Typeface based on sculpture becomes motorized sculpture. The (European) typeface
Jigsaw, “which was inspired by sculpture,” finds a use in typesetting the names of donors to a (U.S.) regional arts council. “A motorized disk contains approximately 2,000 names.... Pushing an initial letter on the control panel allows the viewer to find a particular name. The disk rotates and stops at the requested letter and displays all the names corresponding to the requested letter by backlighting them with white LEDs.” (
Gallery;
Vimeo video.)
[more inside]
posted by joeclark
on Jul 10, 2011 -
12 comments
The Museum of Modern Art
announced this week it would induct 23 digital-era typefaces into its permanent collection (
Times coverage). But what do the
designers of these fonts
look like? Pics or it didn’t happen:
first set;
second.
posted by joeclark
on Jan 26, 2011 -
34 comments
Canter’s Deli font comes full circle. Graphic designer makes actual typeface family out of casual script seen on sign for classic L.A. deli, Canter’s. (
Wins award!) Youngest, hippest member of the family that owns the diner later independently Googles
"Canter's Deli" + font, locates type designer, then hires him to custom-design a Canter’s “gourmet food truck.” “[W]hat was interesting to me was that this whole scenario could not have happened without the magic of the Internet and search engines.”
posted by joeclark
on Sep 13, 2010 -
37 comments
Fraktur mon amour: Ruud Linssen’s
Book of War, Mortification and Love is a collection of “essays on voluntary suffering” that works as a specimen of the
Fakir blackletter typeface issued by merry pranksters Underware. Bored already? Well, try this on for size: It’s “printed in the author’s blood.”
posted by joeclark
on Aug 18, 2010 -
12 comments
Not necessarily “naïve”; more like “vernacular.” Jules Vernacular posts dozens of photos of vernacular or unschooled signage on French buildings (in the site’s punning slogan,
lettres œuvrières et incongruités typographiques). As ever, it’s amazing that this typography, most of it hand-drawn, hasn’t been wiped out by progress and regularized into Arial (or the Arial of 2010, Papyrus).
[more inside]
posted by joeclark
on Mar 20, 2010 -
18 comments
John Mayer gets some really bitchin’ typography. House Industries (last MeFi mention:
1999!) designs a limited-edition tour poster for the crooner who constantly steals the show on
TMZ. “[U]ntil they come up with a JPEG format that makes metallics shimmer like a
Solid Gold dancer’s outfit, there just isn’t a substitute for physically walking around a serigraph and watching the light bouncing off metallic and fluorescent inks.”
[more inside]
posted by joeclark
on Feb 25, 2010 -
35 comments
What type are you? (password: character) Step into
Pentagram's psychoanalyst's office, and let him diagnose your type. 'Researched over seven years with a team of 23 academics across Eastern Europe, ‘What Type Are You’ asks the four key character questions of our day, analyses your responses in exceptional detail and recommends one of 16 typefaces as a result. The recommendation is sometimes controversial but always unerringly true. Said one respondent, “At first I felt angry when I was told my type is Pistilli Roman but two weeks later, I was completely reconciled to it. Now I wonder why I ever thought I was a Gill Sans.”'
posted by heatherann
on Jan 11, 2010 -
126 comments
Stelae for 7/7. The London 7/7 Memorial consists of “52 pillars (or ‘stelae’), cast in rough textured stainless steel, each representing one of the victims” of the 2005 terrorist bombing attack. Typographer Phil Baines (
profile) explains the development of the rough-hewn yet “British” typeface, based on “the 19th-century, untutored signmakers’ sansserif you see on buildings around the city,” that is moulded into the living steel.
posted by joeclark
on Jul 8, 2009 -
15 comments
Tart cards [NSFW] are the means by which many London prostitutes advertise their services. Step into almost any central London phone box and you can contemplate up to 80 cards inviting you to be tied, teased, spanked or massaged.... [Wallpaper Magazine] asked designers – from students to superstars – to find the tart hiding in every typeface and create their own graphic numbers.... all 450 cards can be viewed
here.
[NSFW] [more inside]
posted by carsonb
on Jun 26, 2009 -
39 comments
"I want our type to jump, scream, whisper and dance..." Ebon Heath and His Visual Poetry.
"When I close my eyes I can see the words of great poets like Rakem or Tupac flying thru the air and dancing with the same physicality my body instinctually feels. My mobiles attempt to create a visual sense of rhythm and flow that is alive, not contained." This
interview with Heath breaks down his
Stereo.type and
Purge projects.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on May 30, 2009 -
8 comments
It’s easy to talk about
Adrian Frutiger in the past tense, since his most influential fonts –
Univers,
Egyptienne, and the eponymous
Frutiger – are all at least thirty years old. But
he is still alive, and in the summer of 2006, as he was presented with the
Society for Typographic Aficionados’ annual
Typography Award, type designer
Mark Simonson gave
a presentation on how Frutiger [pdf, 18 MB] affected, and continues to affect, him and all others who benefit from good typography.
posted by tepidmonkey
on Oct 3, 2007 -
14 comments
Not My Type - An office and its occupants, made entirely of typographic characters, create a theatre of emotion. View the separate animations (Flash)
1,
2,
3 and
4. Also,
visit an article on the work's concept development and storyboarding process. And
there's more via Google.
posted by sjvilla79
on Aug 16, 2005 -
11 comments
Daily Type is a creative project run by five russian type designers. Day by day, they create original typefaces and post their results along with routine.
posted by Robot Johnny
on Jun 1, 2005 -
10 comments
Thinking with Type The online companion to the book of the same name offers a nice little online primer on the finer points of typography, including my favourite new online game: Dumb Quotes. Remember kids: only
you can prevent poor kerning.
posted by Robot Johnny
on Jan 31, 2005 -
15 comments
Help is needed to save the Imprimerie Nationale, one of the greatest repositories of typographic material in the world. (If you have ever used a Garamond revival, or a Didot or a Fournier, you are indebted to the Imprimerie.) Their collection, which spans four centuries, is scheduled to be dissolved in the next twelve months.
quoted from Jonathan Hoefler's email that posted by benson
to the typophile forums
posted by sixtwenty3dc
on Oct 21, 2004 -
5 comments
Are you a typoholic? It starts so innocently. One day you're mildly interested in the difference between display and text typefaces. Soon you can distinguish between teardrop and beak terminals. Suddenly you're annoying everyone in the movie theater by yelling out the names of all the fonts used in the credits. What's so scary is that you never saw it coming. You, my friend, are a type freak.
posted by ColdChef
on Apr 29, 2004 -
36 comments
