Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Your Website

This is topic Your Website in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Braden Mailloux (Member # 2229) on 04-02-2004, 01:16 AM:

Please let me make some new graphics for your site... dear god. This site looks circa 1995.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-02-2004, 01:26 AM:

Tick...tick...tick...

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 04-02-2004, 01:34 AM:

Lets see, you were what, 9 in 1995. I'm sure you've got a perfect recollection of what the internet looked like in 1995. [Roll Eyes]

Anyone using Lynx knows it's all about the content anyway.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-02-2004, 01:52 AM:

Oh NO! ***ANOTHER*** "Brainiac"!

>>> Phil

Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 04-02-2004, 02:18 AM:

On an earlier incarnation of my own website (The WBW), I had a link on the index page, under the main "ENTER" link, which read "2400 baud modem users enter here", which took you to a page I designed strictly to look like a no-content, no-graphics, gray-background, Times-New-Roman, no-margins, horizontal-bars-everywhere type site, circa 1994-95. Of course it was all for humouristic effect (and I know that modems had surpassed 2400 baud by then ... BARELY) and I got several laughs for it. Parodies are fun.

In fact, I should mock up another one for my current site ... it'll be fun.

Posted by Ron Lacheur (Member # 1126) on 04-02-2004, 02:49 AM:

Film-Tech has a basic, simple layout. It makes it easy to find information and to navigate. Flash or Dreamweaver or any of that glitzy crap probably just eats unnecessary bandwidth anyways.

If you have a problem with the graphics, speak with Joe [Wink]

Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 04-02-2004, 02:53 AM:

Yeah, I'm all for simple, basic, straightforward, efficient website design. Although, I do have a thing against frames. [Razz]

Concerning "fancy" and "high-tech" websites ... well, if I get one more damned RUNTIME ERROR ... Argh! And re-installing Explorer hasn't worked. Simple layouts rule!

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-02-2004, 02:53 AM:

Ron, Joe ONLY speaks to people that have over 400 posts. He's one arrogant SOB!

But! Brad and/or Adam will speak to "anyone" ... including myself. [Wink]

>>> Phil

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 04-02-2004, 03:05 AM:

Joe is my official spokesperson. He says the things that I would never dare think of to begin with, yet wonder what it would be like to say them and get away with it.

Joe is my hero. [sex]

Dave

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 04-02-2004, 03:13 AM:

Go ahead and make some. Either they will be good and we will use them or they will suck and we will ridicule you for them. Just remember, you started it! [evil]

Regardless, there will be no damned Flash or nonsense like that. This website is for the spread of information, not to look all snazzy and pretty.

In the meantime, read the FAQ about teaser subject titles.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-02-2004, 04:31 AM:

What? NO FLASH! Damn! I want the Badgers!

>>> Phil

Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 04-02-2004, 05:33 AM:

Don't you just love it when Brad pops in and informs everyone of Teaser titles??? I DO. Joe will pop in a while saying that if anyone alters his logos and layout he will pop there and give them one of his special Booth Training programs!!!
Good luck to you. If your logos don't come out well remember that Brad will be the first to ridicule you. I will try to be the second [Smile]

Posted by Mike Williams (Member # 1140) on 04-02-2004, 09:59 AM:

If you want to add some cool flash, be sure there is a Film-tech version of this one..... Zombo.com

Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 04-02-2004, 10:08 AM:

This site is perfectly fine the way it is. I absolutely hate FLASH and all that fancy-schmancy crap.

Posted by Rachel Gilardi (Member # 1016) on 04-02-2004, 10:29 AM:

FT is meant to look boring. If you want some good graphics go to Phil's sex den. Oh wait, it's not there anymore. Nevermind...

Posted by Mike Williams (Member # 1140) on 04-02-2004, 12:39 PM:

quote:
This site is perfectly fine the way it is. I absolutely hate FLASH and all that fancy-schmancy crap.

I agree... [Roll Eyes]

I personally think flash is not necessary unless you like playing games like the ones on The Addicting Games Website . That is why I put that link in my last post. I was being sarcastic.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 04-02-2004, 08:00 PM:

This whole website sucks. And talk about BORING! Projectors, projectors, projectors. Jeez. Somebody shoot me. [Razz]

And do you, by chance, work at the Sonoma Cinemas? Gosh, that place looks so 1994.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-02-2004, 08:33 PM:

This site has experimented with Flash in the past. We had a Flash intro with Evans and myself (that was completely retarded) that I designed as well as Flash navigational buttons. But we found that Flash wasn't compaitble with everyone and it was just too "bloaty" for lack of a better term.

I have come to hate websites designed in Flash. They move too slowly from one page to the next. But people love it due to all of the silly sounds and transitions you can make, and 99.999999999999999999999999% of Flash web designers overuse/misuse Flash when they make a website by just trying to make it fancy.[av=c]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-02-2004, 09:25 PM:

I hate sites that have a flash intro and they have a link that says "skip intro" so you click it (because you are on dialup) and then IT STILL LOADS THE WHOLE INTRO ANYWAY before skipping it. [Mad]

Simple = good. It has been a while since the FTF logo changed though...I remember in the old days a couple of years ago, it used to change every couple of weeks.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-02-2004, 09:29 PM:

Mike, are you talking about the Film-Tech logo on the main page, or the Film-Tech Forums logo? If you are talking about the main page logo, it used to change every time you came to the site. And it still does if you link to Film-Tech with a banner![av=c]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-02-2004, 10:34 PM:

Since no else has bothered do so (and risk being flamed) I'll stand up and defend the use of Flash....

...that is, Flash done sensibly.

Many wannabe graphic artists out there seem to have no clue at all Flash can be used to display non animated, still graphics. They only seem to use Flash whenever they want to stall someone with a pretentious 600K intro download.
[fu]

Flash can display still image graphics, like logos and even graphic illustrations with better quality and better file size efficiency than GIF. JPEG doesn't even need to apply.

A lot of people don't bother to explore Flash for still graphics image uses, preferring to do stupid things like using JPEG for that purpose.

Now, I say "stupid" because it seems like 9 times out of 10 the person putting together the website is also the one designing the customer's "logo." And he does it using some bitmap image editor like Photoshop or Fireworks to put together the art instead of using a vector graphics program like Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Freehand or even Canvas to get the job done correctly.

I'm sorry to sound arrogant about it, but I just laugh at people anymore who put together a "logo design" in Photoshop in crude 72ppi form and then expect that shit to fly in print production, or even worse in areas like large format outdoor advertising.

I have to deal with lots of customer supplied artwork in my day job. If Flash were used more intelligently, I'm certain I would have more customers bringing me art someone else designed in vector form rather than the parade of stupid JPEGs. Several year ago (before the Internet became popular) that was indeed the case. Most customer supplied art came in vector form. The only issues I had to deal with back then were easy ones (missing fonts or the Mac/PC cross platform file exchange). It takes a lot more work to convert someone's pixellated raster image into a smooth piece of vector imagery. But they pay a $50 per hour digitizing charge to learn the deal. Or they can stay ignorant and keep shelling out those bucks.

Posted by Braden Mailloux (Member # 2229) on 04-03-2004, 02:57 AM:

Jesus you guys jumpe to conlusions. First of all, Flash is not a pixel based program. Its vector based art meaning no matter how many times you zoon in its still gonna look the same. Second... I never did say anything about making a flash intro for a website such as this one. I mean just a good label or a banner for the top of the site is all I wanted to do. Also if you wanna talk about pains in the ass... frames. What are you thinking about using frames? Puhleeze. Aside from that... why don't you ask questions and then shoot later for something that you may not like.
ALso... I learned about the 72dpi thingy. I always try to pring out at the highest resolution that I possibly can. I made a poster for my project at svhs and it turned out quite nice after I turned up the rez.
Thank you
Brayshakes

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 04-03-2004, 03:55 AM:

out of curiosity, what's so bad about frames?

carl

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 04-03-2004, 03:56 AM:

They're the third evilest thing in the world, after cable select and whatever it was I declared the second evilest thing.

Oh yeah... and "first of all", nobody said Flash was rastor based, although it was noted that it is indeed vector based. I guess while we jump to conclusions, you jump over posts.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-03-2004, 04:16 AM:

I used to hate frames and I'm sure Brad can tell you that I threw a bit of a fit when this site converted to frames. But now I've grown to like them. They are convenient. I don't think Lynx users like them, though. Maybe Lynx is not too accepting of them. I have no idea.[av=e]

And Braden, we are just all discussing what we like and what we don't. We're not coming down on you or your idea.

This site could be done in Flash without frames, yet still have the benefits of frames. But still, only the logos and original art would benefit from the Flash design. Member pics would still be JPGs, as well as 99% of all the image content here. I don't think the site would move any quicker. In fact it could be slower. I've seen input fields in Flash and they were dreadfully slow. Even when you step up to Director as was the case at my job, it just seems sluggish compared to HTML in regards to the text fields.

By the way, GIFs suck ass. JPEGs KILL GIFs (and any other format that is limited to a pathetic 255 colors) for still images. I'll take a bit of compression artifacts over a tremendous loss of color any day (unless the original graphic only has a few colors, like forum icons). The only real use for GIFs other than that are animated thingies like this:

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-03-2004, 05:22 AM:

Joe: That gif is HOT! Please email me the full version!

Rach: Oh Puleeze! The website Phil's Sexxx Den has been 'up' and running for a long time... You just DON'T know the password cuz you have been BANNED!

>>> Phil

Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 04-03-2004, 05:44 AM:

The only issue I have with this site's frames is that it cuts off the buttons, so they read "Foru, Produ, Manu, Pictu, Revie, Vide, Tip, Reel, Cha, Lin, Hom, Contac, and Uplo" ...not to mention the scroll bars (horizontal AND vertical) that appear there.

Not EVERYONE has their browser maximized all the time, you know! [Wink]

I'm set to 1152x864 with my browser windows usually around 800x600. I think Outlook Express is the only program I ever use maximized. Most sites seem to align nicely regardless of browser size, but then, I'm not really in charge, now am I? [Big Grin]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-03-2004, 11:54 AM:

quote:
ALso... I learned about the 72dpi thingy. I always try to pring out at the highest resolution that I possibly can. I made a poster for my project at svhs and it turned out quite nice after I turned up the rez.

Actually, that's the attitude that gets me on my personal rant, and how I widely deride the Internet as being one of the worst things that ever happened to graphic design.

You don't "turn up the rez" somewhere down the road when you make an original graphic design. Items like logotypes, corporate signatures and many other types of graphical design and illustration are far better realized and reproduced when created natively in vector form.

A vector graphic has lots more flexibility. And if there needs to be a rasterized version, any drawing program can create it in whatever ppi rating is desired. That way the image doesn't look soft or have any pixels visible! Or you can copy the vector paths into Photoshop and do the same thing. Vector to raster is easy. Raster to vector is a pain in the ass.

Unfortunately there's a lot of dumbasses out there writing magazine articles for Photoshop User and other publications showing how Photoshop or any other image editor can be used to design logos. Fucking wrong! When the end result is some dopey bitmap, the work gets an "F" in my book.

For one thing, any basic logo design needs to start out with its first version as one single ink color and able to print at small sizes. It's pretty damned stupid to design a logo in Photoshop with all sorts of rastery effects that require four ink plates (CMYK) and doesn't reproduce worth a shit when shrunk down on a business card.

I wouldn't be so irritated by this kind of thing if it were only hobbyists putting together their own graphics schemes in Photoshop --only to use on their personal web pages. That's fine.

The problem is there's lots of amateurs out there taking paying graphics jobs doing the same damn thing. These guys are screwing up graphics workflows for the people who know what their doing: professional like me who actually bear formal training, degrees and paid registrations for their software. On top of that, they've driven down the wage scales for graphics people to such a degree that many folks with real talent are just leaving in disgust to find something else to do for a living. The logos as JPEGs from amateur designers just adds more irritating insult to injury.

Posted by Braden Mailloux (Member # 2229) on 04-03-2004, 04:32 PM:

Yar... whole lotta anger on your side of the market. I try not to be trendy and all that shit and I don't particulary care about people out there who are so bitter about something like web design. Whats to be bitter about? Nothing... its people that get bitter about this kinda stuff that really bring the market down. Instead of educating that would rather rant and just bitch about what needs to be changed instead of taking action (no offense)

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-03-2004, 04:53 PM:

quote:
Yar... whole lotta anger on your side of the market.

The anger is justified.

The state of graphic design in America on average is laughably pathetic. Good quality design is hard to find and the commercial landscape is rife with shit design. You really see the difference if you compare the work in Europe compared to what gets produced here.

Lots of unqualified amateurs with little in the way of talent or credentials got into the field because they thought it was something cool or easy to do. They were willing to work for much less than most professionals and succeeded in driving wage scales way down.

Most professions in the United States require some kind of formal education or certification for a worker to gain entry into the field. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, electricians, engineers and many others require those kinds of things to get a job. This is not true anymore for the graphics industry. The computer has a lot to do with that. People hiring staffers stupidly look at lists of applications the candidate supposedly knows rather than do something more logical such as examinging a portfolio of work. The availability of pirated software via KaZaa has allowed a new class of hacks to weasel their way into the market.

Aside from the bad business climate, the amateurs out there don't know much of anything about making art that conforms to different workflows. They just design something they can slap on a web page.

quote:
I don't particulary care about people out there who are so bitter about something like web design. Whats to be bitter about? Nothing... its people that get bitter about this kinda stuff that really bring the market down.

See if you can stick to that tune if you earn a four year art degree, or at the bare minimum invest in (pay for) the software you use. You will not be so accomodating of amateurs driving down your wages then.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-03-2004, 06:29 PM:

Joe - I think I was talking about the actual forums logo. I think you guys were probably just tweaking it this way and that and it finally wound up the way it is now. I don't know, I was probably full of vodka at the time.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-03-2004, 07:17 PM:

I did that with Ray Dream Studio (yes Bobby, full version with a HUGE box and a GIANT manual. You should see the 4 GIANT manuals that Final Cut Pro alone comes with). But the thing is, I only remember doing one (the current one). So it was probably the vodka. [Smile]

[av=n]

Braden, where are your new graphics?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-04-2004, 01:49 PM:

Joe, I wouldn't doubt you having full versions of your apps. Anyone that can afford near five grand for a Canon XL-1s should be able to buy software legit. FCP comes with four big manuals? Wow. That's almost unheard of anymore these days.

I'm getting used the anemic, thin litte manuals, such as that poor excuse of an express manual that comes with Macromedia Studio MX. I guess they want you to spend an extra $50 to $100 per app for after market manuals that really should ship in the box.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-04-2004, 04:26 PM:

Yup! Check 'em out:
[av=n]

Nowadays lots of programs come with PDF manuals instead and they expect you to print them out with your own 5,000 sheets of paper! Either that or view them on the computer screen (not tremendously practical).

Posted by Braden Mailloux (Member # 2229) on 04-05-2004, 12:57 AM:

Well. Teach me or something. I mean you can't expect me to get any better. And its harder than hell to pay for professional software when its so goddam expensive. Also, I have all of my work believe me, mainly because I know that I have no talent and I try not to follow all that trendwhore crap that is out there on the internet. Believe me when I say that I want to excel and get my degree in this field and this stuff I am doing know is only helping to expand my knowledge in the programs that I am trying to use such as Flash and Photoshop and I am trying to also learn illustrator and 3ds max although 3ds max follows the trendwhore path unless you know what you are doing, and I am tryin.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-05-2004, 06:00 PM:

I'm not personally attacking you, Braden. But if you want to do professional work (get paid for it, and perhaps even get paid fairly or paid well for it) you should be expected to get better.

[edit - wrote a bunch of stuff, but deleted it for the following]

I have not seen your work. But I have my rather strong attitude about the state of art and design in America mainly because lots of people have got into the field and they are not really trying to do credible work. I see a lot of laziness happening. Much of this is the fault of the business world. They get what they pay for. Send the degreed professionals packing and hire some temps or interns instead.

Here's one example. Consider signs and billboards. I like to gripe about things like "font murder." You don't have to drive far to see lots of cheap ass signs with Arial Bold squeezed all to hell, made to fit any given space. Lazy. Any sign company with a vinyl cutter has access to thousands of fonts through any number of applications they run. Instead of finding something appropriate, the $6 an hour vinyl dude just tortures Arial all to hell. A real designer with any modicum of talent would never do this. That's just one of hundreds of sins I see all the time.

The nice thing about formal education, training, etc., is it makes you more demanding about your own work. You demand more of yourself. You tell yourself, "I'm not going to be like those other hacks out there; I will be proud of what I did and know I didn't just sluff off."

Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 04-05-2004, 08:26 PM:

I read an article recently from a professional, old school typesetter about the state of "fonts" today. This was essentially his take as well, and I agreed with this sentiment completely. The art and craft is lost because computers make it easy and, consequently, quality diminishes. There's something called pride in one's work that can't be taught in the downloading-software approach.

I see it prominently in a different industry, but it's the exact same phenomenon: music. These days, anyone who can work a pull-down menu can "create" music. Especially for "loop-based" applications with "randomize" features, there is no creative skill, craft, talent, or even brain-power required; and so, like anything that's not NEEDED, it gets left out more and more often. If I see one more "No music experience required! Anyone can make professional recordings ... EVEN YOU!" tag line (or derivation thereof) in a "professional" software application ad, I'm going to [puke]

I wouldn't call myself a professional, but I take pride in laying down my own actual guitar performances and working with the recordings ... very few pull-down menus involved, and NO randomize features!

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-05-2004, 09:29 PM:

Back when everything was produced analog, both music production and art production demanded a lot more discipline. Computers have removed much of that and allowed laziness to run wild.

Adobe Postscript and Aldus PageMaker were the things that gave birth to "desktop publishing." Before that, you had to deal with actually planning out pages in advance, conceptualizing ideas before wasting hours going off in a direction that would turn out to be unproductive. You had to figure out what was going to work and then get out the rubber cement, Haberrule, X-acto blades, Rapidograph pens, ruling pens and more. You would spend long evenings in darkrooms, breathing in those chemicals to see what would come out of the Photostat camera. The process was slow and even hazardous, but the creative payoffs were better especially when all the advance planning paid off.

There's still a good number of talented designers today toughing it out. And I would say most (if not all) do some strong brainstorming, doodling thumbnails and all sorts of other problem solving stuff before they ever start launching Illustrator and Photoshop. The idea and end result of visualizing that idea is all that matters. No one should give two shits about what computer programs were used in the processs of getting it created. Unfortunately, many of the business people buying commercial art these days have no clue about that fundamental truth. So they just keep reading app lists on resumes.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-08-2004, 09:18 AM:

I concur with everything Bobby said. I can imagine he feels the same way many of us did when the craft of projection was deprofessionalized. I remember feeling a great deal of resentment towards the people who waltzed in off the street, and into a job that I worked and studied long and hard to get.

Bobby is also right that there are many people who simply cannot comprehend the relationship between pixels, resolution, and image size - yet they are in key positions. A "graphic artist" sent me some raster images to use in a trailer, and completely ignored the mechanical requirements I clearly outlined. When I told him the resolution of his images wasn't high enough, his solution was to send files that had been scaled past 100%!

quote:
Well. Teach me or something.

It's not up to him to teach you. You're the one who said you could make graphics. [Smile]

Btw, I purely love Illustrator. Vector files should be the only consideration when designing logotypes and artwork. All my stuff begins there.

A remastered animation drawing, using vector artwork (of course, rasterized here as a jpeg):

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-08-2004, 11:07 AM:

Vector files can be pretty limiting for artwork, especially if the art has photographic elements.[av=n] The drawing above definitely looks computerized to me. It lacks the natural flow of something that is hand drawn.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-08-2004, 08:30 PM:

There are two tricks to making vector artwork look more natural.

First, you really need to start with a good hand-drawn sketch. It is counter-productive to make "organic" looking artwork using a mouse. It's like drawing using a brick with a cord attached to it. Wacom tablets are nice, but even they are not all that great for creating drawings. There's just no substitute for getting out the pencils and paper and going to work. The old analog way is actually faster too.

Second tip. Once you have a good source drawing to scan, you need to go about vector digitizing it in the right way. Often that means digitizing more paths/colors into the artwork.

Line handling is important. If your source drawing has a lively variety of line thickness that will help. This is one reason why some artists actually create ink drawings using a paint brush. If your line work is all monotone (the same thickness all around) it will have that dreaded stale computer clip art look.

You have to take more time to digitize paths accurately. That doesn't necessarily mean pigging the shape with 4000 control points (objects with too many points may be disregarded when printing, or it may fail to load in the drawing program). Just follow the source drawing closely. If you want the sketchy look, you have to follow it very closely. Scan it into the computer at a good resolution and then use something like Photoshop's pen tool to map out the paths with good accuracy.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-08-2004, 11:29 PM:

Actually, the drawing did start out as hand-drawn animation. It is highly magnified; the Indian maiden appears very small in the frame in the sequence, and she is in motion on ones. You can't have a lot of detail in things that appear small on the screen, or it has a tendency to run together. But, because it's vector artwork, it can be magnified thusly.

The clean, uniform look is intentional.

[ 04-29-2004, 10:32 AM: Message edited by: Tim Reed ]

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-09-2004, 02:18 AM:

quote:
I did that with Ray Dream Studio

Btw, Joe... have you been able to get RDS to run in XP? The menus blank out on mine.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-09-2004, 03:31 AM:

No I've only ever used it on the Mac. I have version 5, and it is even dual processor aware! I can't believe it is, being that it is ooooollllllddddd![av=m]

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-09-2004, 07:39 AM:

I did that intermittent movement animation in RDS, and I wanted to re-render it at a higher resolution some time ago for some reason or another. Oh, the program "works" okay, I guess, as long as I don't have to do anything or click on menus! Guess I'm going to have to take the time to learn 3D Studio Max or Maya. Just not enough time anymore. The outfit that took over RDS has a new 3D program that's supposed to be a lot like the old Ray Dream, but I haven't heard much about it in the groups, so I'm leery of investing in it.

Btw, I know what you're saying about having photographic elements in artwork. I'm doing cartoons and such, and I do use Photoshop for backgrounds, but for "inking and painting" digital animation cels, you just can't get those sharp lines like you can in vector form.

Flash actually works best for this. Its autotrace is much better for converting animation drawings, and the timeline features are setup for cel timing, but I haven't been able to change over to it yet.

Lastly, I completely disagree with you. I think she flows just fine. [Razz]

And, one of these days, I'll finish it.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-09-2004, 04:56 PM:

Send me the project file and I'll re-render it at whatever res you want![av=m]

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-11-2004, 12:39 AM:

Woah! Thanks, guy!

Posted by Braden Mailloux (Member # 2229) on 04-12-2004, 04:15 PM:

I must say that I have never streched any font before. Whatever jackasss did that . that is just prfound laziness

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-12-2004, 05:49 PM:

Font murder happens all the time. You don't have to look far at all to find it. It's in newspaper ads, phone book ads, signs, business cards, brouchures, etc. Here's a graphic of two types of Font Murder I posted in a recent thread:

Font murder even shows up on TV or in the movies. Colin Quinn's show, "Tough Crowd" on Comedy Central squeeze murders various sans-serif typefaces (usually a heavier weight of ITC Avant Garde).

This kind of thing is largely the fault of computers. Vector drawing programs, page layout programs and even Photoshop allow users to distort type. You can apply slanting effects to mimic an italic weight of a font, even though the result often just doesn't look right. You can stretch it or do whatever other distortion you want. But just because the tool is there doesn't mean people need to be using it, at least for the purpose of murdering fonts. Those deformation tools are there for more subtle approaches.

The old analog ways didn't allow that to happen. If you needed an extended weight of Eurostile, you couldn't just stretch it in the Photostat camera. You had to go buy sheets of Microgramma in that rub off Letraset stuff, or spend some money buying the font for a Compugraphic machine if the higher-ups would allow it. People are so freaking spoiled these days.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-12-2004, 05:55 PM:

What's wrong with Arial (printed normally, not squeezed/stretched)? Is it just that it's way over-used, or is there something else wrong with it?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-12-2004, 08:15 PM:

I don't like Arial for a variety of reasons.

Arial is often the font of choice for wannabe designer hacks (typically those making cheap outdoor signs) to use in acts of font murder.

I'm just sick of seeing Arial. It is overused. And to me it is just a sign of lazy design. Even users who have Microsoft Office have a much wider choice of fonts from which to choose. Why not scroll down the font list and grab Verdana or Trubuchet?

Arial is a mongrel font which copies the metrics of Helvetica while trying to unsuccessfully grab style cues from Helvetica, News Gothic, Univers and Akzidenz Grotesk. It is basically a font without any decent flair to it. For all the plain-ness of Helvetica, at least Helvetica still looks "clean." Being a plain looking font, Arial doesn't even manage that very well.

Finally, Arial was a way for Microsoft to cheap-out instead of licensing better type. At least when Apple launched the Macintosh they paid Linotype to license Helvetica out for their platform.

Graphic designer and font artist, Mark Simonson wrote a pretty good article about "The Scourge of Arial" which goes into more detail about Arial pretending to be Helvetica (and doing so badly) along with more details about Microsoft and Monotype cheapening type for the PC platform. The article is at this link: http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 04-12-2004, 11:04 PM:

Trajan needs to be used more.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-13-2004, 02:25 AM:

Font murder...What gets me these days is magazines who are so busy trying to be "artsy" that they make pages impossible to read. Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and Premeire (I subscribe to them all) are guilty of this frequently. Visually interesting is one thing, but when you have to actually STUDY a page to figure out how to read it, that takes the "recreation" out of reading a mag.

And Boxoffice, a couple of years ago they started going nuts with color, putting orange text on green backgrounds, or putting gray text on top of a color picture...it's improved some, but that mag STILL looks like crap half the time.

Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 04-13-2004, 04:54 AM:

I grew quite sick of Times New Roman. It just looks so friggin' DEFAULT to me. There are tons of nice, serif, body fonts out there. Garamond, anyone? I'm a fan of Dutch ... hmmm, today it's Dutch809.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-13-2004, 03:13 PM:

It is rare to see Times or Times New Roman used in any kind of an interesting way. Dodge made good use of it in their ads. The movie title logo for "The Matrix" is just Times New Roman chopped up and deformed.

Dutch 809 is Bitstream's pretty decent imitation of Berthold's Concorde. Not to be confused with the condensed Concorde Nova. Dutch 809 and ITC Weidemann is included in CorelDRAW, along with nearly 1000 other fonts, primarily from Bitstream and ITC. I laugh at graphics people who turn up their noses at Corel, not realizing the program is a steal just for the font collection.

Magazine design is truly messy. I saw a recent cover of "Rolling Stone" featuring Outkast. The cover design was just plain messy looking. I know they were trying to grab some retro 1970's funky style. But they just don't get it. Why not find some vintage magazines of that age and branch off what they did? To do it quick, set some type in Gill Sans or ITC Busorama for the readable stuff and blast up some funky headlines in the wavy Stilla or Motter Femina. That'll grab that "glam" look. Or make some letter designs using that for inspiration.

I forgot to add this part.

Some magazines do have some decent design. There's a couple travel magazines that look good. I like some of the stuff in ESPN magazine. There's a lot of strong graphic design in there, and much of it is well organized. On top of that, the magazine is BIG. I remember when Premiere Magazine first hit the news stands back in the late 1980's. The magazine was large and well put together. Now the rag is a shadow of its former self, merely about the same size as an issue of Time magazine rather than the bigger Life. Freaking cheap skates.

[ 04-14-2004, 09:54 AM: Message edited by: Bobby Henderson ]

Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 04-14-2004, 12:57 AM:

Yeah, many of my typefaces came from the install of Corel's WordPerfect, my first choice in word processing. Unfortunately, the conversion process between WordPerfect and Microsoft Word is so poor, I end up using Word more often, just to save editing time later.