It started with the advice: ‘You have to go back to the broad edge pen. It’s all there.’
Brilliant calligrapher Arthur Baker gave me direction when I first set up my beginning typography course. And I’m still using the same approach today. [Read more →]
The most incredible invention ever conceived by human beings.
These commercials scared the shit out of me.
It all boils down to . . . Helvetica.
JCPenney started as The Golden Rule store – or so said the literature I read as a kid. Wiki says something else.
My mom worked for JCPenney for 22 years and they had a big anniversary in the 1970s. They had wooden rulers with ‘golden rule’ written on them as part of a anniversary suite of premiums. I remember lots of simple yellow (‘golden’) and black stuff, sort of a 70s take on Victorian style.
And I was fascinated with a logotype history chart that was part of a company history booklet. Above is an old photocopy.
Over the years, the company simply became known as Penney’s – logo treatments reflecting retail trends.
The possessive was dropped and the ‘JC’ was officially re-added in 1971 – the year its founder, James Cash Penney passed away.
‘The font is based on the concept of a thin and wide ribbon, bending freely through space’
A new take on the thick and thin strokes of letterforms. Type in your text and a final rendering is fabricated for a fee.
Details here and here. Test drive the Kasheeda font here.
Latin alphabet and Arabic script are both available.
Found via If It’s Hip, It’s Here.
Helvetica on a mug, set in my Alta California font.
Dark brown text, vintage baked enamel-like styling. Great for sweet tea, moonshine, or hell, even prison-grade pruno.
Snag it here.
‘Can a font change the future? On her first day back at the University, a rogue Professor sets out to avenge her missing husband – and the lost art of ink on paper – by conducting a dangerous lesson on typography. When the Professor’s lecture jumps the rails, we peer into a near future where desperate people search for the tangible in an ever more virtual age.’
Futura, as a play, is an interesting concept. It starts with a history of typography lecture – then weaves in its own story about a paperless future.
But is a type history talk good enough to stand on its own – without a play attached? The NYT thinks so. There’s a lot of cool stuff in type history.
The play closed last week, but here’s a few more details.
Found via H&FJ
‘Jean François Porchez was approached at the end of 2009 to create a set of typefaces to relaunch the Conqueror papers collection.’
Jean François Porchez’s beautiful Conqueror fonts are based on some great historical design eras – and are available free via Arjowiggins Creative Papers thru end of March 2012.
The fonts themselves are mostly caps and missing a few punctuation marks – but they also have similar widths, cool alternate characters (such as swashes) and 3D carved versions (as extras) – making them vastly interchangeable. And who knows, since they’re free, maybe they’ll conqueror the design world.
A standard commercial font license applies. Grab em here.
More details here.
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