Okay, okay. I know it’s been a lifetime since I actually found some time to post. But once I saw the work of Annie Vought, I knew I had to have a little Experts homecoming. Vought, an Oakland-based artist, finds beauty in what sadly seems to be a vanishing art: the handwritten letter. She meticulously handcuts the correspondences, removing all negative space to showcase the forms of the individual letters themselves.
From Vought’s site:
The handwriting and the lines support the structure of the cut paper, keeping it strong and sculptural, despite its apparent fragility. In these paper cutouts, I focus on the text, structure, and emotion of the letter in an elaborate investigation into the properties of writing and expression. Penmanship, word choice, and spelling all contribute to possible narratives about who that person is and what they are like. My recreating the letters is an extended concentration on peoples’ inner lives and the ways they express their thoughts through writing.
Wes Anderson is probably my favorite director, and certainly my favorite film stylist. We all love him here at the ‘Agree; Jessica’s handprinted Max Fischer extracurricular activities pencils are probably proof enough. We’re very very very excited about his new movie Moonrise Kingdom.
Typographically, he’s been very consistently an all-caps-Futura man. While he outlined it for The Life Aquatic, Bollywood half-opened something not-quite-Futura for The Darjeeling Limited and emboldened and threw it on a curve for Fantastic Mr. Fox, he’s established an iconic typographic style that is very recognizable. That said, I’m not at all sad that he hired the fabulous Jessica Hische to make a custom script for this one! It fits in with his aesthetic perfectly, and grants the coming of age story a wistfulness that the cold caps of Futura wouldn’t.
*Note that all-caps Futura does make an appearance at least thrice in the trailer, notably on the awesome mimeographed-handwriting-practice-paper letterhead.
If you are in San Francisco today, you should definitely come down to Renegade Craft Fair (we’re here until 6). There are a ton of awesome vendors, including many etsy sellers we’ve posted about in the past. Owen and I are here with some new items that aren’t yet in our shop!
Stupid type joke: T-Mobile uses VAG in pink, AT&T uses Omnes in orange (which they took on after consuming Cingular). If the former absorbs the latter their rebrand is going to look like Dunkin’ Donuts. Ha. Anyway. Ahem.
We’re in the age of the rounded sans. Why, ten years ago, Helvetica rounded and VAG were about all there was. Now not only do we have a plethora of new loveliness like Omnes, Sauna, Bryant, Estilo, Brevia and ooh look at Mija wouldya — we’re also seeing new releases of rounded versions of classics and recent favorites like FF Unit, Gotham, Museo, Din, AG Book, and Proxima Nova.
In 2009 we posted about Simon Page’s beautiful poster series for the International Year of Astronomy. Well, he’s followed them up with a new series, this time for the International Year of Chemistry. I for one am a big fan of chemistry and a big fan of Simon Page. Check out the rest of the series on his site.
Here’s a bit more about the International Year of Chemistry:
The goals of IYC2011 are to increase the public appreciation of chemistry in meeting world needs, to encourage interest in chemistry among young people, and to generate enthusiasm for the creative future of chemistry. The year 2011 will coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize awarded to Madame Marie Curie—an opportunity to celebrate the contributions of women to science. The year will also be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the International Association of Chemical Societies, providing a chance to highlight the benefits of international scientific collaboration.
What happened that animated gifs disappeared for years and now are coming back so dang cool? Check these animations for Russian bookstore (slash bikestore?) Respublica. Great modernist layouts with awesome motion graphics: some favorites below, and see all of em (and a reel with transitions between) on Pavel Paratov’s Behance page!
It’s been a while since we’ve done a TypograFriday for y’all, but Wood Type Revival seems like a worthy candidate to bring it back. Digitizing wood type is not a totally unique idea — there are definitely some wood type fonts out there (most of them aren’t even close to the real thing). But, based on the description of Wood Type Revival methodology, it seems like they are going to put the work in to making these some pretty awesome typefaces. Even more awesome, they are all available on typekit, so you can have rad wood type online. Started as a Kickstarter project, their shop is now live and they have 4 fonts available!
Here is their kickstarter video explaining a bit more about the project:
We posted recently about the launch of swiss-miss‘s fabulous new temporary tattoos Tattly. Well, they are on sale on Fab for the next 3 days. I am a little reluctant to tell more people about Fab, but it is a really great site. It is an invitation only sale site for design-y things and design inspiration. Need an invite to Fab? Well, here you go.
