‘For our first release, Alphabuild for iOS, we wanted to pay tribute to the process of building letters (which is the other fun work we do here at our studio). We wish building letters for our clients was as zany and colorful as it is in Alphabuild. On the other hand, we’re glad we don’t have aliens, glue bottles and sawblades trying to mess up our letter drawings.’

Featuring types from the great Psy/Ops library (including my own Jeanne Moderno) as well as a few tikis (see below) – James Beall’s Alphabuild is a fun, quirky educational alphabet game for iPhone, iPad and iPod.

Snag it in the App store. Website here, Twitter here. And free goodies here.

Happy alphabuilding!

Simone Massoni’s Chicks & Types calendar, still available here.

‘Émilie Vast’s third Herbarium is dedicated to plants that find the strength to creep into our urban space, into the joints of gutters and pavements, in the wall’s cracks, at the bottom of the trees, the park’s grass, on the roofs  . . .  just like their cousins from the woods, they have a history, uses and mythology.’

Cool find. This ‘wild plants in the city’ edition also features my Jeanne Moderno fonts.

Found via Iconoclastic and le lièvre de mars

“Every initiative we pursue,’ starting February 1, reads the press release, ‘will be guided by our core value to treat customers as we would like to be treated — fair and square.”

In just under a year, JCPenney rebrands again. Out is Helvetica, in is Gotham. Also in is a whole new approach to store organization and product pricing.

Brand New article here, press release here.

Changes start tomorrow. Bold design move, bold ad campaign.

‘Originator of Type Fashions’

American Type Founders’ complete 1912 specimen book. 1348 pages.

Entire book posted online here.

The industrial revolution changed the size of font offerings. What were once posters or broadsheets from small type foundries, ‘type specimens’ became elaborate volumes – today collected as rare editions.

more
Since 2007, Open Library has been digitizing rare type specimens. Available to read online or as PDF downloads.

I found out about them just this weekend – font specialist Laurence Penney had posted links on his Twitter feed. These are them:

Caslon, 1785
Binney & Ronaldson, 1812
Montreal Type Foundry, 1850
Boston Type Foundry, 1860
Fann Street Foundry, 1874
Cincinnati Type Foundry, 1882
Allison & Smith, 1889
Cleveland Type Foundry, 1895
Inland Type Foundry, 1897
Toronto Type Foundry, 1899
Keystone Type Foundry, 1906
Barnhart Bros. & Spindler 1907

and
One of my favorites, here’s a link to Bauer’s offerings from 1900.

Found via Hoefler+Frere-Jones, Lawrence Penney, Oded Ezer, Nina Stoessinger, Falstaff & Fakir and Kris Sowersby

‘It includes 134 glyphs – both Latin and Cyrillic script plus two different manicules and various arrows’

Crafted by typedepot and available free: Corki is a beautiful condensed slab serif with Tuscan-styling, pointing hands and other extras.

Snag it here.

‘On one occasion, referring to Benguiat as a ‘printer,’ Allen asked him what a good typeface was. Benguiat had an affinity for Windsor and suggested it to him that morning. He’s used it in every film since.’

Woody Allen and the Windsor typeface. Since 1977. Story here.

‘Metric is a geometric humanist, sired by West Berlin street signs’

Metric is Kris Sowersby’s companion type to Calibre. Design info and specimens here. Pictured, Metric Black.

‘Elefans began many years ago as a reimagining of the infamous Gill Sans Kayo. It basically started by asking ‘what if Kayo didn’t suck”

Jackson Cavanaugh’s Elefans typeface. Preview here.

Percy Sledge. Powered by Gill Kayo.

Percy Sledge: Any Day Now

Found via Buro Destruct

Kriminal-Serie Kommissar X No. 1281. Powered by Gill Kayo.

Found via mickey the pixel

Kriminal-Serie Kommissar X No. 1168. Powered by Gill Kayo.

Found via mickey the pixel

Logo I created for Normandie, adapted from Gill Kayo.

Follow Gill Kayo on Twitter here.

‘The Swiss firm boldly embraced the face’s strong character, making it the singular voice of the Schauspielhaus, a theatre in Zürich’

The work of Raffinerie – theatre branding using the oft-maligned Gill Kayo typeface.

Detailed article by Stephen Coles here.

The work of Australia-based design firm Toko.

Website here, store here. (Unfortunately, the gill ultra bold. tee is sold out)

Dynascript is the latest font from the great Michael Doret.

Details here, buy it here.

Final project from my beginning typography course at American River College: Futura Condensed Extra Bold, crafted as iced chocolate cake by student Lilie Matyuk.

Food-based type is always a tricky undertaking, but luckily we had Teresa Urkofsky teaching next door – in the culinary classroom. Teresa had recipes and techniques ready to advise.

I’ve been drawing some form of type since the 1980s. And have been teaching type for several years now.

It’s hard to ‘go digital’ when introducing typography, since letterform history goes back hundreds (and thousands) of years.

So I still use 15th century era handtools in my introductory type courses.

Good fonts still contain elements from long ago – and today, all we really do is recreate what was once done with broad pens – using digital tools.

font games!
To get a taste of how ‘us professionals’ render type these days, check out Mark MacKay’s brilliant Shape Type (pictured above) and Kern Type. Both are nutshell adaptations of today’s process – kerning being a majorly overlooked, but necessary typesetting skill.

digital type tools
Fonts today are vector-based, so a mastering the basics of Adobe Illustrator is the start.

Beyond this, there are a bunch of applications on the market for drawing fonts. FontLab is the big one, Fontographer is the old one with the easy interface – and TypeTool is a barebones student-discounted alternative. Unlike Illustrator, these font tools take into account how letters are drawn, with built ins that make it easy to adjust edges. Karen Cheng’s Designing Type is also a must resource to have.

And I do all my logo drawings directly in FontLab – after multiple sketches in pen and ink. It’s just easier that way.

Shape Type found via Mark Nutini

The work of Amsterdam-based collective Champagne Valentine.

Reel features Stefan Hattenbach’s first typeface, New Global.

‘Screen-printed in Tokyo on beautiful, red Plike paper with gold, white and black inks.’

Just released: Limited edition typography poster designed by Swedish type designer Stefan Hattenbach, set in his own Tarocco Bold.

Available here.

Video for Rui Abreu’s Orbe font. Available here.

‘smooth, subtle, and non-intrusive’

Dan Jones’ brand new Air font. Available here.

‘Designed by Suomi Type Foundry, Titillation is a rounded, tall and modern styled sans’

Tomi Haaparanta’s Titillation font. Available here.

‘Exciting, Neue, Romance! Adventure!’

‘Love Boot’ prints, cards and postcards.

Vintage, repeating playbill poster design featuring type and boot dingbat from my Jeanne Moderno fonts.

And  . . .  Save $10 on your order of $35 or more at my store. Restrictions apply, go here for details/to get the discount.

(The prints come out really nice too)

While everyone’s gone Missoni for Target crazy, Chank Diesel and Anne Ulku snuck a little custom font into this year’s Target Halloween promos.

Details here.

Eyelash typeface by New York-based Amitis Pahlevan.

The newest font package from Brazil-based Iza and Paulo W of Intellecta Design is pure pen magic: A loose interpretation of the work of Dutch calligrapher Jan van den Velde, 1568-1623.

The Van den Velde fonts feature a bunch of stylistic alternatives, ligatures, swooshes, swashes and other strokes that say woooooooo!

Two frilly fonts are available – one with letters, alternates and fleurons – and a ‘words’ version that features a set of customized words to make any decorative communiqué become the domain of an expert penman.

Snag your own thru MyFonts. Both fonts are on sale thru September 27, 2011.

Niedermann Grotesk is my newest font and it’s been sitting in the hopper for awhile.

It became a side project that appeared while I’d been working on my update to Jeanne Moderno (which is Jeanne Texte, which has been in a little limbo due to other projects) (I plan on getting back to it next month).

Along the way I fell in love with types that were part of the German Sachplakat (object poster) style pioneered by the great Lucian Bernhard – a lot of which can be seen (as backgrounds) in their original zeitgeist settings in the 1927 Ruttmann film I posted on Sunday.

Plakat lettering was drawn as needed, typically painted. For my adaptation, I went back to brush – and included a handful of alternative characters, ligatures, plus a few dingbats.

Grab your copy here.

And  . . .  Save 31%! Niedermann Grotesk is on sale right now at MyFonts. Sale ends September 22, 2011.

‘Type is universal’

Typography is everywhere – and as an art form is often overlooked.

There are very few actual documentaries about type – and PBS decided to take on the task of making one. Or in this case, remaking one. Off Book: Type premiered this week as sort of a seven minute version of Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica. Sort of. It IS a new doc, tho it does cover some ground already treaded.

Off Book is PBS’ new online series focusing on ‘experimental and nontraditional art forms.’ For more information, read here. Website here.

Back in the day, Photo-Lettering Inc. was THE resource for custom set hedline typography, odd letter distortions and other custom font creations that were made possible by the new technology of the time, phototypesetting.

Since, PLINC’s original stock has been sitting in a warehouse. Just sitting. With the elements of time eating up the original negatives.

Several years ago, House bought rights to the collection and set about building an online version of PLINC’s original services – where type is sold one custom set headline at a time. PLINC fonts – which included a lot of ligatures and alternate characters – needed a professional typesetter at the helm.

Today, after years in development, low cost custom hedline type is now available digitally at the new PLINC website. One hed at a time  . . . .

PLINC’s original catalogs are now collectors items (From GrainEdit, above) and House has responded with their own funky update (below).

To register for your own catalog, just go here, explore some phototype history and have fun making heds.

plus
Read more about about PLINC’s history here. Need more than a hed? A couple of the complete fonts are available here.

‘inspired by lettering on an antique perfume poster’

Ray and Chikako Larabie’s funky Honfleur font. Snag it free now, offer ends Saturday August 6, 2011.

‘G’day, I’m Comic Jens! I’m a sympathetic alternative for Comic Sans.’

Jens Kutilek’s Comic Jens. Free download here.

‘A short monologue from the perspective of the typeface comic sans’

Filmed and edited by Joe Hollier, based on the McSweeney’s monologue written by Mike Lacher.

Found via Campbell BrownKorbel

‘founded with the intention of providing unique and quality fonts based on a pay-what-you-want model. All designers get 100% of the donations their font receives.’

The Lost Type Co-Op is the brain child of Tyer Galpin and Riley Cran.

Peruse Lost Type’s fonts here. And pay what you feel the fonts are worth.

Neo2 cover. Photography by Paco Peregrin.

Plus, every issue of Neo2 comes with a free font. Details here.

Blog here.

‘in honour of four outstanding type designers’

Spain-based Atipo’s FontFace project.

FontFeed interview here. Store here. Website here.

Jeanne Moderno A. Baby doll tee. Customizable. Available here.

Even more free wallpapers by Arno Kathollnig  . . .

Franz Kafka Trilogy – featuring my own Chandler 42 fonts (with some pointing hands from Alta California).

‘Paul Renner’s Futura interpreted in metal’

Handmade model with engine. Cesar Santos Perez’s final project from my most-recent experimental typography course at Ai Sacramento.

‘inspiring homes with heart’

Magazines are great sources for inspiration. Not as permanent as a logo – or brand – periodicals have a timer on them. After a few months, they’re gone.

A good newsstand is a treasure trove of the experimental, conservative, international, concise, good, bad, ugly. I drop by whatever I can find – even the Barney Noble chain if one is not nearby – just for a shot in the arm.

Earlier this year I spotted Chandler 42 being used in an Australian interiors pub. Alexendria-based Inside Out is using my typewriter type as a nice accent throughout their pages.

Here’s a few snaps (taken in my new home office – sleepy dog in background).

‘For his thesis, Dong Yoon Park, a Masters student at Parsons, built an iPad app designed to teach pros and novices alike the arcane world of typography.’

Details here.

Found via Taxi

‘joining the baroque Serif with the geometric Sans, the formal with the flourish decorative – ARS Novelty is a typeface that tries to make sense of it all’

A hybrid font designed by Angus R. Shamal. Free download here.

‘You can’t go wrong with a bit of Johnny Cash.’

Colin Evoy Sebestyen’s Futura Animated – motion-ready Futura recreated as a LiveFont. Technical details here.

Svend Smital’s Super Grotesk used on the cover of Brendan I. Koerner’s Now The Hell Will Start: One Soldier’s Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II.

Found via The Book Cover Archive

‘My father gave me some magazines from the 1920s and 1930s’

Hannes von Döhren’s Brandon Grotesque, influenced by early geometric types – available in six weights with true italics.

One of TDC’s 2011 award winners. Available thru HvD Fonts.

Dmitriy Antropov’s final project was a Gill Sans maze, hand crafted from foam.

After we tried to actually do the maze (and failed), Dmitriy reached down and carefully removed a small partition – near the bottom of the a – and we were able to complete.

‘escaping the norm’

Just finished up my Friday night beginning type course – and final projects can take any form. Last night, Christopher Gianni-Embrey showed up for class with an old computer monitor.

Inspired by a recent viewing of The Shawshank Redemption, Christopher visualized the word ‘escaping’ using Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic.

Not on screen, but in screen.

The final piece was Christopher’s first ever attempt at model making. It was crafted from mostly found materials. As he put it, ‘driving around town, there’s a lot of stuff people throw away.’

In the process, he ended up with a bunch of dead computer monitors – just in case the first attempt didn’t pan out.

My next Friday night type course is scheduled for Fall 2011 at American River College. Course number: ARTNM 303.

‘Azuro, the first typeface that’s perfect for reading on screens’

FontShop has released Georg Seifert’s Azuro. Humanist in origin, with large counters and oldstyle numerals; Azuro has been tested in all current on screen media, including Apple’s iOS.

Gizmodo review here. FontShop details here.

And Azuro is on sale – 90% off – thru May 31, 2011.

Also check out Seifert’s Graulau Sans, types he started working on while studying at Bauhaus University, Weimar.

In addition to eating pizza, Nick Sherman designs cool interactive stuff.

Over at MyFonts, Nick’s incredible interface is not only for buying fonts, but a jumping off portal for font cataloging and research. At the bare minimum, I like to use my own RSS feed for previews.

Nick’s latest idea: Webtype’s Font Swapper (pictured above).

Type in any (CSS-coded) website, see what it looks like with types from the Webfonts library.