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.
Oddly, the Experts are a surprisingly tattoo-free group. Thankfully, Tina Roth Eisenberg (AKA swissmiss) has come to the rescue for those times when you just want a little design-y body art. Inspired by the lack of cool temporary tattoos for her daughter, swissmiss contacted a number of designers to see if they liked her idea for Tattly and to see if they would be interested in submitting designs. Some pretty awesome designers have contributed so far, though unsurprisingly, my two favorites are Frank Chimero’s Knucks and Jessica Hische’s Type Nerd (though I kind of love them all). For the first 2 weeks, you can get the whole set for $35.
Posting has been a bit light over here at The Experts; we’ve been traveling and working tons. But thanks to our pal Jesse Ragan, we can break our dry-spell. Through him we learned of Jessica Hische‘s lovely new font Brioche which she designed for his Type@Cooper class. It looks like a pretty fun face and I think she is right, it would be great for weddings. You can purchase it through Jessica’s site.
Happy TypograFriday! It’s been a few weeks, type fans, but the type world went and moved on without us. In case you missed its debut a month back, there’s a new typophile magazine in the world. 8 Faces is a project of British designer Elliot Jay Stocks, and it’s a very approachable magazine for people obsessed with letterforms. The 1000 copy print run sold out in two hours, but there is a PDF edition available too.
The magazine is primarily long interview/profile pieces with luminaries in different subsections of the type world such as veteran designer Erik Spiekermann, superhot letterer Jessica Hische, webtype expert Jason Santa Maria, and quality freefont pioneer Jos Buivenga. Earls asks good questions, and they give interesting responses.
For as timeless (or even classical) an art form as type design is, there is a recurring discussion of the very interesting times we are in, in terms of webtype formats, technologies, pricing models and so on. One needn’t be a total typophile to appreciate it; it’s probably the clearest resource I have seen for where the present and future of webtype.
And the title of the magazine comes from a spread that ends each interview, where the designer answers the eternal question: if you could use just 8 typefaces for the rest of your life, which would you choose? I love hearing people’s answers to these sorts of questions (and if you do too may I suggest Types Best Remembered/Forgotten? And because we aren’t holding our breath for Earls to profile us, we’ve preemptively answered the question for ourselves.
Kirsten: I use the same five almost all the time… Futura, Avenir, Helvetica, Century Gothic, Cursive Handwriting
Jessica: Some obvious. Some cheesy. Some very similar to others. Some I really like, but haven’t yet had the pleasure of using. Futura (obviously), Avenir, Clarendon, Century Schoolbook, Cooper Black (that’s right, I said it), Mrs. Eaves, Rockwell, Neutra
Owen: Sentinel (I was going to say Clarendon, but the folks in 8 Faces #1 convinced me that Sentinel supercedes it now), Neutraface, Knockout, Omnes Pro, Futura, Freight (love the versatility of the whole family but even if it was just Freight Micro it might make it onto the list anyway), Bodoni, AGaramond
Samantha: Estilo Text, Vendetta, Neutraface, Clarendon/Sentinel, Futura, Garamond, Omnes Pro, GarageGothic (good thing we’re married)
There will be a second issue in a longer print run before Christmas, themed “You.”
oy, do we love Jessica Hische. Our copy of her gorgeous alphabet print is being matted right now at Cheap Pete’s. We’re excited for her that she is setting off on her own and leaving Louise Fili, but equally psyched that Cardon Webb (of Cardon Copy) is filling her shoes.
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reative and prolific, Ms. Hische’s newest side venture is the sort of thing that we definitely support. Daily Drop Cap not only features a beautiful letter every day, but also the html to make it a drop cap and the creative commons license on how to use it. So, don’t be surprised if occasionally our posts start getting all Book of Kells on ya.
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nd, it is a brand new project — she’s only up to “C”— so you can pretty much be the first on your block to use it. Yes, this last paragraph was just an excuse to use the “A” — I promise we’ll never use three drop caps in a post again. That’s just gaudy, people.
Jessica Hische — whose font Buttermilk we posted about previously — has just posted a lovely new letterpress poster that is available for purchase through her blog. The prints cost $100 and are a limited edition of 250.
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.
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:
oy, do we love 
reative and prolific, Ms. Hische’s newest side venture is the sort of thing that we definitely support. 
