Man Made DIY

Designer and art director Drew Vanderveen has created "Beardo," a facial hair typeface.

You'll wanna click through, zoom in, and check out the details on this. What he's pulled off is truly amazing.   … read more

There have been several make-your-own-handwriting-into-a-font apps that have popped up over the last few years, but none have actually convinced me to try it until this new solution from Pilot. See, I actually like my handwriting...when I take the time to do it well. Most of the time, if I find myself actually needing to use pencil and paper,  I just end up getting whatever down as quickly as I can. So, it's pretty inconsistent, and I always figured it'd take me twenty-five tries and lots of white-out to come up with a complete alphabet worthy of digitizing.

But, Pilot Handwriting's approach is a bit different. The template looks easy to use, and then you can capture it with your built in webcam, and then edit each letter digitally, within the software itself, so no need for the whole scanner and photoshop song-and-dance.  … read more

There must be tens of thousands of free typefaces online - everything from schoolteacher cursive to graffiti scripts to famous movie fonts can be downloaded for use in personal projects. But, as usual, you get what you pay for, and the majority of these don't have staying power, and only work in specific settings.

Not so, however, with this great collection assembled by Smashing magazine. It's a list of fine free typefaces (outside the free standards, Arial, Verdana, Calibri) that look mighty fine and would fit in a variety of applications.

Having a bit of trouble distinguishing the personalities of various typefaces? Perhaps this will help a bit - "FontStaches" (which should really be typefacestache, but we'll forgive).

It's amazing how much a simple 90-degree rotate gives a character we rarely use so much vibrance and distinctiveness. … read more