LINO-CUT

About as lo-tech as it gets...

Crumbs!!

Eye Eye

In the spring 2008 issue of Eye magazine, there was a feature titled 'Lust and Likeability' in which designers and typographers comment on a list of typefaces, chosen by designer Deborah Littlejohn.

I found out some rather interesting facts about what inspires the designing of a font, how some evolve from existing fonts, and how some appear from nowhere.

Bello, a typeface designed by Underware is 

a "friendly & rich" brush script, designed

 to mimic the work of a sign painter.

The Shire Types, designed by Jeremy Tankard, is a 

typeface consisting of "unusual structure(s) - inspired

by nineteenth century slab serif & grotesque types."

Typography.net

Sansa, by Fred Smeijers

"bears no direct relationship

to any historical model."

I chose these 3 examples, because they show 3 ways in which a font can be created; 

1. Modifying a historical typeface.

2. Creating something new.

3. And most interestingly, mimic-ing a craft.

FACTOID

John D Berry sez...

"Whether as labelling, wayfinding or mere decoration, letters bring function and form to the built environment."

Fonts commonly used in architectural lettering;

HELVETICA
Common as muck



INTERSTATE



FF META



GOTHAM
Inspired by a "letter an engineer would make."
Taken from the extras of the 'Helvetica' DVD



Its reportedly a favourite of non other that Barack Obama



DIN SCHRIFT




FRUTIGER
Popular with the french as it was designed especially for Charles De Gaulle airport.




VERDANA



annndddd...
FUTURA



IKEAAAAAAAA.

Not all of my examples were exactly 'architectural', but it was interesting to see how common and widely used these fonts are. They are around us everyday but we never notice them to be different from each other.

Well I'm glad I cleared that up and sent it to bed!

(List found in 'Eye' magazine. Photos lovingly plucked from Flickr.com)

Comm Tech II: Type in Motion

Pornophonic Orchestra - Dimanche après-midi from yann deval on Vimeo.

Pornophonic Orchestra - Dimanche après-midi
Video by Yann Deval

Fascinating video with so many ideas created from just a scrabble board and tiles.

Kinetic typography

Spent this afternoon looking at kinetic typography on YouTube.

I found this by typing 'typography' in the search field, and at first I was impressed, but then you see just how much of this style is on the website, and you get sick of it very quickly.

I did a search online to find out more about this style of type and there is actually a wikipedia page about it, including details of it's history.

It seems the first time this animated text was used was for the opening titles for Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film 'North by Northwest' which was designed by Saul Bass...



Bass used a similar style 2 years later for Hitchcock's 1960 film 'Psycho'



"Since then, the use of kinetic typography has become commonplace in film introductory titles and television advertisements. More recently, it has been a central feature of numerous television idents, notably Martin Lambie Nairn's first Channel 4 ident (UK)"



That was from 1982! I find it hard to compare with these kinetic typography pieces as I feel they show very little original thinking and style. But its interesting to see what fonts are used to express certain words, and it also shows understanding of design programs such as Adobe Flash or After Affects and the ability to apply text in such an unusual way. Students at CMU's School of Design have even created a dedicated Kinetic Typography Engine, which is used to teach kinetic typography techniques to students.

Block Print

Job Wouters (post below) does 'block printing' for a lot of his prints.

I wanted to find out about it.




This guide is yours for $60

Wikipedia has an interesting 'History of Printing' (click image for closer look)
Its actually 'Woodblock printing'



What the bloody 'ell is stereolithography!?



Did a search on Flickr.com



BACK to wood block printing. As if it is from 200AD - the earliest form of printing according to the list.

"Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper."

Wikipedia

Hiroshige did his prints using woodblock. Something I never knew;



Tom Huck



Dennis McNett


Daaarrrkkk

Comm Tech II: Hand Lettering : Letman

"Job Wouters, aka Letman, puts a modern spin on the archaic practice of hand-lettering"

Creative Review, February 2009.

"Letman's work is Graffiti combined with calligraphy crossed with printing mixed with typography. He is making a previously undervalued and amateurish backwater - the hand-made - into rich artful territory, more than equal to its arrogant, professional brother."

Quentin Newark (nominated Letman for the Brit Insurance Design Awards, 2009)

Letman often collaborates with his designer brother Roul Wouters;

Cyooooot!

Visit Letman's website here.