the mehallo blog. beta.

This week I gave my design history talk on American Type Founders’ Gothics – a large collection of (mostly 19th century) sans serifs typefaces.

ATF was formed in 1892 by a merger of 23 American type companies – resulting in, literally, a huge pile of metal that had to be sorted, catalogued, duplicates removed and if necessary, redesigned. Morris Fuller Benton (1872-1948) ended up doing a lot of the dirty work – among the results were ATF’s very industrial Gothic series of typefaces.

These types exist today in many digital forms – some with their original ATF names, such as Franklin Gothic and News Gothic – or as revivals, which includes Benton Sans and Jonathan Hoefler’s comprehensive Knockout series.

Amidst recent revivals is Caroline Hadilaksono and Micah Rich’s League Gothic (above) – an interpretation of ATF’s Alternate Gothic No. 1 (below).

Snag your own free version here.

And hell, if you see any problems, fix em. The font is open source.

Alternate Gothic No. 1 specimen (cropped), ATF’s Book of American Types, 1934

M.F. Benton, read more on Benton here

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, fonts, typography by steve
1 comment  . . .   

‘Another inspiration was the film MAX (2002), written and directed by one of Emigre magazine’s founders, Menno Meyjes  . . .  I decided Jeanne would be a fictional typeface that was released in 1918, the timeframe from the movie.’

Ascender is running a little sale on some of my fonts. 25% off until March 5, 2011. Offer only available thru Ascender’s website. For details, go here.

(and watch the trailer for MAX here)

Tags: design, design history, fonts, mehallo merchandise, typography by steve
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‘decades worth of the milliner’s designs and to get inside the head behind the hats.’

Fashion blogger Tavi headed to Antwerp in September to review Stephen Jones’ career retrospective exhibition, Accent of Fashion.

Review (with more photos) here. Monograph available here.

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, exhibitions, fashion, photography by steve
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Old home page for ‘Helvetica Lovers Anonymous.’

Click to jump/view larger. From 2004.

Tags: cool finds, design history, typography by steve
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‘[Spy] was cruel, brilliant, beautifully written and perfectly designed, and feared by all.’ –Dave Eggers

SPY Magazine. The New York monthly. The most influential magazine of its time. The Rosetta Stone of modern periodical publishing. Really.

SPY took celebrities and the super rich to task for being, well, celebrities and super rich. Donald Trump was a frequent target. And the best part: SPY was caustically funny and incredibly smart in the way it did what it did. [Read more →]

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, publication design, thoughts by steve
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‘AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s’

Website here.

Found via Daniel Will-Harris

Tags: design, design history by steve
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Part one

‘Every forth purchase is an impulse purchase’

Powerful advertising everywhere!

Incredible footage, includes early shots of Walgreen’s, A&P and Kresge (which became Kmart).

Part two

Part three

Found via Okay Type

Tags: cool finds, design history by steve
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‘Hadank is a display typeface developed from hand-lettered words in a German printer’s letterhead from the 1920s’

Andrew Leman makes props for the motion picture industry. And along the way, he’s built a collection of fonts to help with making said props authentic.

Order his Hadank fonts here. Website (with interview video) here.

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, fonts, typography by steve
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‘Published posthumously in a limited edition of 250, features 142 sets of roman and italic typefaces, a wide selection of borders, ornaments, symbols, and flowers, as well as Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, Phoenician, Armenian, Coptic and Tibetan alphabets.’

My birthday was last week and to my surprise, my wife got her hands on Taschen’s limited edition reprint of Giambattista Bodoni’s masterwork, his Manuale Tipografico (1818).

Bodoni had almost unlimited funding and resources at his disposal – so the details in his large body of types (he just kept going) is beyond what is seen in most revivals of his work. ITC Bodoni comes damn close, but a lot of Bodoni’s original designs end up on the cutting room floor.

My Jeanne types (named for my wife) have roots in Bodoni – and I used some digital resources to research his Manuale. But it is great to now actually have a print edition in my collection – cause I’m not done with tinkering.

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, education, fonts, publication design, typography by steve
6 comments  . . .   

‘Features over 100 cards with specimens from the 1951 type catalog, showcasing dozens of fonts in their various weights and point sizes.’

American Type Founders was the largest metal type company in the world. They came to an end in 1993 in an ill-planned bankruptcy auction.

Tons of type history (literally) were melted down for scrap. Many records and original drawings were destroyed.

Pictured, Just My Type’s recent acquisition: ATF’s 1951 merchandising case.

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, fonts, typography by steve
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A selection of trailers and title sequences from the films of Jean-Luc Godard.

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, typography by steve
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