Semester
February 1 to May 22

1. General Psychology – Tuesday, 12:00-2:50 pm
2. Digital Design 1 – Tuesday, 3:30-6:20 pm
3. English Composition: Creative Persuasion – Wednesday, 12:00-2:50 pm
4. Digital Photography – Thursday, 12:00-2:50 pm

I’m at the point now where I’m starting to take electives, so I think my spring semester is going to be really enjoyable. I don’t think the workload will be super heavy like the semester I naively took Fundamentals of Graphic Design at the same time as Materials, Tools, and Comping Techniques. I might even join the swim team too.

This extra short in-class writing assignment was an exercise in being frugal with words. The first sentence had to have exactly 10 words, then the next one had to have 9, then 8, and so on.

“I can’t believe it’s not butter!” sang the boy, grinning. He was just like a commercial: thrilled, bouncing, mindless.

Is this what today’s youth has come to? Superheroes and spaceships replaced by stupid slogans? Where did all the dreams go? Boy, we let them down. We were terrible shepherds.

It’s too late. We’re zombies. Dead.

For each of these three quick in-class writing assignments, the instructor gave us a few things that the stories had to include, but the fun part was that we weren’t allowed to directly state some of them. I’ll include the bullets after each story so you can see if you figured out what was going on.

I think the third one is the most amusing, but also the most obscure.