Font Fizz

Got drop caps? Look no further than Brooklyn-based graphic designer and illustrator Jessica Hische's Daily Drop Cap, on which she (or a designated guest typographer) regularly illustrates a decorative letter that visitors can use, on a non-commercial basis, "to prettify the Internet and beautify [their] blog posts." Hische began the project as part of her transition to life as a full-time freelancer. "I wanted something to keep me motivated when client work was slow, to keep me inspired when I was working on things that weren't so inspiring, and to give me something to do on a regular schedule," she explains on the site that quickly catapulted her to design-star status. Meanwhile, the daily drop caps will keep coming until Hische has reached her goal of posting twelve alphabets.

Toss out your elegant Helvetica flashcards and start typing those lecture notes and study guides in Mistral, Freestyle Script, and, yes, cringeworthy Comic Sans. Findings published this month in the journal Cognition suggest that people learn better when the information is written in fonts that are difficult to read. Researchers at Princeton asked volunteers to memorize novel information typed in either Arial or more challenging ("disfluent") fonts, including Comic Sans. When later asked to recall the information, the group who had studied the funkier fonts scored an average of 14 percent higher than those who had read the information in Arial. A second study confirmed the results in a group of high school students (this time faced with Hattenschweiller, Monotype Corsiva, and Comic Sans Italicized). "If a simple change of font can significantly increase student performance," conclude the authors, "one can only imagine the number of beneficial cognitive interventions waiting to be discovered."

"Which font is this one here?" That's the question posed (34 times) in a round of I Love Typography's The Font Game. Having gained legions of fans in its free, web-based version, the rapid-fire typeface-identifying game has gone mobile. ILT now offers Font Game apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, with an HD version for the iPad slated to debut later this month. Pick a platform and start training your eyes by identifying more than 1,000 font samples at three levels of difficulty. Able to tell Arial from Univers at a glance? Achieve a fontastic score (which the app makes it easy to Tweet to friends) and secure your rightful place in the game's Hall of Fame.

Only 42 calendar shopping days 'til 2011! Keeping track of time takes on a typographical twist with the 365 Typographic Calendar (formerly known as the Pentagram calendar), which sets each month in a different typeface. Now in its eleventh year, the calendar was the brainchild of Kit Hinrichs, who is now producing it through his new San Francisco-based design office. "So many people, designers included, have no idea who designed the beautifully crafted typefaces that are very much a part of our everyday life," he has said. "I wanted to enable people to become more aware of type as a designed object." The dozen typefaces celebrated in the 2011 edition are a mix of iconic creations by the likes of A.M. Cassandre and Le Corbusier, and the work of contemporary stars including Zuzana Licko and Christian Schwartz. In addition to major holidays, the calendar notes the birthdays of the type designers along with their brief biographies or explanations of what inspired the design.

Great news, font fans! The archives of U&lc, The Inter­na­tional Journal of Typo­graph­ics, are making their way online -- free of charge. Launched in 1973 by Herb Lubalin, Aaron Burns, and Ed Rondthaler, U&lc (short for Upper and lowercase) was a leading voice in graphic design for 26 years. The tabloid quarterly folded in 1999 but has remained a design world touchstone, spawning a 2005 anthology and now, assured online infamy. The archive-minded typophiles at Fonts.com have scanned the complete run of U&lc and will be releasing a new PDF volume every month for the next couple of years. So set aside some space on your hard drive for the massive files. You'll be glad you did.

Gary Hustwit pioneered the font film with Helvetica (2007), but what about tackling a typographical staple that is more loathed than loved? That's the latest project of David Combs, one of the fontheads behind the website Ban Comic Sans, and St. Louis-based filmmaker Scott Hutcheson. The designtastic duo are at work on a documentary about the widely despised font. "I know why people use it, I also know why its the most hated font in the world, but a large portion of the world has no idea why the font was created and why it is so widely used in design that it shouldn't be used in," says Hutcheson of Comic Sans. "That is the purpose of this documentary." They're now in the home stretch of a Kickstarter-based effort to raise $20,000 to fund the project. Incentives to donate (every dollar helps!) include credit in the film and "a personalized photo that somehow incorporates Comic Sans."