Monthly Archives: October 2008
Unsavory Characters
October 31st, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Another spooky item for this Halloween. Check out these portraits on Flickr that were created by Veja magazine using typography. [link from BoingBoing via Extensis Web Developer, Doug Henderson]
On a side note, we just had our fun costume contest, and Max Kerning won. 
Create Chaos Graffiti Wall – oooh creepy
October 31st, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
OK, so it’s Halloween, and things are supposed to be creepy. Well, the art created by attendees on the Graffiti Wall that was right by the Extensis booth wasn’t really exactly creepy, but pretty darn cool. My addition was the Extensis “E” which isn’t too far off the real item, if I do say so myself (check the icon in your browser tab).
We have a few costumes around the office today. Personally, I’m dressed up as Max Kerning. Yeah, anyone outside of the design community or Extensis won’t get it, but at least I got to wear a snappy yellow sweater!
Re-imagined Favorites
October 30th, 2008 by Kelly Guimont
I am a sucker for the remix, the cover version, the result of taking two disparate elements and blending them well. Luckily I am not the only person who enjoys this sort of thing, and those who do are WAY more talented at creating these things than I am, so I thought I would share some of my favorites with you.
* Star Wars + Politics. I love that this even exists, and even more that it came from Ironic Sans, purveyors of the Star Wars font pun I gave you previously. Insipired by Shepard Fairey’s HOPE poster, I present to you A New Hope:
* Hindu Gods + Pop Culture. I found a really nice writeup of this Stuart Rice project to turn Hindu Gods into Pop Culture icons. My favorite so far is Kali:
* Simpsons + Pop Culture. Dean Fraser has a blog called Springfield Punx where he takes random characters and turns them into Simpsons characters. Right now he’s doing a Month of Marvel so you can see his takes on X-Men, and Spider-Man and such, but he’s done Thundercats, Late Night talk show hosts, and more. I love his take on He-Man:
* Style + Pop Culture. Dave Perillo is an illustrator with a definite style I happen to find VERY appealing. He does take commissions, so there are a few of those up, but he also does other images and you can even buy some of his prints. Every image on his blog makes me smile, and since I should really limit my Star Wars links I’ll let you find his Mos Eisley Cantina poster on your own. Instead I’ll post his illustration of The Tenth Doctor:
Enjoy some remixed mashed up stylish art today!
Extensis Motorcyclists Head Out
October 29th, 2008 by Paul Krummenacker
Not all that goes on at Extensis is just Font Management and DAM, we do things other than just work. I always feel that it’s very important for people to have something they like to do that’s completely unrelated to their normal daily tasks.
Jim and Michael take a quick break to stretch their legs
A few weekends ago I and a two other Extensis motorcycle enthusiasts headed out for a ride. We had been talking about going for a ride together for a while, but we finally picked a date, a destination and we did it. Myself, Jim and Michael met in Clackamas, OR and headed off to Salem, OR via the back country roads. We hit Silver Falls State Park and saw the greenery and watched the waterfalls for a bit.
This friendly little rodent came out to say hi
We even were greeted by a very curioius black rodent, not sure if it was a mink, a sabel or just a black ferret. It was very curious and not afraid of us or our motorcycles. Not being a fan of rabies I didn’t stick my finger anywhere near the range of it’s mouth, but I did get some good photos.
The Ural Patrol a Russian military styled motorcycle
After a quick stop for lunch we headed over to the Oregon dealer for Ural and Royal Enfield motorcycles. It was a lot of fun to get to see some very unique motorcycles and dream about owning something historic in style, yet modern in materials and manufacturing. The nice thing about both the Ural is that it was designed to haul a sidecar. This just continutes to fuel my fantasy of packing up the essentials, grabbing a GPS, maps and heading out into the hinterlands for a few weeks. Maybe in a few years I will be blogging from some very remote place, connected via satellite phone… who knows.
A classic café racer setup on this Royal Enfield Bullet
After our trip to the dealership, we headed back toward Portland, winding our way through some of the Willamette Valley’s wine country. It wasn’t quite full on fall yet so the leaves on the vineyards had not started to change yet, but you could tell that things were on the cusp of change.
This was a well needed trip for all three of us. Jim, as you probably know, is our technical writer and he’s been very busy getting things up on the web, out to press and documentation created for Universal Type Server as well as Fusion 2. Michael is one of our engineers who helps make Universal Type Server and Fusion 2 work as well as it does, and I manage the Technical Support Department.
With Fusion 2 out the door and many other projects in the works, I think we’ll need to plan another road trip soon. A little outing to just clear the mind and enjoy the sights.
Typography in music videos
October 28th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
An interesting trend in music videos seems to be continuing, namely the use of type to display the lyrics of the song. If you’re a fan of classic rock, you’ll no doubt remember Bob Dylan’s use of cards to display the ideas in his song Subterranean Homesick Blues. There’s even an OpenType font that was developed specifically to display the cards as written in the song.
Well, the modern hip hop and electronic artists are also getting in on the game. Check out Justice’s video for DVNO [Thanks to Extensis ICS Engineer, Max Mabe for the link].
Or perhaps the fun use of type in this recent Create Award winning Boost Mobile commercial/music video:
Create Chaos 2008 handouts
October 27th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Thanks to all of you who visited the Extensis booth and saw our numerous presentations at Create Chaos 2008 in Orlando two weeks ago. In case there were any sessions that you missed, the organizers have put up a number of the session hand-outs on the event site here.
In case you missed one of the Extensis-sponsored sessions, here are the handouts that were included in our sessions.
- Maintaining Control and Compliance in a Font Intensive Workflow session included our Case for Enterprise Font Management white paper (PDF).
- Our early morning Font Management Best Practices in Mac OS X session includes our Font Management Best Practices Guide (PDF).
- The Digital Asset Management Best Practices session included our Managing Your Creative Assets Best Practices Guide (PDF).
- The Suitcase Fusion 2 Preview session didn’t include any handouts, but covered all of the material that’s now included on the Suitcase Fusion 2 pages of our site. Be sure to check out the many videos, and download the product yourself to test it out yourself, free for 30 days.
Once again, thanks for visiting our booth, and we look forward to seeing you at a future event.
First European Event for Suitcase Fusion 2!
October 24th, 2008 by Claire Taylor
This week Chris Stevens, Extensis Sales Engineer presented and demonstrated Suitcase Fusion 2 for the first time in Europe and the reaction he received from the 200 strong crowd was great! According to Chris the best reaction came during the section of the demo where Floating Previews were shown, with many people in the crowd nodding their heads in approval.
Not only was this the first outing for Suitcase Fusion 2 in Europe, this was the first time that Extensis had particpated in a Polish event. The event that Chris presented at was a Typography Seminar called II Warsztaty typograficzne. Many thanks to our Polish dealer, IT Media, for organising such a great event.
If you would like to see what other events we will be participating in please visit the Extensis events page.
Suitcase Fusion 2: Fun With Floating Previews
October 23rd, 2008 by Kelly Guimont
We have added some REALLY neat new things to Suitcase Fusion 2, and one of them that gets a lot of attention when I show it to people is the Floating Preview. This is why there’s some extra tidbits in previews when you look at them, that little window looking square off to the right:
If you pull that little icon off toward your desktop it will give you a little window containing just that font, and if you don’t have the mouse hovered over it the window disappears, leaving you with text hanging in space.
Never a group to miss out on that sort of opportunity, and in the name of spending more time learning the ins and outs of our latest software, a couple of people in Tech Support* came up with screenshots utilizing this very feature. Since you can tear off a palette for ANY font, clever folks who know the system display font is Lucida Grande can cause all manner of perceived shenanigans with floating previews. For example:
Or even advertising new features within Suitcase Fusion 2:
And these are just two examples of the fun you can have with previews. This doesn’t even include the useful parts like activating the font from that preview window, or dragging it into the middle of the actual document to see if it is what you want to use or not.
If you have a better screenshot of Fun With Floating Previews, link it in the comments won’t you?
*Thanks to Jeff and Jay in Tech Support who gave me these screenshots and this idea yesterday.
Suitcase Fusion 2 on GetCreativeNews with Shellie
October 21st, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Shellie has been providing a weekly video wrap-up of everything creative for years now. Her weekly video-casts are an interesting way to see new products as well as find out about what’s going on in the creative, design and software world. This week’s video features the release of Suitcase Fusion 2 prominently! Check it out:
For more creative news, be sure to check back with Shellie every week.
Extensis releases Suitcase Fusion 2
October 20th, 2008 by Jim Kidwell
Today we released the newest version of our single-user font manager for Mac OS X, Suitcase Fusion 2. This release contains a whole slew of new features that we’re sure that you’ll find helpful and fun to use.
The following are the most prominent new features in Suitcase Fusion 2.
Modern technology
- Built for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
- Based on the Universal Type Client code base.
- The Suitcase Fusion Core™ keeps fonts active even when the Suitcase Fusion 2 is not running.
Auto-activation
- Auto-activation plug-in installation is now a breeze with the Plug-in install options built into Suitcase Fusion 2.
- To ensure a trouble-free workflow, the auto-activation plug-ins contain new features, including the ability to create document sets as well as check document fonts.
- Selective global auto-activation allows you to select which applications to have Suitcase Fusion 2 automatically activate fonts.
- Updated auto-activation plug-ins now include an XTension for QuarkXPress 8 and plug-ins for Adobe InDesign and Illustrator CS4.
Font organization
- Improved search options allow you to quickly locate fonts using very granular font information.
- Smart Sets dynamically filter and display fonts based on your own custom settings.
- Font libraries allow you to organize fonts the way that you want.
- A portable Font Vault allows you to quickly backup your entire font collection, easily switch to an entirely different database, and even move your Font Vault to another drive.
System font management
- Improved system font management features help you avoid font conflicts and other problems with system fonts.
- Easy identification helps you disable unnecessary fonts in your system folders.
Previewing fonts
- Enhanced font preview options, including automatic encoding detection for most Roman and non-Roman languages.
- Floating previews allow you to preview fonts as transparent document overlays.
- Easily customized previews allow you to quickly display preview text as you want it.
- Glyph View Window allows you to inspect the glyphs of a selected font and compare them to any other font in Suitcase Fusion 2.
Font corruption checking and repair
- Enhanced font corruption detection and repair.
For more info, check out the Extensis website:
http://www.extensis.com/suitcasefusion
