Meta Serif is Go!
Into the Hyper Spectrum
Beautiful Decay [beautifuldecay.com], the rad creative mag published out of L.A., has caught the zeitgeist and commissioned Alex Trochut [alextrochut.com] to produce a cover of their latest issue. You can see the artwork above and, if you’d like to have a portal into the Hyper Spectrum of your very own, you can order a copy or purchase a poster version via the brand spanking new Beautiful Decay website [indiemerchstore.com/beautifuldecay].
Shadwell goes Calibri-tastic
In a perfect world you’d get to choose your own screen fonts. You can — sort of — providing the person viewing your site has the typefaces you’ve specified installed on their machine. I’ve recently become glued to Google Reader but am getting kind of bored with the interface and started thinking about my ideal set of screen fonts that would replace the sad bedraggled bunch we currently have to put up with.
Dolly [underware.nl], Balance [fontshop.com/evert_bloemsma] (a Boicozine fave), Gill Sans Schoolbook [identifont.com], Akkurat Mono [lineto.com/akkurat+mono] would be ideal additions to the visual language of the wwweb. Those that can also stay: Georgia, Helvetica Neue, Futura, American Typewriter, the Lucidas. Those that have way outstayed their welcome: Arial, Times, Comic Sans, Trebuchet, Verdana.. shove off you miserable looking shabby shabblers. Yay to the new Cleartype fonts too [ascendercorp.com]. There are already some appearing in shopfronts around the YCN [ycnonline.com] office in Shadwell (the default face being Calibri as displayed above)…
What’s Up #18: Superscript²
Superscript² is [super-script.com] Patrick Lallemand and Pierre Delmas Bouly. Superscript² love typography. Superscript² like to make their own typefaces, in their own distinct way. AZL3 Poster is a chunky and robust a typeface as any and yet makes the most intricate patterns when mooshed together (that’s the *ahem* ‘technical term’ for running your leading and kerning ultra tight). Minimal Blok is building blocks for grown-up typo-fiends. Their graphic design work is just as lush. Go have a geez. Found via Vvork [vvork.com].
What’s Up #17: Alex Trochut
The name Alex Trochut [alextrochut.com] seems to be popping up a bit lately and it’s no surprise lately when you see some of the work this creative from Barcelona is producing. He has already produced a poster design out of play-doe for Dani Navarro’s Poster Project [posterproject.info] as well as being snapped up by Nike and Channel 4 for various pieces. His type experiments are well worth the visit.
From Akkurat to Everywhere
Okay, we all know how old Helvetica is now (like older than you but younger than… er… the Bauhaus) but lets just give it a bit of a rest for now. It’s work is pretty much done and there’s a whole host of it’s contemporaries vying for your attention. The most insidiously demanding of which has to be Akkurat [lineto.com/akkurat]. Haven’t noticed it yet? You soon will do. Designed by Laurenz Brunner [laurenzbrunner.com] as part of his graduating projects, Akkurat was licensed by Lineto, the type foundry set up by Cornel Windlin and Stephan Müller a couple of years ago and has since been included in award winning projects the world over. It seems that only now it’s influence has starting filtering into mainstream usage. It has been used as part of the refreshed identity for the Yauatcha restaurant in London’s Soho designed by MadeThought [madethought.com] and in the rebranding of the Southbank Centre (check out the signage, it’s all Akkurat) – like Meta in the 90s [spiekermann.com], FontFont’s redraw of DIN [fontfont.com] and Tobias Frere-Jones‘ [typography.com/biographies] extension of the highway signage alphabet, now called Interstate, for Font Bureau [fontbureau.com/interstate] later on – Akkurat looks set to make a clean sweep of the current Design vernacular. It’ll be interesting to see if it has the longevity of the afore-mentioned decade defining typefaces… roll on Akkurat Black.
Hel in a Handbasket
Candy’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the typeface Helvetica [candycollective.com/50] is coming to London as part of the London Design Festival 2007 [londondesignfestival.com] from 15th to 25th September. Venue to be announced. The prints themselves are available to purchase from Blanka [blanka.co.uk]. Here is a selection of our faves…
in Events / Graphic Design / Illustration / Typography
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Trust Type Trust
Want type? Who doesn’t! Type is ace. I’ve just discovered The Type Trust [typetrust.com]. An awesome resource for unique and hard to find typefaces. Kind of like a typographic boutique. My current faves have to be Leitura Display (as shown here and as seen in Bad Idea magazine [badidea.co.uk]), Fatty and Ezzo but there’s loads to choose from.
Secret Typography #3
More unreleased type design we wish we could own. This time it’s from graphic design duo Megi Zumstein and Claudio Barandun under their studio moniker, Hi [hi-web.ch]. There’s also a truck load of examples of lush book design.
Secret Typography #2
Custom Typography is rife. ‘Modern technology’ means it’s become relatively easy to commission your own custom made typeface (it’s still takes a lot of time and dedication to build a decent one though), which puts designers in a weird situation where there are many attractive and rigorously developed typefaces that will only be available to a very select few. A2/SW/HK [a2swhk.co.uk] are kings of custom typography, often creating beautifully crafted typefaces that live for a one-off application, such as a book or an exhibition, before being relegated to design history. Like Textaxis [textaxis.com] these typefaces may never be available for commercial use which seems to make them even more covetable.
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