Favorite humanistic fonts for product and information graphics

Helvetica is almost the default typeface that spears in many products of information design, such as control panels on products and directional sign in public place. Its popularity was documented by Gary Hustwit’s 2007 film “Helvetica”. However, while Helvetica can be said as the most widely adopted san serif typeface, there is a trend for over 20 years toward applying more humanistic sans serif typefaces in information graphics.

The main reason why they are called humanistic typefaces I think is because their creators intend to infuse the calligraphic details in typeface design. In doing so, with some variation in line width, the typefaces become more legible than other sans serif fonts. When being called humanistic, they also appeal to people’s cultural side and associate themselves with fonts from various historic periods. This is a sharp contrast against typical san serif fonts such as Helvetica, which seems very strict, rigid and mechanical.

Among those humanistic sans-serif fonts, FF Meta is a notable font designed by the influential German typeface designer Eric Spiekermann. He also co-authored a book, Stop Stealing the Sheep, in 1993, an interesting read that introduces readers to find the right fonts that properly express ideas, emotions and so on. Because you need to pay font sellers such as Myfont.com to get FF Meta, I have found Colaborate font as an alternative for free online and use it often in my designs that involves with informational display. I discovered that Colaborate is equally good and very elegant as well. So you may consider using Colaborate Thin to create that eloquent effect next time when you think of being chic and neat. So far I have used the free version of Colaborate and have not experienced with any virus, and you may download the free fonts Colaborate here but use your own discretion. 

Incidentally I learned lately that as Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum reopened its door to public this year, it has commissioned a new custom-designed typeface by Chester Jenkins. It used the new font to rebrand itself in logo, prints and webs. And it is also free to download. I just downloaded and installed it on my computer. The font package includes all types of line width from heavy, bold, book, light, to thin and in many ways the variations of the font are very similar to Colaborate. Therefore I will try my hand on it next time for upcoming information design or presentation.

Rhino 3D: Rebuild a curve

One thing that I like about Rhino is its ability to rebuild a curve or surface. The function of Rebuild in Rhino is most useful for me in straightening a curve or smoothing a surface. Here I would like to cite an example I found in Rhino 5 User’s Guide.

To make a curve smooth, I can rebuild the curve to remove excess control points. That means I have to select that curve and use the Rebuild command to reduce the number of points and set the degree. The rule of thumb in creating curves for modeling is: “Do not use more points than you absolutely need” as instructed in the user guide.

I can turn on the CurvatureGraph command to check the curves at the same time for smoothness. CurvatureGraph command can display the curvature graph. If the curvature graph is still not satisfactory, then I will move the control points until I have a smooth graph.

As shown in the below image, the yellow curve is a revised one from the green one. The point count is 12 and the degree of cure is 5. Looking at the white curvature graph, I can see the curvature graph on left end of the yellow curve is merge with yellow curve. It indicates that there is tangent or smooth transition from the yellow curve to its adjacent flat line.

 

Relevant details for consumer electronic product design

One day in June when my wife and I strolled down the street in Quebec City during our vacation, a company’s sign caught her attention. It says Advanta Design Industriel. She guessed it must be an industrial design firm. We peeped through the window and, yes, it is a design studio with people working in there. She wanted me to take a picture of the sign for our vacation memory, but I thought why bother, I have seen so many design firms in the U.S.

After the trip, I decided to google the company and found its website. Wow, Bang! This company does put out some good stuff on its site that is worth noting. Mainly you will find it make itself very resourceful regarding the mechatronic design if you go to its expertise page. Right there you will get a glimpse of what an industrial designer needs to know about the details as well as inner working for the electronic products they may design. For example, a designer can learn:

1)      How the clear or translucent lightpipe can work as a conduit for transmitting LED light from PCB board to exterior control/display panel. I consider lightpipe design is crucial to dictate the locations of LED lights on control/display panel as in many projects I have to deal with this issue. It is related to PCB layout and physical sizes and locations of LEDs.

2)      How thin walls can be designed and molded. Thin wall plastic enclosure sometimes are created inevitably even engineers will suggest a designer not to. Here Advanta gives you the idea on how to make the thin wall design works – by using high pressure injection molding to increase the mold flow speed or by choosing the right resin to facilitate the mold flow.

3)      Soft touch overmolding – as the demand for good gripping on the handheld products escalates, the textured and soft touch are becoming the de facto finishing of product exterior surfaces. You will see TPE (thermoplastic elastomer) type of materials like Kraton or Santoprene are widely used in creating these soft touch gripping surfaces.

4)      Overmolding that in some cases combines soft and hard materials into one single part. Overmolding is prevalent in many product details where reducing the abrasion between components in an assembly or creating inmold decoration is required.

These design details featured in Advanta’s expertise page will be relevant to many industrial designers and will certainly help inspire them to unleash their creativities for more design options that take roots in gracious details.