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
Ikea de-Futurafies. You may have noticed something at once familiar and unfamiliar about the 2009 Ikea catalogue: The company switched from a custom variant of
Futura to the font you stare at all day in your browser, Verdana. And type nerds are
losing their shit! [more inside]
posted by joeclark
on Aug 26, 2009 -
167 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
