the mehallo blog. beta.

Isla Waite’s extremely heavy, laser cut student final from my most recent experimental typography course. Her research subject was Erik Spiekermann.

No digitally-made drop shadows here.

Type Munching Dinos by Tiffany Valdez.

Tags: design, education, fonts, typography by steve
1 comment  . . .   

Erik Spiekermann was the guest on Design Chat last week.

Archive here. Detailed post about Spiekermann (with additional videos, links and tons more) here.

I still use his Sheep book as my intro text to the world of typography.

Tags: design, fonts, typography by steve
2 comments  . . .   

Part one

‘Fry travels across Europe to find out how Gutenberg kept his development work secret, about the role of avaricious investors and unscrupulous competitors and why Gutenberg’s approach started a cultural revolution.’

Stephen Fry loves design. That’s one of the reasons he’s really cool. [Read more →]

Tags: design, design history, education, fonts, typography by steve
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So I’m pretty much out the door right now – driving down to TypeCon.

And this Thursday morning I’ll be speaking as an ‘icebreaker’ in the Type & Design Education Forum. I’ll be going over a bunch of things I’ve learned while teaching; things that I’ve discovered work very well in a creative classroom. [Read more →]

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

‘I could not be happier about this, or any more proud to live in a city that recognise the importance of preserving this kind of work.’

Vintage signs unearthed and preserved in Copenhagen. Details here.

Found via Martin Klasch

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, illustration, thoughts, typography by steve
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‘Nuit Blanche explores a fleeting moment between two strangers, revealing their brief connection’

A film by Arev Manoukian. Making of video here.

Tags: design, design history, photography, typography by steve
5 comments  . . .   

‘The film’s title is an allusion to Tatlin’s Tower. This animated short by Theodore Ushev is like a whirlwind tour of Russian constructivist art and is filled with visual references to artists of the era, including Vertov, Stenberg, Rodchenko, Lissitsky and Popova.’

Brilliantly done! From 2006.

Tags: cool finds, design history, education, typography by steve
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‘We’ll explore the hot button topic of web fonts; antique type and lettering of the textile trade; the typography of Disneyland; making smart fonts even smarter; the influence of Charles Eames; liquid typography; west coast ‘Cholo’ style graffiti; and so much more.’

typecon 2010: babel
Big typography conference next week in Los Angeles. Wood Type preview in Carson today. Designer talks, workshops, dealer room, font makers, stuff.

and me
I’ll be giving my first ever TypeCon talk as part of their Type & Design Education Forum. My title is Tell Lies in the Classroom and Get Away With It. It will be as weird as what I normally do in a classroom.

Promise. [Read more →]

Tags: design history, education, events, exhibitions, fonts, typography by steve
1 comment  . . .   

‘The broadside is printed on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell, White, 100t. Everyone attending TypeCon 2010 will receive a copy, courtesy of type quizmaster Allan Haley.’

A broadside tribute to ITC’s new Elegy font – printed in letterpress at Patrick Reagh Printers in Sebastopol, CA. The poster was typeset by the wonderful Ilene Striver – who’s managed to talk me into giving a presentation as part of TypeCon’s Education Forum – next Thursday. More about TypeCon in my next post.

More info about the broadsheet here.

Tags: design history, fonts, typography by steve
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Original ITC logotype handlettered by Ed Benguiat, 1970

Elegy typeface designed by Jim Wasco, 2010

“Where can I get a font of the script used for the ITC logo?’ For almost four decades, this has been one of the most frequently asked questions of ITC. The answer has always been the same: ‘You can’t. The ITC script logo is handlettering and it is not available as a font.”

Now it is. Introducing: ITC Elegy. Two years in production, Jim Wasco took apart Ed Benguiat’s original Spencerian-style script and put it back together with updated spacing and a bunch of stylistic changes.

Detailed article here.

Comparison: Elegy and the original

Found via Delve Withrington

Tags: cool finds, design history, fonts, typography by steve
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‘The resulting font is based on the physical movements of two Oregon ballet dancers  . . .  The dancers were fitted with infrared LED lights, which captured their steps in real time as they danced all 26 letters of the alphabet.’

Typography combined with ballet. Details (and final font) here.

Found via Lyndsie Ross

Tags: design, fonts, typography by steve
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