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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘typography’
12.03.2023
This is one of the more fascinating type design stories Iâve come across in ages. Jens Kutilek has revived a very unlikely typeface: the IBM Selectric version of Univers in 11 pt.

A lot of us will have seen things set on a Selectric in the 1970s, especially in New Zealand. Iâve even seen professional advertisements set on a Selectric here. And because of all that exposure, it was pretty obvious to those of us with an interest in type that all the glyphs were designed to set widths regardless of family, and the only one that looked vaguely right was the Selectric version of Times.
Jens goes into a lot more detail but, sure enough, my hunch (from the 1980s and 1990s) was right: Times was indeed the starting-point, and the engineers refused to budge even when Adrian Frutiger worked out average widths and presented them.
Itâs why this version of Univers, or Selectric UN, was so compromised.
What I didnât know was that Frutiger was indeed hired for the gig, to adapt his designs to the machine. I had always believed, because of the compromised design, that IBM did it themselves or contracted it to a specialist, but not the man himself.
Thereâs plenty of maths involved, but the sort I actually would enjoy (having done one job many years ago to have numerous type families meet the New Zealand Standard for signage, and having to purposefully botch the original, superior kerning pairs in order to achieve it).
I think I kept our IBM golfballs, which carried the type designs on them, and hopefully one day theyâll resurface as theyâre a great, nostalgic souvenir of these times.
What is really bizarre reading Jensâs recollection of his digital revival is that itâs set in Selectric UN 11 Medium (an excerpt is shown above). Here is type that was set on to paper, now re-created faithfully, with all of its compromises, for the screen. Heâs done an amazing job and it was like reading a schoolbook from the 1970s (but with far more interesting subject-matter). Those Selectric types might not have been the best around, but the typographic world is richer for having them revived.
The hits per post here have fallen off a cliff. I imagine we can blame Google. Seven hundred was a typical average, but now I’m looking at dozens. I thought they’d be happy with my obsession over Bing being so crappy during 2022, but then, if they’re following Bing and not innovating, maybe they weren’t. Or that post about their advertising business being a negligence lawsuit waiting to happen (which, incidentally, was one of the most hit pieces over the last few months) might not have gone down wellâit was a month after that when the incoming hits to this blog dropped like a stone. Maybe that confirms the veracity of my post.
I’m not terribly surprised. And before you think, ‘Why would Google care?’, ‘Would they bother targeting you?’ or ‘You are so paranoid,’ remember that Google suspended Vivaldi’s advertising account after its CEO criticized them, and in the days of Google Plus, they censored posts that I made that were critical of them. Are they after me? No, but you can bet there are algorithms that work to minimize or censor sites that expose Google’s misbehaviour, regardless of who makes the allegations, just as posts were censored on Google Plus.
Tags: 1960s, 1970s, 2022, 2023, Adrian Frutiger, censorship, design, fonts, Google, IBM, technology, typeface design, typefaces, typography Posted in design, interests, internet, New Zealand, technology, typography, UK | No Comments »
01.03.2023

I have told this story many times: I became interested in fashion magazines with a 1989 issue of Studio Collections. In fact, it was its fifth anniversary issue. I really liked the typesetting, photography and print quality. I was probably one of the few people disappointed when they went to desktop publishing and the typesetting quality deteriorated in the 1990s.
No such problem at Brogue (well, British Vogue) in 1991, which was still put together the old way. Coincidentally, my first issue of this venerable title was also an anniversary one, namely its 75th. Linda, Christy and Cindy were known to everyone, even young straight boys like me (actually, especially young straight boys like me). Here the visuals and the article quality were influential, and I had grown up reading largely British car magazines, such as Car and Autocar (though I began with Temple Pressâs Motor in 1978). The British way of writing resonated with me and it was familiar territory.
My journey in this world, therefore, began eight years before I started Lucire, and the ideas had brewed for some time.
Yesterday we uploaded three articles from 1998 and they were quite terrible. I might have known what the benchmark was from the late 1980s and early 1990s, but we sure didnât hit it in our writing a year after we started. I like to hope that we have since got there.

Someone shared Phil Knightâs 10 steps in business for Nike, when it was a fledgling enterprise back in the 1970s. I had seen this a long time ago, in the late 1980s, and even used to share it with my students in 1999â2000. I hadnât seen it since.
They are aggressive and macho, which probably ties quite well in with Nike and its early days (John McEnroe was more than a suitable ambassador). They probably lend themselves quite well to sportswear. But a few of these are universal in business.
I like (7): âYour job isnât done until the job is done,â and the third of the eight âDangersâ: âEnergy takers vs. energy giversâ. Bureaucracy, naturally, heads that list of dangers, and rightly so.
You should âAssume nothingâ (5).
I donât know if they still follow these tenets, but some definitely remain relevant.
Tags: 1970s, 1980s, 1989, 1990s, 1991, 2023, business, design, fashion, fashion magazine, JY&A Media, Lucire, magazine design, magazines, modelling, Nike, publishing, retro, typography, UK, USA, Vogue Posted in business, culture, design, leadership, media, New Zealand, publishing, UK, USA | No Comments »
27.02.2023

I needed a 2023 wall planner today, but none of the downloadable ones really suitedâso I made my own. Rather than keep it to myself, I thought I’d offer it as a free download, in case anyone else wants it. They’re two A4s, six months on each, but as the file’s a PDF, you can scale it to A3 without any loss in quality.
The PDF is here (89,747 bytes)âhelp yourself. And yes, I know it’s nearly March.
When I was around five going on six, I found great joy making little calendars. The Massimo Vignelli Stendig calendar was still very influential in the mid- to late 1970s, and many designers followed that lead. They fascinated me, and I got used to the patterns (how April and July start on the same weekday, as do September and December; in non-leap years, so do February and March, and January and October). I remember drawing (on A4s) calendars out from 1978 to 1980 to study these patterns. Of course, 1980 was a leap year, which threw up different patterns.
Ever the perfectionist, there was one month where I missed some days. Upon realizing my mistake, I became frustrated, and stopped. If I had Twink or Liquid Paper I might not have stopped!
When I had to design some calendars for work in the 2010s, the Stendig calendar still came to mind, but certain practical considerations meant I couldn’t ape it completely. Still, there was plenty of big Helvetica on it.
Tags: 1970s, 1978, 2023, calendar, childhood, design, graphic design, Helvetica, Massimo Vignelli, memory, modernism, office, typography Posted in business, design, typography, USA | No Comments »
03.12.2022
Now that the quartet has been launched, it’s evident that Tesla’s naming strategy is all wrong. This is what they should be called.

On a related note:
Since I haven’t seen the March 15 video now circulating on OnlyKlans, I mean, Twitter, I can’t use the DIA reporting form. But those who have, should.
If it were a New Zealand website doing the distribution, a warning would have been issued at the least; and I bet it would have been blocked by now. The person running the site would probably have been charged. Basically what our government is signalling is that a foreign fascist sympathizer has greater freedoms than the rest of us. And what the opposition parties are signalling is that that’s OK, too, because here’s a real thing that they can sink their teeth into, but they prefer to gaslight over other stuff.
The Christchurch Call website has not been updated since September.
Anyone in politics who actually has some bollocks?
Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, car, humour, law, New Zealand, politics, Tesla, Twitter, typography Posted in cars, internet, New Zealand, politics, technology, typography | No Comments »
28.10.2022
I suppose it shouldnât surprise me that I have a US Library of Congress entry, as a published author, though if I am reading it correctly, it relates to my 2010 mayoral campaign.
Following the links there, I arrived at a Virtual International Authority File but the data there seem to relate to my Wikipedia entries. Disappointing.
Keep going, and thereâs an entry at OCLC, a non-profit library collective, also linking to Wikipedia.
But from there I have a WorldCat identity that OCLC manages, and this is where things get a little more interesting.
Thereâs some 2010 mayoral campaign stuff, five references to academic papers I wrote (nice to see they are âheld by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwideâ), an early book I wrote, Typography & Branding (though I donât recall having written it in 2002 as they claim), and a book I didnât author but am credited in the colophon as the body typeface familyâs designer, Mainland Island from Wai-te-ata Press.
Iâm flattered that Typography & Branding is held at two Australian locations, the University of Newcastle Auchmuty Library and the Curtin University Library. I hope their students are getting a lot out of this early book of mine.
I admit I like this tag cloud:

Commiserations to my namesake, Jack Yan, on not winning the Toronto mayoral election. I was getting a lot of news hits from Toronto and Ontario, far more than our media here managed back in the day. I also thought he did rather well in the televised debates. We only had one episode of Back Benches in 2010 that wasnât really a debate. But there was a fun quiz, which I wonâsome of us know more about this city than others.
In a very crowded field, Jack managed seventh out of 31, with incumbent John Tory holding on to his gig with 62 per cent of the vote.
I hope he has another crack at it if he feels he has something to offer. I found him a really great guy to deal with.
Tags: 2010, author, book, branding, Canada, database, mayoralty, Ontario, politics, Toronto, typography, USA, Wikipedia Posted in branding, internet, New Zealand, politics, technology, typography, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
11.10.2022
Iâm not sure why I didnât spot these back in 2012. This was very high praise from Cre8d Design, on âWhat is New Zealandâs iconic font?â So nice to see JY DĂ©cennie in there.
Still on type, the fifth Congreso Internacional de TipografĂa in Valencia cites yours truly.
Como consecuencia de todos estos cambios, surgen numerosas cuestiones sobre cĂłmo afrontar el uso y la creaciĂłn de la tipografĂa en un nuevo contexto, sometido a constantes transformaciones tecnolĂłgicas. Para muchos, los modos tradicionales de concebir la tipografĂa ya no funcionan en el mundo de la pantalla. AsĂ, para el diseñador Jack Yan, la tecnologĂa estĂĄ cambiando tan rĂĄpidamente que la idea de que la tipografĂa se crea para imprimir estĂĄ llegando prĂĄcticamente a su fin. Los nuevos dispositivos electrĂłnicos empiezan a demandar tipografĂas especĂficas y no sĂłlo meras adaptaciones de las ya existentes. Esto implica igualmente un adiestramiento por parte del usuario final, el lector, que no sĂłlo debe familiarizarse con los nuevos dispositivos sino con los nuevos procedimientos asociados a la lectura dinĂĄmica.
This is pretty mainstream thinking now (and I would have thought in 2012, too) but also nice to be credited for saying itâI guess I would have first publicly pushed this idea in Desktop in 1996. But designers like Matthew Carter and Vincent Connare were already there âŠ
Amazing what you can find in a Mojeek ego search, as opposed to a Google one.
Tags: 2012, Aotearoa, design, Desktop, fonts, JY&A Fonts, Mojeek, New Zealand, Spain, technology, typeface design, typefaces, typography, Valencia Posted in design, New Zealand, publishing, technology, typography | No Comments »
02.10.2022
Windows 11 22H2 arrived for me yesterday, and the first order of business, as always, was to sort out the typography. This earlier post is roughly right: make the registry hacks, then change the properties of the fonts in C:\Windows\WinSXS (namely by giving them administrator access) before deleting them. However, I needed one extra step to get them out of C:\Windows\Fonts , and that was to boot up in safe mode and delete them from 7Zip. Only then could I change the properties and say farewell to the dreaded Arial.
You still canât type most characters above ASCII 128 in Notepadâa crazy state of affairs introduced during Windows 11âs timeâthough I managed to get the pound sterling sign to work (even though there might be less need to type it now thanks to the UK government). I guess no one uses the euro symbol at Redmond, or goes to a cafĂ© (forget about any accented characters).
Weâll see if Explorer still rotates photos by itselfâbut as Iâve replaced it with One Commander for most of my file management, it will be a while before I will find out.
The new icons look good, and the new Maps seems to work reasonably well. Mostly I just care that my usual programs are fine and Windows’ font substitutes don’t do anything silly.

Tags: 2022, bugs, computing, fonts, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, technology, typography Posted in design, technology, typography | No Comments »
05.08.2022

Above: Some French text in Lucire.
Regular Lucire readers will have seen a number of articles run in English and French (and one in Japanese) on our main website. Typographically, the French ones are tricky, since we have to distinguish between non-breaking spaces and non-breaking thin spaces, and as far as I know, there is no code for the latter in HTML. Indeed, even with a non-breaking space, a browser can treat it as it would a regular space.
So whatâs our solution? Manually, and laboriously, putting in <NOBR> tags around the words that cannot be broken. Itâs not efficient but typographically, it makes the text look right and, unless weâve missed one, we donât have the problem of guillemets being left on a line by themselves without a word to attach to.
The language is set to fr in the meta tags.
Among our French colleagues, I have seen some go Anglo with their quotation marks and ignoring the traditional French guillemets. Others omit any thin spaces and, consequently, adopt the English spacing rules with punctuation. For some reason, I just canât bring ourselves to do it, and maybe there is an easier way that we haven’t heard of. I hope nos lecteurs français appreciate the extra effort.
Tags: 2020s, 2021, 2022, French, JY&A Media, Lucire, programming, publishing, typography Posted in business, design, interests, internet, media, publishing, technology, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
02.08.2022



Here are three Elle covers that I uploaded to last monthâs gallery, from 1991, 2007 and 2022. Which looks the most modern?
To me, itâs the 1991 US one. The Futura Light type is calm, it all looks rather balanced, and the photograph is well lit and composed. From memory, it was commended by the Society of Publication Designers in New York but I have to check my old annuals.
Go to 2007 and thereâs just too much clutter, and the custom type looks uncomfortable, especially the bolder cut. The 2022 cover sits somewhere in between, but it feels like itâs the dawn of desktop publishing with different sizes and weights, and type inside circles.
Granted, Iâm not comparing apples with apples, as the 21st-century covers are for the French market, and the 2022 cover isnât strictly for Elle but the Elle Corps summer special. Makes you wonder what timelessness is, and if such a thing even exists. Many of the old covers for Lucire that I art-directed were meant to be timeless, too, but how they have dated! Is it about calm, a lack of clutter, and a sensible, restrained use of type? Or does that in fact date things, and we’re just at a moment in time when the 1991 cover’s trends have come round again?
Tags: 1991, 2007, 2022, design, Elle, France, graphic design, Hachette, layout, publishing, typography, USA Posted in design, France, media, publishing, typography, USA | No Comments »
17.05.2022
Iâve had both Firefox and Opera GX running as replacements for Vivaldi, which still crashes when I click in form fields, though not 100 per cent of the time. Itâs running at about 50 per cent, so the fix they employed to deal with this issue is only half-effective.
I see Firefox still doesnât render type as well. This is a matter of taste, of course, but hereâs one thing I really dislike, where Iâm sure thereâs more agreement among typophiles:

No, not the hyphenation, but the fact the f has been butchered in the process.
The majority of people wonât care about this, but itâs the sort of thing that makes me choose Opera GX over Firefox.
Due to a temporary lapse in good judgement, I attempted to install Ăber again, this time on my Xiaomi. Here are the Tweets relating to that:
Evidently no one at Ăber has ever considered what it would be like if someone actually read the terms and conditions and followed through with some of the instructions in the clauses.
After getting through that, this is the welcome screen:
This is all it does. There’s nothing to click on, and you never move past this screen.
This is less than what I was able to achieve on my Meizu M6 Note when I tried Ăber on thatâat least there it was able to tell me that Ăber is not available in my area (Tawaâand yes, I know Ăber is lying).
This has nothing to do with not having Google Services as my other half has a non-Google Huawei and is able to get the program working.
For me, it’s three out of three phones over six years where this program does not workâand frankly I’m quite happy taking public transport rather than waste my time with this lemon. Maybe one day they will get it working for all Android phones, but I won’t hold my breath.
Tags: 2022, Firefox, Google, Google Android, Opera, technology, Twitter, typography, Ăber, web browser, Xiaomi Posted in internet, technology, typography | No Comments »
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