the mehallo blog. beta.

The Making of a Type Sample from FontShop on Vimeo

Once a font is completed, showing the letters and glyphs in their best light is a tricky exercise. FontShop does it right and in this video shows some of the decisions made when creating a good type sample – in this case, the sample for Matthew Carter’s beautiful Miller typefaces, which I used for The Sacramento Union Magazine.

In the 1800s, type foundries used to set their samples in Latin – following the belief that our alphabet looks best in its original language. Marcus Tullius Cicero’s first speech against Lucius Sergius Catilina (below) was popular for samples.

Today, graphic designers use Lorem Ipsum for placeholder text.

Robert Thorne’s Fat-Face type sample, 1821

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, fonts, typography by steve
3 comments  . . .   

Paperbag Parachute by Lois van Baarle; print available here
Follow the Paperbag Parachute blog here
 

From a conversation on Facebook  . . .

Laura Hohlwein:
you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Chris Demas:
Wait no, im pretty sure you are the only one.

Laura Hohlwein:
ha. yeah. could be.

Steve Mehallo:
Nope. There’s more of us. And if you think we’re freaks, you’re right. But we know how to change the world. We invented the ipod, aerosol cheese, disco and the escalator. See if you can do that you non-dreamers you!
 

Escalator, Osaka City, Japan; details here

Tags: art, cool finds, illustration, thoughts by steve
1 comment  . . .   

Artois Le Passage from ilovetypography.com on Vimeo

Tags: cool finds, culinary, design, typography by steve
Comments Off on Beer and typography

Recipe here.

Tags: cool finds, culinary, flom by steve
Comments Off on Spam Viagra

crazy tasty
is an actual Registered Trademark owned by Hormel Foods, LLC and is used exclusively with their SPAM (all caps) product.

No stealin.

Tags: culinary, flom, thoughts by steve
Comments Off on Like, crazy

As I write this, there are 2,728 items in my spam folder; most of them involve some form of penis renovation, ‘The Big Pink,’ ‘urgent and confidential business’ inquiries from deposed royal family members that need my help – and on my blog, 2,201 spam posts sitting in what I call my ‘hey asshole, don’t spam my blog’ folder.

Designer Floyd Hayes has decided to turn annoying spam into money – for a good cause. Since a lot of spam is about freaky misspelled sex stuff, every four weeks Hayes will be issuing the best subject lines as buttons and donate all the profits to a sexual health charity. Details here.

Oh and wait – ‘The Big Pink’ is actually a cool new band, it’s an email I’m actually subscribing to. Here’s their debut album, A Brief History Of Love. Drops September 22nd.

I really wish spam filters worked better.

Buttons found via PSFK

Tags: cool finds, design, fashion, thoughts by steve
4 comments  . . .   

‘Le Grand Content examines the omnipresent Powerpoint-culture in search for its philosophical potential. Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand ‘association-chain-massacre’ which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more.

‘Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emotions and hamsters.’

For more about the work of Clemens Kogler, go here.

Tags: cool finds, design, education, thoughts by steve
2 comments  . . .   

‘To mark the return to sanity, The New York Times asked four graphic designers to imagine a new warning system. Their designs range from the cheeky to the possibly useful. Kurt Andersen provides commentary and explains why the current system is a joke.’ -Andrew Price, GOOD

Legendary SPY magazine was one of my favorites – and founding editor Kurt Andersen is still making snarky commentary. Click either the image or the quote link to read more.

For more from Kurt, check out his weekly radio program Studio 360 and ‘Get inside the creative mind.’

And for the record, I am really glad the Obama administration recognizes the value of good graphic design. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside just knowing this.

Found via GOOD

Tags: cool finds, design, education, thoughts by steve
Comments Off on Redesinging the threat level

San Francisco is a beautiful city.

But there is a dark, very visible problem – one that frames our current national Health Care debate. The problem stems from what has been the traditional US approach: It’s not even happening or We wish all that would just go away.

For the rest of the country, it can be adapted to the acronym: NIMBY. It’s Not In My Backyard so it doesn’t exist. Or: we don’t see it in our backyard, so it’s not actually there.

Danish band Mew was in SF recently and guitarist Bo Madsen posted a simple but poignant observation on their MySpace blog. Here’s the text: [Read more →]

Tags: design, education, thoughts by steve
4 comments  . . .   

Some photos I snapped at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco.

Tags: photography, thoughts by steve
1 comment  . . .   

Check out Joe Kral’s Flickr collection of some of Penguin (and Pelican)’s best cover designs.

And  . . .  check out Phil Baine’s Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005.

Found via LifeClever

Tags: cool finds, design history, illustration, publication design by steve
2 comments  . . .