Technical Trivial Facts (.ttf)

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

In 1964 someone found out that it was possible to directly draw on the IBM 2250 Graphics Display Unit with a morsel of removable chalk mounted on the end of a piece of wood, which was secured to a table with a cord to prevent theft.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Sometime in the 1960s, obviously long after Eric Gill depicted her Bézier curves multiple times in all their graceful naturalness, Beatrice Warde demonstrated optimized fonts for smart-phone screens to students. Eventually it took more than 40 years before someone was smart enough to understand what the use of such a clumsy small device was.

Ofir Shavit

The right one seems to use the much efficient real time multiple hair editing tool, known today as... a comb.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

It’s a lesser know fact that Doug Engelbart used wood full of larvae of longhorn beetles to reduce the weight of his mouse prototype and especially to add an interesting buzzing techno sound to it. Hence initially he wanted to name the device ‘(tailed) beetle’.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

In which case we might have been unaware of gravity still, or otherwise might have been using the popular Anvil computer today.

Nick Shinn

Beatrice still looks in pretty good shape, better than Eric at that particular date, but what’s on her head? Is it a hat, wig, or some kind of hair-spray confection?

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

The nest-like structure Beatrice is elegantly wearing here, is a so-called Cuckoo Head, which was mighty popular among women in the 1960s. It connected the brain via a garland of highly flexible antenna’s with the Annoyed smart-phone. There was also a matching gadget for a clear bird’s-eye view, named Cuckoo Glass.

Chris Lozos

Or as Bob Dylan said, "Your leapord-skin pillbox hat"

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

But that was about a hat; there was too much brain-extending intelligence in the Cuckoo Head to simply call it a Cuckoo Hat.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Although there are some persistent rumors that he was physically incapable of developing facial hair, in Redmond they have the strong opinion that he was the first computer nerd who fully understood the technical possibilities of a razor.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

So-Hot-That-It’s-Melting-Thermal-Paste News: Coming autumn a remarkable book by Clark Cable (‘Gone with the Windows’) titled How Hollywood Influenced the Computer Society will be published!

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Most people know that C-3Po is largely based on the Metropolis-robot. A less well known fact is that R2-D2 is based on a still from the 1965 spaghetti western With My Bare Butt in a Beer Barrel.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Until late in the 1950s at typographic meetings it was common practice –for education and enjoyment– to saw women into two halves to prove that their upper parts were the most important ones for recognition, just as seems to be the case with letters.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

In Visible Language the Jesuit Priest Walter J. Ong, who was Professor of English literature and of Humanities in Psychiatry (and as such could be considered an outsider), makes a clear distinction between writing and typography by stating that in case of writing words are made by creating marks on surfaces and that with type words are made ‘out of pre-existing things’.*



Working with pre-existing things doesn’t by definition limit one’s creativity, as was proven by my 10-years old daughter Eleonora A. Blokland aka Noortje earlier today. Using standard LEGO friends® design elements, she created a good likeness of Conchita Wurst, winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2014; this way not only elevating the toy-building-brick metier to the next level, but en passant also emancipating it.

* Walter J. Ong, ‘Comment: Voice, Print, and Culture’, Visible Language, Volume IV, Number 1, (1970) pp.77–83 (p.80)

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

After an exhausting expedition of more than six months –and at the brink of giving up– the explorers of the World Typelife Fund (WTF) were utterly relieved to trace the last person on earth who did not claim to be a type designer.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Recent in-depth legibility research among primates revealed that eyes and brains are one way or another involved in the recognition of characters.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

After an exhausting expedition of more than six months –and at the brink of giving up– the explorers of the World Typelife Fund (WTF) were utterly relieved to trace a type designer whose brain was larger than his ego.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Darn; I definitely want to flag the former post as abuse!

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Inspired by new approaches from type designers with dyslexia, the footwear industry realized that conventions are flexible, this way opening Pandora's Shoebox.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

During their ongoing research into present-day applications of archetypal models, the explorers of the World Typelife Fund (WTF) were utterly surprised when they noticed the clear resemblance between the 19th-century representation of a T-RexCiraptor (by paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope) and Beavis (left).

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

A sort of multiple mastering by a certain type of species that can be found commonly worldwide in webs.

Chris Lozos

they used Superpropagator ;-)

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

The serious dyslexia of Waterford Tea & Coffee Van’s operator yielded an unexpected result when he had posted a request for crowdfunding.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Early typographic practices for adapting body sizes to grids, inspired others to do related scientific research on Romans, i.e, citizens of Rome.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Inspired by the rapidly increasing number of type designers and foundries, and all in the best family tradition, the young Åring Berlin recently composed the musical Annie Get Your Pen.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

At around the same time the musical High Contrast Society had its premiere on Broadsheet. Starring Frank E. and Bing Crossbar it’s about the established top segment of the type industry, focusing on more down-to-earth matters like Black Tie vs. White Tie.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

An early prototype of wearable technology with an optical head-mounted display was the Giggle Glitch, which was tested at the Hal Roach Studio during the 1930s. It was a thin plastic lens placed directly on the surface of the eye that communicated with the Internet via eye movements. Tests were terminated because of visual side effects.

Russell McGorman

It exhibits such an amazing concentration of typographic expressiveness, I can't understand how the project could be  abandon for such a trivial reason.

Chris Lozos

eye catching

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Until the late 19th century it was common practice at typographic meetings  –for education and enjoyment– to visualize optical aspects of type design on stage. A highly popular act was the one by the TypoTwins. The two brothers (the delivery interval between them had been less than 15 minutes) shared exactly the same height, but the bolder one looked a bit shorter due to a lack of some extra vertical overshoot.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

During the legendary Typographic Concourse at Birmingham’s Vaudeville's City Centre Theater early October 1956, the elegant Mrs. Bellflower scored 83 points (out of 100) with her depiction of the Roman Imperial capital letter T. Unfortunately the jury deducted some points due to the inappropriate distance between her legs.