Category Archives: Design and typography

How to type in special symbols

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A little tip from my own workflow.

Sometimes you need a special symbol in your blog post, document or what have you. (For example, a single proper ellipsis is one character, rather than using five to confect one from periods and spaces; useful when you’re using Twitter and only have 140 characters….) This is where Unicode encoding comes to the rescue. Rather than comb though various keyboard lists or hunt for a sample from a web search, you can type them directly. If you use an obscure glyph often — say a Maltese cross in an order of service — it can save time, too. It’s just a question of having the Unicode number of the symbol you want to use. Memorize it, or have a cheat sheet handy.

See this page for how to input Unicode characters in your operating system. As an Ubuntu Linux user, I hold Control, Shift and u together. This creates an underlined u character. Then I type in the four or five character Unicode number and hit enter. The desired symbol appears.

Here is a selection of Unicode symbol codes I use often — a cheat sheet for me (and you). But there are tons more.

¶ 00B6 pilcrow
· 00B7 middle dot
½ 00BD one-half
† 2020 dagger
€ 20AC Euro
? 22EF ellipsis
? 266B beamed eighth notes
? 2615 hot beverage (coffee)
? 2116 numero
? 2720 Maltese cross
? 2709 envelope
? 2123 versicle
? 211F response

(And now I see I need to have this blog render in a more Unicode-rich font.)

Occupy signage?

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One ordinary to-do issue that came up at the prayer tent at Occupy DC (#OccupyDC) is signage. Indeed, clear signage — for intra-camp use, much less for signs and banners in demonstrations — is an issue.

For which, I’d like to point out a open-source signage font called Allerta.

The Allerta Kit from Matt McInerney on Vimeo.

There’s a coordinating font for print pieces; the typeface includes glyphs commonly needed for signs, for “bus”, “women”, “men”, “food”, arrows and the like.

The font file (at the link above), the open-source Inkscape software (or Adobe Illustrator), printouts, tracing paper (or the old pencil rubbing on scrap paper trick), some thin board (cereal boxes?) and a craft knife could do wonders.

Alas! there’s no Angus Dei/Lamb and Flag for the prayer tent!

Planned upgrades and tech projects

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  1. This blog needs a little refreshing. I’ll look over my reader analytic data and best practices and make some changes. At the very least some new typography, navigation enhancements and a new picture of me.
  2. I’m tempted to use some icons about “311, Health & Nutrition, Democracy, Neighborhoods, Education, and Transportation” from The Noun Project. Some are pretty good. The Soup Kitchen icon seems, for what it’s worth, flaming chalice-ish.  (As does the Unicode symbol for hot springs: ♨ ) Fun.
  3. I’ve been a long fan of UUpdates, an aggregation site for Unitarian Universalist bloggers. and use it almost daily. But it has grown so much that I need an aggregator of my own of blogs I like and actually read, and which have a feed (which most do). I plan to share it.

D.C. map of stereotypes

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Something for the home team during my low-blogging August. The SocialStudies blog — from the half-off-cupcakes SocialLiving people — has produced a map of the District of Columbia overlaid with not-wrong stereotypes of the different neighborhoods.

Some will only make sense if you live here; say, “mumbo sauce” — a concoction native to D.C. that the Chinese carryouts serve with chicken wings. And I can’t (or won’t) say the large sections called “white people” and “Marion Barry” are particularly insightful since I rarely go to either area.

But I do live in the part called “gay” and walk to work in (or near) the “non-profits & acronyms” so make of it as you will.

Big version

Your booth is too white

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That’s not a racial assertion, but an aesthetic one. At General Assembly, some booths in the exhibit hall were visually attractive and others were bland, and it was largely a function of the use of color. But there are some steps to make a booth more interesting.

Let’s consider how exhibit halls are set up. These are usually barn-like facilities with concrete floors and neutral-colored walls and ceilings. The carpeting is an added cost, which explains why some of the larger areas were uncarpeted. The space is subdivided by a “pipe and drape” system. The tables are draped. The carpet and “drapes” are chosen from a limited color pallet, with a decided bias to dark blue, white and gray. Having a uniform color scheme — this year: dark blue carpet and booth drapes; white on the tables — simplifies exhibit administration and probably controls cost. So I don’t expect that to change.

Booth layout, decor and purpose shape the look. Of course, a booth serving as a boutique for colorful clothing will be more visually attractive than a row of tables piled with printed reports, but that’s little comfort if it’s your report that needs to get distributed. This is what I would do.

Assuming there are not hoards expected, but rather you’re hoping to interest by-standers, do place the tables along the back of the booth, or along either side, but not parallel to the aisle like Lucy’s psychiatric help stall in Peanuts; it literally keeps people out and necessarily focuses the eye to the paper. The next idea will be less popular. Have one and preferably two agents standing in the booth. The posture of standing (wheelchair users excepted) is a signal of attention for those passing by. Two? One to engage bypassers and another to assist those already attracted.

Colorful, printed cards might be the best handout: something that advertises the program and, if appropriate, shares a link where interested persons can download the resources, saving money, paper and the effort of hauling print pieces. Modern Postcard and Vistaprint are two good, affordable printers I’ve have first-hand experience of.  If you want to collect info, be sure to provide a clipboard and have plenty of pens at hand. Not as sexy as QR codes or using some a computer or tablet or what-have-you but very cheap and unlikely to fail.

Props help make a booth attractive, though I think video is over-rated for exhibit halls (unless your project is nothing but video). The clip played needs to be short enough to interest a passing person to stay put — a hard sell — and be large enough to be seen, which rules out most laptops. I’d not bring a TV or larger monitor either. When you add an electrical plug, a wired Internet connection or both, you might well double the cost of your exhibit. (Assuming they’re available; they weren’t years ago, if I correctly recall.) That doesn’t bear up as good value, but you might have reasons to disagree.

Better to use a banner, I think. Not the kind congregations carry at the General Assembly opening ceremony, but rather one that has grommets or loops at the top, can be made rigid at the top with the insertion of a dowel or pipe just below that, and has drape weights at the bottom. Use “S”-hooks to hang it by the grommets or loops from the pipe that frames the booth. If a table is set against the back of the booth, and an undraped table is an option, a matching tablecloth is a good option, too. Consider the basic colors of this banner and tablecloth as contrasting with dark blue, gray and white unless you can change it each year and learn what the default colors are before GA. The “Standing on the Side of Love” gold would be ideal, but might be best avoided to give your program a distinctive look.

I have other ideas, but I’ll share those with those I work with. Your thoughts?

A Christian emblem I like

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I’m thinking of options for an emblem for the new church I’m planning. It should be

  • distinctively Christian, but not a cliché
  • simple enough for someone to draw free-hand (a standard I’ve seen for picking out graphically-successful flags)
  • correctly displayed in black and white

I’ve suggested the heptagram before, but that’s a bit obscure. I’m warming up to a knotted cross.

  • they’re used in Ethiopia (consider this lovely one) and Armenia, the two earliest countries to adopt Christianity.
  • they may have influenced Celtic knot themes.
  • they’re graphically interesting.
  • the woven character is also a vibrant image of the interconnectness of humanity and creation.
  • the squared-off design has a modern look.

Ah, but the cross as I envision it doesn’t exist as such as a logo. I’ve seen styles I like made a processional crosses, but these are obviously artefacts and in any case the lower (southward) bar it taken up with the place where it’s mounded on a staff.

I imagine something not unlike four Endless Knots — itself a Tibetan Buddhist emblem —  interlinked in some way at the middle.

If I can be drawn with forty interstices, that would be rather auspicious.

Graphite technology for better church publications

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I’ve often written about the potential quality of church publications — that churches with the money and wherewithal can and sometimes do produce amazing print pieces, but that the technology is exists to help the rest to improve, even if that doesn’t mean a professional job. I’ve gone back and forth about TeX, LaTeX and related typesetting languages, and the reason I’ve not committed it that it doesn’t pass the ease-of-use test. And word processors are meant for easy of use and not beauty of product.

I’m experimenting with Graphite, a text-rendering technology, for Microsoft Windows and Linux. For Linux (and perhaps Windows, which I don’t use), it’s supported in the free- and open-source office suites OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. It can substitute gylphs (the particular shape that corresponds to a letter) making use of an advance typeface’s true small capitol letters, text figures and other typographical features. (Most typefaces the average person uses lacks these features, and it’s one of the almost-imperceptible features that differentiates good printed items.) It’s also free- and open-source software, and there’s support for one of my favorite typefaces, Linux Libertine.

I won’t go any further: this could very well be another dead-end, but will report back if something pleasing comes of it.

 

Congregationalist hymnal is OK

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Pulling old, dropped topics out of the hopper. I ran across the receipt for the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches hymnal I bought, to browse and ostensibly to review here, and made a cursory start then. (And a mention here.) That was two years ago.

Frankly, I don’t think we’re missing all that much. The red cover and name — Hymns for a Pilgrim People — should tell you what it aspires to be: an update of the long-lived and much-loved Congregationalist Pilgrim Hymnal.

There is a market for such a hymnal, and not just the moderate to conservative mainline (if not evangelical; traditionalist might be more accurate) part of the United Church of Christ, where most of the Congregationalists in the United States ended up. The current, favored UCC hymnal (already anachronistically) entitled The New Century Hymnal is a beast I shall never love, and somehow its production says to me that I can never really ever be a part of their fellowship. It tries so hard to do good, but the changes of the English — even when I’m unfamiliar with the hymn, so it’s not just sentiment — are very often hard on the ear.

So back to the Hymns for a Pilgrim People.

No comment about the music, because I’m unqualified to comment. The text selection is desirably middle-of-the-road Protestant, if more sentimental than I would tolerate. On the other hand, hymn numbers 29 and 30, facing, are “Bring, O Morn, Thy Music” by Unitarian minister William C. Gannett and “Earth and All Stars” — the one about test tubes — respectively, and I like those. There’s something for everyone in their fellowship, which is obviously pretty broad. But nobody’s going to use much, much less all, of it.

Gender-inclusive options are available for unaltered hymns, seen too in the Disciples of Christ Chalice Hymnal, but these are found in old standards, like Gospel songs, where people who like them would resent the changes if made in line. The typography is clear but artless. The complete psalter is convenient. The interlined prayers, clearly by NACCC luminaries, are best ignored.

It’s OK. I have a hard time stirring myself to say much, and as a Google search will show, it didn’t draw much attention from others either — mostly church notices that a copy is available to sponsor. If I supplied a church that had it I could live with it. If I lost my copy I wouldn’t buy another.

Interesting features at British Unitarian and Free Christian website

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Some years back I figured out — no revelation to many of you — that there are national tastes in graphic design and so what might simply seem plain or gaudy, romantic or severe in a website is (perhaps) a function in this difference. So I can say plainly that it has been a long time since I have liked the look of the national British Unitarian and Free Christian site. But I’m not its primary audience, so that’s OK all other things being equal.

But past the look there is much to praise about unitarian.org.uk and some of the structural underpinnings of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. I’ll give each of these their due, though I should add that the next couple of weeks at work will be busier than usual, and I have family visiting thereafter.

Let’s start with their annual meetings. As befits of denomination of a scan 4,000 souls, it’s much smaller, shorter, less expensive and simpler than the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly — and I would love to attend one. The unitarian.org.uk site has always had booking information, but this year could book your registration, room and meals (they can come as a package) online. And apart from details for attendees, there’s a solid page for presenters.

And now that the annual meeting is over, you can not only see (admittedly) videos — brought over from YouTube — but printable PDFs of the sites. That’s worth imitating, too. (On the other hand, the coverage of the UUA GA is far more exhaustive and is archived.) And I love the idea of promotional videos of Unitarian volunteers.

Churches and electoral activity

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It’s hypocritical to denounce right-wing churches for their overt support of a political candidate, while churches we like make a more subtle or cheeky endorsement of a candidate, innocent, intentional or not. I bring this up because Unitarian Universalist minister, Prairie Star district staffer and blogger Phil Lund (Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie) considered a failing, fictional test-case church website where the congregation clearly loved a candidate in 2004. (And hasn’t updated their blog since.)

To recap, a nonprofit organization like a church can engage in political advocacy and even a limited amount of lobbying, despite false folk-wisdom to the contrary. And I think it should do rather more than less. But involvement in a political campaign is verboten. Don’t support candidates for public office and not oppose them. Don’t use coded language to suggest one candidate over another. I’d go so far — to be safe — to avoid slogan language embedded within sermon titles, and I’d certainly not change advertising (including the church website) to imitate a campaign before an election. I would not have, for instance, begun to use the typefaces Gotham (Obama) or Optima (McCain) after the conventions. If that meant not calling a sermon “Hope” until the Sunday after election day, so be it. (If rather cautious.)

But the IRS isn’t very helpful in defining what isn’t allowed. Some of the decisions would be situational.What might be fine now — and another reason to mention it now — might cause trouble in September 2012. Or a bit of church phrasing used now and consistently would be OK even if a campaign coincidentally used it in a campaign later. (But I’m not a lawyer, and that’s not legal advice.)

Instead, let me point you to two good sources of information.  One is from the UUA. Another, more detailed resource, is from the Alliance for Justice (and if you are near D.C., they offer very good courses.)

And more about permitted political — non-electoral — activity later.