September 9th, 2010 by owentroy We’ve mentioned Niels “Shoe” Meulman before, but in case you hadn’t looked closer at his Calligraffiti pieces, I wanted to show a few more. I’m not generally even a big fan of graffiti (and nazis and ed hardy have both seriously threatened my love for fraktur) but his hybrid of a loose blackletter and the drips and attitude of grafitti is inspired and beautiful.




Oh and he makes fancy big silk Unruly scarves too, with lovely color combinations and hidden subversive texts (e.g. “Society Fools,” shown on the model). I’m tempted to buy one but maybe just because it comes with a signed copy of his book.


Although he is fierce at defending his turf, Shoe isn’t the only writer at this intersection. I’ve recently discovered Luca Barcellona, whose lettering work is fantastic, and all the better when he mixes it up with spraypaint on a wall. Here’s a flickr set full of crossover work with his “Rebel Ink” crew.


Oh and, happy typografriday!
September 25th, 2009 by owentroy 
We’re happy to announce our second ever birthday card is now available in our Etsy shop. It’s Gocco-printed in bronze and light blue ink on black duplex paper (white on the inside) or chipboard or special limited quantity on pale aqua and reads Happy Effin’ Birthday.
 
The message and ornaments are hand-lettered in a Victorian-era style of calligraphy called copperplate. I spent much of the summer learning it, and now know it well enough to make very pretty letters — heck, I’m nearly ready for the marathon challenge of addressing wedding invitations and decorations using a red cloth tablecloth for this purpose. But, I wrote this about halfway through the class — we wanted it to have of imperfections and downright mistakes so that your birthday recipient won’t squint at it and say, “oh is that Kuenstler Script?”
More information on copperplate, the class I took and some fonts after the jump.
Continue reading TypograFriday: Effin’ copperplate
July 14th, 2009 by samanthatroy 
We’ve been holding off on posting about Jessica Hische’s awesome lettering because we wanted to see if she would participate in our artist interview series (something that would be much more likely if we actually contacted her). But, with today’s release of her first font Buttermilk, we felt at least a brief mention was in order. It is available at MyFonts for $49 — definitely worth checking out.
April 10th, 2009 by owentroy There’s been a trend in the last few years dubbed maximalism. We’re particular fans of how it manifests calligraphically and typographically. Here’s some of the finest, and six words about each:
Ray Fenwick

Words and pictures both very good.
Marian Bantjes

We have one; it’s laser-cut awesomeness.
Jessica Hische

This will be a tshirt soon.
Si Scott

Pen in hand, makes his mark.
Niels “Shoe” Meulman

calligraffiti inventor. Yep, how it sounds.
Seb Lester

Silver on black plike. Pretty rad.
Yulia Brodskaya

OMG that’s quilling? That’s insane yo.
March 26th, 2009 by owentroy 

So, we went to Japan a year ago with our friends and RISD classmates Tim, John and Alex. Three graphic designers, an architect and a uh fashion designer/graphic designer/architect. For those of you who are one or more of these things, take it from me: Japan is so frickin’ awesome.
We went around taking pictures of everything because seriously everything was so rad. We shot manhole covers. We shot shrines that seemed more picturesque than possible. And being designers we took pictures of a lot of type. On this, our second installment of font-y Friday, we’d like to show you a few.
Continue reading TypograFriday: Japan

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