This paper for my independent study is a mess. I’ve read a lot, and I like where it’s going, but combining everything isn’t going well.
Scenes from a roadtrip
When Liz asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate my 50th birthday, I told her that I wanted to go to a Cubs game in Wrigley. I hadn’t been to Wrigley since 1988 when we moved back to South Carolina. Liz and I decided to make it happen, albeit a week before my birthday. Instead of dropping one image at a time, I figured I’d take more of a photo essay approach.
We dropped our kids off at Lutheridge in Arden, North Carolina. Our oldest is a counselor there and the kids have always been Christmas week campers. Once they were settled, Liz and I hit the road.
On the way up, we visited Buc-ee’s for the first time and eventually stopped for the night in Indiana. Liz had never seen Batavia, Illinois where I grew up, so that was our first stop. The next day, we got to Batavia around lunchtime and ate in a pub where the grocery store used to be. Spent some time driving around town and got to see our old house and the church that my dad was pastor. Crazy to see how much has changed and how much is still the same.
In retrospect, this workroom in the church was a great influence for me, filled with copiers, paper, folding machines. Everything a someday graphic designer might love. The door was exactly the same as I remember it.
We found the old windmill by the Fox River where we used to go sledding…
…and even paid a visit to the coolest school field trip location in the world, Fermilab.
Once we got to Chicago, we walked over to Lake Michigan and Navy Pier.
We walked along the Chicago River. And the John Hancock building was a couple of blocks from our hotel. We tried to walk as much as possible, but the heat was pretty bad the last day we were there.
We met a few dinosaurs at the Field Museum. I wanted to visit Sue, the T-Rex. But Liz loved Maximo, the Titanosaurus.
We made it to Wrigley for the Cubs game. I got to see the Cubs beat the Royals 6-0 in a game that included a little bit of everything including Suzuki stealing home.
To break up the trip on the way back, we stopped in Lexington, Kentucky and had an amazing dinner at Dudley’s on Short. I’ve never been to Lexington before and it was great.
We had a wonderful time, even if road construction threw us a couple of curveballs. Really thankful for Apple Maps, which made some time-saving route recommendations. The kids had a great time at camp. And we’re finally back home.
Next week, we celebrate my 50th birthday for real, but this experience was exactly what I wanted.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
I really do think there is something to this: How TV Trained Us to Be Conspiracy Theorists.
Setting prices for type
Years ago when I started selling my typefaces, my goal was to keep prices low. At the time, the prevailing wisdom on MyFonts was to set prices insanely high, then run massive promotions to lower the price to something reasonable. That seemed wrong to me. I just wanted to set the prices low to keep my typefaces affordable. Over the last decade or so, the situation has changed. MyFonts recommends that a single font start at $20. Apparently, if I set my prices too low, MyFonts won’t promote them. Subscription services are further complicating the pricing structure.
Setting prices for any artist is challenging, but I’ve noticed over time that most artists initially set their prices too low. I think I’ve fallen into that trap. I’m working on a new release right now1 and I’ve decided that I need to finally shift my pricing strategy. On August 1, 2025, the prices for all Sketchbook B fonts will increase. Single fonts will be $20. Small families will be $39. Large families will be $79. This increases them significantly from their current prices, but brings pricing more in line with the industry standards.
To provide a transition — and because August 1 is my 50th birthday — I’m going to run a 30% off promotion for the month of August.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
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I’ll also have a couple of birthday-related font announcements coming soon. ↩︎
We got some breakfast Hot Pockets and they no longer ship with a paper “crisper” sleeve, instead recommending an air fryer for a crispier crust.
- A hot pocket fresh out of the air fryer is indeed crispy, but;
- It takes 15 minutes! Not exactly a quick breakfast anymore.
Excited that Cotton Bureau has finally added custom stickers. I added a few sticker designs, including my old film camera stickers.
Me: I really need to wrap up this paper on deprofessionization in the design industry so I can move on to working on my dissertation.
Also me: Digging FOUR papers out from past classes that I never did anything with and revisiting them.
Waking up to big F1 news. Christian Horner out at Red Bull. I guess losing to Nico Hulkenberg at Silverstone was the last straw. Is Max now more likely to leave for Mercedes? Less likely?
SbB Emote: A colorful faux emoji set built in Fontstruct
I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was playing around with some new-to-me features and bricks in Fontstruct. After I finished SbB Roundabout1, I decided those techniques would work really well on a symbol font. So I started playing around with building a couple of little faux emoji. Then decided that I needed to add some color. And before long, I’ve built an adorable set of icons in Fontstruct… SbB Emote.
I don’t know which my favorite is – either the robot or the minifig-inspired smiley. “Happy Frankenstein” is a classic, too. In total, the set has 63 glyphs. The build used over 140 different blocks and 6 colors. It’s probably the most complex Fontstruction I’ve made, since I normally like to keep it really simple.
One cool side effect of using the techniques and blocks from SbB Roundabout is that the two designs work really well together.
I think I’m at a stopping point for the time being. I’ll be honest, I really need to be working on my dissertation and independent study. But I’ve got some ideas for characters I could have drawn… so you never know when I’ll revisit the font. I’m still not sure what to make of color fonts, but I could see how a custom icon font could be useful.
I think you have to be a patron on Fontstruct to download color fonts, so most of you won’t be able to download SbB Emote, but SbB Roundabout is free to download with an account.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
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Now a “Top Pick” on Fontstruct. And by the way, I’m going to need a new name for Roundabout. It’s taken. ↩︎
Adobe's Project Indigo a home run in tough lighting
I’ve been playing around with Adobe’s Project Indigo computational camera app recently. I’ve got an old, but completely functional iPhone 12 Pro. Tonight at a minor league baseball game, while we were waiting for the game to end and the post-game fireworks to begin, I decided to try Project Indigo out in some challenging light. First, from our seats on the first base line, I took a shot with the iPhone’s stock camera app:
The shot’s fine, but it’s clear the net was an issue. The iPhone processing made it seem far more prominent than it really was. I then tried to take the exact same composition with Project Indigo:
This looks a lot closer to reality. It handles the sky and the net better. You can’t really tell from this upload, but detail is much cleaner with fewer artifacts. Project Indigo is still slow to process and occasionally overheats your phone, but in the right situation, it’s a great option.
Your mileage may vary, especially if you have a newer, more capable iPhone. But if you are trying to capture an image in some challenging light, give Project Indigo a shot.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
Fireflies baseball. A beautiful night to catch a minor league game.
My dad randomly asked me if I wanted the typewriter my grandparents bought him when he graduated college. He used it in seminary and his first call. Uh, YES! So I now have a Royal Safari manual typewriter. Seems to work well. Just need a new ribbon.
Watched the entire Cubs game today… 8 home runs. This team is fun to watch. Can’t wait to see them in person later this month.
Watching Cubs v. Cardinals on Apple’s Friday Night Baseball, which is actually on Friday afternoon for July 4. PCA with a great diving catch in the first inning. ⚾️
We’ve reached the part of summer break where one of my kids has decided they want to learn how to make bread.
Embracing old tools in new ways + two new Fontstruct designs
Recently, I started playing around on Fontstruct again. The tool has evolved massively in the 17 years I’ve used it, but I interacted with it largely the same way — placing blocks on grids. I’ve been thinking about how I use design tools lately. I use apps like Photoshop and InDesign the same way I used them a decade ago. In general, this works fine, but I don’t really take full advantage of the advancements in the software. I’ve been trying to explore new features in Photoshop and Glyphs lately, and I decided I wanted to try out some of the features I haven’t used in Fontstruct, too. I just made two designs public: SbB Vertica and SbB Roundabout.
SbB Vertica. A bold all-caps display font consisting of vertical bands. I used the brick size and grid spacing filters to create the banding effect through the letters. To get the angled corners to line up, I needed to use the nudge command to bump bricks up or down.
SbB Roundabout. A thin pseudo-stencil unicase design using rounded corner bricks that I don’t think I’ve ever tried before. This approach also required some nudging, and composite bricks to make everything line up.
Both designs are incomplete and I plan to keep working on them, but I’m happy with how they’ve turned out and wanted to share them. Both would have been impossible or very challenging without these techniques and bricks. It’s a reminder that unused features in my favorite software applications might be just what I need to execute a particular idea or concept.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! Yep, the Mets are still paying him and will be until 2035.
Enjoyed this beautifully art directed and illustrated meditation on AI and art. Take a few minutes and spend some time with it.
My son wanted to play video games with me, so we pulled out the Sega Genesis Mini. All these years later, it’s funny how much I remember from playing Sonic and Streets of Rage II.
This restaurant doesn’t look crowded, but the number of Door Dash drivers coming in and out is substantial. It’s amazing how much these delivery services have changed the restaurant business.