Typophile

Help me name my blog, win Adobe prize

Thomas Phinney

[sigh]

I need to come up with a name for a type blog to be hosted at work (Adobe). So it will be work-related. My idea is to post musings on the technical, business, historical and design aspects of type/fonts and type technologies, with particular attention to OpenType and a bit to SING as well. It won’t be 100% Adobe-centric - I will certainly call attention to cool things from other foundries and companies.

But what to call it?

I have long thought that if I ever got a vanity license plate, it would read “FONT MAN” - but I’m not sure that’s a great name for the blog. Another option suggested by David Lemon (whose license plate reads “TYPE NRD” btw, if you didn’t know), was “Thomas on Type.”

I am eager to hear any other suggestions. If I end up using your suggestion, I will buy you any one Adobe font family or application of your choice. (Note that delivery of the prize may be slow, as there is an internal ordering process I have to go through. But I’m good for it.)

Cheers,

T

My Type
peace

Thomas:

Here are a couple:

Mixed Sorts
Word Space

One more: Virgule.

I think I like that one just because it feels cool to know what one is.

Okay, enough . . . I’ll let the adults play now.

Type Casting

Fontabule
Typo’font
?
Kristina

Phineas FOG
Phinney’s Blogg
Phineus Blogg (Phineus was a borther to Cadmus - the Greek alphabet guy)
Phinney the Second (JW being the first)

More soon...

hhp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe

What about:
Tom’s Pueblo
Pueblog
Stucco
Native Whitewash

More soon...

hhp

Typophile!

No, wait...

Open, Type, Font
Adobe with Character
Out of Sorts
Get the Lead Out

I’d Rather Be Kerning

Type log

Press & Form

A very inside pun on the concept of Adobe as clay . . .

:D

Thomas, what is the deadline?

No particular deadline, but I’d like to make a decision by Monday morning. If I’m feeling uninspired, it could drag on.

Of course I was already feeling uninspired (and slightly jet-lagged), thus the posting here.

Cheers,

T

Typographology?
Citizen Type?
Tipografico? (as in the Manuale Tipographico by Bodoni)
IHeartType?
MyOtherCarIsASanSerif?
TheTypologist?

Type Review

Héctor

Type Chase

Long Primer
Great Primer
Nonpareil
Mutton Quad
Rationalist Axis
Hard Space

Tom on Type

’Thomas the Type Engine’

John, good one.

hhp

The Phin Man
The Phin Read Line
Get Your Kern On
Phin on Phonts
TomCaps
You Can’t Spell “TYPE” without T.P.

More later :)...

Pied Typer
Type Pie
Open Counter

Typblography or Typblographer or
Typ(bl)ography or Typ(bl)ographer

‘Thomas the Type Engine’

Damn! I can’t believe John beat me to that one. He was a real Mr Topumhat :-)

ChrisL

Dances With Fonts

hhp

Phinneyals

ChrisL

Thomas gets Sorted

ChrisL

Tomahawk

hhp

OpenTom

hhp

Uncle Tom’s Kiva

hhp

hypertype - kinda got that httppeal

typeline

tyblography

(I like the type engine too)

Paul Dwyer

• Hint & Out

• Thomas Magazine

• A Note From Thomas

• Handle with Care

• Adobe Type Thomas

• The Metrics

• ThomasExplorer Pro

• Fontophinney

• Adobe Type Manager

• TypeWeek

• Adobe Thomas Std / Pro

• Thomas Extended

• Thomas Phinney Regular

A more brand-identified version of my above suggestion:

Adobe Typblog

My suggestions are

Some Type of Phinney
Typically Thomas, or just Typically
Au Font de Bois (just in case you’d live somewhere in the woods ...)

• What’s the point?
• Notes on notan
• Up the descender, down the ascender
• Take your pica
• em muse
• iFont
• The composition

Tim

Space is a letter
Phin says
Various characters
Some Characters
Ascender jungle
Phinney’s Open Types
OpenTyped
OpenTyper
OpenTypographer
One More Font

PhinneyOpen
PhinOpen - OpenPhin - OpenThom
PhinBlog - PhinBlogger
PhinneyBlog

ThommyBlockers :-)

—astype.de—

Typo Beaujolais

Phints
(Phinney + fonts + Hints [tech.: type hinting + instruction, tip, indication])
It’s short, easy to spell and remember and it does not include the both obvious and ubiquitous “type” label that I think is not necessary in the blog title - your readers will associate it anyway. “Phints” also includes a subtle notion of “mints”, which would be small (11pt? ;-]) intensive and distinctive candies – not the worst thing to have in mind when thinking about entries of your blog.
Alternatively, if you don’t trust the readers’ media literacy and want to stress the word “type” like other posts have implicitly suggested, you could append “-ty” or “-type” (would then be: Phinty/Phintype), but you’d lose some of the “fonts” and “hints” associations.
Perhaps a short subtitle like “Thoughts on type(, Adobe) and more by Thomas Phinney” would clarify your blog’s goal and its contents.

  • The Font Soul Brother
  • Summertype
  • Regular Phin
  • Regular Thin
  • Ten Fingers Tom
  • Phinney on Fonts

    Phinney’s Font Folder

    Type Talk

    Phintograpy
    TypograPhin
    GutenPhin
    In with Phin
    Seriphin (Tom as Angel of Fonts)

    Typing About Type

    The Type Nerd

    My Type Blog (just kidding)

    InPhinntessamal

    ChrisL

    Phinney.fea

    ChrisL

    Just Phinnished

    ChrisL

    typemas
    InType
    glyphblog
    OpenThomas
    phinnitype

    making type
    making fonts
    fontcraft
    typecraft

    Bald Extended? :^P

    About Face

    The Serif Sheriff

    Hmmm

    Making Faces

    Just in type
    Ligature
    Glyphtown
    in dash
    em sight (I couldn’t resist, sorry about that :-)

    ’Phinney Pheatures Phine Phonts’.. :)
    ’Lets talk about Type, Baby’..
    ’TypeTeqTalk’..
    ’OpenToType’..
    ’Lettr’..

    Dav, formlos

    PhinnType, no that won’t work.
    We Love Miranda, yes that is the one.

    :)

    Wow, quite a few excellent suggestions already! I will definitely have no problem finding something I like from this list. I’m glad I asked. :)

    There are so many posts that I’ll need to take some time to review them all. Let’s say that the cut-off will be Sunday evening at 9 pm PST.

    Cheers,

    T

    Adobe Will Take Over the World, But First This Blog

    • ATM - Adobe Thomas Magazine

    • Cup Height with Thomas

    • Spine City

    Phin space

    Why did not anybody come up with
    PostScript?!
    Too obvious, and registered by Adobe, too?
    Hyphenating it (post-script) would show the difference that lies between blogging/posting and scribing/making type and thus denominate the space between the two as your field of work. You’ll write about Typography (post/after script) – Plus, you’ll write, and you are connected to Adobe… It doesn’t tell anything about OpenType, though. But content will dominate its paratext anyway.

    TomTomClub
    HeavyMetalCast

    Letters on Type
    TypeWriting
    Flush
    Teaspoon of Type
    TheQuickBrownFoX
    Brown Fox
    Normal Tracking
    Lowercase Life
    Baseline Bowl

    I know... I’m silly!

    Ragnar Freyr
    www.onrushdesign.com
    www.formislandia.com

    can it be a made up word?

    Typeblographer

    oh someone already said that one. i like it, pretty catchy.

    Goudyamus
    St Bride’s West
    .AFM
    Font Outlines
    Manutiae

    phintissential

    pd

    Type A

    One more:
    Type & Character

    Why not typeface?

    face type

    ChrisL

    Balderdash

    ChrisL

    diss a point
    glyph notes
    character sketches
    phinney’s phont phorum
    phontphorum

    Wow, they keep on coming. I just made a “short list,” but it had 14 names on it, so not very short. Plus I already have three special runners up that are great titles but I just can’t use them for one reason or another.

    I’ll check back in tomorrow evening....

    T

    Alphablog
    Alphabetter
    Beaucoup Phinney
    Encore Phinney
    Phont

    zentype

    the em space
    peace

    font memories (or memory)

    Alphabetties Dig It

    Now I can’t stop thinking about it although I should think about something different.
    signature
    (the nature of a sign-maker)
    more solid:
    type matters
    damn, somebody already uses that in a very ’nice’ way – btw, that applies to ’movable type’, too. So what about
    font matters?
    When I thought about what else could matter, there were some more:
    footnotes
    stereotype
    typomat

    Premeire Pro
    Phinney Premeire Pro or alternately Thomas Premeire Pro

    Phinneyals

    ChrisL

    PhinneyUncensored.otf
    ;)

    Lets Talk Type

    TypeTalk

    TalkingType

    Face Time
    Face to Face

    Infonth
    (info, font, indepth)

    Grey Matters (Or maybe that should be for Hrant...)

    ƒ

    W-What’s the prize?

    Face Value

    > Grey Matters (Or maybe that should be for Hrant…)

    Only if I could get a glyph that looks to be equally an “a” or an “e” (for gray/gray).
    Hmmm, or could it be “Græy”? That would be classy, like “Quærendo”.

    Amy, good one.

    hhp

    But thats inZane Graey :-)

    ChrisL

    typewire

    The name typblography is fun to say and it’s clever, but I confess to hating the term blog... A “web log”, as a concept, seems so one dimensional and so limiting. Unless it is going to be just the ramblings of a lone author, I’d avoid the word.

    Name: Adobe Typepueblo
    Tagline: We’re not just mud and straw!

    :-P

    Flex

    • Phinney’s Anatomy

    • true to type

    • The T Files

    Let’s Talk Type

    I almost suggested that one. It was the title of the first article about type I ever wrote (Metropolis, The Weekly Newspaper of Minneapolis, 1977). It was a one-page tongue-in-cheek look at typographic clichés. I may put it on my site some time for the heck of it. I still like that title.

    Tom’s Adobe Hacienda :-)

    ChrisL

    • Phinneyr Points

    • TAP — The Adobe Pointer

    • to the point

    • The Pointer

    Lets Talk Type

    I almost suggested that one. It was the title of the first article about type I ever wrote (Metropolis, The Weekly Newspaper of Minneapolis, 1977). It was a one-page tongue-in-cheek look at typographic clichés. I may put it on my site some time for the heck of it. I still like that title.
    (hopefully the above paragraph is in italics)

    I honestly have never been to Minneapolis or read your local newspaper.
    I’m located in Vancouver, B.C.

    gln

    I think you misunderstood me. I wasn’t suggesting that you stole my idea from 1977. You know what they say, great minds think alike. It just made me remember the article I’d written years ago. That’s all. (Also, Metropolis folded before the end of 1977. Very few remember it.)

    As I said, I still like the title, and if it’s chosen, of course you should get the credit (and the prize).

    typographically speaking.

    atypical

    Well, it’s been hard to narrow things down, but I have it down to a handful of nine finalists:

    Phinneyus Blogg (inspired by Hrant)
    My Other Car is a Sans Serif (superkhy - might use this as a subtitle below the actual main title)
    Typ(bl)ography (Jason)
    Tyblography (or a variant, Paul Dwyer)
    Fontabule (Kristina)
    Phonts (inspired by Stephan Kurz “Phints,” later also “Phont” suggested by Chester)
    Seriphin (Norbert Florendo)
    Font Matters (Stephan Kurz)
    TypeTalk (gln)

    Here are some that nearly made it:

    Long Primer (John Butler)
    Thomas the Type Engine (John Hudson)
    OpenTypographer (Jan Sandvik)
    Type & Character (Stephan Kurz)
    Type A (jupiterboy)

    And these special runners up, that I had to eliminate for other reasons besides how much I liked them personally:

    - Adobe Type Manager, which is a great title, but since the product is discontinued it’s probably politically incorrect now. Also would be easily confused with the application if anybody ever Googled to find the blog.

    - We Love Miranda, which is very true, but probably not suitable for this particular blog. (Miranda is my daughter’s name.)

    - PostScript or post-script, which are very good, but in the context of Adobe will make people think of something else.

    - PhinneyUncensored.otf, which has great appeal personally, but probably has some wrong connotations for this purpose.

    - Whatever Fredo suggested, just because he has a Watchmen/Rorshach avatar/icon thingie. :) They almost made a movie of it, too. http://www.efavata.com/CBM/Watchmen.htm

    I think I have further narrowed it down to one of these two:

    Phinneyus Blogg (inspired by Hrant)
    Tyblography (Jason / Paul Dwyer)

    With this subtitle:

    My Other Car is a Sans Serif (superkhy - might use this as a subtitle below the actual main title)

    Dang, this is hard to choose between. I may go consult with my co-workers...

    Thank you ALL for your multitudinous suggestions. Just because you didn’t make the short list doesn’t mean you didn’t have good ideas, just that somebody else’s turn of phrase happened to appeal to me more somehow.

    Cheers,

    T

    our man type
    type thought
    typesights
    typevision
    the font imagination
    the typeface imagination
    type thinking
    type world

    Is it too late to suggest:

    Type: AB positive
    Blogletter
    Leadfoot

    ?

    Phinney’s Adventures in the Kernacular

    Thomas-
    “FONTAINHEAD”
    DB~

    To a T
    —
    No Kerning Necessary
    —
    Just my type
    —
    SemiBold
    —
    Into the black
    —
    black on white
    —
    white on black
    —
    point by point
    —
    live without a bezier

    hmm. i really like Postscript

    FINAL TITLE: Typblography, the Phinneyus Blogg

    Thomas “my other car is a sans serif” Phinney is Adobe’s Program Manager for Fonts & Core Technologies. Typblography, the Phinney-us Blogg contains his musings on the technical, business, historical and design aspects of type/fonts and their technologies, including OpenType and SING.

    * * * * *

    This just shows how indecisive I can be when confronted with many good choices. So we have three winners: Hrant Papazian (Phinney-us Blogg), Will “superkhy” (my other car is a sans serif) and Jason Dewinetz (typblography). I wasn’t planning on three first prizes, but in a spirit of justice and generosity, that’s what we’re doing.

    Regrets to Paul Dwyer who also came up with some other riffs on “typblography,” but Jason did it first, and his was the version I went with (keeping the “P” in there).

    Interestingly, two of the three winners are based in Canada. I swear I didn’t look at where they were from until I was notifying them to get them their prizes. :)

    Note also that I have sent email to all three prize winners. If you’re one of the winners, and didn’t get it, check your spam filters or just write me directly.

    Thanks,

    T

    Thomas,

    I can’t wait to read the blogg. Please post a link when it goes live.

    Good luck!

    Congrats to the winners!

    Numerous great entries. What a creative group.

    Paul Dwyer

    Yay! And very generous of you to reward THREE of us.

    Hmmm, now onto the highly pleasant choice...

    hhp

    I feel almost as though I cheated:

    Thomas is making a new site about type stuff, it’s going to be a blog. Um, well, “typblography”?

    Yes? Really? Great.

    And a little something Adobe in return? Terrific.

    ps. Is it just coincidence that both Hrant and I have pseudo-intense (look how mean we are) eye/brow graphics for our thumbnails?

    i’m too late as usual.

    TYPICAL

    magnus

    Except I’m not Canadian. Shucks.

    hhp

    how about “dots, pixels and mud bricks”?

    edit: bah me too!

    Conblogulations!

    “Is it just coincidence that both Hrant and I have pseudo-intense (look how mean we are) eye/brow graphics for our thumbnails?”

    Nahh, it was just the 2 Pulp Fiction guys whom you hired to “influence” the vote :-)

    Congrats to all the winners!

    ChrisL

    Congrats to the triumvirate,
    and looking forward to blogful inspirations, Phinney!

    Er, what about “Atypical”?

    That’s perfect for the next time ATypI does its conference in CALifornia.

    hhp

    > That’s perfect for the next time ATypI does its conference in CALifornia.

    When?

    Dunno - I’m just planning ahead. Yeah, that’s pretty atypical too.

    hhp

    archiType or archeType

    typeFace

    typeSpace

    good luck.... JoshM

    ’Opening of the Field’

    as a lover of Projective Verse or composition by field...i recommend this title. It is of course also the name of a paper by Charles Olson

    Phresh Print by Phinney
    House of Type
    Type Lounge
    Typecast
    Typecasting

    Congratulations to the winners —

    It seems we can’t stop coming up with names, though. Have we all caught the Inphinitum Blog Bug?

    That was a fun read. Can we do it again?

    Kristina.

    itype

    Rodrigue Planck

    The Truth shall set you free

    Sans Typos.

    Too late but here it is anyway...

    USS Notanic

    :-P

    “Fontastic”

    Where is the Thomas Phinney’s blog???

    This calls for a Pepsi.

    Congratulations, Thomas.

    So which font families/applicaitons did the winners request?

    I got InDesign CS2 (and Garamond SuperDuper when I registered it).
    Profuse public thanks to Thomas (profuse private thanks having
    been already delivered back when).

    hhp

    Ditto (ditto). Ditto (ditto).

    [Seriously Hrant, this is getting ridiculous. I swear, I’m going to start disagreeing with you, as soon as you come up with something I don’t agree with. I look forward to squaring off should the occasion present itself.]

    I love that Thomas was so apologetic for how long it might take to get the order through, and 3 days later the box arrived at my door. I mean, come on, three days?! What, do I look like I can afford to sit around waiting day after day after day for free Adobe stuff?!

    Shshshsh! You think we want people to know we’re clones?!

    hhp

    My God, those eyebrows DO match!

    You haven’t ever seen Jason and Hrant in the same place, either, have you? You think that’s a coincidence? In fact, Hrant made up the whole Jason identity so that he could win two prizes! You can never say he isn’t clever....

    As for the shipping, it ended up being very fast because Adobe paid for the stuff and it went through corporate purchasing instead of employee purchasing. Trust me, you could have been waiting a month or more!

    Hope folks enjoy the blog,

    T

    http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography

    word.

    bah... didn’t realize you chose a name. I’m new(b)...

    hehe, you found nice domain, i like it, vise versa from me.
    i choosed those Krebner
    Findyourblog
    Fianaforum

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