1. Best Typeface: GeoGrotesque by Eduardo Manso, Em Type

2. Best Actor: Mr Eaves by Zuzana Licko, Émigré

3. Best Actress: Liza Pro by Underware

4. Best Sans: Alright Sans by Jackson Cavanaugh, Okay Type

5. Best Serif: Calluna by Jos Buivenga

6. Best Superfamily: Trilogy by Jeremy Tankard, Jeremy Tankard Typography

7. Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Giorgio Sans by Christian Schwartz

8. Best Revival: Burgundica by Gerrit Noordzij, The Enschedé Type Foundry

9. Best Foreign Language Font: Nara by Andrej Krátky with Nikola Djurek and Peter Bilak, Typotheque

10. Best Visual Effects: Klimax by Ondrej Jób, Typotheque

11. Best Free Font: League Gothic by the League of Moveable Type; revival of Morris Fuller Benton’s Alternate Gothic No.1

12. Lifetime Achievement: Wim Crouwel

    About Video: For the occasion of the Gerrit Noordzij Prize 2009, Tobias Frere-Jones introduces the work of Wim Crouwel.

    The GNp is an initiative of the master course Type and Media and is organised by the Royal Academy of Art and the Meermanno Museum, under the auspices of the Dr. P.A.Tiele Trust in The Hague.

http://www.printmag.com/article/oscars-of-type

Rich Typography Options for the Web or Why sIFR is Dead in 2009 by Paul Irish

http://paulirish.com/type/

Ommwriter is a simple text processor that firmly believes in making writing a pleasure once again, vindicating the close relationship between writer and paper. The more intimate the relation, the smoother the flow of inspiration.

Minimum Software Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or higher.

Recommended Hardware Requirements: Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers.

Ommwriter

The typical browsing experience is conducted through a single application window. This is indeed a useful, practical thing. Browser Pong instead exists between a collection of windows. During play the negative space between windows is transformed into a playing field? The abstracted tennis court of Pong. The idea of thinking inside or outside some “box” is of course a dead and beaten horse.

Browser Pong was designed to take advantage of emerging HTML5 features (including Audio elements), intentionally breaking compatibility with older browser versions and substandard contemporaries such as Internet Explorer. Good for Macintosh. Best in Safari 4, Chrome 4, FireFox 3.5, and Opera 10 in that order.

Stewdio - Browser Pong

For the first ten years of my career, I worked for Massimo Vignelli, a designer who is legendary for using a very limited number of typefaces. Between 1980 and 1990, most of my projects were set in five fonts: Helvetica (naturally), Futura, Garamond No. 3, Century Expanded, and, of course, Bodoni. {…}

{…} Why spend hours choosing between Bembo, Sabon and Garamond No. 3 every time you needed a Venetian Roman? For most people — my mom, for instance — these were distinctions without differences. Why not just commit to Garamond No. 3 and never think about it again? My Catholic school education must have well prepared me for this kind of moral clarity. I accepted it gratefully. {…}

{…} Those thousands of typefaces are still out there, but my recovery has required that I become more discriminating and come up with some answers to this seemingly simple question: why choose a particular typeface? Here are thirteen reasons. {…}

1. Because it works.

2. Because you like its history.

3. Because you like its name.

4. Because of who designed it.

5. Because it was there.

6. Because they made you.

7. Because it reminds you of something.

8. Because it’s beautiful.

9. Because it’s ugly.

10. Because it’s boring.

11. Because it’s special.

12. Because you believe in it.

13. Because you can’t not.

Design Observer

Textorize by Thomas Fuchs

Like books and other printed things, the overall impression of a map often stems from its typographic design. Often this will be the primary source of critique against it! The type can be too big, too small, to thick, or too thin. Unlike most books, however, maps are multi-layered, complex compositions. The uppermost layer of type often contains the most important information, but must remain legible without covering over too much of the visual detail underneath.

To describe the situation in cartographic design another way, the wrong typeface choice can ruin an otherwise beautiful map! However, even the best typeface design cannot save a map if it is not used properly. A clearly designed hierarchy, using the type in concert with the map’s other elements must be put into place.

Regarding its typographic needs, cartography (maps and plans made for print or screen) is different from traditional print design the following reasons:

1. On maps and plans, text competes with the graphics. In books and magazines, they normally work alongside one another. Text on maps or plans may include place names, descriptions, additional political or geographic info, elevation, and coordinate points.

2. Cartographic text cannot be placed over backgrounds that share the same color as the letters.

3. Cartographic text is also typically placed over many various types of backgrounds – which are usually dark – instead of a common white background, as is the cast with traditional text-based documents.

4. Small text can be difficult to read when placed over complex, textured backgrounds.

5. The eye reads text on a map letter-by-letter, instead of through word shapes.

6. On maps, single lines of text often run across the page diagonally, or on a curve.

7. Type size and style changes quite a lot on maps.

8. Much map text is set in quite small point sizes.

Because of these differences, typefaces designed for use in cartography must meet the following standards:

1. The typeface must be legible in small sizes.

2. At the same time, the typeface must also be slightly narrow, to avoid line lengths running too long.

3. The different styles and weights of the typeface must be clearly differentiated from one another.

4. Individual letters must also all appear different from one another, to help minimize misreadings and misunderstandings.

5. The typeface must be able to form good word shapes, which will also directly increase legibility.

With all the current emphasis on technologies, one needs to be constantly reminded that typography is an essential and powerful force for increasing communication effectiveness. That is its essential role. Improved technologies are only means towards that end.

The message needs interpretation… not interpretation as a masquerade of typefaces but interpretation as an evaluation of content. Interpretation in the sense of discovering the message which has been broken up into essential, minor and insignificant thoughts. Interpretation not only in advertising but also in literature, and ideally a close collaboration between form and content.

To bawl and to whisper, quickly and slowly, all these are expressions of verbal communication. Reading matter will also have to bawl and whisper, will have to run and to stroll, will have to emerge quietly and lovingly as esthetic experiences.

Typography lives its own esthetic life next to the functional typography, the typography of messages. We read words and sentences but are not aware of the formal qualities of typefaces as long as letters are lined up in order to convey a message.

Typography need not only be visible and legible. Typography needs to be audible. Typography needs to be felt. Typography needs to be experienced. Typography today does not mean to place, typography today means to portray.

At its best, typography today is a wonderful blend of art and technology. And that is nothing new. It was that way when ideograms were cut in tablets, or letters where chiseled in stone or penned on papyrus or scrolls. We just need to remember that long before today’s technologies were just ideas, and long after they are obsolete, the artist will have to manipulate some technology so that typography will be seen, and read, and understood, and, to be truly effective, be felt.

If you do feel the need to include a Reset button, use it with caution, and at least be sure to use JavaScript to capture the reset event in order to ask, “Are you sure…?”, thus double-checking the visitor’s intention before he or she does something irreversible.

Submit and Reset buttons should be easy to see, and should be close to their related form controls. In any circumstance where the user has to choose between two or more action buttons, like Submit and Reset, be sure to position the safer or more positive action on the left, and the riskier or more negative action on the right. Also make sure default focus lands on the safer of the two actions, in case the visitor hits Enter without paying attention to the offered choices.

Any time there could be irreversible consequences for a visitor’s action, be sure to confirm that the action is what was actually intended. For example, never delete an account, submit an order, or change critical data in the database without first asking, “Are you sure you want to …” (fill in the blank, of course, with a description of the critical action).

After a form has been submitted to the server, visitors are reassured if the server sends back a response page that re-displays the entered information. That way, they can double-check that the information they intended to provide was not only entered properly but also received correctly by the web site.