So True

Seeing this poster made me think "ah that is so true". It is amazing how, after learning about type, you begin to notice bad typography everywhere you go. It really is everywhere, billboards, logos, letters, packaging, posters, you name it. It's hard to go anywhere without wanting to fix everyone's type!

Measuring Type

I also thought this was pretty cool. Two artists--Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth--decided to take some of the most commonly used typefaecs and see much ink each uses when drawn at the same point size. The artists drew large scale versions of the fonts with ballpoint pens and then measured the level of ink each took.

Kind of awesome!

Garamond is the most efficient, while Impact eats the most ink. Helvetica and Times New Roman are both in the middle of the list.

Know Your Type

The website idsgn.org has been running a series called "Know Your Type" that delves into the history and contemporary applications of famous typefaces. I particularly enjoyed the post about Futura, a personal favorite of mine.


It traces the design from the Bauhaus philosophy and the designer Paul Renner's desire to avoid any unnecessary elements, making for a completely clean and modern typeface. Futura was the first typeface to land on the moon, as it was used for the commemorative plaque signed by the astronauts of Apollo 11 and placed on the moon's surface in 1969.


It has remained popular from 1924, when it was first conceived, up until the present day. It is used in many contemporary logos and products, including Red Bull (which I'm drinking as I type this--ah, finals), Louis Vuitton, Absolut Vodka and the Costco logo.

Altogether it is a font that has retained its relevance for nearly a century, and continues to look fresh and modern in today's design. Truly a remarkable typeface.


Two other typefaces in the series: Verlag and DIN.

Interesting letterpress forms

While working on my banner and resume I came across this website http://nicksherman.com/design/Intercut/ it discusses a typographic system for letterpress printing, and talks about type as a formal structure, rather than visual representation of language.

Two images that I found particularly interesting are:

I Think You'll All Agree

Good luck on your finals and have a great break!

Via

While looking at a bunch of Saul-Bass videos, I came across a cool video. It's the title sequence for thank you for smoking, and the typography is very fun and awesomely designed.

Saul Bass was not only a well known and highly sought after designer, but he was also the undisputed master of film title design. I got really sucked into watching his different videos on you-tube, and I wanted to share a few of his titles (some are really goofy). Not only are his ideas innovative and well-designed, but the type is playful and fun to read as it plays around the screen. Here are a few of his movie posters, he was very intuitive when it came to typography.





Here is one of my favorite movie titles by him:



his ideas were timeless, and are still copied today. here is a title I really enjoyed for catch me if you can, clearly saul inspired:

Type Wrap

Typography is everywhere and we see it so frequently we become almost unaware of it. Upon looking up different types of typography i found some images with typography incorperated in clothes and found it interested how the letter forms were able to adapt around the body as a canvas. Also how they were able to successfully translate some of the items into fashionable statements.

I haven't noticed this until this year:

So, two weekends ago the new Harry Potter came out. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Though I'm not an avid reader of the book, I really enjoy the movies. Obviously the special effects are pretty cool, but what I think is even cooler are the small design treatments that you can find within this fictional world.


For example, the packaging of the various candies and chocolates on the train to Hogwarts are always fun to look at, like the chocolate frog!














But, what really caught my attention in the new Harry Potter was the portions of the film that show off the "Daily Prophet," which is the newspaper in Harry Potter land. It is cool that the photos in the newspaper move, however I think what is even more beautiful about it is the typography. Whoever designed the various papers in the movie series must have gone through a hard time trying to stack and track out all of the headers and text. The paper has interesting drop caps and hierarchic shifts. Especially in the new movie I noticed that the designers used "rivers" and "gaps" in the text of the paper to make imagery, like swirlies and things.

I'm impressed with the production of Harry Potter and the detail and creativity that went into making the "Daily Prophet." It was definitely not an after thought in the movie. Here is a link to part of one Harry Potter film. At 34 seconds it shows the actual newspaper [if you want to skip ahead]. Here are some images of the paper too. It may break some type rules, but.. it's Harry Potter after all.

Punk as F**k

via Friends of Type

Paul Rand Video

I am doing my magazine project on Paul Rand and had been doing a lot of research on him for my body copy. I came across this video and found it to be very fun and informative. It uses all of his work and designs and sums up some of his best work in a quick fun video.

cool typographic art

I found a cool graphic design using typography.

The designer is Tariq Yosef Ahmad Shishani Chachnian Jordanian Live in Amman-Jordan (so long!!!).

These are his works.

And this is a stop motion animation for type. Click here

Vintage Movie Covers

I found thins really cool site from an image originating from ffffound.com They have great typographical solutions, each of these are very,very unique and hold it's own individual feel from one to another, although what they do have in common is the extreme differences. Each one has it's own kind of type, color scheme, medium, imagery layout, mood. It's all very different. Some type is made, some recreated by hand from an already existing type face, and others are made out of the images in the cover itself. It's good to keep sharp, and this is a reminder of just how differently applied type and images can be.

Here's some, to see all of them go to the link.

Victoria

Day in the Life of a Graphic Design Student

Rishi Sodha created this senior design thesis/self-promotional piece documenting just how much today's design students have to know and do in order to stand out from the thousands of other design students compete for entry level jobs.

via Behance Network

Ecological Business Cards

I just came across this via here and here. It's a pretty smart way to rethink designing green. We designers love our fancy paper but at some point we'll have to consider other options. The web and mobile devices are great but I think people still like holding and touching things. Using a stamp could be a good way to blend the real and the "fake".

That D Has Got Some Jive Motions.

I bought this music video when I found it on itunes in 2007, simply because I thought the video was the bomb diggity. The song featured is D.A.N.C.E by the french electronic music duo Justice. If Cee Lo's F**k You video and the Kinetic Type videos were to have a baby, this would be it. Check it out.

A Love Letter for You

Check out this mural project in west philly called, A Love Letter for You. click here

Font Conference

I just wanted to share this video with everyone. It's one of my favorites...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Stationary, book bind, etc

This is for anyone currently working on any stationery collateral or a magazine or brochure, which you probably are if you're reading this blog right now. These are just a couple of things I picked out from some books—I will post more as I come across interesting and inspiring designs.

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Skin Deep Typography

So after viewing most of the posts on this blog i thought other students did a great job of interpresting beautiful treatments of type. I wanted to show an example on how type could be made from something organic yet not reflect the delicacy of most type people see. This man uses clothespins and skin

he has his whole alphabet on http://www.thijsverbeek.nl/index5.html

Onto something a little more permanent and still on the subject of skin. I found a few examples of tattooed alphabets with most of them demonstrating

I am going to continue my search for these skin deep typography treatments but thats all for now.