Hello and welcome to this week’s special edition of “WTF Wednesday.” What a treat we have for you today! As the saying goes, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.” One of the many charms of this great state is how polite folks can be—even when they’re insulting you to your face. It is in this spirit that I present to you a new feature we like to call, “Well, Bless Your Heart.” And what better way to kick off this inaugural edition than with our favorite state symbol: the Redneck. Enjoy! The sign below is a nice example of descriptive, clear messaging without a lot of extraneous details. (They really mean it when they say “General” Store.) The following photo was taken by my friend, Jen Cunningham. She’s an artist who really appreciates good design. The next image is a brilliant example of reverse psychology. For years, political strategists will attempt to emulate this man’s tactics: Here’s a submission from one of my favorite contributors, David Ingram, proving yet again that “Necessity is the mentally-unstable father of invention.” So that’s all for this week’s special edition of “WTF Wednesday.” Bless your heart!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which is a good thing, because I forgot to write today’s post. So, without further ado, I give you “Wordless WTF Wednesday.” Sometimes there really are no words…

Okay folks, this one’s going to annoy some of you… You must stop double spacing after periods. Period. The practice of putting two spaces at the end of a sentence is a throwback to the days of the typewriter. For those of you born after 1975, this is a typewriter: Most of us over a certain age were taught to type before the days of computers. Back then there wasn’t an easy way to adjust spacing between letters, and every letter had the same amount of space on either side. For example, the letter w would have the same spacing as the letter i, which is wack. This is referred to as monospaced type. The extra space at the end of a sentence was used to visually signal a pause. Most of today’s typefaces are designed with each letter’s spacing proportional to its shape. Therefore, that extra space after a sentence is not only unnecessary—it’s kinda fugly as well. Case in point: Courier is a monospaced typeface. These extra spaces are particularly evident when you’re reading a paragraph or more. Once you become aware of it, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. Sentence after sentence of double spacing will stand out…

Howdy folks. I’m writing this post while on a drive back from Houston, Texas—the Dutch oven of our fair state. Don’t worry, I’m not actually doing the driving. I leave that up to Mr. Weenie and Wally the Poodle (whose foot keeps hitting the space bar). As I stare off across picturesque fields of grazing cattle and mattress factories, I’m reminded of a common design practice which dictates that “less is more”—a practice completely disregarded by most advertisers from Katy to La Grange. Let’s face it, everything’s bigger in Texas—trucks, hair, presidential libraries—and typography is no exception. Now, far be it for me to argue with one of the all-time greatest design tips I ever received: “When in doubt, make it big. If still in doubt, make it big and red.” I try to honor this tradition as much as possible, but I think an argument could be made that Texans tend to take this a bit far. Take, for instance, a sign advertising ZDT’s Amusement Park: Correct me if I’m wrong, but if an advertiser has but a few seconds to get his or her message across as I go speeding down the highway at 70mph, wouldn’t it make…

This past weekend my sister and I headed down to San Antonio for a little R&R. We stayed at the Hyatt on the Riverwalk, where we enjoyed lots of Mexican food, shopping and even a foot massage. The highlight of my trip was coming across the following monstrosity. It’s as if spa management handed over window dressing responsibilities to someone’s 16-year-old niece. Poor, poor  Hyatt Spa…

It’s not that Tracking and Kerning have it out for each other; they’re just different breeds of the same species. While kerning refers to the adjustment of space between two specific letters, tracking deals with space between multiple letters in a word, line or paragraph of text. Tracking is the drunk sorority girl of typography, with the paradoxical ability to be either dense or spacey.  It can change the look and legibility of a block of text or create graphic impact for a specific word or headline. Tracking covers a lot of ground and usually won’t vomit on your shoes at the end of the evening. Occasionally tracking is used to squeeze more characters onto a line of type, but I generally recommend against using it for this purpose. While it might prevent a word or two from carrying over to another page or column, it may also cause changes in the flow of text, hyphenation issues, awkward spacing and the dry heaves. Whereas tracking is more popular and easy to do (see “drunk sorority girl”); kerning is like a surgeon, but with more friends and better social skills. A refined and delicate process, kerning is the adjustment of space…