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.
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.
This week’s schmetsy is a little bit more narrow in focus than usual: tote bags. No, no, black-and-white tote bags. Wait, design-geeky black-and-white tote bags! This one runs the gamut, from letterforms to parts of letterforms to Thai letterforms, parallel lines to Bauhaus shapes. Enjoy!
The first time I went to Europe, I went on an EF tour — plus, I have travel on my mind right now — so these videos are right up my alley. They are lovely and educational, but what makes the Live the Languageseries extra special is the fantastic regionally-appropriate typography, done by Albin Holmqvist. I hope they add one for Rome — I’m trying to learn Italian, and I love any opportunity to see Italy.
I’m really diggin the style of the project “50 and 50” — where 50 designers are invited to make an illustration of their state’s motto. The colorscheme (a sophisticated red white and blue) and format is consistent, and curator Dan Cassaro has a sort of modern-Americana vernacular + workhorse Futura-y look for the site which works great with the selected (typographically skilled) contributors. It’s good to see this style done well by more folks than just Draplin — though looks like he’ll be doing Oregon.
North Carolina by Matt Stevens — I’d have bought a print of this one if that had been an option; as it wasn’t I figured the next thing was to blog it. Please guys, prints? Or t-shirts? Tennessee by Matt Lehman. Massachussets by Mark Weaver.
The observant among you may have noticed that the type here at the ‘Agree is a little different. We’re dipping our toe in elegant typography using typekit, and we’re pleased as punch about it. If you don’t know much about using good type on the web yet, but want your site to look good (like ours does we hope, or like my brother’s blog which inspired us to take the plunge, or like thedieline) we definitely recommend it.
If you want to figure out how to make your site look unbelievably good, you should definitely head over to Jason Santa Maria’s site. He not only puts together some of the best examples of good web type, but he’s one of the clearest voices on explaining the new tools and finally, not coincidentally, one of the primary developers of those tools, including Typekit and the WOFF format.
His latest blog entry is a detailed behind-the-scenes of the making of the most fantastic typographic things on the web yet. Lost World’s Fairs. This was made to promote IE9’s support of WOFF (just when most of us were about seven years into considering IE dead). Santa Maria’s Moon one shows live type on a slant, shifted baselines and slant within a text box, overlapping text, text behind alpha masked objects and other things you thought the web couldn’t do. Naz Hamid‘s El Dorado has lovely overlapping transparent type, shifted letter by letter. (Yeah that’s all live css type… Crazy right?) And Frank T Chimero‘s Atlantis one is particularly awesome, combining excellent use of extended slab Hellenic and Simonson’s Avenir-contender Proxima Nova plus extended scrolling-as-narrative movement a la the best webcomic I can remember, When I am King.
Anyway don’t delay: go look at the Lost World’s Fairs right now. And if you’re curious for more, all of the contributors wrote about the experience: Jason, Frank, Naz, Trent, and Dave
We went to see Stefan Sagmeister talk at the Levi’s Workshop last week — sort of amazing, really, that one of the most famous designers in the world spoke to an audience of maybe 200, for free. For those who are unfamiliar with our profession’s enfant terrible, he’s a smart and humorous designer with a refreshingly honest standpoint.
What you may not know is that after seven years of running his studio, he took a full year off for inspiration and exploration, and intends to do this every seven years. He justifies this decision admirably well, and as he is prone to saying, Having guts always works out for me.
He showed slides of a few of the projects from his second one, from which he recently returned, from Bali. His first, where he stayed in New York, he considers mostly a failure. And yet, a page from a diary from that first year headed Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far has provided him the content for dozens of high-profile projects for a variety of clients over the last several years (plus a very-cleverly designed book and community-participatory website).
Some of the entries are thought-provoking like koans, like Jenny Holzer truisms. Others are shockingly banal, at least when you’re expecting Holzer-level thinking. But the typographic settings of them (often made with collaborators such as Marian Bantjes) are always interesting.
Oh in case you’re wondering: this Absolut ad isn’t Sagmeister but a complete (if well-executed) ripoff of his style.
Hope everyone had a great weekend. It was absolutely beautiful here in the Bay Area! For today’s flickr Mondays, I’d like to introduce you to Netherland artist, Anja Mulder. I am in awe of Anja’s beautiful hand drawn lettering on old book pages. Her work brings a sense of calmness that I really do enjoy.
Thanks to one of my new favorite blogs, The Jealous Curator, I just discovered TypArchive, an amazing collection of images of hand-painted, neon and dimensional signage. Aside from being really nice to look at, I think it could be a great resource if you are looking for a little typographic inspiration. When Owen and I travel, we are constantly snapping pictures of cool typography; perhaps we’ll need to submit a few images.
TypArchive is an image library primarily focused on hand painted signage. The objective is to amass a comprehensive global collection of a high-quality images and produce hard-copy volumes.
Amidst a landscape of vapid strip malls and sterile signage, hand-painted lettering retains a soulful aesthetic to be treasured. Like other crafts dissolving in the digital age, sign painting is a fading occupation. Today it’s easy for any layman with minimal computer knowledge to produce a sign within minutes, but the skill acquired to artfully produce hand lettering took years of apprenticeships, dedication and true talent. – RD Granados
