Hour Glass Creation

Carl Shank • October 18, 2023

Hour Glass Creation. Have you ever found something that challenged your creativity and skill? In typography such things exist all the time. In leafing through old ad booklets for the now defunct Adobe Minion Multiple Master Font (See Blogs on "More About Fonts" and "The Journey of Digital Type"), I found a challenging hour glass design with type expertly set within the hour glass to look like time slowly draining from top to bottom. That inspired me to see if I could do something similar with Adobe InDesign, which I love to use for all sorts of projects.


The challenge was to create an interior using only type that seems to be trickling down, as time is seen slowly moving down the hour glass. Since I am a Christian typographer, author and pastor, this was also an opportunity to pull from the Bible's perspective of time slowly drawing to a conclusion from the book of Revelation in the Bible. I chose Revelation 20 as the text to use inside the hour glass. I am certain that more professional illustrators and type setters can do a better job. But this is what I created using the tools and training in InDesign over the years.


Enjoy — and dive into your next type challenge!

Successful Layout & Design

The Legibility Group

By Carl Shank • July 29, 2026
The Legibility Group. This group of typefaces comes from the The Mergenthaler Linotype Company was a company founded in the United States in 1886 to market the Linotype machine, a system to cast metal type in lines (linecaster) invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. The company became the world's leading manufacturer of newspaper and book typesetting equipment. The Legibility Group is a series of serif typefaces intended for use in newspapers on Linotype's hot metal typesetting system. They were developed in-house by Linotype's design team, led by Chauncey H. Griffith and released from 1925, when the first member, Ionic No. 5, appeared. The family became a large group due to the creation of slightly different designs for different printing conditions, such as levels of inking used in different newspaper production processes and versions with different x-heights. [6] [b] Linotype carried out a survey of optometrists as part of their research processIt consisted of Ionic No. 5, Textype, Excelsior, Opticon, Paragon and Corona. Although not part of the family, Linotype marketed its sans-serif family Metro and slab serif face Memphis as effective complements for headings.

English Penman Calligraphic Fonts

By Carl Shank • July 13, 2026
George Bickham the Elder (b. 1684) was one of the most influential English engravers, calligraphers, and writing masters of the eighteenth century. Although he was a capable print engraver, his lasting significance lies in his role in preserving and popularizing English Round Hand (later known as Copperplate script) through beautifully engraved writing manuals. His work shaped business handwriting, penmanship education, typography, and ornamental lettering for generations. He trained as both a writing master and an engraver, two professions that were closely linked before the advent of modern printing. Rather than merely copying handwriting, he engraved elaborate penmanship examples onto copper plates, allowing thousands of identical, highly detailed specimens to be printed. He became renowned for his extraordinary ability to translate handwritten originals directly onto copper plates with exceptional fidelity, a skill admired by his contemporaries.
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