The Windows 11 upgrade arrived on my desktop machine before my laptop, which was a surprise. Also surprising is how uneventful the whole process was, unlike Windows 10, which led me to become a regular on the Microsoft Answers forums. A few tips: (a) do back everything up first; and (b) do take screenshots […]
Category: typography
Typeface design, typography and the font industry.
Spacing in French: figuring out how to punctuate professionally
With the French edition of Lucire KSA now out, we’ve been hard at work on the second issue. The first was typeset by our colleagues in Cairo (with the copy subbed by me), but this time it falls on us, and I had to do a lot of research on French composition. There are […]
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Title design in 1970: big geometric type rules
There is something quite elegant about title typography from the turn of the decade as the 1960s become the 1970s. There is 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever by Maurice Binder, which apparently is one of Steven Spielberg’s favourites, but I’m thinking of slightly humbler fare from the year before. I got thinking about it […]
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Helvetica in metal, 1985
This was the back of Mum’s 1985 tax assessment slip from the IRD. Helvetica, in metal. The bold looks a bit narrow: a condensed cut, or just a compromised version because of the machinery used? Not often seen, since by this time phototypesetting was the norm, though one reason Car magazine was a good […]
If you’re in the ‘New Zealand can’t’ camp, then you’re not a business leader
Which club is the better one to belong to? The ones who have bent the curve down and trying to eliminate COVID-19, or the ones whose curves are heading up? Apparently Air New Zealand’s boss thinks the latter might be better for us. From Stuff today, certain ‘business leaders’ talk about the New Zealand Government’s […]
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How to delete Windows 10 system fonts for real, not just remove registry references to them
My last post implied that I ego-surfed and found a Wikipedia chat entry about me, but that’s not the case. I was searching for information on how to remove a system-protected font from Windows 10, and seeing as I often post solutions to obscure technical issues on here, I had hoped I recorded my how-to […]
More Wikiality—and this time it’s about me!
Goes to show how seldom I ego-search. Here’s something a Wikipedian wrote about me in a discussion in 2010: Jack Yan is not a notable typeface designer. He has never laid a hand on mouse or trackball to operate a font editing application. He tells some graphic designer employees of his what he wants […]
When not having something drives creativity
I hadn’t expected this reply Tweet to get so many likes, probably a record for me. I knew my parents couldn’t afford The Lettering Book, so I went without, which forced me to create my own typeface designs. Later I became the first digital typeface designer in this country. — Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jackyan) July […]
Fixed Vivaldi’s poor type display, thanks to wmjordan
It took two months but I finally got there. Vivaldi now displays type normally though the browser interface is slightly messed up. But I’ll take good type display, thanks. On the MacType forums, a user in China called wmjordan was in the same boat but had found a solution. In their words: For […]
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Directwrite isn’t the culprit
That was confusing. Yesterday’s blog post was representative of my thinking: given that certain people were upset when Chromium took away the Directwrite toggle in 2016, and type rendering on Chromium-based Vivaldi deteriorated significantly for me with v. 2.10 (it turns out v. 2.9 was the turning-point), then did Chromium only switch fully to Directwrite […]