Not so current developments in typography

I wrote this post about the Indian rupee some years ago but never published it. Given the feeling of time suspended brought on by COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders (and suspension of normal life in general), I decided to publish rather than discard it.

My initial motivation was to come up with something interesting to say using combinations and permutations in meaning of the words “economics”, “typography”, “development”, and “current”. I DO love typography!

Currency of developing economies

Most countries have distinct identification symbols for their currencies, but until 2011, there was no official currency sign for the Indian rupee. Only `Rs’ was used to represent it.  India shared the abbreviated form of the rupee with Pakistan, Nepal, Seychelles and Sri Lanka.

India’s finance ministry organized a public competition to design a new symbol for the rupee. The successful designer was awarded Rs 2.5 lakh, but had to surrender the copyright to the government of India. The symbol chosen was

₹

which is U+20B9 in Unicode and ₹ in HTML. It is a blend of the Devanagri ‘Ra’ and Roman ‘R’.

Typeface Scales Up, Keeps in Step with HTML5

I’ve been asked about the small insignia at the bottom right corner of this page: It is the Typekit logo!

There have been some exciting developments in typography for digital publishing recently.  HTML5’s arrival permits the true ability to render typeface online. It is known as the WOFF standard. Google’s Chrome browser version 6 supports WOFF, and as of September 21, so does Typekit. Typekit offered WOFF support for Internet Explorer 9, still in beta, since the middle of September. N.B. Many WordPress sites use Typekit fonts. I don’t know if there is a contractual relationship between the two. I am appreciative of Typekit’s free font service for my WordPress.com budget blog.

This is a nice example comparing Windows versus Mac O/S. Better vertical metrics result in greater consistency across platforms:

Before and After Updated Vertical Metrics for Mac Fonts via Typekit Blog

Here you can see the improvement due to better rendering that comes with a WOFF-supported browser and typefaces:

Anticipate Better Rendering in Internet Explorer 9 via Typekit Blog

Enjoy some all around spectacular-ness: From the Lost World’s Fair site!  The image is a lush, multi-font fantasy of World’s Fair 2040. It is beautiful.

More details are available

via the Typekit blog: In keeping with our strategy of constantly iterating and improving our font library, we have updated the following… Read More

Update: Type is Art to Take With You

Parts of A Character U.S. Postal Stamp

Parts Of A Character stamps by scerha

The Type Is Art interactive site, which I was introduced to by via ProArt on Twitter, has a store on Zazzle. There are some delightful and truly original products here, and they are actually made by Susanne Cernha of Silo Designs, who is associated with the Type Is Art project.

Unlike most of the promotional product pages that link to many blogs and fan websites, this one is not a tired old recycling of the same t-shirts, porcelain mugs and canvas bags with a logo stamped on the front that I see everywhere. Update 17 Aug 2010: There are plenty of t-shirts, porcelain mugs, canvas bags and baseball caps on Zazzle, I just hadn’t found them when I wrote this post. However, that doesn’t extend to the TypeIsArt site.

Parts of a Character is a bona fide U.S. Post Office stamp. Denominations are U.S. First Class (first and second ounce) and U.S. Priority Mail < 1.0lb.  Update 17 Aug 2010: I was incorrect about quantity purchase requirements. They are not huge, but pricing is in fact based on order quantity. Another plus: there are no huge bulk purchase requirements.

I found another data-related site at Zazzle, the pleasant ethnographers from Floating Sheep. I’ll take the liberty of cross-linking to Ellie Asks Why Annex on Blogger, and my post about geo-tagging and Microsoft’s Tag application. It offers a curious opportunity for creating linkages between the physical world and the interwebs.