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Today is the last day of our ASCII+ Week, celebrating the introduction of Zeitung Mono. Earlier this week we turned our homepage into Responsive ASCII and showed you Subpixel ASCII+ art. But we hear you saying: “yeah yeah, an ASCII website is nice, but we want ASCII movies!” So we give you ASCII movies. But then: Responsive ASCII movies of course.

Introducing ASCII TV

You can change the resolution by enlarging or reducing the window size, or by using the controllers. Also: change the color of the movie by varying between Light to Extrabold styles.

Get popcorn & drinks and enjoy your private responsive ASCII Movie Night. Please find a nice, personal selection of movies worth watching at Zeitung’s ASCII TV. More than enough for a satisfying movie evening with your friends. (If you like to see other movies in ASCII, let us know)

▶ ASCII TV

We’re happy to announce that yesterday Underware joined Type Network, a group of independent type foundries and individual type designers. Let us explain why we think this is a good idea. The type world changed a lot in the past decade, and joining forces with kindred spirits is a good push in the right direction. For example, currently it ain’t always easy for some designers and other font users to find the right typeface. Not everybody takes the time to follow all font releases, make a list of personal favourite font foundries, or invest lots of time in selecting the right typeface for each project. And that ain’t always easy. It’s a jungle out there. Type Network can help to clear to that path. Visit one place, and find a limited selection of fonts, but with a range wide enough to meet the most versatile demands. We’re in great company at Type Network, the wheat is separated from the chaff, so you don’t have to worry to buy a pig in a poke. Besides, we know many of the people in and behind Type Network for many years, and they are good people. Or as the Dutch say “goed volk”. And for many more reasons we’re excited for this new adventure.

▶ Underware comes to Type Network

A new monospaced font* and Responsive ASCII* are a nice start to celebrate the ASCII+ week, so let’s get one level deeper. Notice the differences between these 2 trees? The image on the left is old school ASCII art, the one on the right is made with our subpixel technique. The resolution is nine times higher, although the point size of the text based visual art remains identical. Pretty sweet, if you ask us. How this is achieved is explained in the article From ASCII Art to Subpixel ASCII+ Art, a must-read for ASCII art & monospaced fonts lovers. No time to read all that? Get your hands dirty with the ASCII+ Art Generator, and play. This tool has been optimized for Zeitung Mono, so the results will always need to be displayed in Zeitung Mono.

Read ▶ From ASCII Art to Subpixel ASCII+ Art

Play ▶ ASCII+ Art Generator

We’re happy to announce the latest news on web typography. Every wondered how to recognise poor web typography? Why is it that micro-typography on the Internet lags centuries behind? What is the connection between text lines and Laurel & Hardy? Why is web typography actually a misleading designation? This newspaper tells in a nutshell what designers should keep in mind when deciding on typography for web users, including key design-elements and often overlooked facts.

24 pages full of typographic wisdom and experiments. Everybody who designs for screens should read why web typography sounds good, but looks awful, so get your own Zeitung newspaper.

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Why wouldn’t ASCII art, being over 50 years old, adapt itself to modern times? We are all familiar with ASCII art and we all know responsive websites. What happens if these 2 are combined?

We released a monospaced version of Zeitung yesterday, and we all know that monospaced fonts & ASCII art are a match made in heaven. Therefore our website has a new homepage, using responsive ASCII. Resizing the window will offer the full experience: the text size which displays the ASCII art remains the same, independent of the window size. As a consequence: the resolution increases once the window enlarges.

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Zeitung Mono is the monospaced companion to the Zeitung family, a sans serif which works well in small sizes on screen. This monowidth font family increases the functionality of the Zeitung font family, resulting in happy programmers, smiling ASCII-kids, razor-sharp journalists and finally: worldpeace.

Zeitung Mono is everything a contemporary monospaced font needs to be. A good monospaced font has a fancy italic for unmistakable distinction & lots of weights which supply a broad typographic palette. So you may guess once what Zeitung Mono has. Right, exactly that. Say hello to Zeitung Mono.

Introduction offer: Let’s Mono Together
Order Zeitung Mono complete, and get a free license for a friend.
This introduction offer runs until 31 July 2017.

26-30 June 2017: ASCII+ Week

For all ASCII lovers, and those who love to be surprised: next week, from 26 to 30 June 2017, it’s Underware’s ASCII+ Week. Microsoft wrongfully declared ASCII dead in the end of the 1990s. As real ASCII-kids it’s finally time to show our love. Every day some ASCII news. Stay tuned, more on Monday.

Four countries in four weeks. We’ve got a couple of presentations coming up, where we’ll present our latest findings. Hope to see you in of these cities:

18 May: Plug & Play, Porto, Portugal — plugandplay.pt
25 May: TYPO Berlin, Germany — typotalks.com/berlin
1 June: BNO Zwolle, the Netherlands — facebook.com/bnozwolle
10 June: IS Type conference, Istanbul, Turkey — istype.com

The associations a font has and the emotions it can evoke, are culturally defined. They change through time, vary around the world, and sometimes vary from one country to another. Recently our typeface Bello became associated with politically progressive movements in Ireland. The reason why this happened has been described by Robin Fuller in this article in the Dublin InQuirer: How Bello Became The Typeface Of Protest.

© photo Gerry Mooney