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 - 13 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

Stereotypes -- Derided by typophiles as crass, "ethnic type" has a revealing taxonomy and, surprisingly, serves a purpose.
posted by cog_nate on Jun 19, 2009 - 66 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

The Ministry of Type is a weblog about type, typography, lettering, calligraphy and other related things. The FontFeed, from the folks at FontShop, is a daily dispatch of recommended fonts, typography techniques, and inspirational examples of digital type at work in the real world. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Mar 31, 2009 - 12 comments

Decodeunicode.org has a useful and full-featured search for the names and glyphs for those Unicode characters that display as a plain box full of despair. It is presented by the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. Roll the dice ⚅⚄ and try it out. [more inside]
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim on Jan 23, 2009 - 25 comments

Fridge magnets in seven scripts – Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Korean, Arabic, Devanagari. [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Jan 11, 2009 - 12 comments

Cartype has a huge repository of vehicle logos and other related typography. [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf on Dec 15, 2008 - 5 comments

Definitive guide to fonts on Mad Men. Mostly the fonts that didn’t exist during the time of the show. Not every single thing is “historically accurate,” apparently. [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Oct 7, 2008 - 23 comments

Type is art. Take little pieces of letterforms and make something new.
posted by signal on Jul 18, 2008 - 10 comments

The handwriting of typographers.
posted by oneirodynia on Jul 10, 2008 - 21 comments

Marian Bantjes, typographer, designer, and Layer Tennis competitor, received a 419 spam email and turned it into this print. [more inside]
posted by heeeraldo on Jun 27, 2008 - 8 comments

The 2007 Feltron Annual Report . via
posted by signal on Jun 8, 2008 - 13 comments

Giant Twittering Typewriter in Second Life. Type here (SLURL) and press the carriage return and it posts to here. Yay. [more inside]
posted by brownpau on May 1, 2008 - 42 comments

Two blogposts from Smashing Magazine: Breathtaking Typographic Posters and Typography in Motion. Some notables: Retro Artist Feature, Linocut Print of London, It's the Outsideness Flavour of It, Zeitgeist, Hier Vorne, 80 of 500 Handdrawn Posters and music video for Ya no sé qué hacer conmigo by Uruguayan band Cuarteto de Nos.
posted by Kattullus on Apr 22, 2008 - 7 comments

FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks. Once you're done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application.
posted by Dave Faris on Apr 12, 2008 - 21 comments

The product of an entire semester's work: one single type block. An essay on letterpress printing with wood. [via]
posted by Armitage Shanks on Jan 23, 2008 - 17 comments

Israeli designer Oded Ezer produces stunning works of experimental typography. He has been lauded for creating [PDF link]"...Hebrew characters that melt," but it is his more unconventional work that is truly breathtaking - made up of letters with vivacity and personality. He calls his gorgeously abstracted work "typo art," existing wholly neither in the space of art or typography, with hope that it might transcend language altogether. See his flickr stream for more sketches, works, and arresting typescapes.
posted by youarenothere on Jan 9, 2008 - 21 comments

Fonts at the movies. [more inside]
posted by Terminal Verbosity on Dec 14, 2007 - 21 comments

The printing press lives on—in Akron, Alabama, at least, where computer programmer-turned-letterpress printer Amos Kennedy uses metal type to create lots and lots of posters. [Found here.]
posted by tepidmonkey on Nov 20, 2007 - 12 comments

So You Want to Create a Font (Part 1, Part 2). For something with a less presumptive title, there’s this, this, this, this, this, or even this, Eric Gill’s An Essay on Typography.
posted by tepidmonkey on Oct 29, 2007 - 15 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

I loved this beautifully filmed short documentary on The Letterpress. For those of us who have ever risked our very own fingers for the cause of printing, or had the California Job Case burned into memory, this will be a trip down memory lane. For the rest of you, it may give you an idea for your next hobby.
posted by The Deej on Aug 23, 2007 - 30 comments

How the new type standard for American road signage reduces halation and improves readability.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 11, 2007 - 47 comments

Type The Sky: font project by a student at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
posted by fandango_matt on Aug 6, 2007 - 14 comments

In 1957, Swiss typographer Max Miedinger invented "the official typeface of the 20th century" -- Helvetica [previously discussed here, via Arts and Letters Daily].
posted by digaman on Apr 21, 2007 - 44 comments

Helvetica, a documentary film. "Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives."
posted by londontube on Jan 25, 2007 - 25 comments

Misprinted Type.
posted by hama7 on Oct 23, 2006 - 22 comments

Type, handwriting, and lettering
posted by persona non grata on Aug 20, 2006 - 17 comments

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web. Robert Bringhurt's undisputed bible of typography until now has been limited to print design. This site, a work in progress, presents his principles one at a time, and explains how to follow them as a web designer using HTML and CSS.
posted by Robot Johnny on Mar 8, 2006 - 29 comments

Typographica's Favorite Fonts of 2005
posted by plexi on Dec 29, 2005 - 13 comments

Moon type, an embossed typeface invented by Englishman William Moon in the middle 1840s, seemed to have won the fight to bring reading to the blind. Online Moon type generator here. It was based on simplified Roman text, was easy to use by all, and once enjoyed the status as the most popular embossed typeface in the world (failed night writing system withstanding). Until Louis Braille developed his system, that is.
posted by luckypozzo on Oct 8, 2005 - 21 comments

Typetester, for web designers. via
posted by btwillig on Sep 30, 2005 - 23 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

The Scourge of Arial. It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft's influence in the world. Arial, however, has a rather dubious history and not much character. In fact, Arial is little more than a shameless impostor...
posted by Robot Johnny on Aug 9, 2005 - 97 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

Web of Letters Type in a word -- instant type collage.
posted by Robot Johnny on Mar 15, 2005 - 15 comments

RoboType, a way to make art with letters without forming actual words or sentences...
posted by wendell on Mar 7, 2005 - 13 comments

BitFontMaker - Create, edit, and save your own truetype pixel font via this web app.
posted by Robot Johnny on Feb 21, 2005 - 9 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

The Warner Bros. Cartoons Filmography And Title Card Gallery has more title cards and coloured rings than you can shake a carrot at. A great resource that goes hand-in-hand with this and this for all your Looney Tunes-related research.
posted by Robot Johnny on Nov 29, 2004 - 10 comments

Found typography
posted by Robot Johnny on Nov 17, 2004 - 13 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

"Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark..." (qt video, via Signal versus Noise)
posted by emptybowl on Oct 6, 2004 - 44 comments

LetterJames artfully alters photographs of typography with your personalized greeting. Lots of fun (but watch out for all those pop-ups!)
posted by Robot Johnny on Sep 4, 2004 - 2 comments

The title screens of hundreds of your favourite movies
posted by Robot Johnny on Jul 28, 2004 - 11 comments

Art, Link, Letter: Abba Richman's beautiful The Alphabet and Dean Allen's rustic Found Alphabet are collections of letter shapes found in various outdoor objects.
posted by iconomy on Jun 25, 2004 - 11 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

The alphabet like you've never seen it (quicktime movie).
posted by Robot Johnny on Apr 22, 2004 - 23 comments

The Movie Alphabet Game is harder than it looks. I'm stuck on C, O, U, and X. When you're through with that, try the second one.
posted by Robot Johnny on Mar 3, 2004 - 23 comments