I’ve been supporting print designers using Macs since the days of System 8, well over 10 years, and font management has always been the most frequent problem I’ve been asked to resolve. For years we’ve fought the battles of missing fonts, corruption, truetype failures, and just plain too many fonts on the system. Load too many fonts (some 2,000 postscript fonts here at Creative Services), and your system will begin to drag. Even worse, when you tried to find a font in Quark or InDesign, you had to scroll through the hundreds of fonts in your list. So we have always used the best font management tools available so that we could easily load and unload our thousands of fonts.

Back in the day of OS 8, Adobe Type Manager was required, and it was and remained a dog. We loaded and unloaded fonts manually, that is, we put them in the system font folder, rebooted, and then reversed the process once done using them. It was easy to miss something, and often designers would just keep activating fonts without ever removing any, and this would clog their system performance.

When Apple moved to OS X, the problems multiplied, as there were now 4 different font folders, and Murphy’s Law set in. Font Book, which comes with OS X, works, sort of, but it is not a professional level tool. Font management programs have several advantages, including previews of your font collection, folder organization and activation, automatic loading and unloading of fonts, and resolution of duplicates.

We used two of the leading products, Suitcase and FontAgent Pro, but when it came time to upgrade a couple of years ago, I looked around once again, and to my surprise found the best of the lot was the new Font Explorer X from Linotype, and it was free! When I first opened it, I thought I had opened ITunes by mistake; the interface is very similar, including a Linotype store where you can buy and download fonts.

Linotype is one of the oldest European font houses, with many famous font designers including Hermann Zapf, Adrian Frutiger, and Akira Kobayashi. I could understand that they could make such a great product and give it away (Suitcase/FontAgent are $100), as they were able to get you to their store. The prices are the same as Adobe, but much easier to preview and buy. Besides, many of the fonts we use are Linotype originals, and licensed by Adobe for sale.

Font Explorer X is still the best tool, IMHO, and there are two commercial versions available, workstation and server. However Linotype still offer Version 1.2.3 which is a free download available at http://www.fontexplorerx.com/download/, and at that price, it’s the best deal out there. Snow Leopard is said to improve font management within the OS, with unlimited fonts allowed (without system degradation) and auto-activation, two major steps in the right direction. In fact, if things go right, we may not have to buy any font management software in the future, Font Explorer X Version 1.2.3 will bridge our needs till after upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Here is a link to a review of font management tools written last fall, (I think it is still valid):
Font Manager Review

On the Web today, it doesn’t take much to leave a bad impression on a user. However, awareness of a few common usability pitfalls can drastically improve your site.

• Straying from Web standards – This holds true for not only the style standards of the organization and department, but the Web in general as well. For example, light text on a dark background has been shown to slow reading speeds by up to 30%, so use it wisely. Also, no one wants to see your flashing, seizure-inducing banner or your tie-dyed horizontal row divider.
• Endless text – Overestimation of the interest of users in textual content is all too common. A recent study found that users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less. Skimming has become the norm, and it should be accounted for in your writing and layout.
• Bad architecture – Some experts report a site’s information architecture encompasses 80% of usability problems. Investment in an architecture planning stage, including addressing features like logical content organization, link labeling, and consistent navigation, typically pays off several times over in usability.
• Mobile inaccessibility – The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. This means that your site must support mobile devices, load quickly, and allow for my stubby fingers to distinguish between tiny text on my phone while I am driving my flying car (they’re coming out any day now, right?).

These select oversights most commonly occur when designing for the Web in isolation from users. This facilitates forgetfulness that real people will be using your site, not merely the idea that you have of their behavior. Not having the resources or time for usability testing is no excuse for user interaction, when meaningful feedback can be generated by asking simple tasks of those around you. For example, you can get some sense of how a novice user would handle your architecture by asking a parent or grandparent to find something on your site without using “the Google.”

With Apple’s recent firmware updates to the iPhone and iPodTouch, users can now save a ‘webclip’ to the device’s home screen. When you add a Web site to your home screen, the default icon is a cropped image of the site. This tip explains how to add a custom icon for your Web site. The process is similar to adding a favicon, or favorites icon, to your site.

First, create a PNG image, name it apple-touch-icon.png, and upload it to the root of your Web site.

I have created an IU webclip icon and posted it to the iu.edu/ indiana.edu server. If you have an IU subdomain (such as creativeservices.iu.edu), this webclip won’t work by default. To get this to work with an IU subdomain, you’ll need to either upload the PNG file to your own Web account, or add the following line of code to the head of your documents:

< link rel="apple-touch-icon"
xhref="http://www.iu.edu/apple-touch-icon.png" />

It seems like everyone is a designer. With the advent of desktop publishing programs, a do-it-yourself culture has emerged, one in which anyone with a computer, some software, and a dash of self-confidence can put together the departmental newsletter or annual report. But how good, and how effective, is do-it-yourself design that is executed by individuals without a design education or experience in marketing or advertising?

It is my observation that really good design requires expert knowlege of design principles and the tenets of typography use, as well as artistic skill and sensitivity to content and audience. There is great value in investing in good design. Whether you need a brochure or a Web site, the investment pays off because a good design makes you and your organization look professional, polished, legitimate. Professionally designed communications are good not only for your image, but they also are more likely to achieve your desired result.

So, to get back to the title of this blog . . . a good design is a toaster. I happen to like toast. To start the day with a perfectly toasted slice of whole grain bread with real butter and strawberry jam . . . well, there is nothing better. Perfectly golden toast with melted butter and something sweet. I feel nourished and ready for the world. What creates my toast? That’s the best part. My toaster was a wedding gift from my friend Katie and it is a work of art. A 50s-replica silver chrome behemoth capable of accommodating four thick bagels. It is the finned Chevy of toasters, both aesthetically pleasing and functional. It makes perfect toast and it is cool to look at. I’m convinced that it makes the best toast on the planet. It has great lines, it uses the space on my counter efficiently even though it has a substantial presence, and it makes me feel good about the concept of toast.

I’m sure if I stuck my bread in a cheaper, less artful unit with a heating element and slots, that it would still end up as toast. But the experience wouldn’t be as satisfying, and I probably wouldn’t be convinced it was as delicious. It’s the good design that makes it work for me, makes toast an event. The moral of my story: if you want to go beyond heated white bread or stand out in a world of Wonder toast, then you might want to invest in professional design.

And now. . . I think I’ll go plug in the Chevy on my counter and turn the dials to medium. All this talk of toast is making me hungry.