As a story, The Secret of Kells is nothing to write home about. The characters are very straight forward and quickly overcome any situations of doubt or conflict. As this is a film meant for children, it makes sense that nothing is terribly complex, but as an adult, the plot seemed overly thin. Sadly, the last sequence of the film moved far too quickly, skimming over a great deal of potential story and ends abruptly, leaving me a bit disappointed and wanting more.

However, where this film truly shines is in the art direction and execution.

In a world where more and more 3d films are being made and promoted, The Secret of Kells goes in the absolute opposite direction, trumpets its 2d nature with fascinating perspective and framing. While seeing utterly flat scenes can be a little surprising at first, one quickly becomes accustomed and enjoy the visual choices made by the film makers.

The character designs too are all extremely unique, each bring their own charm and look to each of their scenes. In contrast with the beautiful and intricate patterns of the Book of Kells, the characters are very simple, with only enough lines colour to bring them to life. I really loved seeing the tall, striking figure of the Abbot in each of the scenes he appeared. Also, Panger the cat’s expressions and personality are presented extremely well.

What I found most beautiful about the film was the integration of Celtic symbols and patterns worked into the backgrounds throughout the film. For the most part, these symbols are used in the more natural elements — trees in the forest and (my favourite) the snow falling during winter. Thusly, one can strongly see where the inspiration for those symbols originated and perhaps what drove young Brendan.

Music in the film is well done and appropriately Celtic, featuring the talent of Bruno Coulais and Kila. For a sense of it, I’d recommend listening to some of the youtube videos with the soundtrack or on the Amazon preview (though that has spoilers about the film story). I really enjoyed the music throughout.

As a typographer, my interest in the film was primarily in its connection to the Book of Kells — the imagery, patterns and the pages themselves. Unfortunately, the sections that involve the most stunning elements of integration with the Book are all in the film’s trailer and the film doesn’t bring too much more to bear. The only exception comes in the last 15 to 20 seconds, which are absolutely beautiful, but painfully short. However, as I mentioned earlier, the whole film is littered with Celtic symbols and patterns and I would be extremely happy to watch it again if only to look for those elements and appreciate the art.

While I enjoyed the integration of insular type and forms in the film itself, I did not particularly appreciate it in the opening and closing credits. Set in a more traditional insular script / Celtic typeface in smaller sizes, I found them difficult to read, especially as they were not on screen for particularly long. While keeping in spirit with the setting and basis for the film, I felt the negative impact on readability was more significant than the overt connection with the period. A typeface with Celtic “touch-points”, but more aimed at usage for text sizes would have been more appropriate. After some research (and suggestions from Dan Reynolds) , I’ve found some possibilities that could work better.

Luminari is more firmly based in insular scripts, but has a little more readability thanks to a taller capital height and U&lc.

Amulet offers a large x-height, open counters and more Roman letterforms, making it more readable, but also features many of the stylistic elements found in Insular scripts.

Hamlet is one of my favourites, despite not being primarily based on insular forms. With an integration of Blackletter style and Roman forms as well as large, open counters, the typeface achieves a high level of readability, even at smaller sizes.

Rieven Uncial has many touch-points with Celtic insular scripts, but brings more regular forms to create a typeface that works well at medium sizes.

ITC Korigan is similar to Luminari, but with slightly simpler letterforms that may be more readable at smaller sizes. It wouldn’t work very well in extended text, but in short bursts is rather beautiful.

A final item I wanted to point out was the main title. It seems there was some disagreement over the choice of typeface used for the main title of the film. “The Blog of Kells”, the book and soundtrack feature a lovely illuminated version of the title set in insular script and feels very appropriate to the context of the film.

Then we look at the title used in the French Theatrical Poster and on the website set up by BV International & Disney — the title has been redone in FF Fontesque by Nick Shinn.

FF Fontesque is indeed based on calligraphic forms, but not the ones found in insular scripts. Rather that “Shinn explains that he was actually inspired by faces with extreme contrasts of proportion like Garamond and calligraphers like Fred Goudy who believed that type shouldn’t be too perfect” (via Typedia). The illuminated version used elsewhere is lovely, so why the change to this ill-fitting and (to my eyes) inappropriate type choice? My guess is that the international distributers felt the insular film titling wouldn’t be friendly enough to kids and in order to make it seem more “appealing” changed it to something far less effective.

Oddly, after discovering the theatrical poster set in FF Fontesque, I found two other posters floating out there in the internet. One bears similar type to that used on the blog and a second that uses the frame of Aisling’s face in the leaves as the basis. The first, I believe, is the Irish release poster and uses the same image as the soundtrack. I’m not a fan of the usage of heavily saturated colour and odd contrast in the poster design as it draws the eye away from the central focal point, though I really like the usage of Aiden’s and the Abbot’s heads in the bottom right and left respectively. The second is the official US distribution poster created by NYICFF. I really like this version of the poster — it is simple, invokes the sensibilities of the film and has an attractive quality. However, I’m not entirely sure why “The Secret of” is set in small caps while “Kells” is U&lc (see the difference between the ‘E’ and ‘e’ as well as the height of the ‘l’s)?

All in all, I greatly enjoyed watching The Secret of Kells and the art direction, but feel the type treatment for it, while not necessarily inappropriate (except for the Fontesque titling), could have been improved with more careful selection.

I highly recommend The Secret of Kells as it brings a fabulous art and style to an industry that so often lacks it.

Film stills are from The Secret of Kells official website.

[updated with new information courtesy of Eric from NYICFF]

So click Portfolio to see all the pieces I added or try the links below.

Syzygy
type design / typography

Book Design
typography / print / graphic

Japanese Typesetting
print / typography

Blog & Portfolio
web design / graphic design

Shakespeare Broadside
print / typography

Graphical Letterforms
graphic / experimentation

So, I’ve started trying to go around town as I am walking to work or out at lunch to see what interesting typography is out there. All in all, I’m rather happy with the variety and quality I found. I’ve put a collection of them on my flickr account, but thought I would talk about some of my favorites here.

This sign is one of the my favorites I found. It is totally hand made (check out the “A” character, you can still see the pencil lines from original sketches. However, despite its handmade nature, you can tell there was a lot of work that went into creating the letters. As a result, many of the letters look very close to one another. The baseline is very clearly defined and the S / G even drop slightly below the baseline appropriately. In addition, the creator made a really nice ligature for the “The” as well.

I’m having difficulty identifying the main font used for the “DAILY NEWS ADVERTISER.” It is similar to Futura and Nimbus, but the “S” is different from Futura and the “R” is different from Nimbus, so I’m not sure what it could be. Furthermore, the “G” is a bit unusual in a sans-serif.

This is one of the several photos that I took of this historical plaque on a building by Waterfront Station in Vancouver. I was rather taken by the font used on the plaque and thought there were numerous really beautiful letterforms. The “Q,” “R,” and “E” in particular have a really nice feel to them.

I have to say though, it was the “8″ that really captured my eye. The feel of the number is so nice, balanced and rounded. You feel like it is in constant motion despite the static element of the engraving.

The “M” bears a close resemblance to Waverly, but the “C” is totally different. Otherwise, I have been unsuccessful in identifying it. I really like the overall feel of the font and originally thought it may have been hand-done, but the inconsistencies in letter form is more likely due to the creation process, not a lack of consistent font.

Be sure to check out the flickr feed for the full collection of photos!

I’ve started off focusing on Swiss type and grids, since they have been so influential in the development of modern design. One of the first sites I came across that really caught my eye was the blog / portfolio of Wilson Miner. He does so many things right with this design and coding, I may have to borrow elements from it. Of course, he borrowed elements from this poster by Josef Müller–Brockmann. Seeing that poster myself, I started to wonder if there were any other swiss posters that had layouts or grids that I would want to base my own designs off of. This led me to the following sites:

The Grid System is a blog of articles centered around the ubiquitous grid. There are a large number of excellent articles there, so I highly recommend checking it out if you are interested in developing and using grid systems in every day life.

Typographic Posters is a site dedicated to presenting and preserving posters involving typography and graphical elements. To get one’s work on the site, you have to apply especially and show your work to be of a certain level of excellence. However, as a resource for inspiration, it is wonderful. There are tons of different styles and designs from modern designers all around the world. I especially liked the work of Benjamin Lambinet, but I will need to spend more time on the site! I do wish their user interface was a bit better though. Navigating the site via the sidebar proved a chore since with every reload, the scrollbar would reset to the top, regardless of which artist you were currently looking at. Ultimately, I took to just opening artists in new tabs and breaking the experience for the sake of ease-of-use.

Speaking of ease-of-use, I point you now to the Swiss Poster Collection. Run by the Swiss National Library and other prestigious agencies, it aspires to be a searchable collection of swiss typography posters. As with most public / government run sites, the design and UI aren’t particularly well executed, but if you know the name of the person in particular you are researching, it will provide large, high quality images of posters by that person. A bit hit or miss, but could prove useful. I really wanted a “browse” option, but could not find one…

One of the best sites I came across was Swiss Legacy, a blog run by Xavier Encinas, amalgamating new works and content in the tradition of the swiss typographers. I found numerous little gems and interesting links from his blog. One of my favorite was Type Trumps, “playing cards” of different typefaces. I am really fond of physical objects and to have reference cards for typefaces would be rather nice. Such things really help me come to understand better than just seeing it on the computer screen. Another great piece were these business cards made by a company called Hello, out of the UK. The thin layer of green in between the white edges of the card, plus the embossed backside really add character and life to the cards. I can’t imagine what the cost ended up being, but my is the effect nice. Finally, I wanted to bring up this article about Helvetica in the New York Subway system. Many designers have seen the film Helvetica, but it doesn’t really tell the true story of the typefaces used in New York. It is a really interesting read, so I recommend checking it out!

So that concludes my evening’s activities for swiss type exploration. I got some good ideas and will be spending more time in the coming days to see what designs I can come up with!

As a last note, I still really want these shirts, but wow expensive.

• @font-face in IE: Making Web Fonts Work (Jon Tan tutorial about implementing @font-face in IE)
• 100 Best Fonts (listing of the most popular fonts, rather traditional in focus. Wish I could read German)
• 15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography; Under the Bonnet part II: taking a list apart (strong examination of the typography behind the A List Apart design)
• 16 Best-Loved Font Bits In Web Design (well-written examination of some of the writer’s favorite fonts — a nice mix of well-known fonts with others you may have seen but may not be able to readily identify)
• 3 Reasons Why the New Vista Fonts Suck
• 30 Fonts That ALL Designers Must Know and Should Own (good basic list, and some of the "must know" choices will surprise you)
• 465 Free Fonts for Ubuntu (many, many free fonts for Linux owners)
• A Plea From 16 Most Overused Fonts (whimsical article begging for the named fonts to just go away for a while; we’re all guilty of overusing at least one on this list)
• Admiration for Typography on the Web
• Adobe Originals (good Wikipedia article about the numerous fonts distributed over the years by Adobe)
• All Fonts Preview (nowhere near "all fonts," but gives graphical comparisons of a large number of widely available Mac and Windows fonts in a comparable size)
• All you wanted to know about Web type but were afraid to ask (not nearly this comprehensive, but a good resource nevertheless)
• The Anatomy of Web Fonts (SitePoint article by Andy Hume, excellent basic tutorial. If you’re hopelessly confused, start here)
• Are Vista Fonts Ready for the Web?
• Arial versus Helvetica
• Beautiful Web Typography: 7 tips on de-sucking the web (fascinating slide presentation)
• Better CSS Font Stacks (one of the articles that gave me the impetus to write this article)
• The supplement to Better CSS Font Stacks
• Better ways to use fonts in web design (examples of smaller, tighter font stacks for a variety of fonts and desired effects)
• Better web typography (includes good primer tutorial, in PDF format)
• Bitstream Vera Fonts (Gnome source for free, licensed Bitstream fonts)
• Choosing the right font for your blog
• Common fonts to all versions of Windows and Mac equivalents (good if limited chart for comparison, good selection of screenshots)
• Complete Guide to Pre-Installed Fonts in Linux, Mac, and Windows (compare fonts to one another w/graphic images of different fonts; quite expansive and useful)
• Complete Microsoft ClearType Font Collection (graphical comparisons of variants of the Microsoft Vista fonts as viewed with ClearType font smoothing)
• CSS font matching: Windows, Mac and Linux
• CSS font sampler and survey
• CSS Font Stacks (alternative sets to my proposals; smaller, tighter stacks, with visible if limited comparisons)
• CSS and Vista’s New Fonts (discussion of Vista’s comparatively smaller fonts)
• DejaVu Fonts (free download of DejaVu fonts, originally intended for Linux users but free to all comers)
• Display Type and the Raster Wars (as noted in the article, Jon Tan’s acerbic and insightful view of Microsoft’s use of ClearType, with particular attention paid to how it works in IE 7)
• Don’t Be Afraid of Serif Fonts (nice study of sites successfully using serif fonts in their design)
• Downloading and Using Vista Web Fonts
• Supplement to Downloading and Using Vista Web Fonts
• The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (in-depth, book-length analysis of the various elements of typography)
• Evaluating fonts: kerning (Pascal’s quick examination of kerning and other issues, including some comparisons of kerning issues with Times New Roman)
• exljbris Free Font Foundry (free font download site, of markedly higher quality than your average fonts. Many come with variants such as italics, boldfaces, etc)
• Font Chart (VisiBone’s rather cramped but info-packed chart listing the 65 most widely available browser fonts and giving side-by-side comparisons — available in .GIF or on card stock)
• Font Families and Web-safe Fonts: The Point of Penultimate Resort (a discussion of "web-safe" fonts and the limitations of the concept in practice)
• Font-Family.com (auto-generates basic font stacks based on initial preferences)
• font-family discussion
• Font Finder (must-have Firefox add-on that allows you to select an element of a Web page and see its font stack and other CSS styling)
• Fontbooklets (cool, free method of examining and comparing fonts in both print and electronic displays)
• FFontMatrix (ambitious project still in development, to provide comparisons of font stacks as proposed by users)
• Fonts for the Web
• Fonts for web design: further comparison of cross-platform dependability (tables comparing frequency of fonts found on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines)
• Fonts for web design: a primer (good visual comparisons between some core font pairs)
• Fonts on the web and a list of web safe fonts
• Fonts included with each version of Windows (lists the fonts supplied with a number of Windows systems, also lists numerous non-English fonts such as Estrangelo Edessa, Shruti, and Vrinda).
• Fonts supplied with… (meticulous but out-of-date listing of fonts supplied with IE5x, FP 2000, Office 2000, Word 2000, Win 98, Win XP, and Win 2000)
• Fonts Used by Companies in Logos and Branding (lists the fonts used by companies in their logos and branding — in German, unfortunately for me)
• Free fonts from recognized font foundries
• Free UCS Outline Fonts – Summary (home of GNU FreeFont series)
• GNU FreeFont (view FreeFonts as they appear on screen)
• Download site for FreeFont series
• Great Fonts for Web 2.0 (good examples of some lesser-known alternatives used in more modern designs)
• The Helvetica Hegemony: How an unassuming font took over the world
• II Love Typography
• Increase Your Font Stacks With Font Matrix
• Font Matrix (large, fairly comprehensive font matrix showing fonts installed with various Mac, Windows, MS Office, and Adobe software; no Linux fonts and therefore not complete)
• Interview: Opening shots in the Second Font War
• Is Microsoft’s Vista Font Just a Copy? (article questioning if the Vista font Segoe UI is a ripoff of another font, Frutiger)
• It’s time we take back Times New Roman on the web (nifty tricks to breathe new life into an old chestnut)
• Legally Get Vista Fonts from Microsoft, No License Required (by installing the PowerPoint Reader)
• Let’s Talk About x, Baby (x-height discussion)
• Liberation Fonts (source for Linux RedHat Liberation series free fonts)
• Liberation fonts (official RedHat source for Liberation fonts)
• Liberation fonts (informative Wikipedia article on the Liberation fonts)
• Linux equivalents Verdana, Arial fonts (comparison between several Linux fonts and "core" fonts Arial and Verdana, as well as a monospace comparison. Very useful, but I wish the author had provided a similar comparison to "core" serifs)
• Linux Font Equivalents to Popular Web Typefaces
• Linux fonts (mostly X11)
• List of fonts in Mac OS X (features an excellent graphic giving examples of the many, many fonts OS X users have available to them)
• The Logos of Web 2.0 (fonts often used to achieve that "Web 2.0" look)
• Lookalike Fonts (by no means a comprehensive list, but a fair compilation of free "lookalike" fonts that match up, more or less, with commercial fonts)
• Luxury Type (design and typography maven Jeff Croft gives us some slightly less traditional stack alternatives)
• Mac OSX 10.4 Fonts List
• Mac OSX 10.5 Fonts List
• Microsoft’s ClearType Font Collection: A Fair and Balanced Review (detailed review of Microsoft’s six Vista fonts)
• MiniFonts (source of some of those cool small, clear "pixel"fonts you see around the Web)
• Pixel Fonts, Screen Fonts, Bitmap Fonts, Small Fonts (a listing of several small-font and pixel-font providers)
• Mozilla Developer Center: font-size-adjust
• The Myth Of ‘Web-Safe’ Fonts
• The Next Big Thing in Online Type (thoughtful, sympathetic examination of the six main Vista fonts)
• The New CSS Font-Family List (gives some rather attenuated alternatives to my stacks)
• The new typography (among other things, documents the large penetration of the Lucida family of fonts)
• New Vista Fonts and The Web
• Not-so ClearType :: Apple FTW (Sitepoint blog slamming Microsoft ClearType)
• The Palatino FAQ
• The Principles of Beautiful Typography (excellent and comprehensive excerpt from Jason Beaird’s book The Principles of Beautiful Design; this is a good place to begin exploring the entire subject of typography in Web design)
• Reading Design (strong ALA article)
• Simple CSS: Creating More Readable Text (excellent, if quite basic, walkthrough to creating usable, readable font displays on your page)
• Smashing Magazine (has a number of articles on fonts and typography, including a number of free font offerings that stand well above the usual freebie offerings, quality-wise)
• Start Testing Your Designs With and Without ClearType
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface (just read it)
• To Anti-Alias or Not to Anti-Alias? (good discussion of whether or not to use aliased fonts in design and testing)
• To Helvetica and Back (a celebration of the myriad variants of Helvetica, and an offering of several alternatives)
• Topics: Design: Typography (excellent ALA article archive)
• Trebuchet Nation
• Typechart (gives extensive and varied samples of some major Win and Mac fonts, as well as the CSS to use them)
• Typetester (invaluable resource for comparing fonts with one another)
• Typographic Alternatives to Helvetica (some lesser-known choices in the listing makes this article all the better)
• Typographica
• Typography on the web (another good intro page, with graphic examples)
• Typogrify (compilation of Django templates that automatically add CSS and other styling to your typography)
• Typogrify: easily produce web typography that doesn’t suck (walkthrough of Typogrify functions)
• Typophile
• Visual reference to 19 fonts for cross-platform web design
• Web Design is 95% Typography
• Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design with XHTML, CSS, and DOM Scripting (Google books excerpt only); Budd, Clarke, Lloyd, et al; copyright 2007 friends of ED
• Web Safe Fonts (lists well over 100 Web fonts, their chances of being installed on various computers, and a visual comparison; does not list Linux fonts, and does not show fonts not installed on your machine)
• Web Style Guide: Typography (another comprehensive primer)
• Web typeface specimen screens (excellent compilation of detailed "specimen screens" for a number of common Windows and Mac fonts)
• Web Typography
• Web Typography Cheat Sheet (aptly named article, nice reminder of the benefits of spacing, sizing, etc)
• Web Typography Sucks
• Web Typography Tutorial (strong primer for the ideas behind web typography and font selection, with copious illustrations)
• Windows loves Arial (article about Windows XP forcing users to view sites in Arial over Helvetica)
• Windows Vista Fonts Compared to Typical Web Fonts (PDF file, provides side-by-side comparisons of Vista fonts to various Windows and sometimes Linux fonts)
• World Class Cities (explains where the names for all those old Mac fonts such as Chicago and New York came from)

  Good sources and/or lists of so-called "core" fonts:

• Core fonts for the Web
• SourceForge’s free, licensed download site for Microsoft’s core fonts
• Microsoft’s TrueType core fonts (alternate source of Microsoft core fonts, intended for Linux users but free for all comers)
• Microsoft Typography: Fonts and Products for Windows
• Fonts supplied with Mac OS
• Fonts supplied with UNIX / XFree and GhostScript

In particular, I wanted to highlight a particular photograph I took today. This one came out amazingly well with a wonderful contrast and differential between light and dark. When I saw it on my camera’s digital screen, I thought it looked good, but seeing it on the computer shows even moreso the power in the imagery. I hope you like it!

The best part? I have not retouched the image at all. It came out this way from the camera straight away. So yeah, I’m really pleased!

I decided to do something a little different today, and spent some time in Garageband, making a song. It was something I used to do more in the past, but haven’t done enough of recently. In fact, this was the first time I’ve opened the program since I got this machine in the early summer, last year!

Garageband is useful in that it provides musical loops, small sample bits of music, that can be meshed together to create a full song. The only problem is that because Garageband is included on every Mac and since music loops are so easy to use, you will hear them used over and over in more indie video and audio creations. In any case, if one is feeling musical, but doesn’t have the time to spend on creating a song from totally original elements or if one just wants to play around for a bit!

I started creating this piece in a different direction, but when I found the dog barking loop, I had to figure out something with it. Hearing it, I was reminded of the track “Bad Dog, No Biscuit” from Cowboy Bebop. It has a really funky and wacky sound to it and that feeling was what I wanted to capture with the sounds in this song. Overall, the song came out a bit stranger than I anticipated, but I like it overall!

I downloaded the additional music loops available from Apple, so maybe next time I will have more variety to work with!

In other news, I tried a new experiment with my geometric squares. Normally, when I make designs that have the rhombuses on the outside, the square on the inside end up parallel to the outer frame. This time, I thought I would try to create one in which the inner square is rotated 45 degrees from the outer frame, creating a diamond look.

The most fascinating part of this design was that it resulted in a diamond square in the middle of the design. It appears that all the extra space that was present in the other designs I’ve done, which usually shows up at one edge of the design, was pushed into the middle as a little square. Seems pretty cool that there is enough space to fit another square into the whole layout! I would have never guessed from my previous designs.

Interestingly, the fact that this is possible makes me think a bit about the design process. Even if one sets up a box of limitations and has a limited type of tool to work with, there are always options and possibilities to create solutions that are special and unique. This design in particular is special because it was unexpected. The best designs are the ones that surprise you and show options that were inconceivable, but inherently awesome.

Interestingly, there isn’t an equal set of shapes for each color. The blue / uncolored ones have all the rhombuses and the green/red have all the squares. In addition, there are four more blue triangles than uncolored ones.

I found it was rather fun to make different little designs using the limitations of the space and kind of shapes. Course, at the same time, I wasn’t sure what to do! I think my first design was centered around creating one that had mirrored elements and colored. At the time, I just started putting pieces into the little holder and then composed from there.

Today, I thought I would play with it and see what sort of designs I could come up with. After making one style, I thought about doing something a with more limitations. My first concept was to see if it would be possible to create a design in which no two pieces of the same color shared a side. It was an interesting, but ultimately simple exercise.

It was easy to burn through the blue and uncolored pieces on the edges, so all I needed to do was figure out the middle. Of course, with less space and more tight controls on which pieces could go where, it came along quickly.

Next, I thought about creating a design in which none of the uncolored pieces touched the edge. This proved much more of a challenge, especially combined with the “no two connected pieces can share a color” rule I used in the previous challenge. I struggled with the lack of uncolored rhombuses for the outer edge. However, the most difficult issue I ran into was how to make the outer border fit into the containing box. In my attempts to prevent the uncolored pieces from touching the edges, I ended up using the different pieces in ways that prevented a clean edge to be formed. While I created some nifty designs, none of them were usable.

In frustration, I took a look at the photo I took of the first challenge. I realized that in order to create an edge that would properly fill the box, I needed a very particular set of pieces. As you can see, from the previous one, it was 4 rhombus sides and a triangle’s long side. Now, the rhombus edge is the same length as the short side of the triangle and the side of the square. Aha! A breakthrough at last. Now, armed with the knowledge of what I can and cannot have on the outer border, it became significantly easier to construct the outer edge and then build inward.

I thought the final design was kinda classy, though now I wish I had switched the red and green squares on the right side so that there was consistency in arrangement, but that’s ok! I was happy with how the blue and uncolored rhombuses came together in the middle to make the cross.

After completing this design, I wondered if it would be possible to prevent there from being any blue or uncolored pieces touching the edge. Turned out that it was pretty simple and just required a slight adjustment of the design.

Afterward, I thought I would do one last design in which all the pieces of the same color were connected to one another. After the long slog of the previous challenge, the ease of this one was rather refreshing. Ultimately, I thought the design ended up rather nicely too!

The only odd thing was that due to the additional blue triangles, it became impossible to create a totally mirrored design. All in all, it was a fun exercise.

Now, the best thing is to set up a system of redundancy with no single points. Anytime there is a single point, you’re in danger. This can refer to a single array of drives, a single drive or any one point that will bring down the system and cause data loss. RAID, or “Redundant Array of Independent Disks,” is a system involving multiple hard disks to duplicate and protect data. There are different sorts of RAID systems (see the wikipedia article for more info) that ensure different levels of data security. One bad thing about RAID systems is that they can be a bit finicky, fragile and are generally difficult to set up, especially for someone with little IT knowledge.

Drobo is a system that is based on the concept of RAID but uses a proprietary system (BeyondRAID) to manage data in a way to maximize space while still managing single drive failure. It allows you to insert 4 internal hard disks of any size and the system will just take care of it. In addition, should one drive fail, you can simply replace it with a new one and let the system rebuild the drive from the remaining one(s). There are some down sides to this system. Should multiple systems fail at once, you’re in trouble and since BeyondRAID is proprietary, should the Drobo itself fail, you have to buy a new one or pay the company to recover the data for you. In addition, it is rather expensive, but you are paying for the simplicity. For someone concerned about data security but without the technical knowledge or money to make a much more advanced system, the Drobo is a pretty simple and easy way to protect your data. Of course, to better protect your data, you should get two and mirror one onto the other. That way, even if one totally failed and all the data on it was lost, the other one could be used to restore data.

I originally wanted to get a Drobo system since it is one of the best and simplest means of protecting data, despite its flaws. However, the cost for it was prohibitive to me. Part of the problem was that I wanted to get a setup that had a number of accessories in addition to the drobo itself. The cost ended up being a lot higher than I could manage. So I put it off.

However, I was still lacking ANY data backup. This was troubling.

The next option I had available to me was to buy a simple external hard drive. It wouldn’t be fancy, but it would be space and would provide opportunity to back up all my data. Now, when buying hard drives, it is important to pick well known brands that have a reputation for quality, because really you don’t want a drive to go down. As Canada has Boxing Day sales and January sales, I went out to various stores hoping to find some good deals. Turned out that Best Buy was selling the Western Digital (WD) Essential My Book 1TB (their base model) for $150 CAD, which is quite a good price. However, Best Buy was totally sold out… and so was Futureshop… So that was a bit disappointing. Since the brick and mortar places failed me, I went online.

Checking out Tiger Direct and Newegg, I managed to find the same WD drive for $160, but wanted to see what other options were out there. The fact that the WD one only offered USB 2, which while the most versatile, is also one of the slowest modern technologies for transferring data. Sadly, not too many drives had Firewire 800 (the next fastest) or eSATA (the fastest) and the ones that did were significantly more expensive (at least $100-$200) for equal amounts of storage. So those didn’t work out, but I did find something otherwise interesting.

It seems that last year, something called a “Hard Disk Dock” or “Cradle.” These devices are docking stations for internal hard drives.

These “enclosures” are designed to accept internal dark drives via a top slot kinda like a toaster. This poses multiple advantages. First is that with the same base dock, you can swap in multiple drives. Apparently they are even hot swappable. Second is eSATA compatibility. While there are cheaper options for USB only docks, the ones that include eSATA are not much more ($50). Furthermore, the docks actually include an eSATA cable, unlike the WD ones I saw. In addition, any hard drives I buy to use with this thing I can REUSE should I ever get a drobo or similar setup. This is also true of the eSATA expresscard I would need to make the whole thing work.

So where does that leave us? I could pay the $160 for what is essentially a one-time memory boost or I could pay around $270 for a system in which every part is exchangeable and upgradeable as my needs change. Do I need more space? Swap in a new drive. Storage unit failure? Buy a new one (they’re cheap!). Do I need a different storage unit (ala drobo)? Copy my data onto the new device and then swap in the old drive. Do I have eSATA for if I buy other devices that use it? Yes!

All in all, the speed boost (about 10x faster than USB 2) plus the options for future upgrades really make the HD dock seem like an extremely good combination. Admittedly, it is more expensive by about $100, in the process I am purchasing a 1.5TB drive and eSATA expresscard that are both reusable in later drive setups as well as a dock that can be used with (hopefully) any sized internal drive, which are cheaper than externals w/ enclosures.

So, as a short term expenditure, it is higher, but as a long term value, it is also higher in terms of speed, re-usability and upgradability. In any case, my order from Newegg of the drive and dock should be arriving next week sometime, so I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out!

In the grand scheme of things, it is extremely difficult to create a perfect system. One needs multiple drives in multiple places and a means of mirroring data regularly and reliably. However, that tends to be an issue for larger corporations, companies and colleges to resolve. For the rest of us, we just do our best. The question primarily comes down to how good we want our backup system to be and how much we are willing to invest to make it happen.

font-family: Frutiger, "Frutiger Linotype", Univers, Calibri, "Gill Sans", "Gill Sans MT", "Myriad Pro", Myriad, "DejaVu Sans Condensed", "Liberation Sans", "Nimbus Sans L", Tahoma, Geneva, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans serif;

In this font stack, there is a general order of Windows fonts, Mac fonts, Linux fonts and web safe universal fonts. Within each OS font set, you go from least commonly available to most commonly available. In the case of Windows for this example, Frutiger is the least common and Calibri is the most common (on every Vista machine).

So this seems like a bit of trouble, but what does it gain us? Given restrictions on the web, there are approximately 5 fonts that one can use with security. While they work, wouldn’t it be nice to have more options? Especially when the vast majority of users will be able to use one of the special fonts that you have picked out (he claims upwards on 90% of users).

It all sounds good, but there are still some problems. First off, the fonts aren’t exactly the same. By attempting to use more beautiful fonts, you lose control over the exact look and feel of the site. Furthermore, Vista fonts such as Calibri have a base size much smaller than other fonts. In the example above, you can see that Calibri is significantly smaller. As you can expect this may cause a problem in readability, so perhaps it would be better to avoid such fonts, but the choice is yours. A third issue is that one must increase testing to see what the site looks like on more machines so you can have a sense of how the font stack is affecting the feel. Finally, poor font choices in your stack will result in poor legibility if someone ends up with that particular font choice, so it is crucial that you pick and test!

Overall though, I am fascinated by the concept and plan on experimenting a bit with it myself! As much as I like web fonts for nostalgia, it would be nice to explore different options to develop even better experiences on the web.