Type News: Wish You Were Here
Ah, summer is here at last.
(Apologies to our readers in the southern hemisphere, of course.)
While most of us were welcoming the arrival of the solstice, others were taking in two of the hottest type-related gatherings this past week — Type Camp California and the Ampersand Conference in Brighton. Lucky for us, plenty of individuals shared their notes, thoughts, and experiences from these events.
David Bushnell, Jon Tan, Laura Kalbag, Anthony Stonehouse, the Fontdeck Blog, and Eye Magazine provide perspectives on Ampersand Conference, the inaugural web typography symposium. Also for your viewing pleasure are Fontdeck’s Flickr gallery of scenes from the conference and slides from John Daggett’s The Future of CSS Typography presentation.
Half a globe away, Billy Whited penned a Day One Recap of his Type Camp adventures, while William Seneshen’s collection of photos is packed with happy Californian campers to be jealous of.
Time to stop wishing we had been there … let’s start soaking up some shiny new type.
Like many designers, Keith Bates assumed the sans serif used on the famous Keep Calm and Carry On poster was a derivative of some Gill or Johnston type. After a bit of digging about, Bates expanded upon the twelve existing uppercase letters — including the “anomalous” C — and produced Keep Calm. This exercise in successful extrapolation includes alternates for the lowercase ‘g’ and ‘t’, as well as a “crown motif” dingbat.
Pablo Impallari has revisited his popular Lobster typeface and expanded it into a four style family, including a new lighter weight and upright styles. Like its predecessor, Lobster Two is available as an open source web font from Google.
Brian J. Bonislawsky’s Astigmatic foundry also has something new in the Google directory this week. Redressed is a straight forward (and quite upright) script sporting unconnected glyphs, an economical footprint, and calligraphic charm.
Goliath is the latest beast from the Photo-Lettering archive to get the digital touch. Affectionately known as film Nº 6206, this Vincent Pacella original is a solid slab of epic proportions.
Latinotype offers up a pair of fresh faces this week. First up is Guadalupe, a rather fashionable Didone with a playful demeanor. Roman and italic styles, featuring a choice of regular and ball terminals, plus plenty of alternates and swashes.
Compared to the delicate finesse of Guadalupe, Latinotype’s Patagon is ready to stomp on some toes. This beefy, uppercase sans takes cues from both historical woodtype and contemporary ornamentation.
And now for the rest of the week’s tidbits and curiosities.
- Jan Middendorp interviews Gerard Unger for the “Double Dutch” edition of MyFonts’ Creative Characters newsletter.
- What does Łukasz Dziedzic have in common with those damn, dirty apes? Adam Twardoch demonstrates how to create a Planet of the Apes poster using nothing but a selection of Dziedzic’s typefaces.
- New York creative director Justin Thomas Kay launched his Version Type Foundry site.
- Tired of FontLab’s frustrating foibles? Prepare to be blown away by Yannick Mathey’s Prototyp-0 Font Generator.
- Another fine batch of Adobe faces have been added over at Typekit. You had us at OCR-A!
- The deadline for discounted submissions to ATypI’s Letter.2 competition has been extended.
- Neville Brody was presented with this year’s D&AD President’s Award.
- Louise Fili and Steven Heller present their gorgeous, new tome Scripts: Elegant Lettering from Design’s Golden Age over at Design Observer.
- GuitarSquid says “enough already” and pleads with musicians to stop using the Bleeding Cowboy font.
- Erik Spiekermann goes forensic on a “blatant imitation” of his ITC Officina typeface.
- Apparently, making a web font is a lot of work — just ask Hoefler & Frere-Jones.
- Speaking of web fonts, the promise of a new book on web typography by the heavyweight team of Mark Boulton, Richard Rutter, and Jon Tan has the interwebs all atwitter.
- Project Thirty-Three shows off David Day’s personal “shrine” to the geometric brilliance of album cover art.
- Fontdeck does a slick job presenting an online version of the type samples included in their lovely gift boxes.
- Gustavo Ferreira takes us back in time with a live critique of Elementar, circa 2002.
- Silly rabbit, type is for kids. Don’t believe us? Check out Naomie Ross’ Anatomy of Type Children’s Book and the Typographic Design for Children project.
- Grain Edit peeks into the inventive typographic works of Keetra Dean Dixon.
- Ford is dropping Helvetica for … Helvetica.
- The limited edition Art for Joplin posters by St. Louis based Moosylvania are stunning (and in support of a good cause.)
- Need more typography on your walls? The first of eight limited edition prints from 8 Faces is now available.
- Holy Étouffée! It’s less than two weeks until TypeCon2011: Surge in New Orleans.
Now that we’ve filled your head with all manner of typographic wonderment, get out and enjoy the first weekend of summer (or winter).
Did we miss something? Let us know in the comments.
Thanks to my pal Erik Vorhes for taking this past week off … I got to use all those other keys on my keyboard for a change.
Comments are closed on this entry.
1.
Infideluxe Jun 25, 2011
The photographer’s name is actually spelled “William Seneshen”.
2.
Grant Hutchinson Jun 25, 2011
Thank you for keeping us on our toes. Mr Seneshen’s name has been summarily corrected.