Dai Vernon font

[Bill Mullins]

The introduction to the reissued, updated version version of Revelation stated that Andrew Leman was in the process of designing a font based on Dai Vernon's handwriting. It is for sale HERE.

I have no stake in it -- I just think it is way cool.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Very interesting. How long till fan fiction turns up in the form of faux antiques with further revelations?

[James Alan]

David Ben posted some background on how this font came to be in It's Amazing.

[Joe Pecore]

Is anyone working on a Bruce Cervon Font ? ;)

[Matt R]

Nice font, although spending $20 for 1 or $35 for both might be a tough sell with so many free fonts out there

[Bob Cunningham]

From my perspective, $20 for one font seems like a decent price point for vanity impulse product.

A DTP geek collecting fonts would probably not buy this - a magic geek who thinks it is cool to keep his/her notes in Vernon's handwriting is likely to part with $20.

The question I have is this - would most people who would want this be able to install a font in their OS ;-)

[Ian Kendall]

What? You mean right click and choose 'install'...

[Dave V]

I would assume that anyone who is interested in a custom font would know what to do with it. Of course I could be wrong. ;)

[Magic Newswire]

I love it. I bought it and you can see it in action at my website. Well done!

[Roger M.]

The Vernon font looks amazing on your web site Dodd, very stylish, easily readable........and adds a permanent touch of Dai to the site.

[mrgoat]

It does look brilliant. However, if it was my site, I would use a machine readable font for them. Google cannot read the lovely Vernon font and thus all those brilliant names, and thus brilliant google juice, is going to waste.

[naquada]

actually mr goat thats not quite true.. there are many ways to allow google and other systems to read custom fonts, and use pretty much any font you like in a webpage.. (which works for all the dreaded IE's except 5.5, all webkit browsers, firefox etc etc etc)

if you know what your doing then you can take any truetype, otf etc font, and have it rendered into a font that can be used as a normal font on a site using normal text, in very much the same way as the google font API uses..

although I've not done it with the Vernon font yet.. theres not reason it wouldn't work..

I have used the former method on a number of sites i've done for people. Google reads the text perfectly normally, and its selectable as pure text. the 'font' descriptor in the html/css is then a custom font

you can also do a similar thing with images to actually be text (thats knocked out to far outside the browser view window) but appear to the reader as graphics but appear to google as pure text (and not using the 'alt' tag)

in Dodd's case he's purely using a graphic, which is a perfect way to use the font, although using the latter method above, he could allow google to see the images are pure text for indexing (which it wont at the moment so much)

[mrgoat]

if you know what your doing then you can take any truetype, otf etc font, and have it rendered into a font that can be used as a normal font on a site using normal text, in very much the same way as the google font API uses..

I don't understand what you mean here?

[mrgoat]

And actually, higher up my list would be to make the image names not

SOMWILLIAMSON200LEFT.jpg?__

but

David_Williamson.jpg

and adding the alt tag "David Williamson"

etc to each of the names on the side nav.

:D

[Jim Maloney]

Right: the problem is not the font itself, but rather that the text is actually an image file. Any font used in the same manner would have the same problem. Damian's suggestion would help with that.

-Jim

[naquada]

if you know what your doing then you can take any truetype, otf etc font, and have it rendered into a font that can be used as a normal font on a site using normal text, in very much the same way as the google font API uses..

I don't understand what you mean here?

mrgoat.. there is a web development method to allow you to present text on a page that uses a custom font, as opposed to the standard 'websafe' fonts..

effectively some javascript in your header is used to replace a font in a style.. Your HTML would read:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<script src="cfn.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="vernon_ttf.font.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
cfn.replace('h1');
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This text will be shown in vernon.</h1>
</body>
</html>

were <h1> text would normally use a 'websafe' font, it would in this case use a custom font vernon_ttf that is on your webserver.

google would see it as pure text.. readers on your site would see the text in the, say, vernon handwriting font..

The truetype font does need to be converted into a specific format (the xxx.font.js file above)

hopefully that make a bit more sense ?

[naquada]

Right: the problem is not the font itself, but rather that the text is actually an image file. Any font used in the same manner would have the same problem. Damian's suggestion would help with that.

-Jim

in a way yes.. you could add 'alt' tags to the images/filenames to make it more google friendly

or you use CSS img replacement methods to have html that reads:

<h1 id="podcast_dai_vernon">
<span>our interview with dai vernon</span>
</h1>

but the 'our interview with' never appears, but the image using the font does... google would see it as a yummy text rich site to do lots of indexing on... readers would see a very image rich site (perhaps even with no text on it at all!)

either way there are pros and cons of either method, and this probably ends the web coding lesson for today.. ;)

the vernon font is great.. and as soon as someone wants me to build a site with it.. and I have enjoy time and I'm not ill.. I'll happily buy it and build one that google sees as text. ;)

[mrgoat]

if you know what your doing then you can take any truetype, otf etc font, and have it rendered into a font that can be used as a normal font on a site using normal text, in very much the same way as the google font API uses..

I don't understand what you mean here?

mrgoat.. there is a web development method to allow you to present text on a page that uses a custom font, as opposed to the standard 'websafe' fonts..

effectively some javascript in your header is used to replace a font in a style.. Your HTML would read:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<script src="cfn.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="vernon_ttf.font.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
cfn.replace('h1');
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This text will be shown in vernon.</h1>
</body>
</html>

were <h1> text would normally use a 'websafe' font, it would in this case use a custom font vernon_ttf that is on your webserver.

google would see it as pure text.. readers on your site would see the text in the, say, vernon handwriting font..

The truetype font does need to be converted into a specific format (the xxx.font.js file above)

hopefully that make a bit more sense ?

Right, didn't know about that. Cool.

However, that does mean stopping using images and starting using text, right? Just prettier text.

[naquada]

Right, didn't know about that. Cool.

However, that does mean stopping using images and starting using text, right? Just prettier text.

nope just means you can use all three :)

1. text
2. pretty text
and 3.images that appear to google as text

[mrgoat]

Cool. Thanks for the info!

[Magic Newswire]

It does look brilliant. However, if it was my site, I would use a machine readable font for them. Google cannot read the lovely Vernon font and thus all those brilliant names, and thus brilliant google juice, is going to waste.

Actually, those are simple graphic's using the font. They all have appropriate ALT= tages and the names in the actual interview listings as well. For example, the Image attributes for the David Williamson button on the left looks like this :
<img src="/storage/SOMWILLIAMSON200LEFT.jpg" alt="Magician David Williamson" />

Here's a video from the official Google Webmaster Blog that explains how they look at ALT Tags for images when Google crawls your site : www.bit.ly/bYjaTj

And actually, higher up my list would be to make the image names not

SOMWILLIAMSON200LEFT.jpg but David_Williamson.jpg

etc to each of the names on the side nav.

Unfortunately, I have several images for each interview so I'd have a 250 pixel image for the interview ID3/Graphic, the one that appears at the top for the Spirit of Magic and in some cases one for the person when they appear on This Week in Magic and the ID3 for that as well. I guess I could do David_Williamson1.jpg etc... but it helps to keep them from conflicting and overwriting one another. According to everything that I've been able to find. the ALT tag is just as important as far a Google Juice goes.

If anyone has a better alternative that I haven't considered, I am always willing to listen & Learn