Pub Links: The Play Ball Edition

Ah, springtime in Boston. The last remnants of dirty snow cower in the shadows near big box parking lots. The Emerson girls are trading in their UGGs for flip-flops. And with the first pitch at Fenway, the looooooooooooooooooong winter of ’08–’09 was finally, officially, over ’round these parts. Now ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, introducing the starting lineup for the 2009 Publicious GREP Sox.

Batting leadoff, and playing centerfield, O’ReillyMaker lets you customize your own version of those iconicly weirdo book covers.

Batting second, and playing shortstop, a must-have iPhone app for fontgeeks: Bitstream’s What the Font? for iPhone. With it, you can go to the grocery store, snap a pic of a box of Cocoa Puffs, and WTF will tell you what typeface that crazy rooster has been dancing in front of lo these many years. I think it’s HelveticaBlackExtraCuckoo.

Batting third and playing second base, Squidspot’s Periodic Table of Typefaces.

Batting fourth and playing first base, David Pogue’s blog post on landscape vs. portrait orientation for PDFs. Touches on a lot of issues of readability and design.

Batting fifth, the designated hitter, the story of how the InDesign spell checker caused a controversy that lead to a newspaper recall. Actually, I think it was probably the person using the spell checker. But fine, throw ID under the bus. It can take it.

Batting sixth and playing left field, Apple and Adobe: The Odd Couple. Steve Jobs has to be Felix. Who at Adobe would be Oscar?

Batting seventh and playing right field, the Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament in Chicago.

Batting eighth and playing third base, Adobe and Facebook getting social.

Batting ninth and catching, an anagram maker. Some of my faves:

Helvetica = A tech evil

Adobe InDesign = bondage inside, deadening bios, disdain begone

Publicious.net = bionic pustule, polite incubus, unlit poi cubes.

And the starting pitcher, THE greatest Looney Tune of all time: Baseball Bugs.

Font Bits

A few font bits for your your lunchtimesuck:

Are you into fonts? I mean, are you really into fonts? Do you assign them personalities based on your experiences with them? Then check out Extensis’ amusingly creepy (or is it creepily amusing?) Typecaster videos that cast real people acting like fonts mixing in a singles bar.

I myself have an ongoing blood feud with Franklin Gothic. Back in the ’90s I would flee from the sight of Copperplate Gothic. Maybe I just have a problem with Gothics.

Know the name of a font, but not its look, or vice versa? Identifont will find it for you in a matter of seconds.

Lastly, I’m thinking of blowing $9 to have Fontifier make a font out of my handwriting. I don’t know what I’ll ever use it for, but it does fascinate me in a cyborgy kind of way.