Font Fizz

Curious about typographical trends? Check out Typograph, an interactive database cataloging 30 years of typography. The task of tracking the popularity of typefaces began as a hobby for Niko Skourtis, who later turned it into his undergraduate graphic design thesis at California College of the Arts and ultimately, a public website that makes the archive available to everyone. An assortment of stunning charts, graphs and timelines presents each typeface that appears in the Type Directors Club annuals and its relative frequency.

Take type into your own hands with Draw Your Own Alphabets, new from Princeton Architectural Press. UK-based writer and designer Tony Seddon walks you through the process of creating hand-lettered fonts that are sure to jump off the screen (or page) and offers 30 inspirational examples of custom-drawn alphabets, from Control Chaos and Knit to Hairy Beast and Spaghetti Junction. Lest your lettering remain in the sketched stage, Seddon also includes a technical section -- on scanning, uploading and preparing artwork for print -- and a primer on the myriad applications for your personal alphabets.

Spread the lettering love to design amateurs with Type Fun01, a quick and pretty online tutorial that introduces typography concepts, jargon, tips and techniques to the font-curious. "Type Fun01 was created to show the bare bone basics of typography in an intuitive and easy-to-digest way," says creator Will Ryan, a graphic design major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From a quick history the site moves on to a rundown of styles (know your slab serif!) and character anatomy before offering examples and a list of resources for further study.

Tired of hunting through vast character sets or relying on the likes of Wingdings and Webdings to get the symbols you seek? Check out Symbolset, which uses plain-language keywords and Unicode instead of letter-mapping. So, for example, type "check" and the text instantly turns into a checkmark; "heart" becomes ♥ (just in time for Valentine's Day). The smart symbols are baked into the growing family of Symbolset fonts with OpenType, so they work in modern browsers. Among the newest is SS Social, a symbol font comprised of logos of Web-based services and products.

You can spot Mrs Eaves at 50 paces, but where do you turn in the case of a more elusive type? Click over to WhatTheFont, an online app from the lettering luminaries at Bitstream's MyFonts. Simply upload an image to the site and see what the vast WhatTheFont database turns up as among the closest matches. If the trusty algorithm doesn't get you any closer to the identity of your mystery typeface, try posting a query to the WhatTheFont Forum (also free), where, according to the site's creators, "cloak-draped font enthusiasts lend a hand."

Type is speech on paper. Typeradio is speech on type. That's the mantra of the must-listen radio channel on type and design. Tune in& -- via the Typeradio Micro FM broadcast, MP3 internet radio stream, or podcast -- for font-themed questions, answers, performances, events, and talks online and onstage. Recent guests on the broadcast include leading creative minds from around the world, including Irma Boom, Adrian Shaughnessy, Simon Garfield and Ravi Deshpande.