Archive for 2015

Hello-Fresh-Group-Home

HelloFresh is a delivery service that saves you time on shopping and meal planning – you pick recipes and they send a box full of pre-measured ingredients that you cook at home. It’s one of many such services popping up left and right. In this growing market, where websites replace store aisles, each brand’s take on photography, colors, and type will be key to luring in cooks.

The approach of HelloFresh is a bright orange and green color palette combined with Alice Savoie’s Capucine. Her typeface is used primarily for headings and its rich flavor is balanced by a generous amount of white space. Capucine’s distinct italics are also put to good use, adding a layer of hierarchy and a subtle sense of movement to the page.

Hello-Fresh_Web-Promise

The design carries over to their iOS app, where you can see recipes and rate meals. Paired with Adobe’s Source Sans, Capucine is used more extensively and at a wider range of sizes. The typefaces complement each other, creating a bright vibe and easy-to-follow instructions. Overall, the use of Capucine lends warmth to an experience that could easily feel cold.

Hello-Fresh_App-1

Hello-Fresh_App-2

Capucine is available for desktop and webfont formats, and has extended licensing options.

What began as a retooling of our production process ended up as a full-scale rebuild of every font in our library. The new, updated fonts are now available to all customers as free upgrades. The changes are almost entirely technical in nature – in other words, the design of the typefaces remains the same – but the improvements are beneficial to everyone, particularly those who licensed webfonts or who regularly use Microsoft Office applications on Windows. Many of the changes were based on customer feedback so if you ever experience problems with our fonts, get in touch – we’re here to help.

So, what changed?

Desktop Font Changes

  • OpenType fonts now work better in Microsoft Office programs. If you’ve seen styles behave unusually or not show up at all, this should fix that.
  • Certain fonts are now style-linked for better behavior in programs that require style changes be made using the Bold or Italic buttons.
  • Font menu organization has changed for three families: Bryant Condensed, Bryant Compressed and Klavika Condensed. The fonts are now grouped as their own family rather than under their larger family name (see illustration below). Some programs were unable to handle the larger number of fonts in a single grouping. This also results in better cross-platform compatibility.
  • Other minor improvements.
Process_Blog_Font-Update_img-desktop

The way three families display in the font menu has changed. In this example, Bryant Compressed & Condensed are no longer grouped together under Bryant.


Webfont Changes

  • WOFF 2.0 format added. Webfont packages now include WOFF2, WOFF, and EOT files for each style. This new format offers compression advantages over the original WOFF format.
  • OpenType code, once stripped for file size, has been added back into the fonts. This does not add OpenType features, but restores the ability to access them via CSS for any OpenType features in the font. For most of the current webfont library that translates to ligatures and fractions.
  • Fixed glitches that occurred in certain browsers hindering rendering or kerning.
  • Further minor improvements to rendering of all non-manually hinted fonts.
Process_Blog_Font-Update_img-webfonts

We added the WOFF2 font format to all webfont packages for a total of three format options. The examples on the right show the file size differences between WOFF and WOFF2.


How to Upgrade
First, sign into your account and re-download your licensed fonts. Desktop users should uninstall existing fonts, restart, and then install the new fonts — in that order. Because the internal names of the fonts changed for the three reorganized families — Bryant Condensed or Compressed, and Klavika Condensed – existing documents using those fonts will have to replace the old fonts with the new fonts inside the document. Webfont users, upload the new versions to your server and check that the new font file names match the old. And for those of you using Typekit, republish your kits and the latest versions will be served.

Process foundry page on Fontstand

After a month on Fontstand we’ve made all of our typefaces available. If you haven’t seen Fontstand, it’s a free Mac application that allows you try fonts at no cost and rent them on a monthly basis. We offered five select families when the app debuted but now our entire library is there to test and rent. Read a bit more about the app in this blog post.

If you want to dive in, visit our foundry page on Fontstand.

Scandia on Fontstand

There’s a new way to test our typefaces, and not just that – you can rent them too. Fontstand, a desktop Mac application, lets you try fonts for free for one hour as well as rent them on a monthly basis at 10% of the normal license cost. Whether you rent or trial, the chosen fonts work right away in your design apps without you having to install them. At launch, Fontstand offers hundreds of typefaces from over twenty independent foundries.

Clicking a ‘buy’ button isn’t always easy. Maybe you need to test the fonts before committing, maybe you want to make sure the client approves, or maybe you’re a design student on a tight budget. We get that – we’ve been there – and we think Fontstand can help. This new approach to licensing is a great way to get your hands on high-quality typefaces and ensure that you’re using the right font for the job. You can think of renting as an extensive test or as a way to use fonts for a limited time – you can always rent the fonts again when you revisit a project – and once you rent for twelve total months, the fonts are yours to download.

To get started with Fontstand, visit fontstand.com. And the links below will take you directly to the fonts we currently offer. If there are any typefaces you’d love to see on Fontstand, send us an email or tweet.

Process on Fontstand:

13 Mar 2015

Minnesota by Design

The Nerf Ball. Masking tape. The Hüsker Dü logo. Cheerios and Wheaties. This is Minnesota design and we haven’t even mentioned the architecture. Or the chairs. Or the rollerblades (don’t roll your eyes). Or the magnetic poetry (don’t roll your eyes!).

Walker Art Center launched a web-based initiative called Minnesota by Design and as you can see, we can’t pick a favorite. That’s why it’s such an honor to have Klavika included in the collection. Eric, who designed Klavika in 2004, was born in Minnesota and we’re proud to uphold the culture that has been here long before us.

MNxD_Maple

The virtual gallery allows the Walker to include works that can’t be practically collected – like a park. It also means webfonts. We were excited to see Maple chosen as the typeface for the project, used for everything from navigation to descriptions and even the map that represents the origins of the designs.

So if you’re interested in some design history – much of this work extends far beyond Minnesota – take a look yourself but beware the rabbit hole. Soon you’ll know plenty about the Honeycrisp apple. Tonka Toys. Paul Bunyan. Marcel Breuer…