Eight new bricks

We’ve added eight new bricks to the FontStructor:

I know people have asked for others but these are the ones that have consistently been asked and argued for. We will add more bricks and brick functionality in a later update to FontStruct.

FontStructions in Use

Building a fine FontStruction can be satisfying. Installing it and creating a sample image in your favorite layout software is exciting. But perhaps the greatest moment of all is when your FontStruction is set free from the monitor and finds its way into a real-world application. As FontStruct grows we are receiving more and more reports of FontStructions in use.

Three FontStructions on a huge LED Display

Last week the Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany revealed its “Welcome Platform”, a new, central forum and entrance point for students, staff, guests and the general public. A permanent part of the building is a huge LED-Display, almost 16 metres in length and on that display, three original FontStructions! They were designed by Daniel Schöps for Fuenfwerken Design AG You can see and read more on Fontblog, or if you’re German’s rusty, you can try a Google translation. View and download the FontStructions here. There are many great FontStructions inspired by LED and LCD display fonts, but it’s wonderful to see someone going the other way and designing an original one for a real client. Check out the hanging numerals.

Thanks to Jürgen Siebert from FontShop Germany for the tip and the blog post.

FontStructions you can pick up and hold

Other known examples of FontStructions in extra-digital use include Afrojet‘s wonderful  Sawhorse beermats. Even the heraldic graphics are a dingbats FontStruction:

Then there’s Font Fairy‘s ingenious popup FontStruction “Solly PopTab” and the rubber stamps created for the Peecso Typographic project by nelloz. In the FontStruct Flickr Pool I even noticed a FontStruction being used as part of a knitting pattern:

Any more?

If you use (or spot) your own or another designer’s FontStruction in a print or otherwise non-screen-based project please upload a photo and let us know.

New Features: Homepages and Messaging

Dear FontStructors, We are adding a number of new features to the FontStruct website today.

Homepages

The first one is a homepage for every user. This is a public version of your MyFontStruct page with a list of your shared FontStructions, and some customizable information about yourself. When you click on a user’s name in the gallery or elsewhere, you will now be taken to this page. This is a much better and more reliable option than the page of search results which you currently see.

So now you have your own unique FontStruct internet address (http://fontstruct.com/fontstructors/yourusername) which you can use anywhere and everywhere as a reliable reference to your work on FontStruct.

As well as a listing of your FontStructions, the homepage also includes a ‘Profile’ page which by default shows some information about your participation in FontStruct. You can also place your own URL on this page to promote your private website, your business or another project, and there’s an option to display some additional information about yourself if you wish.

With the number of FontStructions in the gallery growing daily we hope that new features like this will help in allowing your work to stand out from the crowd.

Of course there are RSS news feeds for each user’s homepage. By subscribing to these feeds you can easily keep up to date with your favourite designers’ work.

Messaging

Registered users can now send short private text-only messages to other users. Many users have asked for such a feature which may be familiar from other social networking websites.

Some reasons people have given when requesting a feature like this are:

• To ask a designer whether their FontStruction can be used commercially.
• To contact designers because they are interested in working with them.
• To collaborate with other users on a FontStruction project.

To send a message to another FontStructor, go to their homepage (e.g. by clicking on their name next to one of their FontStructions) and click on the contact button next to their avatar. Then fill out the form to send the message.

You can configure the messaging system to suit your needs. For example, you can opt out of the  system completely, or you can choose not to receive email notifications when messages arrive. Their is also a spam reporting mechanism which, along with other precautions, should help us prevent abuse of the system.

Redesign of MyFontStruct

Along with the new user homepages and the messaging system, MyFontStruct has been rearranged into a series of tabs.

There are also a few new settings. Under the “Profile” tab for example, there is a new option to show your “real name” instead of your FontStruct username on your user homepage. while under the “Settings” tab, and then “Messaging and Notifications” you’ll see the new settings for the messaging system.

Under “Profile” and then “Delete Profile” there is also now an option to delete your FontStruct profile completely. Yes, occasionally people really do ask for this!

What’s next?

The next feature to be added will almost certainly be additional control over spacing in the FontStructor (i.e. the right side-bearing and finally a space character).

Apart from that, keep your suggestions and bug reports coming. Even if they are not acted upon immediately or soon or ever, they are all taken seriously. The majority of them are turned into tickets in our internal tracking system where we plan and prioritize the development of FontStruct.

(teaser image on the front page features sweet home by mippo)