WANTED: Slab Serif Typeface for Over Use

WANTED

Slab Serif Typeface for Over Use

Also known as Egyptian, Square Serif, Mechanical or Mécanes

I seem to be noticing a lot more Slab Serif typefaces in use these days, particularly in advertising, both in print and on the web, including this article. Their use is widespread on sale signs, promotions, company straplines and display headings. Not surprising, they were created as "Display Fonts" with their clean, bold lines and squared serifs. Being robust they are intended to draw attention to themselves. If you want your message to stand out on a page, it certainly will.

The advancement in mechanical printing and the need for large scale advertising saw the first Slab Serifs (or Egyptians) appearing way back in the early 1800s as well as the even heavier Fat Face fonts.

These are a few of my favourite things

Maybe I'm noticing them more because I've used them on a recent project and now, while working on a new brand which requires a bold and confident look, a Slab Serif fits the brief. There's certainly plenty to choose from and it is easy to spot one of the hundreds of Slab Serifs, old and new, in use everywhere.

My personal choice has always been Rockwell. Designed in 1934, it's been around for a while and there are many older and newer, more contemporay popular Egyptians: From older typefaces like Clarendon (1845), ITC American Typewriter (1974), and more recently, the specially commisioned Guardian typeface (2005) and the extensive Soho with 40 faces! Just a few more of my favourite classic Egyptians.

Substance over style

I was taught that type should not be 'noticed', but 'read' and that the choice of type and typography should simply reflect and enhance the tone of what is being said.

Does a message lose its impact if the style of type is over used? Or am I just constantly bombarded with messages trying to get my attention? Possibly, most of the time this is true, so I guess the typeface has done its job and I'm probably numb to the actual words.

The choice is yours

However, there are of course many other Display fonts other than Slab Serifs that grab your attention by saying "Read This" and "Sale That". Once again though, it seems that I only notice the Slab Serifs. Am I just in a "Slab Serif mode" or are they in fashion at them moment? Many people use the wrong typeface for the wrong reason and say things such as, "I've seen this cool font on a poster, let's use that!" even if it's not fit for the purpose. I may be worried that if I use Rockwell or a similar font again some people will think I'm following a trend or just lazy - even if it works, and it will. Or maybe I'm just a type geek.

Typeset in Arvos by Anton Koovit

Images in order of appearance:
Guardian: Guardian.co.uk poster
Normande and Bodoni Ultra Bold Fat Face typeface
ITC American Typewriter, New York logo
Clarendon: Fontface
Soho: GQ Magazine Cover
Rockwell: Achievement First Endeavor Middle School, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
Rockwell: Poster

Stage Two of New T Shirt Store is Over Here

Brand new specialist T shirt store is Over Here

Painting nearly done.

First batch of fitting acquired.

St Nicholas Market, Bristol

Opens 31st March 2012

New Specialist T Shirt Store is Over Here

Brand New Bristol T Shirt Store is Over Here.

Stage One completed!

Walls fitted.

Next: Underpaint the walls and get some cabinets...

Wall colour: Film Noir

There it is!

Developing the new uchi streetwear online store: Day 3

So many glitches...
Migrating the website from one hosting package to another didn't go as smoothly as I wanted. Drupal 7 isn't the easist CMS to configure. The novice will quickly learn alot as much of the back end stuff isn't easy to find and depending on your host you may need more PHP skills than the developers would have you believe. When problems occur things can get a bit crazy. A basic knowledge of PHP and some understanding of your server configuration may be vital. The Drupal developers could do well to spend some time as Users for a while and not assume everyone breathes and eats Code.
There is plenty of help. There is a large community of forums and discussions and documentation out there and I have found many of my problems are not unique. However, implementing the solutions to some of the problems is almost as much headache as finding what the problem was in the first place.
At the moment having upgraded to the latest Drupal 7.8 version I'm seriously considering downgrading as the amount of errors I get is too much.
Blank pages, Fatal memory errors and critical system bugs....

Developing the new uchi streetwear online store: Day 2

Using Drupal as the content management system is much more complicated than Wordpress or Joomla. However, already I can see the benefits in the long term for what is possible. It may take longer to understand but the rewards are worth it. Doing what Drupal is capable of in Joomla for instance would certainly involve a lot more third-party applications and custom coding. It's worth using Drupal just for the knowledge it will leave you with!

Today, using the E-commerce module, created the basics of an online store, added some catagories, products classes. Then deleted them all and uninstalled the ecommerce module!

Next. To begin again using Ubercart!

Will be adding links from the current uchi website to here so the site development can be followed... If anyone's interested.

Developing the new uchi streetwear online store: Day 1

Seems a bit daunting considering we've managed to create websites using just pure code. Now it's a full content management system: full urban streetwear store ecommerce web expereince, product reviews, articles and blog.

Developing a new streetwear online store is going to take longer than we would have liked. Two months to get it to a decent stage isn't that unreasonable. The challenge is certainly worth it, despite having little spare time to do all the other things.

Still, once the basics are done, populating it with the full uchi product range should be just a matter of man hours. Maybe not. Inbetween there's the fourth album to complete, most of the concepts and artwork is already underway, just not enough hours in the day..

New uchi online store in development

Follow the development of the brand new uchi store currently being developed. After so many customers have expressed how much they liked our products we thought it was time to do our brand the justice it deserves. We hope to give you an improved experience with this new site.

A lot of people have told us that it's the stories and the deeper levels of thought behind our designs which make us stand out from other urban brands. So, this is what we'll be concentrating on, the journeys that we all make and the expereinces we all share. These are the things that ultimately govern all our expressions.