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felishaxtq3926-blog · 5 years
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How To Convert WAV To M4A
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truemedian · 4 years
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The Scroll subscription service is an ingenious web technology hack
Welcome back to Processor, a newsletter about computers and also sometimes other things. You are probably expecting me to spend several paragraphs making fun of Google for creating yet another messaging product, as The Information reported yesterday. Not gonna do it: it’s enterprise-focused and from what I can tell about Google’s cloud business right now, a haphazard message app strategy is the least of their worries. Instead, the thing that blew my mind yesterday was Scroll, a new $5 per month subscription service that gives you a bunch of websites without ads. I kept on experiencing successive waves of small revelations when I thought about it. I’ll disclose now that Vox Media (and therefore The Verge) are partners, but I had no idea this service existed until it was announced yesterday. First: although I don’t have any specific reason to distrust Scroll, this still feels like a data privacy time bomb. Scroll won’t sell my data, but what if the company that snaps up Scroll does someday? There’s a prominent button for deleting your data, at least. Scroll’s privacy policy is refreshingly readable and candid about what it gathers and what it does and doesn’t share — including being honest about sharing information with governments when required to by law. It also notes that your data could go along with a sale of the company itself. Basically I suggest you find the “delete your information” button and remember where it is. Second: Scroll’s entire method of stopping ads is an absolutely ingenious repurposing of third-party cookies. You log into Scroll, it sets a cookie, and then the websites you visit see that special cookie and don’t serve you ads. It’s not even ad-blocking, they just don’t get served. It is actually quite elegant, but if you take a second to think through the chain of communications and deals that are required to make it that elegant, it seems like a hellacious hack. Then again, as Nilay Patel said to me today, isn’t most web technology a hellacious hack? There are a few more details — Safari in particular is stricter than other browsers and so it requires an extension. Brave will also need some extra effort to work with Scroll. (Scroll has a snarky footnote about them.) Third: it’s a much easier solution for websites to get paid than asking each of them to roll their own subscription. It tracks where you visit and automatically divvies payment up between those partner sites. I could (and eventually will) quibble about the percentage Scroll is taking: $1.50 out of $5, or thirty percent. As an independent startup, I’m not going to begrudge Scroll its revenue, and it likely needs a bigger cut to stay in business than Apple or Google do on their App Stores. If the company hits scale, though, I’d like to hope that it will find a way to reduce that cut. Fourth: hang on let’s think about that hellacious hack again! Although you have to constantly have Scroll email you a “magic link” and then ensure you open it in the right browser, it means that you are getting your paid-for ad-free experience in the app of your choosing. Unlike Apple News (disclosure: another Vox Media partner), you aren’t forced into a not-especially-great app. You don’t get a link that seems like it goes to a web page but actually just goes to Apple’s app. You can also use it on any device you own, not just Apple’s products. Also unlike Apple News, this subscription isn’t really a subscription. For publications that put articles behind paywalls, Scroll won’t get you in. On the whole, though, I much prefer Scroll’s system to Apple News. It works better with the existing web and the existing apps we all use to navigate it. A subscription system that turns off ads, pays publishers, and doesn’t lock me into any particular app while also doing a pretty good job of keeping my login active? Seems good to me. Still, I’m not quite going to go quite so far as to endorse Scroll (and not just because Vox Media is a partner). Deciding to sign up is between you, your level of trust in Scroll’s privacy policies, your ad-blocking conscience, whether you care about the current list of partner publications, and the cost. Fifth: Scroll puts a white bar at the bottom of every webpage it’s active on, ostensibly so you have the benefit of getting share links and an audio reader mode. No thank you times a thousand, Scroll. However, one benefit of using web browsers instead of Apple News is that web browsers are relatively open platforms and so you can use them to alter the web pages you visit (at least on the desktop — on mobile things are still often locked down). So, for example, I have a little script that I cobbled together after a day of Googling that makes it easier for me to format the links in this newsletter by automatically changing the web page I store them on, Pinboard.in. My favorite method is an extension called Tampermonkey. I wrote a little script for it that hides Scroll’s annoying bar. Other than some preliminary settings, it’s literally one line. It should work in Chromium-based browsers. Here it is, offered with zero support and absolutely no guarantees that it’s any good at all. Bonus sixth revelation: Tampermonkey offers a Google Drive-based sync, and since Microsoft’s new Edge browser runs on Chromium, my script auto-synced from Chrome on a Mac to Edge on Windows and Just Worked. The Internet! Sometimes it’ll surprise you.
Tech contends with the coronavirus
└ Apple is limiting China travel and has closed one retail store due to coronavirus outbreak └ iPhone maker Foxconn says coronavirus outbreak won’t affect production └ United Airlines suspends some China flights after coronavirus outbreak └ Facebook, Razer, and LG are restricting employee travel to China amid coronavirus outbreak
Big reads from The Verge
└ To contain disease outbreaks, health officials rely on people’s trust You’ve probably formed an opinion on how anti-vaxxers have affected public health (the right opinion is that it has been for the worse). But similarly online misinformation can rush to fill the void of faster-moving health crises. Nicole Wetsman looks at the intersection of health, internet censorship, and trust: If one crisis is handled poorly, there will likely be less trust during the next one. Not only that, but the spread of misinformation can have real-time impacts on what people believe. That erosion can weaken public health response. └ How Amazon escapes liability for the riskiest products on its site The outcome of some of these cases could determine the fate of Amazon’s marketplace. Is it like an eBay or a Craigslist, with Amazon as a middleman, or is Amazon the retailer? People tend to think of Amazon as the latter but Amazon thinks of itself as the former. Great report here from Colin Lecher. According to court records viewed by The Verge, Amazon has faced more than 60 federal lawsuits over product liability in the past decade. The suits are a grim catalog of disaster: some allege that hoverboards purchased through the company burned down properties. A vape pen purchased through the company exploded in a pocket, according to another suit, leaving a 17-year-old with severe burns. └ BoJack Horseman’s finale signals the end of a Netflix era Julia Alexander has an excellent, focused history of Netflix as seen through the lens of its original programming decisions.
More news from The Verge
└ Everything we think we know about Samsung’s next foldable phone └ Everything we think we know about the Samsung Galaxy S20 └ Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip fully revealed in leaked images The minimalist screen on the outside is an interesting choice. I will be very, very curious to see if this “ultra-thin glass” is actually more durable than plastic. We’ve all sort of been assuming it will be, but it’s no sure thing. └ Moto G8 and G8 Power leak with hole-punch displays and midrange specs If battery life and a big screen are your top needs in a smartphone, it’s worth keeping an eye on these. └ Filmic DoubleTake lets you record from two iPhone cameras at the same time Apple hyped the heck out of this app, now it’s finally here and Becca Farsace has run it through some paces: With the Discreet mode, I was able to film from the Wide and Ultra-Wide, both at 1080p, at the same time. The H.264 .mov exports are really clean and take very little time to transfer to the camera roll. Pair a clean export with the iPhone 11 Pro’s excellent lens calibration, and you have a perfect punch in from a single phone. └ UK defies US and refuses to ban Huawei from 5G networks └ Google Translate will transcribe translations in real time on Android One step closer to the Babel fish. └ Neil Young says the MacBook Pro has ‘Fisher-Price’ audio quality You might think this headline is overstating how fiery this Vergecast interview is. But I promise you it is understating it. └ Pokémon Home cloud storage service will launch in February for $3 a month So if Nintendo creates a pokémon and then you catch that pokémon and then you put that pokémon back in a Nintendo server farm is that like throwing the pokémon back? Have you really caught anything? Are you just renting pokémon? Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy. Read More Read the full article
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markgossage · 5 years
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youtube
https://ift.tt/2XYdSOo Design Bundle Review How To Create High Converting Marketing Designs Bonuses First of all I will explain what this massive Design Bundle software consists of and then will walk you through all of them. The 1st tool is the Landing Page Builder. It’s a drag and drop website and landing page creator that comes preloaded with hundreds of blocks and professional page templates. The 2nd tool is Pixa Graphics Designer This tool is perfect for creating stunning designs fast, even if you have zero technical or design skills. You will be able to create facebook ads, social media covers, ecovers, tshirts, memes and a load more. In just minutes. The 3rd tool that is included is the Logo Creator You will now be able to create fantastic eye catching logo’s fast, simply answer a few questions and the software designs the logo for you. It comes loaded with 545,000 SVG icons, keeping all of your logo’s fresh. The 4th tool that is included is the Ecover Creator It will now be so easy to create red hot stunning eCovers in minutes. People judge their products by their covers. With the eCover creator you will be giving everyone that good first impression. Over 500 high quality templates are included so you will be able to create your high quality covers in minutes. The 5th tool is the Mock Up creator This is a powerful tool that is going to generate all of your mock ups for you, in seconds. It comes with over 100 templates that will showcase your work perfectly. The 6th Tool is the Scene Creator It gives you everything to create scenes on your desktop with drag and drop simplicity. Simply choose a desktop style, add accessories, text. Background and then export it fast. The 7th tool is Stock Explorer Stock Explorer is a huge library of millions of Royalty Free visual content including animated graphics, Video Backgrounds and audio tracks. The Eighth tool is Flexible Images You will be getting access to even more high quality images, high resolution images with transparent backgrounds. These will blend in perfectly with any of your projects. The 9th Tool is the eBook Creator This will bring your eBooks to life, in minutes. You will now be able to create, lead magnets, reports, how to’s, magazines, DIY articles and a load more. The 10th tool is the Video to GIF creator You will now be able to convert your Videos into GIF’s. The software can handle many different video formats, such as, mp4, WebM, FLV, WMV, rich media files and turn them into high quality animated GIF’s. It really is a massive not to be missed package at $47 and that is a one off lifetime payment with no monthly fees. There are One Time Offers One Time Offer 1 is the Design Bundle Pro edition at $47 it’s a one time payment that will give you even more than the front end One Time Offer 2 is the monthly Club option priced at $27 monthly One Time Offer 3 is the Agency Kit for a one time payment of $97 The final upsell is the resellers kit priced at $147. It’s a one off payment with no monthlies. Check out all of my Bonuses by clicking on the link below Your bonuses are already there, waiting for you in the download area. https://ift.tt/2XYdSOo Click On The Link Above + Check DesignBundle Out Now & secure Your Bonuses ============================================== Learn More About; designbundle review, design bundle review, designbundle bonus, designbundle review and bonus, designbundle bonuses, designbundle demo, designbundle preview,get designbundle, designbundle walkthrough,oto,bonus,discount,mark gossage,#markgossage,#DesignBundle,plr, bestbonusking.com,#bestbonusking,how to,#howTo, Check Out My Channel Here https://youtube.com/channel/UCS9YkUH7ZGsDU5QQCqMfFgQ =============================================== Recommended Products: WP EasyClone https://youtu.be/u2uYCN4jhXI Quit 9 To 5 https://youtu.be/vWGK1wXKm4o WP Social Proofs https://youtu.be/6RpGqjRPkOI Social Video https://youtu.be/VI3MZFhBJS4 The Gold Rush https://youtu.be/qTTMnRsBFtI ================================================== Affiliate Disclaimer: While we receive affiliate compensation for reviews / promotions on this page, we always offer honest opinion, relevant experiences and genuine views related to the product or service itself. Our goal is to help you make the best purchasing decisions, however, the views and opinions expressed are ours only. As always you should do your own due diligence to verify any claims, results and statistics before making any kind of purchase. Clicking links or purchasing products recommended on this page may generate income for this website from affiliate commissions and you should assume we are compensated for any purchases you make. ==================================================== Get Your DesignBundle+ Bonuses here https://ift.tt/2XYdSOo by Mark Gossage
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dorothydelgadillo · 5 years
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7 Essential Content Marketing Apps & Tools I Can't Live Without for 2019
Who has two thumbs, speaks limited French, and struggled to get out of bed for this first post-holiday morning back at work?
Don't get me wrong -- it's only been in recent years that I wake up each day feeling hashtag blessed about the fact that I get to do what I'm passionate about for a living alongside some of the smartest people I have ever known.
Still, I'm dragging this morning.
And my to do list is a mile long. 
Because, fun fact, pillar pages don't write themselves. Nor do whitepapers, blog articles, or case studies.
This surprises me, given how every other article I read recently has to do with the rise of Skynet as a reality; you'd think they'd have figured out how to do all of that by now, right?
Just kidding, I love robots -- from a distance. 
Plus, hyperbolic posturing about the robot apocalypse aside, there are a lot of ways technology and automation have already transformed the way I map out, write, and produce the content for a lot of our strategies. 
(And I'm not even counting HubSpot Marketing Hub.) 
Since neither content (or pimpin') is easy, I'm going to share the apps and tools I use every single day -- and consider indispensable -- to produce a good portion content you interact with on this website. 
App #1: GatherContent
If you've ever worked with me on a project, you know I live and die by GatherContent, a centralized content creation, production, and collaboration platform I can only assume was created by Zeus from on-high -- it is that magical.
I was first introduced to GatherContent years ago by Jessie-Lee Nichols (now IMPACT's Design Supervisor) when we were working on a website project together. 
I'm resistant to change -- especially when it comes to someone trying to "evolve" or "improve" my processes, but Jessie-Lee was persistent. 
"You'll spend less time chasing down approvals, trying to find drafts in Google Docs, and digging through your emails," she said, zeroing in on my biggest challenges. "Everything is one place, with real-time visibility into the status of every single piece of content in a project."
Lo and behold, she was right. Flash forward to now, there is no project I work on that doesn't leverage GatherContent.  
From within GatherContent, I can work with multiple collaborators, give access to my higher-ups so they can see the status of a project or single piece of content at any time -- whether it's 3 a.m. or 3 p.m., they don't need to email, call, or smoke signal me to find out the status or deadline of a piece of content.
For writers, I can leave comments and assign out changes. Additionally, either the writer or I can overwrite whatever content is there. There is a rollback feature that allows someone to see what changes have been made without whoever made the changes having to highlight them or call them out.
Finally, GatherContent keeps me sane. It isn't free -- although the pricing is very reasonable, especially if your a small business. (If you're an agency dealing with lots of clients or content production, you'll need to be smart about how many projects you set up.) 
But what it saves me in time, content project administration, and sanity makes it worth it to me. I'm infinitely more productive with it, and I would consider it the most important tool I use. 
I also can't even imagine managing all of the different projects I oversee without it. It's life-changing. 
Of course, if you're one of those folks who loves searching through endless Google Docs and emails, and spending more time calling and emailing about content projects instead of actually doing the work, you probably won't need it.
As I mentioned, GatherContent isn't free. It starts at $83 per month, with lots of options for organizations.
  App #2: Bear
I have a confession to make: I absolutely hated writing when I was younger.
In fact, one time when I was eighth grade, I turned in an essay where the last paragraph was the same sentence copied and pasted over and over again, just so I could meet the minimum word count requirement without having to put more effort into it. (My teacher didn’t appreciate my sense of humor.)
Obviously, I've come around since then.
But my change of heart only came about because eventually I realized that (a) I was good at writing, and (b) it wasn’t the act of writing I despised so much, but rather I hated the cluttered and distracting writing experience of Microsoft Word.
Enter stage left, Bear. 
Bear (available only for iPhone, iPad, and Mac) is an app that's all about empowering users to "write beautifully." And it does that so very well.
It's gotten to the point where everything I write -- IMPACT blogs, content projects for clients, freelance projects, etc. -- always passes through an initial rough drafting stage within Bear.  
In addition to comprehensive and lengthy content creation, Bear can also be used as an Evernote-esque notes application, making it quite versatile. 
Bear is free, but if you splurge on the paid version ($1.49 per month or $14.99 per year), you can enjoy custom themes, syncing across multiple devices, and exporting capabilities. 
App #2: Hemingway
Whether you’re a seasoned content creator or you’re a new kid on the inbound block, you undoubtedly know how hard it is to write and edit your own work -- and not just because you are too close to your writing to gauge its quality.
Thankfully, someone created Hemingway.
In addition to being one of my favorite authors -- as well as one of the best characters in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris -- Hemingway forces you to evaluate the readability of your work.
It tells you what grade level your work reads at, and it scans your work for sentence complexity, passive voice, and overuse of adverbs. 
While you have the option to write directly in the Hemingway app itself, I find these kinds of mark-ups to be very distracting while I am trying to form my ideas for the first time.
Instead, I usually type of my first draft in Bear and then copy it over to Hemingway, when I'm ready to switch my brain over to editing mode. (But how you choose to use this app is entirely up to you!)
You can use Hemingway for free through your web browser at www.hemingwayapp.com, or you can download the desktop version for $9.99.
App #3: Grammarly for Google Docs
OK, Grammarly isn't new, but you know what is? Grammarly for Google Docs. 
It's not a separate tool from standard Grammarly. It's just a new feature that is so freaking valuable, I have to call it out separately, on the off chance that those of you who are familiar with the product haven't heard about this.
For those unfamiliar with Grammarly, however, it is a standalone desktop and web app that also has a Google Chrome extension that scans your writing in various places across the web -- or as input by you -- and provides editorial suggestions.
It's not perfect, but it has saved my patootie more times than I care to admit; especially when I'm rushing through emails early in the morning. 
Unfortunately, as with any technology, there were a few blind spots for the tool -- places online where Grammarly could not go. The most annoying of which was Google Docs, one of the most widely-used content collaboration word processing apps out there.
Even though I spent the early part of this article swearing off Google Docs for GatherContent or Bear, I still use it a lot. 
For example, sometimes I want a word processing application where I can also fiddle around with images and more visual formatting that GatherContent and Bear purposefully avoid in their feature set. 
Finally, Grammarly made the announcement we've all been waiting for -- Grammarly for Google Docs was now in beta for those using the Google Chrome extension.
Please remember that no automated editorial assistant is infallible. Review every suggested edit; never blindly accept them all.
Grammarly is free, although I highly recommend the premium version, as it scans for more nuanced grammar issues that can substantively elevate the quality of your writing.
App #4: WordCountTools.com
One of the most game-changing editing lessons I have ever learned is not to edit for everything all at once. Rather, you should edit for style, grammar, and narrative progression separately, in individual editing phases.
That’s why after I put my work through the readability test of Hemingway, I drop my work into the text box on www.wordcounttools.com. 
Not only does this website tell you how many words your composition has overall, it also targets one of my biggest writing “quirks” -- redundancy.
(Seriously, I don’t know what my problem is, but I am incapable of going a single column, essay, or blog post without repeating certain words or phrases.)
Below the area where you paste copy, you’ll see a keyword density box, which counts how many times non-“grammar words” appear in your work.
I know, it seems almost stupidly simple.
But as someone who spends a good portion of my day editing the work of others, trust me when I say it’s likely that more than a few of you reading this post should also be using this tool.
App #5: Noisli
I used to spend so much time at work trying to find the perfect work playlist on Spotify to keep me on track. Music is supposed to help spark productivity and creativity, right?
Wrong. Well, for me, anyway.
I don’t know whether I’m defective or something, but most of the time I find myself distracted by music.
Either I get wrapped up in the song itself -- even if it’s only instrumental -- or, when one song ends, I don’t like what comes up next, so I break from my work to spend 20 minutes trying to curate a new ideal soundtrack.
Noisli is a stunning, minimalist (and free!) background noise generator. Or, as they like to say, Noisli is “your productivity companion.”
Even though there are multiple studies showing the positive effects of ambient noise on productivity, Noisli confused me when I took it for a test drive a couple years ago, during a particularly challenging copywriting project.
At first, listening to noise while working seemed… strange. Not to mention completely boring. Now? I’m a total convert, and it’s pretty much all I listen to when I’m trying to get sh*t done. 
With my free Noisli account, I’ve created and saved custom blends of sounds -- which you control using the soundboard shown on the left -- that can set the tone for my entire working day.
Sound options include rain, thunderstorm, wind, forest, leaves, water stream, seaside, water, bonfire, summer night, fan, train, coffee shop, white noise, pink noise, and brown noise.
As my Creator's Block co-host (and long-time work pal) Jessie-Lee knows, my favorite Noisli blend is one I call "rainy trainy." It’s a personalized symphony of thunder, rain, train, and fan sounds. There's also a splash of coffee shop, for good measure.
I created this soothing blend because I love traveling by train and have been doing so for years -- in my 20s, when I would travel home to Washington, D.C., while living in Boston, and now, when I travel to and from my home in Annapolis, Maryland, to IMPACT's home office in Connecticut. 
Fun fact: You can also share blends of sounds with other people.  
Noisli is available for free through the website. There is also a free Chrome extension and iOS app available for $1.99.
App #6: SEMrush Content Template
I learned about this gem when I was working with Franco Valentino of Narrative SEO on a comprehensive SEO analysis we published last year. Now, I don't leave home without it, so to speak -- especially when I'm crafting individual pillar strategies.
If you have SEMRush, simply click on “SEO Content Template” in the menu on the left near the bottom and enter the keyword you want to base a piece of content around. It will spit out recommendations on everything -- target length of your content, links and semantic keywords you should include, and much, much more.
It also has a rich-text editor, where you can test the content you're creating that targets a particular keyword string against the recommendations it provided:
SEMrush costs money, but it's worth the money. They also have a lot of different pricing plans, depending on the needs of your organization.
App #7: Evernote
Given how ubiquitous Evernote is, it almost feels like a copout to include this in my list. That said, I spent years not understanding how or why millions of people and scores of businesses trust the elephant-branded app, before it finally clicked for me last fall. 
Now, I'm an Evernote freak, too.
For the three of you who haven't heard of Evernote, it's a note-taking application you can download or use through the web. You can clip things from the web, create templates, scan and attach documents, and sync your notes across multiple devices (if you pay for the premium version).
I also love how I can easily share notes in my Evernote -- for example, a table of contents developed during a pillar strategy brainstorm. By clicking one or two buttons, I can share an accessible URL that stays updated if I make any changes to the document, instead of having to copy and paste the information into an email or a Google Doc.
But for me, it's application is simple.
I've created notebooks for my podcast, my pillar strategies, and general notes for content I'm working on. It's where I store all of the preparation notes for pillar strategy sessions, the questions I'm going to ask a Content Lab guest, and where I outline longform pieces. 
There isn't much to say about Evernote that hasn't already been said by somebody else. But what I will say is that so much of what I have gotten out of it only came about once I understood it was all about how I organized and setup my Evernote. 
If you're looking for a virtual notebook to help you make sense of all of the back and forth that shouldn't live in disparate emails or Google Docs, but also has no business living in something like GatherContent, I can't recommend Evernote more.
Evernote is free with premium and business options available.
The Best Writing Hack Is Honesty
Even though all four of these apps have revolutionized the way I think about and approach my work, the best piece of advice I can give you about how to boost your content creation capabilities is this:
Have an open and brutally honest discussion with yourself about what specifically you don’t like about the writing process.
No app or program can tell you what your problem is or fix a writing roadblock you can't identify; they can only help you once you have some idea of what pain point you’re trying to address.
The answers will vary drastically from person to person, as they should. For instance, while my struggles were rooted in distraction and focus, yours may be founded in writer’s block, which is an entirely different beast.
So, while I think each of you will like at least one of these apps, I hope you’ll also do yourselves a favor and figure out what part of your own personal writing process really needs improving.
from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/content-marketing-apps-tools
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Panel Crowns 5 Worst IPhone Games.
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dawnajaynes32 · 7 years
Text
Typodermic’s Raymond Larabie Talks Type, Technology & Science Fiction
[Call for Entries: The International Design Awards]
Raymond Larabie, known for creating ubiquitous futuristic and sci-fi fonts, has been involved with type since he “was about five years old” and was using type at that early age as well. His experience with typography, especially when it came to the hands-on-use of Letraset, helped him understand how typefaces looked, and how typography worked. By the mid-1980s he edited fonts and made his own fonts on his first computer, doing everything on a TRS-80 in bitmap. He eventually graduated to the Commodore Amiga.
Neuropol was created in 1997 and was used for the logo for the Torino Olympics in 2006. It’s been updated and expanded a lot over the years and also comes in a more buttoned up X style. The truncated arms were inspired by a malfunctioning vectorbeam screen on an old Tempest arcade machine.
Larabie earned a Classical Animation Diploma at Sheridan College in Oakville, and went on to work as an art director in the video game business working on games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Super NES (SNES), as well as the Playstation and Playstation 2. During that time, he maintained his love for type and type design, and made free fonts, releasing them on the Ray Larabie Freeware Typeface of the Week website. This soon became Larabie Fonts. In 2001, he started a commercial font venture, and quit his job two years later to work on fonts full-time.
Influenced by Letraset at age five, Larabie says his own Letraset sheets got “used up decades ago,” in the mid-1980s. “I wonder if younger readers realize that fonts were once something that you’d buy and they would get used up. These are replacement copies of catalogs because I wore the originals to shreds. I don’t know why I was so obsessed with this stuff as a kid.” Photo by Raymond Larabie
Inspired by the Pinto Flare typeface, Larabie created his own groovy version called Pricedown. You might also recognize it from Grand Theft Auto‘s wordmark. “I worked for Rockstar at the time but they weren’t aware that they were using a font which was created by one of their employees before the company existed.”
Larabie moved to Japan in 2008, where he operates Typodermic Fonts. Larabie provided a behind the scenes look at his design process for HOW readers, and answered questions about his work and his influences.
How Raymond Works
Step 1
“When starting a new typeface, my first step is to draw a few heavy sample characters to establish dimensions and sidebearings.”
Step 2
“Once I’ve got a few sample characters for the heaviest weight, I add a weight axis and design a light version of those characters. This way I can test interpolation, alter the x-height, sidebearings and width, then note the scale percentages—afterwards, I delete the light test characters. I’m using a uniform line width since this will be an interpolation target which will be thrown away later. I usually use an interpolation of between 10 to 20% of the heaviest weight as my extra-light so it retains some of flavor of the heavy weight.”
Step 3
“One by one, I add completed heavy characters, making sure each one harmonizes with the existing characters. I don’t draw them in alphabetical order but I try not to leave the hard letters like a and e for last. The interplay between f,r,t,z is particularly difficult so they should be drawn all at the same time to make sure they work together. There’s no separate spacing phase—I’m adjusting and thoroughly testing the spacing for each character as I go.”
Step 4
“Next I create composite accented characters and finish the rest of the character set. I use a set of reduced height accents for the capital letters and more generous ones for the lowercase.”
Step 5
“After lots of testing and minor adjustments, I’ll create kerning classes and create all the kerning pairs. It’s important to spend a lot of time setting up the kerning classes. Not only does it make the kerning process much faster but it reduces the possibility of error and omission.”
Step 6
“Now it’s time to create the light interpolation weight. I’ll use the notes I made earlier to make everything narrower, decrease the x-height and pad the sidebearings. I’ll also create a quick, disposable outline version to use as a guide in the background.”
Step 7
“Next I’ll complete all the light characters. I need to adjust the sidebearings on thin characters like lowercase L, I, 1 etc. The accents no longer line up so they all need adjustment. The kerning will need to be done all over again. Some pairs won’t need adjusting but they’ll all need to be checked.”
Step 8
“Next, I experiment with the interpolation and make adjustments to refine the middle weights—it’s a bit like pulling strings. You can see how I need to cut away a piece of the Q so the tail goes through only on the lighter weights. This stage can involve a lot of manual cleanup and vector surgery. Now I decide which weights I’m going to export. Then I fill in the style names, do some autohinting, more testing, more adjustments and I’m done.”
Q&A with Raymond
Q. What inspired you to create your own type design foundry?
I like to call it a font company. Foundry makes it sound like I work with molten metal.
What’s behind the name? What does Typodermic mean, and why did you go with that name?
During the indie font gold rush near the turn of the millennium, font puns were in short supply so I jumped at that one as soon as I thought of it. I used it as a font name first and later a company name. “For font junkies” is my slogan but I thought of that much later.
What software do you use for finalizing, editing, and producing the font files, and why do you use it?
I use FontLab Studio because it’s been the dominant type design tool in Windows for almost two decades. On a Mac there are several other viable options but in Windows, if you want to create interpolated typefaces, it’s the only way to go.
What prior font software did you use, before the tools you currently use?
I used Fontographer but then stopped using it because it hadn’t been updated for close to a decade. I miss the vector drawing in that one but without interpolation, it’s a no-go.
When you started out as a type designer, who or what motivated you to get into type design, and why?
It was the emergence of type design tools. I was making fonts as soon as I got my first computer, a TRS-80 in the early 80s. But there was only so much you could do with those old bitmap editors. The urge was still there but dormant until I got my hands on Fontographer in 1996.
Larabie calls Conthrax “a techno typeface that’s designed to hide in the background” and he strived to make it look technological without being loud and flashy.
The average person who looks at your type catalog might see a strong science fiction influence. How has sci-fi shaped your typographic tastes, and the type designs you make?
When I started in the late 1990s that category was underserved. You’d see that style in logo designs but not much as typefaces. I think now, techno is considered a legitimate category but not long ago, that style of type was passed off as Microgramma or Bank Gothic clones. I do love sci-fi and video games and that’s definitely an influence. The choice of going square is often an attempt to make type that harmonizes with our environment. We live in a high-tech, rectilinear world. When I started seeing my techno fonts used on consumer electronics, it guided me more towards those sorts of projects.
Typography has a prominent place in many science fiction comic books, films, and cartoons. What movies or comic books get the typography right, in your opinion, and why?
Sci-fi type like in Robocop (1988), Star Trek the Next Generation (STNG), or Demolition Man were amped up versions of popular type styles in the times they were made. The STNG typeface feels like a late 1980s software company logo—perfect for the times. Sci-fi type often fails when it regurgitates old sci-fi ideas. We’ve seen decades of the Blade Runner line gap trick. It was a stark vision of the future in 1982 but maybe we should be extrapolating the visuals of today to develop new visions of the future.
Something that constantly annoys me is the use of Bank Gothic to imply “futuristic.” Bank Gothic was designed in 1930 and was based on a popular sign painting style from around 1900. It was the kind of thing you’d see on rail cars, gravestones, stock certificates etc. When I see it, it looks very old-fashioned to me so it’s a bit like seeing a Model-T Ford in a sci-fi future. Famous movie examples: Moon, Terra Nova, Edge of Tomorrow, Battlestar Galactica, Hunger Games, Falling Skies, Jumper and several Stargates. I think Bank Gothic is often chosen because it’s a square font that a lot of people already have on their computer. It’s not a bad font by any means but it’s very American, circa 1900 to me.
youtube
  When it comes to your process, do you begin working directly on paper during the initial design phases, or do you go right to the computer, and what benefit does that method of working provide?
I usually don’t use paper at all. I jot down notes as I’m working such as sidebearing numbers and accent offsets. I feel like the design of each glyph should be as open as possible so they can be formed by their neighbors. If I decide what glyphs are going to look like ahead of time, I can paint myself into a corner. A far more useful visual aid is to keep a reference photo on my desktop wallpaper or pinned to my cork board—usually not of anything typographical but more of a thematic image. For one job, I needed to create a tough, military looking typeface so I pinned a picture of a Humvee to my board. To me, that’s more useful than sketching out the alphabet. Even if I don’t use visual reference, there’s some kind of doctrine I can use to help me make decisions. Otherwise, I tend to smooth the edges down until the typeface has no character.
You offer a lot of free fonts, as well as fonts that cost money. Why so many fonts for free?
It’s promotional. Those free font sites get so much traffic. I’ve had over 60 million downloads from DaFont alone. The free fonts can lead to sales of web, app and eBook licenses or other weights like heavy or ultra-light.
What are your best-selling paid fonts?
Korataki is a techno font commissioned for the Mass Effect game series that’s always done really well. Meloriac is mixed case, extremely bold geometric sans which has been a steady seller. Conthrax is a more recent success. It’s a squarish, soft, ultramodern deliberately sedate.
What are your most frequently downloaded free fonts?
Coolvetica. It’s downloaded almost twice as much as the next one down the list. Then there’s Steelfish. That was a bit of a dud until I spruced it up a few years ago. I’ve been constantly going over the old ones and freshening them up or rebuilding from scratch. Then Budmo, Neuropol and Pricedown.
The Budmo typeface, influenced by marquee signs.
What type designers, foundries, or visual culture do you look at for inspiration these days, and why do you look at that work?
I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. I try to avoid looking at design blogs, or anything tagged as typography. I feel like it’s a bit like visual dieting. It’s not just what I look at, it’s what I don’t look at. And more than ever, as a species, we’re all feeding from the same visual trough. An example of a recent tangent was diving deep into the world of reel-to-reel tape decks and obsolete audio cassette formats, strange auto-reverse mechanisms. If you don’t swerve, you’ll end up making the same typeface someone else already made.
In addition to offering your fonts through your own site, they can be found at fonts.com as well as Fontspring and other sites. What advice would you have for the budding type designer, who wants to get their fonts picked up by those distributors?
When you’re developing your typeface, you should try to imagine the kind of customer that’s going to purchase it. Give it some kind of reason to exist. It’s not enough to make an attractive or interesting typeface. It’s fine if you want to get experimental but those sites aren’t the place for that sort of thing. They’re like department stores rather than galleries. For example, if you’re making a font that looks like neon lights, you can look at what’s available and think about the kind of customer who might need one. What kind of projects would they use it for? Is there something missing in the current selection of neon light fonts?
Korataki was commissioned by Bioware for the Mass Effect game series.
Some of your influences, such as the TRS-80 and 1980s pop culture, are also found in Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One, which Steven Spielberg has made into a feature film. You’ve got such a deep catalog of future-forward and sci-fi fonts. Leading up to Ready Player One’s release, if we see a 1980s renaissance—and especially one with sci-fi and gaming influences from that era—what new creations can we expect to see from Typodermic Fonts?
I think the console games of the 1980s and 1990s have been well fetishized—the aesthetic is well known. Younger generations have developed a visual style based on that type of look but it’s based on a relatively narrow view on games in the 1980s. There’s an aspect of gaming that’s been largely ignored and is in danger of being lost forever: microcomputers. While some people were playing Atari and Nintendo in the living room, the rest of us were at desks, patiently waiting for games to load from cassettes. Those types of games haven’t been popular with collectors and they’re often ignored. Cassettes and floppy disks fail—manuals and packaging get thrown in the trash. Some of the Japanese microcomputers like MSX, NEC PC Series, X-1, FM-7 had specific technical limitations that created their own unique visual style. A lot of the console game franchises we know and love started off on these systems before people played them on their living room game consoles. Many microcomputer games that were released in this era will never be recovered. A few years ago I made Rukyltronic which was a tribute to 1980s UK microcomputers like Beeb and the Speccy. That’s the kind of thing I’ve got my eye out for and it’ll inevitably make its way into my upcoming typeface releases.
Where do you see type design heading in the future?
Typography has a fashion cycle so you’ll see the same kinds of typefaces come and go. But when they cycle back each time, new ideas will be applied and they’ll required upgrading as user expectations keep getting higher. Things like optical scaling which will compensate for the environment. What makes a typeface perform better in small print on a smartwatch is different from what works best on a billboard and it’s not just the weight. In the 1990s, a basic character set with a few accents and stock mathematical symbols was the norm. Typefaces rarely came with more than regular, bold and italics. Now we expect a weight range, more language coverage, cohesive symbols and OpenType features galore. Also, new font technology will allow us to finally produce convincing handwriting. I think some of the innovations required to make Arabic writing work properly will provide us with some interesting tools. Once type designers have access to these tools, who knows what we’ll come up with?
Edited from a series of online and email interviews. Captions for Neuropol, as well as Toxigenesis type design process provided by Raymond Larabie. Check out Typodermic Fonts online and follow Larabie on Twitter and Instagram.
  The post Typodermic’s Raymond Larabie Talks Type, Technology & Science Fiction appeared first on HOW Design.
Typodermic’s Raymond Larabie Talks Type, Technology & Science Fiction syndicated post
0 notes
dawnajaynes32 · 7 years
Text
Typodermic’s Raymond Larabie Talks Type, Technology & Science Fiction
[Call for Entries: The International Design Awards]
Raymond Larabie, known for creating ubiquitous futuristic and sci-fi fonts, has been involved with type since he “was about five years old” and was using type at that early age as well. His experience with typography, especially when it came to the hands-on-use of Letraset, helped him understand how typefaces looked, and how typography worked. By the mid-1980s he edited fonts and made his own fonts on his first computer, doing everything on a TRS-80 in bitmap. He eventually graduated to the Commodore Amiga.
Neuropol was created in 1997 and was used for the logo for the Torino Olympics in 2006. It’s been updated and expanded a lot over the years and also comes in a more buttoned up X style. The truncated arms were inspired by a malfunctioning vectorbeam screen on an old Tempest arcade machine.
Larabie earned a Classical Animation Diploma at Sheridan College in Oakville, and went on to work as an art director in the video game business working on games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Super NES (SNES), as well as the Playstation and Playstation 2. During that time, he maintained his love for type and type design, and made free fonts, releasing them on the Ray Larabie Freeware Typeface of the Week website. This soon became Larabie Fonts. In 2001, he started a commercial font venture, and quit his job two years later to work on fonts full-time.
Influenced by Letraset at age five, Larabie says his own Letraset sheets got “used up decades ago,” in the mid-1980s. “I wonder if younger readers realize that fonts were once something that you’d buy and they would get used up. These are replacement copies of catalogs because I wore the originals to shreds. I don’t know why I was so obsessed with this stuff as a kid.” Photo by Raymond Larabie
Inspired by the Pinto Flare typeface, Larabie created his own groovy version called Pricedown. You might also recognize it from Grand Theft Auto‘s wordmark. “I worked for Rockstar at the time but they weren’t aware that they were using a font which was created by one of their employees before the company existed.”
Larabie moved to Japan in 2008, where he operates Typodermic Fonts. Larabie provided a behind the scenes look at his design process for HOW readers, and answered questions about his work and his influences.
How Raymond Works
Step 1
“When starting a new typeface, my first step is to draw a few heavy sample characters to establish dimensions and sidebearings.”
Step 2
“Once I’ve got a few sample characters for the heaviest weight, I add a weight axis and design a light version of those characters. This way I can test interpolation, alter the x-height, sidebearings and width, then note the scale percentages—afterwards, I delete the light test characters. I’m using a uniform line width since this will be an interpolation target which will be thrown away later. I usually use an interpolation of between 10 to 20% of the heaviest weight as my extra-light so it retains some of flavor of the heavy weight.”
Step 3
“One by one, I add completed heavy characters, making sure each one harmonizes with the existing characters. I don’t draw them in alphabetical order but I try not to leave the hard letters like a and e for last. The interplay between f,r,t,z is particularly difficult so they should be drawn all at the same time to make sure they work together. There’s no separate spacing phase—I’m adjusting and thoroughly testing the spacing for each character as I go.”
Step 4
“Next I create composite accented characters and finish the rest of the character set. I use a set of reduced height accents for the capital letters and more generous ones for the lowercase.”
Step 5
“After lots of testing and minor adjustments, I’ll create kerning classes and create all the kerning pairs. It’s important to spend a lot of time setting up the kerning classes. Not only does it make the kerning process much faster but it reduces the possibility of error and omission.”
Step 6
“Now it’s time to create the light interpolation weight. I’ll use the notes I made earlier to make everything narrower, decrease the x-height and pad the sidebearings. I’ll also create a quick, disposable outline version to use as a guide in the background.”
Step 7
“Next I’ll complete all the light characters. I need to adjust the sidebearings on thin characters like lowercase L, I, 1 etc. The accents no longer line up so they all need adjustment. The kerning will need to be done all over again. Some pairs won’t need adjusting but they’ll all need to be checked.”
Step 8
“Next, I experiment with the interpolation and make adjustments to refine the middle weights—it’s a bit like pulling strings. You can see how I need to cut away a piece of the Q so the tail goes through only on the lighter weights. This stage can involve a lot of manual cleanup and vector surgery. Now I decide which weights I’m going to export. Then I fill in the style names, do some autohinting, more testing, more adjustments and I’m done.”
Q&A with Raymond
Q. What inspired you to create your own type design foundry?
I like to call it a font company. Foundry makes it sound like I work with molten metal.
What’s behind the name? What does Typodermic mean, and why did you go with that name?
During the indie font gold rush near the turn of the millennium, font puns were in short supply so I jumped at that one as soon as I thought of it. I used it as a font name first and later a company name. “For font junkies” is my slogan but I thought of that much later.
What software do you use for finalizing, editing, and producing the font files, and why do you use it?
I use FontLab Studio because it’s been the dominant type design tool in Windows for almost two decades. On a Mac there are several other viable options but in Windows, if you want to create interpolated typefaces, it’s the only way to go.
What prior font software did you use, before the tools you currently use?
I used Fontographer but then stopped using it because it hadn’t been updated for close to a decade. I miss the vector drawing in that one but without interpolation, it’s a no-go.
When you started out as a type designer, who or what motivated you to get into type design, and why?
It was the emergence of type design tools. I was making fonts as soon as I got my first computer, a TRS-80 in the early 80s. But there was only so much you could do with those old bitmap editors. The urge was still there but dormant until I got my hands on Fontographer in 1996.
Larabie calls Conthrax “a techno typeface that’s designed to hide in the background” and he strived to make it look technological without being loud and flashy.
The average person who looks at your type catalog might see a strong science fiction influence. How has sci-fi shaped your typographic tastes, and the type designs you make?
When I started in the late 1990s that category was underserved. You’d see that style in logo designs but not much as typefaces. I think now, techno is considered a legitimate category but not long ago, that style of type was passed off as Microgramma or Bank Gothic clones. I do love sci-fi and video games and that’s definitely an influence. The choice of going square is often an attempt to make type that harmonizes with our environment. We live in a high-tech, rectilinear world. When I started seeing my techno fonts used on consumer electronics, it guided me more towards those sorts of projects.
Typography has a prominent place in many science fiction comic books, films, and cartoons. What movies or comic books get the typography right, in your opinion, and why?
Sci-fi type like in Robocop (1988), Star Trek the Next Generation (STNG), or Demolition Man were amped up versions of popular type styles in the times they were made. The STNG typeface feels like a late 1980s software company logo—perfect for the times. Sci-fi type often fails when it regurgitates old sci-fi ideas. We’ve seen decades of the Blade Runner line gap trick. It was a stark vision of the future in 1982 but maybe we should be extrapolating the visuals of today to develop new visions of the future.
Something that constantly annoys me is the use of Bank Gothic to imply “futuristic.” Bank Gothic was designed in 1930 and was based on a popular sign painting style from around 1900. It was the kind of thing you’d see on rail cars, gravestones, stock certificates etc. When I see it, it looks very old-fashioned to me so it’s a bit like seeing a Model-T Ford in a sci-fi future. Famous movie examples: Moon, Terra Nova, Edge of Tomorrow, Battlestar Galactica, Hunger Games, Falling Skies, Jumper and several Stargates. I think Bank Gothic is often chosen because it’s a square font that a lot of people already have on their computer. It’s not a bad font by any means but it’s very American, circa 1900 to me.
youtube
  When it comes to your process, do you begin working directly on paper during the initial design phases, or do you go right to the computer, and what benefit does that method of working provide?
I usually don’t use paper at all. I jot down notes as I’m working such as sidebearing numbers and accent offsets. I feel like the design of each glyph should be as open as possible so they can be formed by their neighbors. If I decide what glyphs are going to look like ahead of time, I can paint myself into a corner. A far more useful visual aid is to keep a reference photo on my desktop wallpaper or pinned to my cork board—usually not of anything typographical but more of a thematic image. For one job, I needed to create a tough, military looking typeface so I pinned a picture of a Humvee to my board. To me, that’s more useful than sketching out the alphabet. Even if I don’t use visual reference, there’s some kind of doctrine I can use to help me make decisions. Otherwise, I tend to smooth the edges down until the typeface has no character.
You offer a lot of free fonts, as well as fonts that cost money. Why so many fonts for free?
It’s promotional. Those free font sites get so much traffic. I’ve had over 60 million downloads from DaFont alone. The free fonts can lead to sales of web, app and eBook licenses or other weights like heavy or ultra-light.
What are your best-selling paid fonts?
Korataki is a techno font commissioned for the Mass Effect game series that’s always done really well. Meloriac is mixed case, extremely bold geometric sans which has been a steady seller. Conthrax is a more recent success. It’s a squarish, soft, ultramodern deliberately sedate.
What are your most frequently downloaded free fonts?
Coolvetica. It’s downloaded almost twice as much as the next one down the list. Then there’s Steelfish. That was a bit of a dud until I spruced it up a few years ago. I’ve been constantly going over the old ones and freshening them up or rebuilding from scratch. Then Budmo, Neuropol and Pricedown.
The Budmo typeface, influenced by marquee signs.
What type designers, foundries, or visual culture do you look at for inspiration these days, and why do you look at that work?
I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. I try to avoid looking at design blogs, or anything tagged as typography. I feel like it’s a bit like visual dieting. It’s not just what I look at, it’s what I don’t look at. And more than ever, as a species, we’re all feeding from the same visual trough. An example of a recent tangent was diving deep into the world of reel-to-reel tape decks and obsolete audio cassette formats, strange auto-reverse mechanisms. If you don’t swerve, you’ll end up making the same typeface someone else already made.
In addition to offering your fonts through your own site, they can be found at fonts.com as well as Fontspring and other sites. What advice would you have for the budding type designer, who wants to get their fonts picked up by those distributors?
When you’re developing your typeface, you should try to imagine the kind of customer that’s going to purchase it. Give it some kind of reason to exist. It’s not enough to make an attractive or interesting typeface. It’s fine if you want to get experimental but those sites aren’t the place for that sort of thing. They’re like department stores rather than galleries. For example, if you’re making a font that looks like neon lights, you can look at what’s available and think about the kind of customer who might need one. What kind of projects would they use it for? Is there something missing in the current selection of neon light fonts?
Korataki was commissioned by Bioware for the Mass Effect game series.
Some of your influences, such as the TRS-80 and 1980s pop culture, are also found in Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One, which Steven Spielberg has made into a feature film. You’ve got such a deep catalog of future-forward and sci-fi fonts. Leading up to Ready Player One’s release, if we see a 1980s renaissance—and especially one with sci-fi and gaming influences from that era—what new creations can we expect to see from Typodermic Fonts?
I think the console games of the 1980s and 1990s have been well fetishized—the aesthetic is well known. Younger generations have developed a visual style based on that type of look but it’s based on a relatively narrow view on games in the 1980s. There’s an aspect of gaming that’s been largely ignored and is in danger of being lost forever: microcomputers. While some people were playing Atari and Nintendo in the living room, the rest of us were at desks, patiently waiting for games to load from cassettes. Those types of games haven’t been popular with collectors and they’re often ignored. Cassettes and floppy disks fail—manuals and packaging get thrown in the trash. Some of the Japanese microcomputers like MSX, NEC PC Series, X-1, FM-7 had specific technical limitations that created their own unique visual style. A lot of the console game franchises we know and love started off on these systems before people played them on their living room game consoles. Many microcomputer games that were released in this era will never be recovered. A few years ago I made Rukyltronic which was a tribute to 1980s UK microcomputers like Beeb and the Speccy. That’s the kind of thing I’ve got my eye out for and it’ll inevitably make its way into my upcoming typeface releases.
Where do you see type design heading in the future?
Typography has a fashion cycle so you’ll see the same kinds of typefaces come and go. But when they cycle back each time, new ideas will be applied and they’ll required upgrading as user expectations keep getting higher. Things like optical scaling which will compensate for the environment. What makes a typeface perform better in small print on a smartwatch is different from what works best on a billboard and it’s not just the weight. In the 1990s, a basic character set with a few accents and stock mathematical symbols was the norm. Typefaces rarely came with more than regular, bold and italics. Now we expect a weight range, more language coverage, cohesive symbols and OpenType features galore. Also, new font technology will allow us to finally produce convincing handwriting. I think some of the innovations required to make Arabic writing work properly will provide us with some interesting tools. Once type designers have access to these tools, who knows what we’ll come up with?
Edited from a series of online and email interviews. Captions for Neuropol, as well as Toxigenesis type design process provided by Raymond Larabie. Check out Typodermic Fonts online and follow Larabie on Twitter and Instagram.
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