Every once in a while, I manage to post something that seems to strike a chord and it starts to spread through the tumblrsphere with the help of the reblog feature. This is something I love about tumblr.

Then of course there is the downside of that. Once a post gets past through 4 or 5 tumblelogs, comments get attached to the original text, new authors get credited, and worst of all, you find yourself reading text in a blockquote within a blockquote within a blockquote within a blockquote (and so on). You end up reading two or three words per line, making whatever was attempted to be said almost completely unreadable. The irony of course being that my most popular posts tend to be about typography…

So the point of me saying all this? I know there is always the inevitable backlash whenever anyone brings up the idea of etiquette on the internet, but perhaps some reblogging etiquette? I have a few simple ideas so that you can avoid clutter, get your point across, and credit the correct source.

1. If it’s an original post, go back to the source to reblog. Don’t reblog from the 4th guy to reblog it. Credit the actual author.
2. If it’s an internet meme that’s being passed around everywhere, reblog it from the site you saw it first, and drop the multiple blockquotes and comments attached.
3. If you want to reblog an original post with a poignant comment, make sure it’s clear which is the original post and which came after. If the comment is seven blockquotes deep, do a little bit of cleanup and credit the original author first and then the author of the followup comment.

I always appreciate a reblog, but I especially appreciate a reblog done well.

This is a follow up to the last post titled “Don’t Use Arial.” This a little explanation as to why I would say a thing like that. Refer to the image above to see what I’m talking about.

1. “Keming.” When Monotype attempted to redesign Helvetica (and created Arial), they abandoned Helvetica’s strict adherence to 90 degree terminals. That’s why you run into problems with Arial, like when a lowercase r and n are placed next to each other. The modified terminal at the top of the r almost touches the letter next to it, thus creating some keming. Notice this isn’t a problem in Helvetica. The terminal at the top of the lowercase r ends at a 90 degree angle and allows space for the next letter to breathe.
2. The uppercase R in Helvetica is beautifully crafted. It lives almost entirely within it’s own bounding box, with a slight slight swash at the bottom right that creates the negative space needed for a lowercase letter like o, a, or e to fit in. In Arial, the R extends a bit further outside it’s bounding box and creates a difficult kerning job for almost any letter following. The uppercase R in Arial just look like it belongs in a completely different typeface. Perhaps it should have just stayed in Frutiger, where it works.
3. The negative space problem. The uppercase G in Arial is just another example of how Arial fails when it comes to negative space. In Helvetica, the uppercase G includes a stroke that grounds the letter and fits in perfectly with the parallel 90 degree angle of the next letterform. In Arial, that stroke is dropped and you end up with a G that is seemingly floating above a baseline. This style of G can be executed well in a neutral sans-serif face (check out the G in Univers for example), but it involves carefully crafting the bottom to give it some much needed weight and allows for some nice negative space between it and the next letter.
4. Arial abandons the rules. There are instances in graphic design where tossing the rules out the window becomes acceptable (I’m not a huge David Carson fan, but he has seemed to make it work), but when it comes to redesigning Helvetica, throwing the rules out just looks sloppy. The 90 degree rule in Helvetica is a huge piece of why it works. The 90 degree rule is: all terminals end at a 90 degree angle. In Arial, the rule is only applied at times. At other times, terminals end in 25 degree angles, as is the case with the uppercase C. Sometimes they end in 60 degree angles like the lowercase r. This sloppy application only really leads to problems, like in example number one.

Now I’m not saying Helvetica is the perfect typeface. I know there are a lot of people that love Helvetica and a lot of people that are sick of it. I’m just saying that when it comes to picking a typeface that looks like Helvetica, pick Helvetica. Don’t use Arial, and I hope I’ve made it pretty clear why. While Arial may be a typeface in it’s own right, the only reason for it’s existence, is a case of Microsoft not wanting to pay licensing fees (I know, I can sense the irony too). Arial was just designed to fit within the same letter widths without applying all the rules that make Helvetica work.

The book to screen comparison photo I posted the other day got me thinking about other devices compared to books in terms of point size.

I decided to see what iPhone font sizes compared to type size in a book might look like. The book I used for comparison was Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style(I can’t think of a more carefully designed book). I then put together a page for the iPhone with a range of different point and pixel size placeholder text, with a pixel ruler on the left side. The Elements of Typographic style is set in 10pt Minion. For the iPhone we’ll use Times New Roman, since Minion isn’t available.

Getting a decent picture was kind of difficult but I managed. I found that I hold my phone about an equal distance away from me as I do a book when reading, so distance doesn’t need to play too much into the equation. Laying the two side by side, I came to the conclusion that the best point size for easy reading on the iPhone is somewhere between 13pt-14pt(or 17px-19px). Default for the iPhone(like any browser) is 12pt/16px.

Conclusion? This little test is by no means definitive, but… If you are creating an app/web app for the iPhone with a significant amount of text, think about bumping up the font size just a little bit more than the default setting, especially if you’ve set user-scalable=no. And don’t forget about line-height.

Note: I didn’t try using em or percent for measurement in this test, but if you want to do the conversion yourself, here’s a nice chart for that.

A simple poll posing the question “Is graphic design art?”

I’ve always separated the idea of art and design in my own mind. I’ve always considered myself to be a designer rather than an artist, and I would rather be referred to as such. The distinction I feel should be made is that design is visual problem solving, communication, and attempt to serve more than just the designer. Vignelli designed the New York Subway system, not to hang on a wall, but to serve the good of those who travel on the subway. Adrian Frutiger designed Frutiger so that you could find your way to the gate your plane is departing from, not so it could be sold at auction for millions.

As a student at a college with both Art and Design in the title, I’ve debated the question “What is art?” many times. I’ve always come to the conclusion that there is no solid answer. You get very similiar answers to questions like “What is pornography?” So of course the question can’t really be answered, but in short, do I think of graphic design as art? No. I find it to be beautiful often times. Some design work I find stunning. But I’ve always thought of design and art as serving two very different purposes. I don’t think it’s a slight against graphic design to say that, no, I wouldn’t consider it art. It’s a visual form all it’s own.

P.S. Sup, Foo has reblogged with a nice counterpoint. I do enjoy when reblogging is used constructively. I have to say that I do tend to look towards the Modernists when I attempt to construct a definition of graphic design. Perhaps that is the basis of what informs my opinion on the line (if there is one) between graphic design and art. And perhaps the line grows ever more grey. Touché.