entries Tagged as [education]

‘Nature of Language’

‘In July 2013, artist José Parlá painted Nature of Language, a mural commissioned by SNØHETTA and North Carolina State University for the James B. Hunt Library in Raleigh. The library is best known for its architecture and technological integration, including a large robotic book storage and retrieval system which houses most of the university’s engineering, textiles and hard sciences collections.’

Jose Parla’s lettering art in a library. Syncs with concepts I’m throwing around in my Friday night type class.

Found via Graffuturism

Tschichold’s ‘Typografische Vormgeving’

TschicholdTypografische

‘rare Belgian newspaper article on the publication of Jan Tschichold’s ‘Typografische Vormgeving’ (unfortunately no information on the name of the newspaper nor the date)’

Found via typojo

Stephen Fry on language

It’s interesting how celebrity works.

I’ll often bring up Stephen Fry in the classroom (and mention his incredible Gutenberg documentary for the BBC) but very few students have heard of him. Then I mention Hugh Laurie and House, then draw the connection to Fry and Laurie and – just let things happen.

(I also think Laurie should have played Archer on the Star Trek prequel series, but what do I know)

Designer Matthew Rogers took Fry’s comments on language – which has this wonderful way of evolving – and made it visual (above).

I am currently working on a project where I’m screwing with language for fun. Google Translate is a great video game, no scores or explosions (unless you look them up); but always fascinating results.

Found via Upworthy

‘Design Like Nobody’s Watching’

DesignLike_

Words and pictures by Grant Snider.

OFFF poster 2013

Years ago Step By Step was a graphic design magazine that showed complex design solutions in a ‘step by step’ process. So was HOW, which broke out HOW things were designed.

Today we assume computers just design everything. Not true. Not everything.

Pictured is the work of Dmitry Karpov. And at Behance, here is the Step by Step breakdown of HOW they were done.

Found via Designcollector Network

Bass at 93

‘His most famous title sequences include the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm for Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of a skyscraper in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho’

Last night, Google doodled this (above).

Last week in my history class, I presented footage of the original titles that Saul Bass designed that Google doodled this (above) was based on.

Dave Brubeck came along for the ride.

More info here.

Found via Alice Woodruff

Don’t we have enough fonts already?

‘So just as we change as we grow up and our bodies, opinions and tastes change. This is Time. This is Life. They are defined by Change. So Change is inevitable, its outside of need or necessity. It just Is.’

The images (and words) are from this wonderful post over at the Alias blog: Why new typefaces? Alias is run by David James and Gareth Hague.

In my opinion/experience, we’ll stop having a need for new typefaces right about the time we stop wanting new music, new food ideas (I’m hooked on detox water right now) and new ways of looking at how we dress ourselves.

Types have personality, just like humans. Take it all away and we become  . . .  Helvetica. On a Star Trek planet where we all look, think and dress alike.

Type is everywhere. And humans like to mess with shit.

via Alias

Typographic soft porn, via Italy

Last week I attended TYPO in San Francisco and noticed that my notebook was full. No room for notes.

My solution was the #typo13 hashtag, Twitter, plus big fingers and cranky iPhone. Everything I attended I tweeted, autocorrect had other ideas, TYPO ended up meaning typo.

Typically if I go on a tweeeeting binge like this, I lose ‘followers’ and get bitched out a bit. Instead I ended up meeting some cool people from around the planet.

Sol Kawage lives in South Tyrol, a ‘german speaking region in northern Italy.’ Her tagline on her Twitter account states: ‘Annoying people since 1980.’

Pics are from her blog, cool holdings of a small Museum of Modern Art in the City of Rovereto. More here and here.

FUSE, then TYPO

In 1998 I attended this over-the-top crazy creative conference in San Francisco.

It was called FUSE: Beyond Typography and it was a Neville Brody gig, named for his font magazine. The whole shebang overstuffed itself into San Francisco’s Masonic Center on Nob Hill. And what happened inside was really ‘beyond typography,’ in that the typophiles I knew were complaining where’s the type? It made sense. It was BEYOND.

It was many days. I think a week. Maybe a month, a year? I don’t remember. Nob Hill is up in the clouds, which was fitting. But what I do know is the speakers – which ranged from budding architects Zaha Hadid and Michael Sorkin to author Karrie Jacobs and a slide show from soon-to-pass-on Tibor Kalman – left me recharged about graphic design and what a real creative can do.

Then, turned out the week of FUSE Phil Hartman died.

And

2001 changed everything.

And the economic disaster that followed also put a lot of creative plans on hold. I quit my corporate job right after FUSE and moved on to more meaningful work, eventually landing in teaching. I kept doing the fun work, but bread-n-butter work started to take over. Survival became more important as creativity was pushed aside.

In 2007 I left my position as president of the Art Directors and Artists Club of Sacramento and from a distance, saw it shut down early 2012. BUT I did remember the spark of FUSE (which was a money-loser for the organizers) and kept side projects going. I started this very blog, released a few fonts. [Read more →]

‘Who are modern Russian designers?’

Modern graphic design has roots in Russian Suprematism and Constructivism. Here’s a trailer for a film by Sergey Shanovich that looks at what’s been happening since.

Facebook page here.

Found via Motioncollector

Sunday Rock, analog Cyrillic



‘Specialization of our school is contemporary music teaching for kids and teenagers’

Modern Dog recently created this poster for Sunday Rock, a music school in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

And I provided Robynne and Co. some quick Cyrillic type the old fashioned way: Scanned in from early 20th Century sources, pieced together letter by letter.

Four different scripts combined to have similar weight, rough edges, heavy caps. I’ve been doing a bunch of work this way lately – sometimes one has to go back to basics.

And on weathered days (like today) vinyl sounds better than digital.


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