(Image by Pindec)

It would seem that the days of professional typography on the web are still a long way off. As I type this, I have a cart loaded with $300 worth of typographic loveliness, yet just as I was about to click 'buy' I've had to stop.

My intention is to use said typeface as part of a gallery rebranding exercise, the font will be a key component in this new identity, however digital use is restricted.

A read of the terms & conditions reveals the vendor does not allow online font use — specifically recent embedding technologies such as @font-face. For those unaware, @font-face is CSS3 technology to allow any text on a website to be rendered in a custom font. This font resides on the server and is loaded as the page is rendered. This (finally)  the need to use images to render custom type and allows for search engine friendly, accessible websites which are on brand and inline with an identity.

This is ridiculous. In this digital day and age restrictions like this are hindering any digital progress. Online is often seen as the primary form of a brand's communication — so why am I still restricted to using Arial, Helvetica, Times & Trebuchet?

So as my finger moves away from the mouse and my cart is emptied I wonder what other options I have? Do I re-consider and purchase whilst accepting a digital prescence rendered in Arial or go looking elsewhere for an alternative knowing I'm likely to be disappointed? There are plenty of fonts with more open licenses, but generally the quality and range is far inferior.

Clearly the reason foundries are making such a decision is because anyone can browse a site's source code and work out where the font resides on the server and download it. Fair enough — but I do feel this is a regressive attitude. We can just as easily download copyrighted images, music and movies using similar procedures but we have an internet rich in media.

Ultimately this results in my indecision to buy the font. Should I choose not to the type foundry and designer lose my money and any exposure this brand would have brought them.

What do you think?

* EDIT * The original post on You Thought We Wouldn't Notice has now been removed and replaced with an apology & correction.

The Good — contact sheets from the BDE 2010 photoshoot

The Bad — the imagery which we 'ripped off'

The Ugly — BDE2010 is a bi-annual event showcasing dance from around the world. We won the pitch to brand the event back in February 2009. Our approach was to use the technique of Light Painting with dancers expressing movement and form. These forms would ultimately create the final identity mark. What interesrted us about the idea, and ultimately what captured the BDE team's imagination was a logo being made from the movement of dance itself. Over the following 3 months we conducted a photoshoot and produced the final identity for the festival.

To be honest, we saw a dilution of our brand, but BDE 2010 is just a project and we'd already moved onto the next. End of.

Until today.

Today we were made aware of a post (no longer available) on You Thought We Wouldn't Notice blog by the (re)traces photographer claiming our brand identity work for the British Dance Edition 2010 (BDE2010) is a ripp off the (re)traces project. Ummmm, ok - this is getting serious.

How many people have seen that post already? How much damage has been done? What if we hadn't seen this and it grew to become something far worse? Already a response had been left from Artsadmin an established arts organisation of over 30 years with no doubt wide reaching connections. I didn't like the assumption that the original poster was in the right and we in were the wrong. And talk of compensation? OK - maybe it's time to clear up some things.

So my reply followed and clearly states our position — essentially that of we were unaware of the (re)traces project and our only inspiration was the concept of Light Painting itself. It also states that our work precedes theirs by at least 6 months — so perhaps it's us who should be crying copyright infringement? Maybe we should be kicking up a fuss? It's certainly not the first time we've been copied both visually and verbally.

But we don't care. We're more than a one trick pony. We're also assured in the knowledge that our renderings are clearly better — this goes without saying if you consider the talent involved in the project.

Unfortunately the article lays the assumed copyright breach on our good friend Chris Keenan who we commissioned to take the BDE 2010 photography — so he looks like the bad guy in all this and we sincerly hope this does not affect him in any way.

It's all too easy to slander people on the Internet and this is a prime example of how someone who clearly has an issue has caused an issue without really thinking.

We'll take the Pepsi challenge over this should push come to shove because we know our work was in no way influenced by (re)traces. If we take consideration of the dates, at best it's coincidence on their part.

I hope this makes our position very clear.

For those interested, you can see a short documentary on the identity project here.

The excellent Gary Taxali delivers a rant about the state of the illustration industry in the current economic climate. I can totally appreciate his point of view. Big up!

This isn't the first time we've seen a site very similar to Visual. We'll take this as a compliment, even though it is a steal!

I’ve had it with Firefox 3. What should be a relatively lo-fi experience of ‘browsing the internet’ seems to be the most difficult task for this browser to handle. Maybe it’s trying to do to much and forgetting that is the core Firefox role?

For the past few weeks every 30 seconds of browsing time is punctuated by an annoying 3 second pause (beachball) as the browser plays catch up with itself. This tends to happen during the funny bits in YouTube videos or crucially when I press 'Proceed' in a checkout.

Maybe it’s deliberate?

The most recent spate of issues center around the browser totally smashing my computer’s processor. The fans kick in and everything grinds to a halt. Any input in any application takes forever and is only fixed by pressing the blue button below.

What gives? Don’t get me wrong — I see the potential in the browser — I love the new bookmark tagging and plug-ins (I only run a couple btw) but if this hinders the core process of accessing the internet then sorry — but it’s time to uninstall. That has to be the drastic measure — by keeping it on my hard drive, instinct will surely make me fire it up again.

So where next? Maybe… I might give Camino a whirl. It’s by Mozilla and is pretty decent. I might also give Flock a try. It’s a social networking aware browser which seems quite interesting. Or it’s back to Safari — but for some reason it isn’t storing my passwords correctly… sheesh!

For those ready to defend Firefox — I'm running on a 2.2Ghz Core Duo Macbook with 10.5 & 4gigs of RAM — should be more than plenty!

So I updated to Firefox 3 the other day and have been generally impressed with the subtle but sweet updates. It certainly feels faster on the Mac than it's slow-as-a-slug predecessor.

But today I discovered a major glitch in the upgrade… all my Firefox 2 bookmarks have disappeared!? What a cack handed mistake that is.

After a quick bit of research it seems it's a known bug for those who tried out the Firefox 3 beta for a while. There is a work around but it looks like a royal pain.

Luckily - my bookmarking is a bit shoddy at the best of times and I only recently moved back over to Firefox from Safari in my game of browser tennis — so the most useful bookmarks I do have are still safe.

Anyways - let that be a small warning — back-up your bookmarks first just in case.

…alas Tallis Shorts didn't make it into the final selection. We’re a bit gutted especially when all the finalists seem to be profit making organisations with either paid membership access or Google Adwords littered around every corner.

I’ve seen site much better than Mindbites and I can get free tutorial videos off YouTube, and OnlyHuman seems to have very little (useful) educational content. I always wanted to know 'How to not cut your finger off’!!

Tallis Shorts is funded, maintained and supported by the school and in my eyes is a true Educational Resource with students and staff creating and sharing media amongst themselves for the purpose of creative learning.

To be fair there are a couple of great finalists and I’m certain one of these two will be the winner. It’ll either be; Ecolect (with it’s SN-esque typography) or TED.

My money’s on TED.

It’s funny — after missing SXSW for the past two years (as a winner and as a finalist) this year I’ve managed to blag my way to SXSW! Of course, I’m not that biitter about not getting to the final — it is after all just a bit of fun. But I will be flying the flag for Tallis Shorts and will be championing the need for good, unique graphic design. Which leads me onto the actual point for this news post.

With an estimated 6 billion websites currently out in the web-o-sphere, how can one site distinguish itself from another?

Unique graphic design is one way. Unique graphic design can define and shape a product. It can help differentiate one product from another. It doesn’t mean simply following a trend or style to emulate your heroes. A quick scoot through the SXSW finalists from all the categories confirms a mass homogenisation of the web. I can barely distinguish the sites I’ve just looked at.

This advice is relevant for all aspects of creativity. Be original and stick with your approach. Being different makes a difference. 

• “Introduced on Thursday, the bill--titled the Communications Legislation Amendment (Crime or Terrorism Related Internet Content) Bill 2007--would empower the federal police to alter the "blacklist" of sites that are currently prohibited by the Communications and Media Authority.
  
  The list currently includes pornography and "offensive material." However, under the amendment, federal police would be able to add other sites to the list, including content that the AFP Commissioner "has reason to believe...is crime- or terrorism-related content."
  
  The definition of material that may be liable for censorship includes Internet content that "encourages, incites or induces," "facilitate(s)" or "has, or is likely to have, the effect of facilitating" a crime”

This is quite shocking to hear as it’s a small step in the wrong direction. What will be deemed offensive and unacceptable in the future? Freedom of speech and freedom to publish is the very essence of the Web. Will this movement eventually halt file sharing websites? Or, for example, would a site like StickerNation have been blocked as it promoted illegal activities?

Perhaps the most shocking part is that this is in Australia. Coming to a democracy near you real soon.

Read more 

…found another site that borrows heavily from ours. Compare the two pages and you will see the many similarities. There’s a few copy differences though; I’m guessing AJL doesn’t use a Mac as he’s neatly changed that reference to just ‘Computer’. That’s about as good as it gets though, I mean come on — the navigation naming and general layout is a bit too similar. Maybe in his links section he should add a new category called ‘Currently stealing…’

Maybe we should be flattered? Nah, fuck it - email sent. 

I was recently informed of a website using copy from our site to promote theirs. Naturally we were a bit pissed but intruigued how the informant knew our words were being used elsewhere because that’s like matching 2 needles in a haystack. They told me about Copyscape and I have to say, I’m very impressed. What happens is this, you insert your site’s URL into their search and they then search the web finding websites with text that matches yours. In other words finding people too lazy to write their own copy.

We found several sites that have ripped parts of our ‘Things we do’ page — word for word. I contacted all biters involved and whilst one was deeply apologetic explaining they’d hired a copywriter and hadn't realised he’d stolen our text and passed it off for his. The 2nd thief was quite arrogant assuming we’d made a mistake. The final stealer justsimply ignored my emails.

Bunch of dirty thieves — it took me ages to write our website copy so this is why I’ve created a new blog category called Rants, you are reading the 1st of many  ;)

Thanks to GrafixGirl for the heads up.

Edit 10.08.07: Still no word from the two companies who haven't amended their sites. I just ran both these sites through Copyscape to see if they had used anyone elses copy words. Turns out Squared Designs also steals copy from Good (who have just been informed). Yay for Copyscape!!

Edit 10.08.02: Another email back from one of the culprits. They apologised and have agreed to remove the text. So, just one more to go.