Museo Slab
I’ve been using Jos Buivenga’s ‘Museo Slab’ type family for a job that seems to have gone on almost all year - and, unusually, I like it even more now than I did to start with (this is also the first job where I’ve used the same type family on both web and print). I also really like this guy’s work - the three different styles of the Museo type family have steadily remained in the top 20 best sellers of typefaces since they were released, which is not bad for a one-man outfit which began (and still continues) to give away many of its types for free.
Veer reinvents Letraset!
Who would have thought? A message arriving today from Veer, the type and image supplier, announces: “Ever wished you had a set of stylish, varied font characters that you could place, as if by magic, on surfaces around the home, office or studio? …Simply place the transfer sheet on your page or surface, scribble on the back of your letter of choice and Bob’s your uncle.” Veer have reinvented Letraset! And they’re offering it for free! I find this absolutely fascinating for several reasons, not least because it’s clearly targeted at an audience that isn’t expected to remember rub-down lettering (gosh, how old that makes me feel!). However, on a more positive - and perhaps more significant note - it illustrates a growing desire for physical means of expression. And how the virtual can cross over into the physical realm (as with those digital type designers who’ve had their fonts cast for letterpress). For more information: click here.
A taste of the future?
Over the last year I’ve become a huge fan of Argentinian type designer Alejandro Paul and his Sudtipos foundry. Ale’s speciality is creating hugely imaginative and complex scripts that make use of the sophisticated glyph substitution features of OpenType (meaning that it is possible to have many different versions of each character, and that combinations of characters can be replaced by specially drawn logotypes that connect and interlock them in ingenious ways). I’m not alone in being a fan of Ale Paul’s, of course – he’s been winning awards from the Type Directors of New York, and other prestigious bodies, for the last few years. However even his amazing creations have been trumped for once, with the release of the Liza type by the fabulous type design collective ‘Underware’. Liza is an energetic, sexy, distinctly twenty-first century script. But what is most incredible about her is Underware’s inventive new features, including ‘out of ink’ (to replicate the effect of a signwriter’s brush going dry), ‘t-topper’ (to extend the crossbars of ts improbably across whole words) and ‘super-looper’ to get decidedly swirly down below. An amazing feat, guys – both aesthetically and tecnologically! You can find Liza currently living at www.underware.nl.
The Khatt Runner
Since I first saw them, I’ve considered MK12’s title sequences for Marc Forster’s (2007) film of The Kite Runner a lovely and sympathetic synthesis of traditional Persian calligraphic styles with contemporary Western typography (I also thought the film was a brilliant bit of cinema). To see them click here. (‘Khatt’ is the Arabic word for calligraphy, making for this groaningly awful pun!)
This guy’s blog rocks!
The idea of a blog is that – in contrast to the static, rhetorical websites of the ‘first generation’ – it should be spontaneous and personal and informal. But the software and templates that most of us use frequently tend to make our blogs look ‘monumental’ (often in contrast to the words we write on them). Here’s a blog that doesn’t, however. It’s an amazing bit of design to make something that shouldn’t look overdesigned look… well, undesigned! I guarantee you’re going to come away thinking ‘what a great guy! what a great blog! this blog really rocks!’ (or your money back… ;-)
Oh, and you can find it here.
Swirling delights
For some time I’ve been captivated by this emerging graphic style, with its extravagantly flourished letterforms that swirl into arabesques. However I’ve only just discovered the man whose work seems to have inspired it: Si Scott. And I realise he has been responsible for some of the things that have most impressed me over the last couple of years: the 2006 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition poster, the Orange ‘If you love something, set it free’ campaign, the BBC’s ‘The Secret of Drawing’ titles, and so forth. He has a very nice site at http://www.siscottstudio.com/ with examples of his work.
e-motion
A lovely little wordless interactive animation by Tânia Falcão (http://www.electronic-motions.com/) that shows how powerful this medium can be, and how expressive (and universal) the human face is as a means of communicating emotion. Muito perfeito!
I find this logotype by Iranian designer Mehdi Saeedi simply beautiful (there are more examples on his website www.mehdisaeedi.com). It seems completely ‘of the moment’, expresses all of the fluid, cursive loveliness of the Arabic alphabet and is a very effective piece of design (I can imagine it working extremely well in the ‘waste no pixel’ world of the web). After such a long period of graphic sterility and ‘dryness’ it is so nice to find – now almost on a daily basis – examples of designers’ work that take my breath away.
When it comes to things happening in the USA, we can be a bit slow on the uptake this (other) side of the Atlantic. I heard the term to ‘obamify’ for the first only recently when I downloaded some funky filters for Apple’s Photo Booth application. And subsequently I discover that it refers to the distinctive style of Shepard Fairey’s iconic campaign image (above). Even in the short time this has been around, it has already given rise to numerous spin-offs and spoofs. The one that Fairey himself is most proud of is the cover of Mad Magazine (which can be seen here).
