Penguin (RED)

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I always love seeing how designers interpret a simple set of design restrictions. For this redesign of eight classics from Penguin Classics in collaboration with (Red), a group of designers was asked to create covers using a quote from the text and a red band at the bottom. For the most part, I think the results are fantastic. I particularly like the ones where the design breaks out of the top of the cover and crosses into the red band. The books will be published in early May.

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Designers shown:
Therese Raquin — Jim Stoddart (Penguin Press art director)
The Secret Agent — Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin Press art department)
Dracula — Non-Format

via Creative Review

Down the Fractal Beanstalk

You know how But Does It Float fades in its wordless content slowly and one at a time, leading to a sort of dreamlike user experience? Well the other day, I was wading through its abstract wonderland and a few scenes from another world caught my eye.

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They’re by notable generative artist Tim Hutchinson. Impressed and intrigued, I looked into Hutchinson further. He’s made algorithmically generated art using a variety of software and runs a thoughtful and serious blog about Fractal Art called Orbit Trap.

The ones that most impressed me were made in a program called Fyre. I’m not the right sort of a geek to figure out how to run this on a Mac (command line? DarwinPorts? Unix?); I’d appreciate anyone’s help because, damn do I want to play with that. Please.

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Four pieces of iterative art I did today, after the jump.

Continue reading Down the Fractal Beanstalk

TypograFriday: All Your Slab Are Belong to H&FJ

Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, typographic superstars who positioned themselves so strategically in their field that they registered typography.com, have recently announced their third serif in two years.

While many type designers create their faces primarily out of their passions, H&FJ made their decision with market strategy in mind as well. It’s pretty clear by now that the era we’re in (and hopefully not leaving too soon) will be judged by history to be an age of slab serif. And like a pool hustler suddenly sinking shot after shot, it’s breathtaking to watch how quickly H&FJ have created three of the strongest, most fully-featured slabs on the market.

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Vitesse
, their newest, is their foray into the type of the moment: a square-based slab. But just when I find myself absolutely loving its stylish proportions, it screams out something ultramasculine (I can see it on high priced electronics and sports magazines alike).

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Sentinel
, which seems like it just came out, is their Clarendon. It’s explicitly designed (like Canada Type’s Clarendon Text) to work better in text settings than most clarendons, plus it has an unmatched range of weights.

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And Archer, their Antique slab with cute as a button ball terminals and a large range of hairline weights, still has us drooling.

Four more of our favorite slabs that aren’t by H&FJ and that we didn’t feature in our last slabs roundup:

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PMN Caecila • Before the 21st century slab rennaissance this was my favorite. And I love that most books on the Kindle are set in it, so pleasant.

Museo Slab • if Archer is too expensive, start with the free weight of Museo; the whole set is pretty affordable.

Granite • Alright so this isn’t a text face but I love it so much I’m putting it in here anyway. I’m a big fan of Gareth Hague’s sense of proportion in general; his faces have a noteworthy elegance. This extreme-contrast slab is no exception.

Neutraliser • Actually now that Vitesse is on the market, art directors at men’s magazines everywhere are find/replacing their captions paragraph style from Neutraliser to Vitesse. But in 2004, it was certainly ahead of the curve

BAFTA Posters from Tavis Coburn

Fantastic retro-stylist illustrator Tavis Coburn put together five program covers/posters for the BAFTA awards (British Academy’s version of the Oscars) and they’re amazing, both individually and taken as a set. Click through for full-resolution: the halftones and details are worth it.

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Oh and although I saw Avatar twice in theaters, I am thrilled that Kathryn Bigelow beat James Cameron at the BAFTAs – The Hurt Locker was an incredible film.

via Drawn!

TypograFriday: Ligatured Sans

You know ITC Avant Garde, the lame came-with-the-OS wannabe-Futura type. Designers among you probably know Avant Garde, the 1968-1971 magazine for which Herb Lubalin designed a fantastic and groundbreaking tightly kerned sans serif logotype. Lubalin expanded this all-caps logo into a rigidly geometric display and text face at ITC, where he was a cofounder. The digital version you’re familiar with is an imperfect digitization of the most uninteresting part of the original design, although the Pro version that adds back in the ligatures is now available.

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Lubalin used it several times, always with the alternates and ligatures enabling incredibly tight settings, throughout the next few years, notably in U&LC magazine. And others began to use it, but not well. A few notes on its misuse from Thinking for a Living:

Tony DiSpigna, one of Lubalin’s partners and co-creator of ITC Lubalin Graph and ITC Serif Gothic, has been quoted as saying, “The first time Avant Garde was used was one of the few times it was used correctly. It’s become the most abused typeface in the world.” Ed Benguiat, one of type’s legends and a friend of Lubalin’s, commented, “The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words Avant Garde. Everybody ruins it. They lean the letters the wrong way.” Steven Heller also noted that the “excessive number of ligatures […] were misused by designers who had no understanding of how to employ these typographic forms,” further commenting that “Avant Garde was Lubalin’s signature, and in his hands it had character; in others’ it was a flawed Futura-esque face.”

It’s been revived in the last decade quite a bit, first for music then for a certain scenester Vice ironic recapitualization of the Me-Generation?

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excellent

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Don’t get me wrong: I actually really like the examples above. It’s not even been that it’s been done a zillion times but after about six, it’s already been done to death. If you’re considering using Avant Garde ligatures and it’s not 1976, I ask you to reconsider. Either reference the seventies in a fresher way if that’s what you’re going for… or if what you’re liking is the interlocking ligatation of it, may we suggest a few alternatives?

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Fedra Display by Typotheque, part of a megafamily that ranges from hairline to black with condensed and compressed weights.

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Camera from Flat-It. Rounded and deco-style, this is quite a distance from Lubalin’s design. However it’ll still work if what you’re looking for is nested, tight lettersetting.

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Sevigne by Reserves. This new face was actually the inspiration for this post. By combining Lubalinesque ligatures with the  classic proportions so popular now in typefaces like Gotham and Neutraface, and restraining it to lightweight and all caps, Reserves has put together an affordable, contemporary and altogether elegant face. It’s on special pricing right now; get it before Urban Outfitters goes and ruins it for all of us.

If You Could Collaborate

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Apparently, we have a bit of a thing for Craig Ward — we posted about his work here and here. His latest endeavor — a collaborative project with Sean Freeman and Alison Carmichael — from the If You Could Collaborate show from earlier this year is pretty awesome. I’m particularly into Allison Carmichael’s piece (top).

Here’s a little more info on If You Could Collaborate:

If You Could Collaborate is the fourth annual If You Could exhibition. Aiming to provide a platform for the finest creatives from all over the world to question their conventional working methods and outcomes. The contributors have been challenged to produce something a little unexpected, by working with a partner of their choosing from any discipline, profession or background. There is no brief to answer, or format to honour – the only limit being the enterprise and imagination of the artists involved, and a liberal 12 month deadline.

And here is a pretty neat process shot from Sean Freeman:process

Etsy Schmetsy: Year of the Tiger

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone. It’s the Year of the Tiger, so now you have a great excuse to adorn your walls, desk, head and so forth with the orange and black striped paragons of predatory cuteness. Here are ten handmade tigers (and one vintage one) from Etsy.

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Row 1: Tiger Screenprint from milkbunnie; Baby Tiger Note Cards from FloatingPalace
Row 2: Tiny Tiger Baby from violetpi; Vintage Midcentury Tiger Planter from NiftyVintage; Year of the Tiger hat from Jackthemanabouttown
Row 3: Eye of the Tigers from dailyode; Sleepy Tigger from zime; Tiger Twins print rom WildLifePrints
Row 4: Year of the Tiger letterpress print from dutchdoor; Year of the Tiger Kitty from novarhyme; Nola the White Tiger from nonesuchgarden

The Kelly Moore Bag

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We are planning a trip and I really wanted a way to carry my camera other than throwing it into a purse. Before Christmas I saw the Kelly Moore bag on Uppercase and thought it looked like the perfect solution. I was going to post about it right away, but the bags were all pre-orders, and I wanted to see if they were as great in person as they looked on the site.

Well my bag arrived and it is fantastic. I can’t wait to start using it. It looks like it is really well made and is big enough that I don’t think I’ll need to carry a separate purse on my trip. Plus, since is it way prettier than a normal camera bag, not everyone will know you have a camera with you. The bags come in some really great colors and she is working on a camera bag for men too, so soon there will be a stylish camera bag option for everyone.

UPDATE: Enter the code BLOGLOVE for $50 off a Kelly Moore bag!

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TypograFriday: Shahn

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One of my favorite artists ever is Ben Shahn; his linework was terrific, his color sense really interesting, his sociopolitics inspirational, and his handlettering fantastic.

Above and below, a few scans from the book November Twenty Six Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three, a Wendell Berry poem about JFK’s death which he illustrated and lettered. I’ve tried lettering with jaunty mixes of thicks and thins like this before, and let me tell you, it’s super tough to keep it from not looking totally goofy. That he set type as serious as a poem about national grieving using it is astonishing.

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A few other of his pieces which incorporate his fantastic lettering:

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Public Sale, 1956

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Parade for Repeal, 1933

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Maimonides, 1954

Teach thy tongue to say I do not know and thou shalt progress? Such a good quote.

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For those of you who are font-hungry, there are (at least) two fonts on the market which are based on Shahn’s lettering: Bensfolk from Haroldsfonts and thorny tuscan Rendevous GRP from Grype. Although both are pretty nice, the supersmart Opentype version with dozens of smart contextual alternates that rotate in… is sadly yet to be made. You’ll just have to use a pen, folks.

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Kitty Caller

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It is a really good thing that I read The Donut Project. Without it, who knows how long I would have waited to learn about the fantasticness that is Kitty Caller. Sure it is basically totally unnecessary, but it makes dialing the phone way more fun. It’s the best 99¢ I’ve spent in a long time.

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