Have you every been working on a project- a poster, a flyer, an album cover- and felt like you just couldn’t find the right font? The average person will get about 50 different fonts with the purchase of a computer and operating system- which is more than enough. Most people will recognize these well known typographic choices:

But for graphic designers, these simply won’t cut it. Which is why we have gigantic collections of fonts that could be used for every imaginable project. When we are trying to convey of sense of social responsibility mixed with a youthful enthusiasm- which font works best? When we are trying to make a logo that “looks sort of like the competition, but better” which font do we use? Ligatures? Small caps? There are millions of choices out there from small typographic foundries who sell sets for less than $50 to Large Foundries whose offerings can reach up to $2,500 euros (Like this one.)

There are also many websites offering free fonts for download, though these fonts present their own problems. First of all, you never actually know if a font is free because the creator of the font intended for it to be free, or if it was somehow circulated without his or her knowledge and using it for commercial purposes could later get you into trouble. Some sites, like Abstract fonts, have recently incorporated a tagging system for the fonts they offer, differentiating between, personal use, commercial use and distribution.

Secondly, free fonts are usually incomplete, which you don’t find out until you are trying to type a word with an accent, or use numbers or punctuation marks. That’s always a disappointing moment.

But we’ve seen a new trend emerge in the past couple of years- physical objects as type. I first noticed it a couple of years ago at a graphic design conference I attended in Mar de Plata, Argentina called TMGD. Outside the venue in a grassy field they had placed large letters lit up- TMDG.



It was like a sculpture and people were immediately drawn to them. I later saw a photo of these letters used on postcards advertising events for that weekend.

I have since seen many examples of the “font as object.”

A postcard for an art show, several campaigns (Corrado Mattresses, Imagining Mozambique) from this Italian design group, and on many of the “Do not disturb” segments on Fox television.

So next time you can’t find the perfect font, think about how you might create it yourself- from clay, wood, cloth, legos, branches, metal or whatever else you’d like. Then grab your camera and start shooting. Now you can avoid having to add any 3D effects in Photoshop and the final image will be much more original. Viva “font as object!”

Tags: font as object, fonts, TMDG, typography
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Copyright 2007 Forest Stewardship Council, A.C. All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the publisher’s copyright may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, recording taping, or information retrieval systems) without the written permission of the publisher.

Colourtime has made the decision to become FSC certified, showing that we comply with the highest social and environmental standards on the market. The certification process is carried out by independent organizations who assess forest management and chain of custody operations against FSC standards. After a thorough review Colourtime is proud to announce that we have passed the audit and have been granted the ability to use the FSC seal certifying our commitment to maintaining an environmentally responsible business!

For more information about how Colourtime can help your next marketing campaign or financial report be a little “greener” please call us at 1.866.372.6567 to find out more about our FSC certified products.
For more information about the certification process, the strict environmental standards or where to locate manufacturers or distributors please visit www.fsc.org.

Tags: Alliance, certification, council, forest, FSC, Rainforest, stewardship
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No matter the industry, in order to remain a successful business it is imperative to stay informed about new technologies, new tendencies and trends, and new products or services that your company may be able to incorporate into their offerings.

Many companies that have been in business for decades are sure that they have found the winning solution- and on the one hand they are right. Considering the statistics that claim over half of new businesses fail within the first year, any business that achieves that kind of longevity has certainly earned its place in the market. But as any professional gambler will tell you, past success is no guarantee of future success. Even a thriving business can take a hit without realizing why.

So what’s the solution? Well there isn’t one magic answer, but it’s always a good idea to stay abreast of what the leaders in the industry are doing. Are your competitors buying more up to date equipment, hiring more staff or introducing new products? Maybe they have started to include discounts for return customers or have invested in a completely redesigned marketing campaign. You may choose to adapt some of these same techniques, or you may decide that they are not right for you or are out of your price range, but by attending conferences, workshops and trade shows you are one step closer to making sure your company is taking advantage of all the options it has available.

That’s one of the reasons why ColourTime sends representatives to print shows across Canada and the U.S. One of the upcoming shows, Graphics Canada, is Canada’s largest and will be held November 12-14 2009 at the Toronto International Centre. It includes sectors devoted to sign printing, mail fulfillment, graphic design and plenty of new equipment and software. We are busy maintaining our edge so we can help your company maintain theirs.

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Anyone who has heard experts discuss the current economic crisis, no matter what their political persuasion, will surely have come to the conclusion that the lack of oversight and regulation by a third party was largely to blame.  While financial specifics such as leverage and illiquidity play their role in this complicated equation, the relative absence of a qualified organization of outsiders intelligent enough to understand the financial loopholes but ethical enough not to take advantage of them, is the more serious and overarching problem.  If we can take away one lesson from this recession, let it be this- humans are fallible.  We tend to be short-sighted and in this era of gleefully unchecked capitalism we tend to put profits before the well-being of communities.  Thank goodness then, for the Forest Stewardship Council.

In the past decade we’ve seen environmental awareness take on more importance, both in the lives of individuals and in the boardroom. Caring about the earth and its future is no longer just for hippies. In fact it has become a powerful a marketing strategy, which is precisely why consumers should be wary when purchasing products or services claiming to be “environmentally friendly.”  This is a vague term that may mean anything from not testing products on animals, to using a certain percentage of post-consumer waste, to simply incorporating the color green in the packaging implying a contrived affinity with the “green movement.”

The Forest Stewardship Council has been around for over 15 years focusing on one very important component to environmental protection- global deforestation. FSC is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests. FSC provides a certification system with internationally recognized standards for communities interested in responsible forestry.  FSC recognizes the fact that many consumers try to do the right thing by buying responsibly produced products but that the choices can sometimes be confusing.  At least when it comes to timber and paper products business and individuals alike can make an informed decision.

That is why Colourtime has made the decision to become FSC certified, showing that we comply with the highest social and environmental standards on the market. The certification process is carried out by independent organizations who assess forest management and chain of custody operations against FSC standards.  After a thorough review Colourtime is proud to announce that we have passed the audit and have been granted the ability to use the FSC seal certifying our commitment to maintaining an environmentally responsible business!

For more information about how Colourtime can help your next marketing campaign or financial report be a little “greener” please call us at 1.866.372.6567  to find out more about our FSC certified products.
For more information about the certification process, the strict environmental standards or where to locate manufacturers or distributors please visit www.fsc.org.

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Vancouver residents are already well aware that their city is source of pride. After all, Vancouver has been voted one of the top places to live numerous times, including a world wide survey taken in 2007 which ranked Vancouver 3rd out of 215 cities. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of visiting this verdant metropolitan capital, do yourself a favor and put in on your to-do list, if only for a weekend. While our neighbors to the south may suffer from delusions that all Canadians live in igloos or commute to work by dog sled, those who are in the know relish in the exquisite natural surroundings, rich cultural heritage, and delicious international cuisine.

Many of those who have gotten to know Vancouver have done so through conventions held at our beautiful Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre (VCEC). Located right on the water with a beautiful view of the harbor and conveniently situated in the heart of downtown, the VCEC offers visitors more than just a typical convention experience. In fact, about one-third of convention delegates enjoy themselves so much that they end up traveling to other parts of the province as part of their stay.

Opened on July 4, 1987, the existing Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre got its start as the Canada Pavilion during Expo 86. According to the VCEC website, “Within 10 years, the convention centre was at capacity with an obvious need for additional space, particularly as Vancouver became known as one of North America ’s leading meeting and convention destinations.” That’s why the PavCo. partnership has decided to build a new convention centre as an extension of the existing waterfront location. The 1.1 million sq. ft. project will triple the convention centre’s existing capacity and help generate an additional $107 million annually in delegate spending. On average, a delegate will spend about $350 per day during their visit to Vancouver, injecting national and international capital into our local economy. In 2010, the VCEC will also be home of the 2010 Olympic Games media and broadcast centres.

One of the most exciting and unique features of the convention centre aside from the spectacular floor-to-ceiling glass, is a six-acre living roof, one of the largest of its kind in the world. “The convention centre expansion not only breaks new ground in terms of design, it will also be a showcase for sustainability with such things as the living roof,” said Olga Ilich, Minister of Tourism, Sport and the Arts and minister responsible for the expansion of the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre. “It is all the more gratifying when a BC firm demonstrates the ability to provide the expertise and creativity required for leading edge projects like this.” The sustainable design of the living roof includes drainage and water recovery systems that will collect rainwater to irrigate the nearly 400,000 native plants and wild grasses that will create a downtown “urban oasis.” With sustainability making the transformation from noble ideal to marketable reality, it is no wonder that businesses, governments and individual citizens are demanding more environmentally-geared projects- especially those financed with public funding.

The new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco opened in late September 2008 with a similarly green aspirations- a living roof covering almost 2 acres. It is precisely the addition of such a unique environmental feature that has begun to draw a different kind of crowd. The wait to get into the museum on their monthly “free day” in late December was over 2 hours long.

The Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre will be adding 335,000 square feet of function space to the existing 133,000 square feet, for a combined total of 468,000 square feet of meeting, exhibition, ballroom and theatre space. In addition to the employment opportunities created during construction, the project will generate more than 7,500 direct and indirect full-time jobs once it is opened in 2009. With additional public amenities including more accessible outdoor and plaza space, retail space and restaurants one can only assume that this long-awaited expansion will be a source of pride for Vancouverites as well as a source of joy and inspiration for those who have the privilege to visit.

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It is no secret that technology helps make our lives easier- navigating in our cars, communicating with our friends across long distances, traveling to new places without getting lost. We can be assured that our Granny Smith apples will always have that same taste thanks to patented and genetically modified seeds, we can sleep easier at night knowing that the carbon monoxide alarm in the hall will alert us of any deadly gas, and we can drink our milk assured that it has been pasteurized and hermetically sealed.

However, technology is also inadvertently responsible for an absence of the human touch, as these days few things are rarely hand-made. Sentiments for loved ones are better expressed by store bought greetings cards and a myriad of fast food restaurants have made it easier than ever to avoid preparing home cooked meals. Instead of stopping by a friend or neighbor’s house we prefer to send a mass email, updating everyone at once as to how we are doing. Given the state of things it seems harder and harder to maintain that personal touch.

One small but interesting idea to combat this trend is to make a font from your very own handwriting. After all, so many of us are using the computer more and more, and handwriting all those Christmas letters or thank you notes for a wedding seems like an impossible task. What about sending out an electronic invoice with your signature confirming a received payment? Wouldn’t printing name tags for an event or labels for scrapbooking seem a lot more personal if they were printed with your own handwriting?

Now some of you may have heard of Fontographer, the most famous and most popular font creation software. Those people probably also know that the most common Bézier drawing programs used for vector output are Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand. But most people probably don’t know that it was Fontographer, not Illustrator or Freehand, that was the first Mac-based Bézier drawing program back in 1986. Since then Fontographer has become an important tool for many designers, however at a price of $350 US, it has remained out of reach for most non-designers.This is where the website Fontifier comes in. With the Fontifier website you print out a template, write in each letter, number and symbol (they have a template with accents for writing words in other languages as well), scan the page and Fontifier does the rest! They show you a sample of your new handwriting font and if you like it, for only $9 you can buy the TrueType format (for PC or Mac) that you can use in your word processor or graphics program, just like regular fonts such as Helvetica or Times New Roman.

I went through the process and found it to be very easy. A couple of my letters didn’t turn out quite the way I had expected (a really fat capital “K” and a lower case “a” without a hole), so after scanning the page in .TIFF format I edited the few screwy letters in Photoshop so that they were consistent with the rest of my casual and spunky print, thus avoiding having to rewrite all the characters on a new template. The final result spreads the letters out a little more than my actual handwriting, but I can easily adjust that in Illustrator. I have used my new font several times already and am glad to have it as one more tool in my arsenal. So if you are looking to add a personal touch to any digital document, try this idea out and see how it feels to have a your very own font!

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Awhile ago I was talking with one of my co-workers and he mentioned that he’d heard of a financial report that the shareholders actually had to bake in an oven in order to be able to read it. It sounded too good to be true- financial reports make up a large portion of a lot of printers’ business, and are generally comprised of dozens or even hundreds of black and white pages filled with dense text, charts and graphs. In short, these sorts of documents don’t seem like the kind of thing that anyone would put that kind of creative effort into.

However, it is commonly understood that while annual and financial reports are a necessary byproduct of all public companies and many privately held ones, most shareholders don’t relish reading them. In fact, Glenn Curtis states in an article for Investopedia, a Forbes media company, that when these reports begin to “clog up mailboxes across the country… a large percentage of shareholders might toss this document in the trash can when they receive it.”

So what should a company do to create a compelling financial report, one that any recipient would find intriguing, even delightful? When faced with just such a dilemma, Podravka, the biggest food company in South-East Europe decided to hire the company Bruketa & Zinić to spice up their annual report. Called “Well Done,” the report consists of two parts: a big book containing numbers and a report of an independent auditor and a small booklet that is inserted inside the big one that contains the very heart of Podravka as a brand: great Podravka’s recipes.

This smaller inner book contains blank pages printed with thermo-reactive ink that when wrapped in tinfoil and set to bake in an oven at 100 degrees Celsius will reveal both recipes and illustrations of the previously empty plates filled with food.

To see more photos and read in detail about the project, visit Dezeen. The comments are also interesting to read as they reflect everything from praise to a somewhat misinformed outrage about possible environmental impact. I found this project to be an inspiring piece of communication design and it has certainly created a buzz, which is of course a great form of promotion. At the very least I hope it will encourage companies and individuals to introduce and implement creative ideas in traditionally non-creative realms.

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Photography, whether digital or traditional, is a tricky art form. With the aid of photo editing software such as Photoshop, the possibilities seem to be limitless- changing not just basic color information such as sepia tone or black and white, but allowing the user to reach into the photo and change, enhance or diminish reflections, skin tone, back lighting, and lens flares. A photographer can make a photo appear to be a watercolor painting, a charcoal sketch or even a high tech rendering of etched glass. Colors can be flipped and inverted so that the end result bears almost no resemblance to the original image.

Of course all of these tool and tricks must be used with caution. The internet is full of sites where people show off their photography (Deviant Art, Flickr) and in viewing these you are likely to come across many cityscapes that have been converted into candy-land renditions of an acid flashback. Tweaked beyond repair, these photos are the evidence that in addition to fancy software and a fast computer, in order to produce a truly great photograph one must also possess the more traditional aesthetic mindset which naturally leads to excellent composition, interesting subject matter, appropriate lighting and good taste in general.

Now, even if you have all of the aforementioned items checked off your list, if the photo is out of focus, you’re pretty much out of luck. Of course you can try to work around it, use the Sharpen tool, make a mask and use the Healing tool on the background to increase the contrast between the two…but ultimately, even the most talented photo editor will agree, there is little to be done with an out of focus photo. And in most instances, we cannot go back to that time and place to capture that same magical moment.

This is where Adobe comes into the story, the protagonist and superhero ready to lend an able hand. Or at least, ready to tell you about a prototype of a piece of hardware that they will encourage camera companies to manufacture in order to use a new tool they would like to introduce in their software in say, 10 years. But the hope is there, and the prototype is oh-so-cool, so let’s take a look.

Adobe, most well known for programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, seems to have effectively taken over the market when it come to graphic design. With their purchase of Macromedia in 2005, Adobe now offers a slew of programs to do anything from creating animated banner ads for cell phones to complex websites to laying out entire newspapers and magazines. To stay competitive, the researchers at Adobe came up with a camera lens unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It has 19 small lenses and prisms that capture the same scene from slightly different angles in order to create a “3D photograph,” according to Dave Story in a French press conference in October of 2007.

At first glance, Story shows19 versions of the same photograph, and the difference is so slight that it makes you wonder what all the fuss is about. Then he explains, “With that we are able to determine the depth of every pixel in the scene.” Story then shifts the focus from the statue in the midground to the statue in the foreground, then again to focus on the wall in the background, changing the depth of field in a matter of seconds. Very cool. Then he keeps the statue in the midground in focus and the foreground out of focus and goes in with a “focus tool” and essentially “paints” the parts of the image he wants to be in focus. Conversely, he later goes in with an “unfocus” tool and “again “paints” the areas he would like to be out of focus. The result is really impressive- imagine taking just one photo and having all these options that before would have been utterly impossible to do with a camera alone and difficult, messy and unprofessional to do with the current tools available in Photoshop.

There are those who are drooling all over themselves waiting for this new fly-eye lens to come out on the market, and there are those are ideologically opposed, claiming that soon no one will need to have any skill whatsoever to take a decent photograph. Watch the videos yourself and see what you think. The French video is pretty low- quality but is a longer explanation and shows the “focus” tool I mentioned. The NotCot site has a higher quality video but it is much shorter and includes less explanation.

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Printers like ColourTime, who offer a wide range of services and fast turn-around, are always concerned about the quality of their products and offering a high level of customer service. According to Toni McQuilken in the February issue of Printing News, this is part of a growing trend, “The industry as a whole is trying hard to move away from a strictly manufacturer role to more of a service provider and partner to the clients and end users.”

Part of the way printers look to improve relationships with their clients is by suggesting new products or services that they might enjoy. Because the process of traditional offset printing hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years, this leaves the innovation to other areas such as digital imaging and poster printing, as well as new technologies in either paper or ink. As we take at look at advancements in ink production, it is easy to see how the catalysts of such progress are primarily economic in nature.

In the aforementioned issue of Printing News, McQuilken interviews several representatives from ink manufacturers. Steve Simpson, senior vice president and chief technical officer for Superior Ink states, “In 2007, we saw the continuation of significant price increases in raw material costs, much of which was driven by skyrocketing crude oil costs. Additionally, the cost and availability of seed-derived oils such as linseed was dramatically impacted by the biodiesel movement, where farmers are shifting their crop selection toward corn, soybean, and other more profitable bioethanol feedstocks.”

As with many industries, the most important issue printers and print suppliers see going into 2008 is the subject of sustainability. Sustainability is one of those terms that is difficult to define, possibly bringing to mind images of quaint farmers’ markets or fields full of windmills. Sustainability, however, is just as much an economic term as it is an environmental one. As Wikipedia sees it, those in favor of a “sustainable approach” strive to make “human economic systems last longer and have less impact on ecological systems.”

While we often associate sustainability (or lack thereof) with major global problems such as climate change and oil depletion, it is important to remember that any economic unit- a business, a household- will naturally benefit from resources that last indefinitely. Many businesses are realizing that this “green” trend is moving from merely a buzzword to a profitable business strategy.

Though most printers already offer at least a few options of post consumer recycled paper it appears that we will be seeing even more “green options” in the years to come, including:

***Inks made with vegetable derived oils such as linseed and soybean, as well as resins derived from renewable resources like tall oil and gum rosin.

***100% UV-curable offset inks, which are not only free from volatile organic compounds, but they offer other benefits such as reduced makeready, which leads to less printed waste.

It seems that ensuring both sustainable profits for printers and sustainable resources to protect our environment don’t necessarily represent opposing viewpoints. As for any printers who want to move towards a more sustainable business strategy there are several organizations who offer just that sort of advice such as the Printers’ National Environmental Assistance Center and the new start up website SGP Partnership. For consumers in the U.S. looking for businesses and services in their area with a sustainable approach try pluggreen.com. Canada has its government run site with info about developing sustainable business strategies.

As the SGP site claims, and we have to agree: Print plays a vital role in communication, education, and daily existence. The printing industry has historically understood its effect on the natural world and accepts responsibility to continue efforts to reduce its overall environmental impact.

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Group 1 Software, a Pitney Bowes company, recently sponsored research showing that consumers pay more attention to direct mail than to their online equivalents. Americans, it seems, spend nearly twice as much time reviewing printed statements and other documents received in the mail than the three and a half minutes spent reviewing them on the web. As Rob Pipe, vice president, marketing and strategy for Group 1 Software states, “These findings suggest that organizations who put targeted cross-selling messages on physical statements may achieve higher return on investment.”

The Pitney Bowes press release indicates that this information might be especially useful to banks, credit card companies, mobile phone companies and even governments. The assumption is that if a current or potential customer is spending more time reviewing a company’s printed material, the extra time spent will allow that customer to see information about new products or promotions thus leading to additional sales or a greater level of brand recognition.

Why is it that the average person pays more attention to printed material than their web equivalent? Perhaps, as Jakob Nielsen claims, because “A web page is fundamentally a scrolling experience for the user…Users often begin scrolling before all elements have been rendered, and different users will scroll the page in different ways throughout their reading experience.”

Nielsen, who has been called “the king of usability” (Internet Magazine) and “the smartest person on the Web,” (ZDNet AnchorDesk) points out these restrictions on web-read statements: “less graphics, smaller graphics, shorter text (since it is unpleasant to read online), less fancy typography (since you don’t know what fonts the user has installed), and less ambitious layouts.”

Could it be that aesthetics play such an important role in the amount of time spent reviewing a bank statement? According to this information it seems that when it comes to capturing your customers’ attention for a sustained period of time, direct mailers have the upper hand over their web equivalents. Just another reason to come into ColourTime and let us show you what we can do to help your business.

For more on this research see Group 1’s press release.

For more on print vs. web design, see Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox.

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