The Cubs’ offense is fun to watch this year. I’m glad they score lots of runs, because the team sure gives up lots of runs.
Return to Fontstruct
About 16 years ago, I started playing around with Fontstruct, an online tool for crafting modular typefaces. I’ve released 48 designs on Fontstruct and some of those have served as prototypes for designs that I finish in Glyphs, my favorite type design app. I tend to work in Fontstruct intensively for a while, and then disappear for a year or more. But I love the tool and contribute as a “Patron.”
Lately, I’ve been on quite the streak.
SbB Papaya. I was watching F1 and McLaren uses some modular numerals on their cars. Based on those numbers, I built an entire design. I wasn’t sure if the look was going to extend through the whole character set, but the design actually works pretty well. And as a bonus, the Fontstruct team selected it as a top pick.
SbB Powercore. I’ve had some drawings in my sketchbook of a unicase design that I like a lot, but haven’t gotten around to building. I wanted to see how the letterforms would work together so I built a quick pixel-font prototype.
SbB Astrometric. I took the basic letterform structure of Powercore and tried different approach. I thought this would look vaguely sci-fi when I started to build it, but as I built out the character set, it had a somewhat older feel. Not sure why. I’m really happy with it and this is one of those fonts that I’ll likely rebuild and polish in Glyphs. I think the design would work well as a variable font design.
SbB Theorem. I built this a few years ago, and forgot about it. So I dusted it off and added a few additional characters that I skipped over earlier.
SbB Greenlight. All the cool kids are building color fonts on Fontstruct. It’s a feature that’s available for Patrons. I’d played with it once before to add some color to my Dingbots and Monsters design, but I hadn’t tried to build a color typeface. I built SbB Greenlight to experiment with the process of building a color design. I’m still not 100% sure why we need color fonts, but it’s a fun process and a pretty accessible tool for anyone that’s worked with design software like Illustrator or Photoshop that use layers to organize art.
You can download and use any of these1 if you set up a free Fontstruct account. I don’t know if I’ll keep up the pace, but I’m really enjoying building typefaces right now and I’m inspired by the other designers in the Fontstruct community.
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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Except for the color font. That’s a Patron exclusive. ↩︎
Happy Easter from Team Wertz!
Quick favor. I need a few more responses for a pilot study on social media use that I’m doing for a grad school class. It’s a simple Google Form. Completely anonymous and it won’t be used for published research. It’s just for practice – and a grade. Thanks!
Watching the Rocketeer because it’s fun to watch the good guys fight the Nazis.
Spent today at Augusta National with no phone or digital devices. It’s nice to be forced to unplug for the day.
I’m back to playing around on Fontstruct. Just published SbB Powercore, a unicase, pixel-inspired design. I’m digging this combination of unicase characters. Still a work in progress.
One thing about going back to grad school in your late 40s… everyone thinks you are a professor.
Getting back in the habit of writing one of my elected representatives every day.
Today, we are thankful for protective lacrosse goalie gear.
Great game, Gamecocks! So much depth. Looking forward to the National Championship game on Sunday. 🏀🐓
Google’s AI Overview has already declared that South Carolina defeated UCLA on Sunday for the National Championship.
Spring is finally coming to campus.
As a South Carolinian, I’m happy to see Cory Booker break Strom’s record.
Looks like the Women’s Final Four will be South Carolina + the three teams that beat them during the season… Texas, UCLA and UConn. I think these are the four best teams in the country. And while I’m a Gamecocks fan through and through, Paige Bueckers looks like she’s on a mission.
Saw this last week and I’m still thinking about it…
Procrastination is not a time management problem. It’s an emotion management problem.
Jill vs. the science fair
Took the modular numerals from the 2025 McLaren F1 livery and built a font on Fontstruct.
I’m ready for an F1 race that doesn’t take place in the middle of the night where I live. I want to watch the Chinese Grand Prix tonight, but 3 am is… inconvenient. I love that this sport travels the world, but varied start times is one of the consequences of that.
Writing became secondary.
Dave Winer writing about the “the Writer’s Web”:
The web was initially designed for writers. Styling, links, paragraphs, titles (at all levels). The ability to edit. No character limits. That’s what we had to work with when we started blogging in the mid-late 90s.
What happened to the writer-centric web I loved in the late 1990s? Building a regular readership is challenging. In the earliest days, sites linked to other sites. Bloggers shared work from other bloggers. RSS provided the ability to subscribe to sites, but after Google killed Reader, the focus turned exclusively to search engines and social media. The competition to be at the top of the search results reshaped writing on the web. The ever-changing social media algorithm provided an audience for writers, but maintaining that audience changed the nature of writing on the web.
Blogs became about ad revenue. Search engine traffic and optimization. Building a “side gig.” Success became about building an audience on each proprietary social media platform. Increasing your follower count. Becoming an influencer. Writing click bait headlines to maximize engagement. Getting subscribers for your newsletter. Blogging became “hard” because it wasn’t about writing anymore. It was about marketing.
Writing became secondary.
So how do we bring the emphasis on writing back to the web? The good news is that great writing is already all over the web. It’s just overwhelmed by all this platform-siloed, revenue-focused, engagement bullshit. It’s hidden among the sea of SEO-laden posts that flood the web. It’s bottled up on Medium or Substack, and other platforms that promise the exposure of social media.
If we value writing on the web, we need to link to good writing and thoughtful commentary. Share what we find through our own sites. Read independent writing and respond. Encourage others to share their thoughts outside of social media silos. I’m glad Dave specifically asked for people to respond to the concept of the “Writer’s Web” because it spurred me to write this post. And hopefully, others will keep this conversation going as well.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.