#this is also such a nice typeface

[rubberbandballqueen]

ever since i found out that highway gothic (typeface commissioned for use in the american highways) is optimized for legibility with just a brief glance at high speeds i cannot stop thinking abt how easily readable it is. like my eyesight isn't like immaculate or anything so i can sometimes have a hard time reading fine print but even when the roadsigns are kind of blurry they're still pretty easy to read

[ailurinae]

A font with mirrored glyphs

Street Slab Mirror has all glyphs reversed from left to right, for when Unicode right-to-left mark (U+200E) just doesn't cut it.

Unicode BiDi reverses the *order* of the glyphs, but each glyph still looks the same, great for e.g. Arabic, not helpful for e.g. Leonardo da Vinci mirrored writing or boustrophedon writing (some ancient Greek, Etruscan, etc writing went one way, then the other "as the ox plows")

(Street Slab is an extensive family of fonts, scroll down a ways to get to Mirror)

It's free for personal or commercial use! However, it is a custom license that doesn't meet the Open Source Initiative definition of Open Source, so probably you can't use it in a lot of OSS software and maybe some open culture works (e.g. Creative Commons licensed stuff)?

[dawns-beauty]

Okay, to counteract all my complaining, here are some (lore friendly) mods that I just like a lot (no animals, people, weapons/armors, mesh/texture replacers, etc. because there's too many and it gets boring.)

-

Ghosts of the Deathbells: adds a really rare, somber event to picking a deathbell flower.

Falmeroon: adds Snow Elf ruins to some remote edges of the map. I've made an unofficial SE port here.

Snow Whale Bones: adds the remains of Snow Whales in some mountainous areas (iffy canon but sorry they are Cool.)

Windmills of Skyrim: adds windmills with unique, custom-painted sails to farms.

Scarecrows of Skyrim: adds scarecrows to farms.

Scribes of Skyrim: makes books and notes use a variety of typefaces (any fellow Pentiment fans out there?)

The Old Ways-Nordic Religion: adds totems representing the Nordic pantheon around Skyrim. Has patches for the next recommendation.

The Great Towns/Villages series: overhauls the smaller, worldspace towns in a really cool way, includes voice-acted NPCs. Personally, I like Kynesgrove the best because it actually adds to the lore about the Nordic pantheon. For Shor's Stone, I recommend this mod as well.

Redbag's Rorikstead: I like this mod over Great Village's version because the houses have sod roofs and I'm a sucker for sod roofs.

Capital Windhelm Expansion: adds some really thoughtful lore touches (Dunmer refugees outside the walls, an Arena, and a cool vampire quest)

Relic of Dawnstar: adds a Gehenoth skull to the White Hall (requires Cities of the North), inspired by the lore of the Travels game

Environs series: thoughtful additions that makes certain places change over time.

WiZKid's mods: especially Lund's Hut, Lively Farms, Icy Windhelm, Pinewatch, Hall of the Dead Stained Glass Windows, and Pavo's House. Sepolcri is also pretty good but loses immersion points for using celtic cross gravestones. You can pry Lanterns of Skyrim II from my cold, dead hands, though. Lux? Idk her, LoSII is my bestie.

Fancy Sleeping Tree Replacer: the Sleeping Tree is supposed to be a remnant of the sentient trees of the flying city of Umbriel (from the novels.) It should be weird, is what I'm saying, and this mod makes it alien and beautiful.

Unique Culture Riverwood: a mod that gives Riverwood its own style of farmhouse and a little more personality. The author has also made a mod for Falkreath.

Immersive World Encounters: adds more and edits World Encounters, including encountering faction NPCs out and about (ex. the Companions outside of Whiterun doing Companion-y things in the wilderness).

Glorious Doors of Skyrim: adds some really cool doors. 'nuff said.

Redbag's Dragonreach: adds some unique flair to Jarl Ballin's crib.

Cultured Orc Furniture: replaces generic furniture in Orc Strongholds with custom furniture.

Lavinia's Memorial: adds some gifts from her grieving parents to the little girl's grave in Falkreath. Ouch.

Nocturnal Moths: adds moths that spawn around lanterns at night.

Moons and Stars: fixes the positions of the stars and moons, as well as making moon phases consistent.

DK's Realistic Nord Ships: replaces Skyrim's ships with some gorgeous new models.

Morgenstern's Mushroom Circles: adds more fairy rings in the wilderness. Delightful!

Bloodmoon Brodir Grove: makes the grove in Solstheim a little more like it was in the Morrowind DLC. The mod author also has more mods that bring Bloodmoon details and locations to Solstheim.

Ships of the Horizon: does what it says on the tin.

EVG Animation Variance: the whole animation series by Everglaid is nice (haven't tried Traversal yet, but that is some incredible technology) but I especially like this one for the old people animations

jasperthegnome's houses: these are SO cozy and comfy.

Arctic- Frost Effects Redux: makes frost spells have cooler effects (including 3D ice spikes)

Northern Roads- Let Me Guess Someone Stole Your Sweetroads: a plugin that cuts down on Northern Roads, removing all the landscape changes and bridges and just keeping the clutter. Way more compatible than the original mod.

Skyrim Bridges: this is my favorite bridge mod. There are many, but I like this one best.

Edit: forgot two tiny mods in my original post:

Nightcaller Temple Unique Shrine of Mara: replaces the generic shrine with a wooden shrine Erandur carved

Broken Tower Redoubt Unique Shrine of Dibella: similar to the above mod, but Reachmen carved this one.

[hoofpeet]

why don't you like Colorado?

Also, what typeface do you use for your comics?

I switch between Bell MT and Poor Richard every once in a while!! And for Colorado-- this state would probably be nice to live in if it wasn't literally impossible to find stable housing-- I'm probably biased here because we've been having an ESPECIALLY rough go of it but . Both times we looked for apartments here the search took 3+ months to secure a place, with ~2,100 a month apparently being kinda low for this area. The majority of my coworkers are either currently looking for a place or were evicted/priced out of their last places so . TL;DR The housing situation is a literal nightmare around here

[dirtyoldmanhole]

YRMR cover progress for the curious!

before drawing, there were a few things i knew that the cover had to have/show:

critically, had to have vibes of an enemies-to-lovers dynamic in the sense of ... the power tilt? even though that's not "technically" the true nature of their dynamic. gunter's not a nice guy in this fic, even aside from the possession, and i also didn't want anybody to run into this unsuspecting the darker parts to the fic. him more looming/threatening than you'd expect in base game, etc.

wanted to emulate kozaki's style through the whole cover in line qualitty, coloring, and composition. thankfully he gives a few tips over on his twitter. it's both a neat little nod at the source material, and also as a style experiment.

a big theme in this fic is gunter being made of so many masks/shells (there's a perfect blue cover, see below, that specifically made me think this composition could work.)

learning that kozaki hews pretty close to grids + the golden ratio was another big lightbulb moment, here's a drawing yoinked from his twitter where he shows it himself.

after scraping/studying from kozaki's twitter, i made one or two thumbnail doodles below. you can see the solid one had a golden ratio + general line dynamic check squiggled to the side. there's room for the title, the focus is on corrin, it'll work both in a horizontal and vertical crop, looking good so far.

you can see how pretty tightly to the thumbnail i kept, other than moving the vertical text to the top since i didn't have as much room there. i'm a little worried about the different line quality between how big the face is vs corrin but we'll see.

something i also realized i like about the composition is corrin "could" look like she's attacking the viewer, but she also looks like she could be guarding him with her back to him, which.... heh. comes up in some interesting ways in the last third of the fic (possession wise).

bunch of cleaning up.

as I suspected since this is 11x17in (much bigger than what i normally draw) i had to grab a different brush for gunter since thin lines were not going to work as they did for corrin. i think kozaki's real genius is how he treats texture with his linework; where he does thin lines, where he puts the thick ones, etc.

corrin's coming along great but there's a spirit to the first face on the left i think i'm missing now, so i'll probably re-insert that. (also decided to at least draw in his face there even though the masks/slices will distort that). i think what also helps is gunter's face is very low contrast and needs to remain low contrast, to help corrin pop out in front.

then i started thinking about typography. a lot of the fonts i had were either way too masculine/bland/modern, or way too feminine/curvy. this title needs a hint of masculinity to nod at FE's general action-adventure RPG roots, but it's also very distinctly the kind of erotica that doesn't easily lend itself to a genre. it's tender horror, it's daddy kink, it's vicious romance, it's ... a lot of things.

here's another thing: when thinking about title typography, another consideration is genre. briefly i considered something like lovecraftian covers; my doujin circle and i had been sharing pictures of old pulp covers. i also noticed a lot of my favorite JP erotic horror doujin have very spiky titles. this title also needs to be scrunched up in a tight space so it's not like we got a sprawl of acreage here either.

what doesn't help is enemies to lovers doesn't really have a visual language in mainstream media.

it's a staple of Ao3 (written) genres, but the closest you'd get otherwise would be romantic horror (kind of says a lot about who makes what huh?). for example, the shape of water (movie) isn't a 1:1, but it's pretty damn close -- unfortunately that poster dodged the question by using an art deco-inspired font typeface that was more about the setting than the genre.

and then i had an epiphany. maybe i was approaching this from the wrong direction: it's the knight/liege romance that's the heartbeat to YRMR.

think more old dragonlance novels. old medieval/fantasy pulp novels; plenty of kinky sex and ass in there, and still close enough to FE. remember everyone and their mamma having a bi ass crush for bad boy raistlin? that's the vibe i want.

this kind of glorious deranged shit. you're not gonna be surprised at possessed grandpa whip kink if you read these on the regular.

after ~*arcane designer magic*~ (I do this for a living) bolton and magiona display were the two fonts that were gonna work just fine together.

god that looks so much better. this looks believable now.

the thin/thick line weight contrast in magiona display is going to accentuate the lineart in a way that might be tricky with other fonts that work better on painted covers. bolton's "squished" vertically enough it doesn't compete with the other one, and makes for a good secondary/tertiary font.

few other things happened.

i shrunk gunter's face because not being able to see his jawline (sex appeal u see) was bothering me from a composition standpoint. it's the same reason frank frazetta didn't censor his glorious asses.

(said seriously, by the way. so many people don't give their lust in art enough credit.)

i also needed more room for the title to show, and the line quality/scale difference between his face was also bugging me. does this mess up the golden ratio composition? sure, temporarily, but his armor's weirdly flexible that we can adapt it pretty easily.

it's about this time i'm also looking through my hydrus network stash of favorite covers for what color palette and contrast to use. kozaki tends to skew purple/cooler hues for nohr characters, and that'd go well with these two.

purple/green hues that play well with light purple and the yellow from those old covers i love so much, low contrast midground, and something that'd contrast well with text above. dark/black background for the gothic vibes, and the text will probably need to be white or some sort of light-warm hue for that "pop".

doing color tests is more of a leap of faith and intuition than an exact science, but damn it is it satisfying when you nail it in one go and go 'holy shit i want to read this. :D

(green/gold for the hint of anankos' mask, also matching the yato and her warmer skin tone. purple flames for him, but the high contrast armor to separate her from his larger shapes. we've got the dragonstone and the yato as flexibility for lighting and emphasizing contrast with her. )

i kind of like how i accidentally made the mask shards reflect(?) a bit of his own face. hell yeah throw it in. this is something that's more likely to work than not. this is something that has that mix of id and horror i've been going after.

here's another version with references to the side and the golden ratio laid on again.

honestly a lot of it at this step is going 'dude you know what would be SO DOPE.... PURPLE FIRE...' 'dude..... fuck yes....' 'what about some sick ass sword effects?' 'YEAH....' and saving a bunch of backups in case of the idea didn't work out.

(am i going so much harder on a literal gilf porn fanfic cover than i need to? hell yeah. gunterfuckers deserve better. :D )

anyway here is when i start questioning everything, so i'll take a break from the colors to tighten up the lineart. now that the composition's settling in much tighter, i'm also thinking about how the two shapes interact with each other and if there's any potential issues with tangent points (where two lines intersect each other in a way that makes an optical illusion.)

that said i love how his jawline "points" at her face, that kind of line you want.

grinding away on corrin's lineart. also double checking that the shapes/colors/forms for her "make sense" both standalone and with the composition too. what's nice is she's at the point where i can just turn off my brain and polish up.

naturally couldn't resist poking at it more and this is when the rest of it clicked after figuring out which bit was anankos' mask, which bit was possessed!gunter vs himself (polished up the armor a bit too. at this point i'm pretty confident that it'll stay "set"; the biggest thing i'm likely to change is the blue silohuette to the dragonstone side for corrin.

here's the last true screenshot before cleaning up the last 2% of the lines. added the pulp cover texture around the border, switched the colors of the text so the cream would stand out more, cleaned up gunter's face and also increased the darkness of corrin's body so it'd contrast more with him behind.

thanks for reading. :D

[honeybyte]

Wait how do you make a font of your handwriting???? I've been wanting to do that for so LONG but i could only ever find weird sketchy websites and apps that didn't work :(

i think i used calligraphr! its been a while since i actually made my font, but the basic steps of it is

》 find a typeface grid where you can write out your alphabet

》 fill in all the letters

》 scan it into a font maker

》 dowload the svg or ttf file

》 i had to look up how to do this but you can upload it to your comp's default fonts! and it should come up in clip studio from there

calligraphr is free to use, there's an option to upgrade but it provides a template and creates the file for you. there's also a Microsoft Font Maker! i havent used it but i found out abt it thru this post that gives you a quick playthru on how to make your font!

for reference, this is how the original font came out thru calligraphr

it's a nice personal touch, and makes it blend into my art more than a serif or sans serif font. it looks like Mine and i didnt need to write it out by hand :>

[accio-victuuri]

CPN : XZS vlog chapter 5.5 Rome & Paris 📺

just some bits and pieces that we picked up from the recent vlog shared by xz and his team. honestly, their work just keeps getting better and better. no one does it like them. some people may hate on him for the ‘vlogs’ but at this point, the production quality is on par with something you can show on tv or a streaming app. xz’s travel show when….

as usual, everything is fake and interpreted with turtle/cpn glasses on. if you don’t like it then feel free to scroll — no one is forcing you. ‼️‼️

Let’s start with the date of posting which 3/29, out of all the days he could have shared this, why now? They usually go for Thursdays but not this one. We think it’s a late 3/28 gift, that day is Wuji recording and also when WYB came home from his Rome trip. What a nice coincidence, cause the vlog posted had Rome in it too. These two are really so particular with dates! I can’t. 🥹🥹🥹🥹

1. One thing that stood out to me was when he was looking at a design book. He was talking about designing typeface and letter, and how there are different formations in writing or presenting them. I don’t think that it was ever CPN that he likes to play with letters/ characters to give a different meaning. or to hide something. think : yibo’s motorcyle suit. this just confirms that.

( i have talked about most ( if not all ) of the design bits and hidden meanings per the photos above and more. it’s too much for me to link each one so just feel free to explore this blog. )

2. The way he was eating the lollipop and his pose is so WANG YIBO. I’m sorry, but that’s the first thing that came to mind. Yibo and his oral fixation is real and we see it on SDC most of the time. 😂 They really mirror each other’s habits now and do certain things that make you go “wait… that’s totally xx behavior and not his..”

people are wondering if they saw the fanart of them eating 🍭 at some point and copied it unconsciously.

3. The element of romance in this vlog makes me wanna scream! honestly. Sure, you can argue that the place ( especially paris ) is romantic or that he is doing fan service to the viewers — like, you’re in a romantic weekend with me in Paris. Yeah. Sure. that’s a plausible explanation. but for a clown like me, the elements seem deliberate.

The lines in Moon River:

I'm crossing you in style some day // Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker // Wherever you're going, I'm going your way // Two drifters, off to see the world // There's such a lot of world to see // We're after the same rainbow's end.

He sang the line ‘ i’m crossing you in style some day ‘ — yeah, ZZ. you will be with WYB one day in Rome and Paris. and the mention of a Rainbow. 🌈 I need someone to make a fan video with this as a BGM please.

Next is JVKE’s golden hour. This one has more 👀 lyrics. The whole “golden” and “see you shine” just screams his love for anything about the sun. the sun and his sunflower ☀️ and the mention of summer.

We were just two lovers // Feet up on the dash, drivin' nowhere fast // Burnin' through the summer // Radio on blast, make the moment last // She got solar power

I also don’t really buy it when people say “he doesn’t understand the lyrics, don’t think to much..” i mean. are you really lowkey insulting him at this point? he may not know like the details, but i’m pretty sure he understands the general meaning. and like, it’s not that hard to understand english words. come on.

The style for the intros were also reminiscent of the movie Roman Holiday. Maybe they looked up a movie and watched it. but anyway, the story of this is also a romantic movie.

Yes we know you’re not single. ☺️☺️☺️☺️

4. He wore a long wooyoungmi coat which I talked about here. So looks like that’s where the paper bag was from? but if he already wore it, why bring the bag like that? it’s not that precious of a cargo to hand carry anyway. i’m still eating the candy.

5. Same place, but years apart. ⏱️

6. How he was trying to ride the scooter makes me soft. I feel like the influence of riding things like this ( and even the hoverboard he owns ) is from WYB. 🥹 He can’t do motorcycles, but he is willing to try everything else. The whole image of him riding it reminds us of the loyiboard character design too!

7. When you see what’s on screen during the 2:28 timestamp, it’s a dog. Lol. thinking of your puppy back home? There are also two other shots where a dog is there, but not as deliberate as this one.

8. It looks familiar 🤔🤔🤔🤔

9. It depends on how you see it, 8 or infinity. I’ve really been up in arms with this CPN and feel like we will see more of it.

10. The message ZZ brings in this vlog is the best thing tho. from the caption of the video on weibo :

The best time is on the road, to listen In the heart, to draw inspiration, to travel far, to find a different self. Feel free to do what you want👣

I love how he is encouraging people, in a way, to get out there. which was always his message to fans, to have time to go outside and build themselves up. Don’t spend too much time online. Also the bit about feel free to do what you want. I really hope he gets to do that more. I hope he gets to make choices that lean more towards the things he wants. 💕

and this bit : ( to native speakers, feel free to chime in too )

“in the long run the straw weighs” = despite the light weight, everything becomes heavy if you bring it for too long.

-END.

[officecyborg]

Manually checking the glyphs every single time is a pain in the ass, so I made this list as a reference for myself of what different fonts could do and whether they include the characters I use most often. Posting it here in case someone else finds it useful. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This isn't intended to be, like, an exhaustive masterlist, just my personal preferences. Also disclaimer that (1) I'm not a typography expert and (2) I was eyeballing the languages supported by my computer, so if I got something wrong re: character sets, my bad.

Links/details below. It's nice to tip the designers if you can. Many of these are open-source, but not all. Check the licence!

"Extended Latin" = Seems to support Icelandic, Czech, Hungarian... anything I was scanning for.

1797 Claustro: Basic diacritics.

Akazukin Pop: Japanese + extended Latin inc. ə and ß + Cyrillic + Greek. Note: Download requires a Pixiv account.

Alegreya: Extended Latin inc. ə and ß + Cyrillic + Greek.

Apfel Grotezk: Extended Latin inc. ə and ß.

Averia Serif Libre: Many diacritics + Icelandic letters + ß.

Ballet: Extended Latin inc. ə and ß + Greek math symbols.

Bantayog: Many diacritics + Icelandic letters + ß. Has a Baybayin script version, but as a separate typeface. Note: PWYC.

Barracuda: Basic diacritics + Icelandic letters. Note: Download doesn't come with a licence, I'd contact the designer if you're planning to use it for something $$.

Blue Highway: Extended Latin inc. ß + Greek math symbols.

Compagnon: Many diacritics + Icelandic letters + ß.

Fafo Sans: (Flashing gif at link.) Extended Latin inc. ß + Japanese (minimal kanji) + Greek math symbols.

Grenze Gotisch: Extended Latin inc. ə and ß + Greek math symbols.

Hachi Maru Pop: Japanese + many Latin diacritics + Icelandic letters + ə, and ß + Cyrillic + Greek.

HVD Rowdy: Many diacritics, renders ß but as a single character that looks like ss.

IM Fell Types: Extended Latin inc. ß + μ. Note: Flowers, which are not on Google Fonts. How to use these.

League Gothic: Extended Latin inc. ß.

Maragsâ: Many diacritics + ə. Note: PWYC.

Mochiy Pop One: Japanese + many Latin diacritics + Icelandic letters + ß.

Nova Mono: Extended Latin inc. ß.

Nyght Serif: Cyrillic + extended Latin inc. ə and ß.

Oliciy: Many diacritics + Icelandic letters.

Ostrich Sans: Most extended Latin inc. ß (Heavy and Medium weights only, and missing a couple like Hungarian őű).

Otomanopee One: Japanese (only basic kanji) + extended Latin inc. ß + Greek math symbols.

Otsutome: Japanese + many Latin diacritics + Icelandic letters + ß + Cyrillic + Greek.

Piron TW: Cyrillic and extended Latin inc. ß. Also μ.

Pretendard: Robust multilingual support; extended Latin + Cyrillic + Greek + most IPA symbols. Also has Korean and Japanese but as separate font packs.

Railway: Most extended Latin + ß (though missing a couple like Icelandic ðÐ).

Reggae One: Japanese + extended Latin inc. ß + Cyrillic + Greek.

Shantell Sans: Extended Latin inc. ə and ß, Cyrillic + Greek math symbols.

Sinistre: Extended Latin inc. ß + Cyrillic.

Tanker: Extended Latin inc. ß + Greek math symbols.

Tiny 5 x 3: Extended Latin inc. ß.

Togalite: Japanese + extended Latin inc. most IPA symbols + Cyrillic + Greek.

Tsukimi Rounded: Japanese + many Latin diacritics + Icelandic letters + ß.

Yuji Boku: Japanese + most extended Latin inc. ß (though missing a couple characters like Czech Ůů).

Zero Gothic: Japanese + many Latin diacritics (some don't display correctly on my computer, but that might be on my end) + Icelandic letters + ß + Cyrillic + Greek. Note: Download requires a Pixiv account.

[typefacetournament]

ROUND 2 - GREEN GROUP

Propaganda under the cut.

Bookman Old Style: "nicely even, a good serif font so we don't have the I-l mixup, because seriously, sans serif is BULLSHIT. Book Antiqua is a solid second though", "its a nice wide serif font, easier to read than times new roman"

Junicode: "A font that supports way more Unicode characters than your average typeface. It also looks good."

[runwayrunway]

No. 44 - FedEx Express

If you have ever sent or received a package, particularly if you live in the United States, you may be familiar with FedEx, and @magic-gps requested that I discuss their airplanes!

FedEx (founded and formerly known as Federal Express) is a massive network for transportation of mail and cargo, and Federal Express Express (okay, no, I can't call it that, FedEx is legally the full name even though we all know what it's really short for) is its airborne branch, making up the largest cargo airline by fleet and freight tonnes conveyed in the entire world. Their largest customer is the US Postal Service, with whom they have an exclusive contract - any USPS air mail is carried by FedEx Express - but they also fly for countless other clients. They cover so much ground (air) that they not only have a dozen hubs but an additional SUPERHUB, located in Memphis. They're what DHL is for Europe but doing bigger numbers, and that's with UPS, Atlas Air, and Kalitta Air to compete with. Although they're based in the US, their website claims that their destinations include every US zip-code, plus "over 220" countries and territories. There are 195 internationally recognized countries at present. I don't think saying they fly everywhere is even really hyperbole at this point.

FedEx's fleet is massive and eclectic. They have the world's largest cargo fleet, with 650 planes (which are named by employees, frequently after their children). Add in FedEx Feeder, a second fleet of small propeller airplanes dry-leased to local carriers for use ferrying small loads to the full-size jets, and there's a total of 699 FedEx liveries in the skies with 88 more on order. They occupy whole swathes of tarmac. They're everywhere. Like snails after the rain.

Oh, and apparently this livery was designed by Lindon Leader (what a name) of Landor Associates, the prolific and highly regarded design firm responsible for hits like the SAS belly stripe livery and misses like JAL's two previous designs. I have higher standards for liveries that are just absolutely everywhere, so let's see if Landor was able to live up to them.

I'm going to be specifically talking about, because I presume this is what the requester meant, the livery FedEx adopted in 1994. The timeline of this is interesting, because the name of the airline stayed Federal Express until 2000, when the entire company rebranded from Federal Express to FedEx and added the redundant 'Express' to the airline's name. I've always thought that was very funny, and while that's charming to me I don't think I should be encouraging things like this. It's just sloppy and a bit weird to say.

Before they adopted the livery they did briefly trial a new logo. From 1991 to 1994 they had this!

Boy do I not like that! It's significant to the history of the company in that it shifted the colorscheme from indigo and burgundy to purple and orange, except that the difference in brightness here is really almost upsetting and the logo itself is...it looks like that. It's very TRON somehow. I don't find the tackiness pleasant. It's just ugly. The typeface they chose is bad. The wriggly X is nice but every other letter looks a unique sort of hideous, with the E in particular looking like a rake made of sponge which has been placed in water and left to soak. Thankfully they moved on quickly, replacing this logo at the same time as their livery.

The fact that there's six years between the visual rebrand and official renaming is interesting. Federal Express was already colloquially known as FedEx before the official renaming, and used it in their branding, but they weren't legally FedEx yet, so for that little span their planes bore both names.

This adolescent period in the life of modern FedEx featured the 'Federal Express' subtitle in this serif mystery font which I haven't seen mentioned at all anywhere. I couldn't find many more pictures with the full 'Federal Express', but there's a scattering of seriffed planes out there, it seems. It looks a lot better with the 'Federal' taken out just by virtue of legibility, and I have to say I'm very keen on the way the subtitle is offset to align with the start of the E. It looks nice and aerodynamic. When the first word is taken out it has the extra benefit of lining 'Express' up with the 'Ex' that stands for it.

But there it is! The FedEx logo. Adopted in 1994, considered a contender for the best logo ever made, winner of over 40 awards.

I want to disclaim for a moment. I think it's always been somewhat implicit that my opinions are just one manifestation of the infinite variability of human thought and inevitably subjective but I do need to re-stress this now: these are my own hot takes. My opinion is not legally binding. Lindon Leader is an incredibly accomplished designer and I'm not even a designer at all. There is a reason that FedEx's logo is so widely acclaimed. My criticism of it is not an attempt to contest its legacy, and is - again - just my opinion. And it is an opinion colored not only by the fact that I'm an amateur, and by the fact that my tastes are different from other people's, but by the fact that this logo is quite literally older than I am, and tastes have most certainly evolved since then.

I think the FedEx logo is...okay. I certainly do not despise it, but I would stop very short of calling it the best logo ever. I'm going to talk about why I'm so underwhelmed by it, and it's going to sound like I don't like this logo for a bit, but if you power through that you will see that my opinion about it isn't as straightforward as the sum of my opinions about its parts.

The fantastic thing about this particular logo is that it's easily the most-discussed and best-documented bit of branding I've yet covered, so it was a delight to research. I didn't even have to call in my font wizard, for example, because Leader explicitly states what it is in this interview - a proprietary typeface heavily inspired by Univers 67 Bold Condensed and Futura Bold. I actually like Futura (the Cyrillic version is one of my favorite Cyrillic typefaces) but don't love Univers 67 - it reminds me way too much of the handwriting style I was drilled in at school. US schools have truly heinous taste in the penmanship they teach, and much like how Parker cursive inherently reminds me of third grade, Univers 67 feels to me like an adult version of something I've long since outgrown. The design of the letterforms here, with the exaggerated x-height and all the lines (crossbars included) having a uniform thickness of 'very', reminds me of the posters on the walls of elementary school classrooms.

Take a look at this. The green line is hypothetically where the baseline should be, but the E and D descend slightly below it. According to my font wizard this is fairly common as an attempt to some sort of visual trick, but I don't like it. I can make it out from a distance and it significantly bothers me.

Speaking of misaligned, I've always felt like the vertical line on the E was slightly wider than that on the D, but had dismissed this line of thought as an optical illusion - the darker color and the lack of detail at the top, plus the lack of gaps at any point in the E, artificially make the D look narrower than it is. I tried lining them up, and I was right, it's an optical illusion. I still hate it. What isn't an optical illusion is that the middle line on the E is thicker than the second line on the F - again, hate it!

And I just don't like this font! It's like if they fed different fonts to a neutral network and had it invent a weight bolder than bold, like the neural-network generated upperer and lowerer cases. I'm aware of the existence of ultra bold weights, and I'm not talking about those, because those are regular ugly and clearly made by humans. This looks like an algorithm expanded the letters until they were touching.

But the touching bit is intentional. The FedEx logo is hiding a little secret, perhaps the most frequently cited reason for why it's so beloved. Between the E and X, Leader slipped in an inconspicuous arrow.

And I can't pretend this isn't really clever. It's subtle but once you see it you can never unsee it. My problem is that one feature doesn't make something good on its own, particularly when it's something you can easily miss at first. The Sneeze interview linked earlier sort of implies Leader built the font in large part around the idea of the arrow, and I find that a little problematic. Sometimes an idea is so fantastic you just can't let go of it, but when you're designing something you just can't be myopic like that. And, to be clear, I don't think Leader sacrificed the aesthetics of the wordmark to accommodate the arrow. I'm sure he personally thinks this font is beautiful. But when I evaluate it for myself, I can't allow one good feature to overpower my own dislike for the font overall, even if it is legitimately clever.

I do have some nice things to say, though. Well, mostly one nice thing. I love the color scheme. I think the purple and orange shades here are a wonderful choice, an uncommon one but one that manages to be a visually pleasing combination. If either of the shades were less saturated, or the purple were brighter, it would lose its cohesion, but Leader chose the perfect shades to bring out the best in each other. The old red and purple shades were absolutely hideous, but he transformed them into something great.

But at the end of the day my opinion of the logo on a granular scale is irrelevant. And I don't say that because I'm in the minority here or because I'm not allowed to have an opinion or anything else of the like. It doesn't matter because the FedEx logo is older than me and it is FedEx. When I see something purple and orange, I think of FedEx first. Let me use an example by invoking something better left dead.

In 2018 the Overwatch League, an esports league based around the maelstrom of poor decisions which is Blizzard's video 'game' Overwatch, played its first season. A charter member was the Florida Mayhem, a team which was in all honesty sort of a joke (though not exciting enough to live up to their name). I stopped following OWL after the first season, so I'm not sure if any of this has changed, but they finished second-to-last, made some very questionable choices on the management end, and were representing Florida. All of these facts are ontologically comedic. But above all, these were their team colors.

So, this creates the clear issue demonstrated above. Certain brands are so culturally entrenched that even a passing similarity in visual identity makes you immediately look like a pastiche, even if you're otherwise distinct. Mayhem's branding is, in my opinion, way better than McDonalds's, but it was still the right move when they changed to a completely unrecognizable color scheme in 2020. You just see some things and immediately recognize them.

The cultural specter of the FedEx logo is very useful to the FedEx livery. As long as you do not royally mess up - which they have not - a FedEx plane will immediately resemble a FedEx package, even if it doesn't actually look like one, since they're mostly white.

...well, okay, the planes are also mostly white. And I'll be honest, on the 727? This plane isn't half bad. The clean line of the t-tail makes this sort of straight-line-down livery look so much better, and the placement of the wordmark in front of the heavily swept wings keeps the white tube from looking quite so much like a white tube.

But the 727 isn't the only airframe they fly. They're the largest operator of six separate types, most of which are fully retired from passenger service, including the MD-11. Their MD-11s are literally the only trijets you'll see around in the US these days - they only started retiring their DC-10s in 2021, nearly ten years after they flew their last passenger flight. They're pretty unusual among large cargo airlines in that they flew the 747 for just over five years, and not particularly on their own initiative, having acquired a few from a merger with the Flying Tiger Line. So the way the livery looks on the 727 doesn't tell the whole story.

Okay. So that...is a couple of white tubes. That's somewhat unfortunate.

I want to clarify that, while this style of livery has become increasingly popular over time, culminating in its codification as an outright trend in the late 2010s and early 2020s, FedEx adopted this livery in 1994. It is wrong to say that the FedEx livery resembles TAM, Lufthansa, or Icelandair, and more correct to say that all of the above carriers are wearing a style similar to FedEx (though Qantas and MALÉV came first). Despite the fact that I've been known to call these 'Lufthansesque', Lufthansa didn't invent this style and didn't do it best. Still, doing it earlier doesn't excuse it.

FedEx in particular suffers from the rear-heaviness issue. Though they have a larger logo which balances it out better than some (Lufthansa), it's kind of countered by the fact that FedEx exclusively operates planes I'd consider on the long and thin side. It makes the white look all the more dominant on the airframe.

FedEx does take one measure to mitigate this - the undersides are painted grey (in a style I've been calling 'Deltalike' to myself even though Delta absolutely did not do it first) instead of being the same white as the rest of the fuselage with the purple fully wrapping around. Also, they have the line remain straight on the third engine of trijets, instead of committing to one shade or the other, as older trijet liveries frequently did.

Compared to an ASL Airlines lease which keeps the underside white and the purple as a contiguous loop, this creates a much more streamlined look. But it's not enough to save this.

And I think what bothers me the most is how at odds this is with the thing people say is so brilliant about the logo - the arrow.

Arrows are, as Leader pointed out in his interview, definitely not a new phenomenon in airline liveries. Hell, we even had Arrow Air.

But there's a reason for that. Arrows represent forward movement. They're fundamentally indicative of speed, efficiency, and polish. And airplanes are more or less shaped like arrows, when you think about it.

Something being done very frequently doesn't make it somehow creatively bereft. And it's not like only painting the tail and the big of fuselage directly below it is reinventing the wheel either.

Cheatlines, and hockey sticks especially, were not a particularly new thing when my perennial example of 'boring idea, good execution', Kalitta Air, rolled out in the 1980s. In fact, they were done to death. But Kalitta Air's choice in color and shape, use of proportions, and stylish logo set it apart from every other airline to use this style.

There is a reason arrows are so common. They are speed and precision and kinetic energy. When you refuse to consider making something common your own, you often shoot yourself in the foot. With the logo constructed, with the motto 'the world on time' written on the nose of each plane, absolutely nobody would turn up their nose at FedEx having an arrow motif on its livery.

Ultimately, I'm a bit sad, because the FedEx logo, while I don't like a lot of the choices made in regards to the font, would provide a truly fantastic jumping off point for a livery that would elevate it beyond the point anyone could ever dismiss it as being part of a crowd of very similar designs, the way I have by lumping it in with Lufthansesques. Arrows, being a fundamentally long and tall shape, would also avoid the pitfalls of a livery type which I have already on multiple occasions critiqued for inherently creating a look of rear-heaviness, particularly on longer and thinner airframes, especially when the color used is a dark shade to contrast a white base.

That said, the FedEx livery gets a bit of a free pass where something like Lufthansa doesn't. FedEx's logo is so ubiquitous that unless you actively interfere with or muddle it, any plane bearing it will immediately be recognizable as a FedEx plane the same way a truck or package is. As a branding exercise it is certainly successful. It looks clean, it's by no means exceptionally ugly, it does its job...but it is so rich with potential and so impoverished in execution. Doesn't it just look like this plane isn't taking off, but being pulled by the weight of its purple slice towards the ground?

I'm giving FedEx a D+.

I don't feel good about doing this. I think this is an opinion which is not only contentious but downright unpopular. But as I've mentioned a few times my grades take into account more than just broad aesthetic appeal. Branding and environment factor in, but what also factors in is, as I said in discussing Saudia, wasted potential and a refusal to capitalize on what you have that's clearly good. When I graded Air Astra down for not reaching its potential I meant it as a kind gesture, not even a sort of tough love but an acknowledgment that I like what they have and I know they'll do better.

FedEx, however, is just disappointing. For the frequently cited best logo of all time, this is just unacceptable. This verdict brings me no joy, but the fact that this logo is so beloved doesn't mean I can go easy on it - to the contrary, it had a lot to live up to, and it just didn't.

[swifty-fox]

wait ok so as a professional dom does gale have kinks that he won’t engage with, like boundaries? also does he have favourites? or is that like separate between his personal and professional life so he does have fav kinks that he prefers at home obviously but not at work like he sort of treats it all the same. cause as a professional dom he doesn’t get turned on as he works does he?

Omg haha wELL.

Gale’s limits are below, listed in clear typeface. No Daddy kink, no Rape play, no kissing/sex. 

John reads that last one a couple of times, sticks another cigarette between his teeth and tries not to frown. It wasn’t that he deeply wanted to, but he’d expected at least kissing. Gale had beautiful lips, soft and sensual and feminine in a way that contrasted with the rest of his masculinity. John thinks it would be nice to kiss them.

But again, this was just research. 

so I haven't done a lot of bg development for this au, not like I have with little beasts or Kfak. But I do think like all my AUs Gale grew up with an unstable alcoholic father. So no on the daddy kink. I think he doesn't engage in CNC for a multitude of reasons, but especially within the professional space it crosses too many lines. In personal life he may do cnc play, and would quite enjoy some forms of CNC play, but not rape play. Which ARE two different things I am happy to explain if anyone is curious.

no kissing or sex is because then it becomes a legal issue of prostitution. which is not wrong, but not what Gale does. I think professionally there's a lot of stuff he does that does nothing for him personally.

Of course he gets turned on while working! Not always and not every time and not with every client but he is sexually into domination and he does have people engaging with kink with him. So he does get aroused but he maintains that professional line. (maybe not with john tho....after all he's not paying him :)) )

[thecornwall]

Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #871: Voracious Vermin

Voracious Vermin is a common from Wilds of Eldraine. Not sure why the typeface looks so ass here. I think they may be ripping these assets straight outta Arena or something.

Back in my day there was a RARE that did this, but without the making a token and only worked for goblins and it was a 1/1. Admittedly only cost {B},(phew, for a second there I thought my } key was broken, disregard). I think that rare was boss as hell and I think this common is, too.

I love the death cycle strategy in Magic, partially cause Lorwyn goblins was what got me into the game, partly cause it has a nice fail state, wherein your creatures are dead, but it's okay, you wanted that to happen. Also there's something satisfying about sending wave after wave of your own men to their deaths, Zap Brannigan style.

[royb0t]

h3llb3nt - 0.01 (CD, 1996, Fifth Colvmn Records). First release from Hellbent (more often stylized h3llb3nt). A stellar collaboration between Bryan Black (haloblack, Motor, Black Asteroid), Eric Powell (16 Volt), Jared Louche (Chemlab), Charles Levi (Thrill Kill Kult) and Jordan Nogood (Nogooddesign).

Love all of h3llb3nt's releases. Their first release sets a great tone for the band with post-coldwave, literal whispers of cyberpunk and the clinical sounds of the digital, balanced nicely with Levi's signature funky basslines.

For 1996, the artwork seems to hint toward the digital precision a la The Designers Republic (95's Wipeout game/compilation) and typeface minimal-but-messy like Tomato (Underworld's '94 LP Dubnobasswithmyhead). Stuff we'd call today probably early Y2K Aesthetic or maybe even a smidge proto-Metalheart. (Nogood's design spans all of h3llb3nt releases but also recognizable in album artwork for haloblack's '94 LP >Tension Filter< and 16 Volt's '96 LP LetDownCrush).

The music is just as excellent. Few artists or releases sound much like this. Highly suggest starting with "Chromed", "3 Murders, 3 Nights" and "Burnout", but the entire album is stellar as a whole.

[starflungwaddledee]

hello! i first wished to say that your awtdy au is such a cool concept and your art is astounding to look at!!! the way that you draw mk and gk's wings (honestly how you draw them is like candy to the eyes) is something that i will take as a reference for my own drawings, and your headcannons of magolor and bandee's relationship is very cute to look at <33 (also your magolor design is just chef's kiss AJSJAHSJA) and i wanted to ask what font do you use for your comics? it just goes very well with your drawings and it also looks very nice to look at

waaa thank you so much for all the kind words!! auuoohghh oooof wuhghgghhh i'm so touched that you like all these things in particular because they're all things that are specifically important to me, so this just went straight to my heart (and my ego a little bit. lil bit...)

as for the font i use, it's my faaaavourite comicing font, it's called SS Pretzel and you can get it here on the creator's kofi! it's totally free by an indie designer (who also created the infamous Soapy Hands) but tip if you can; creating typefaces is actually extremely hard and unappreciated work!

[magnetictapedatastorage]

Why do nice food counters (cafes, ice cream places, etc) make the typeface on the wall menu sooooo so so so SO small! How am i supposed to quickly make a choice when the prices are the size of one atom! It makes me embarrased to squint and lean, but also confused at how that design got approved!

[typebyjopa]

WEEKLY APP NO.7 | TRIPLE S (SHIFT)

This week's theme is "vernacular." I used this week's theme to really flesh out what a real page on my zine would look like. I've been struggling to find a certain visual style to cling onto despite creating a mood board. It's been hard to not go back to usual design style for this zine as the main goal for this assignment is to break away from that comfort. This inevitably means that I'll have to go a lot more simple and experiment with my type and I think this was a great exercise to really hone in onto a sense of direction.

I'm quite set on the background graphics and body type typeface, that's already been settled. I wanted the main body type to be fully justified as it is apart of the climax of the story and I think narratively it makes sense for that type to be condensed and shape into one mass form. One of the main concepts for this zine is distorted text (done effectively of course). I had great success at finding a balance between distortion and legibility. It's also nicely framed within the box that the paper shreds make.

This page is the second to last page of my zine which is why I have a small sample of text towards the bottom right of the page to aid the viewers into the other page on the other side. I think it could be a bit bigger as it may be a bit too small for legibility.

I have gained reassurance for my new sense of direction for this zine and after this weekly app, I'm confident that I'm able to build upon this concept.

TYPEFACE -> AREA BOLD // REGULAR

Still figuring out which other typeface I'll be using for headers.