To celebrate the 80th birthday of Wim Crouwel and 20 years Nijhof & Lee Vivid organizes the exhibition 80 20 100. 100 works by Crouwel will be on display. For this Vivid gallery made a selection from the superb Crouwel collection of Frank Nijhof and Warren Lee. A fully illustrated catalogue designed by David Quay (*) will accompany the exhibition.

The exhibition is dedicated to Frank Nijhof who passed away September 3rd. Nijhof and Warren Lee had been planning this exposition and catalogue to celebrate Crouwel’s birthday and to link that to the 20th anniversary of the opening of their bookstore. That plan had been made all the more poignant with the passing of Nijhof; therefore, in his memory, the exposition and the catalogue have been realized.
More on Frank Nijhof on Unzipped.

Wim Crouwel, vormgevers, 1968, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Wim Crouwel is a Dutch designer, artist, professor and museum director. Born in Groningen in 1928, he arguably is one of the most important designers in Dutch graphic history. Crouwel is still active, primarily designing major art exhibitions like the 125 Favourites exhibition by the Rembrandt Association in the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam also opening this month.

Crouwel studied at the Minerva Academy in Groningen from 1947 to 1949, and then in Amsterdam until 1952. In 1952 he established his own design bureau; by the end of the 1950s he started a collaboration with industrial designer Kho Liang Ie. His design for the Benelux Pavilion was awarded the Leopold II Prize in 1958.

In 1963 Crouwel was one of the five founders of Total Design. This multi-disciplinary design bureau was named like this because it was the first in The Netherlands to deal with every single aspect of design in the broadest sense of the word. It became a dominant force in Dutch design, and Crouwel and his colleagues had a significant influence on the national and cultural identity of The Netherlands. Crouwel himself was responsible for many of the posters and catalogues of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1956 till 1982.

Original cover for New Alphabet - An Introduction For A Programmed Typography

Wim Crouwel has always been fascinated by grid based design systems, and this is prevalent throughout his whole œuvre. He went on to apply grid systems to type design and his famous 1967 design New Alphabet in particular; extending the grid to become a matrix within which the characters were constructed. As a result of the restrictions imposed by the cathode ray tube for which they were specifically designed, they consist of only horizontals and verticals.

In 1997 David Quay and Freda Sack’s The Foundry created Foundry Architype 3, The Wim Crouwel Collection; digitizing the three New Alphabet weights, as well as alphabets for the Fodor Museum (part of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), and for the Vormgevers exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, and an alphabet originally designed for Olivetti. Upon the request of numerous users the latter was expanded into the four weight typeface family Foundry Gridnik which became an instant hit.

From 1972 on Wim Crouwel started teaching Industrial Design part time at the Delft Technical University, and in 1980 he left Total Design to be full time professor. In 1985 he became the director of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam and also held the Private Chair Art and Culture Sciences at Erasmus University, Rotterdam (1987–93).

Wim Crouwel’s work is regularly awarded national and international prizes. Every Dutch citizen knows his work but often doesn’t realize it. Throughout the years Wim Crouwel designed a number of postage stamps; the most well known being the stark number stamps which were first issued in 1976.

Wim Crouwel, Visuele Communicatie Nederland, 1969, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Nijhof & Lee new and antiquarian book store was founded by Frank Nijhof and Warren Lee in 1988. The shop is situated in the Staalstraat in the historical centre of Amsterdam. Specialized in books on fine art, architecture, photography and design the shop has become the specialist in the fields of graphic design and typography, with a collection of new and antiquarian books unique for the Netherlands. Nijhof & Lee also carries a large collection of posters by Dutch graphic designers of the second half of the twentieth century.

You are cordially invited to attend the opening of 80 20 100 on Saturday, October 11th, at VIVID Gallery in Rotterdam.
The exposition runs through November 23rd.
The printed catalogue contains 100 designs by Wim Crouwel and an essay by his long time friend and colleague Ben Bos. It has been designed by David Quay and is available at the exhibition, in the Nijhof & Lee shop or through their website. A price list is available separately.

VIVID Gallery
William Boothlaan 17a
NL-3012 VH Rotterdam
The Netherlands
+31 [0] 10 4136321
Opening hours | Tuesday – Sunday, 12 am – 6 pm

Header image: Wim Crouwel, VIVID exhibition Wim Crouwel Fonts, 2002

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After a one year break publishing house Hermann Schmidt Mainz in collaboration with the Frankfurt Book Fair will exhibit TDC 54, the current Type Directors Club of NY show in hall 4.1. booth Q 155. This next leg on the European tour of the exhibition will open on Wednesday October 15th at 5:30 pm with an inaugural address by Ivica Maksimovic, Rector and Professor for Visual Communication and Advertising at HBK (Hochschule der Bildenden Künste) Saar.

You are invited. Printing the invitation graphic found on Fontblog entitles one reader of The FontFeed/Fontblog plus friend free entrance to the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 15th from 5 pm on. Which is a nice offer as regular admittance to this professionally attended event costs €38,-. The fair closes at 6:30 pm, and visitors have until 7:30 pm to leave the venue.

The people at Extensis are launching the “better, faster, funner (?)” Suitcase Fusion, featuring “all new architecture, all new open source technology, all new UI”. From the Extensis Community Blog:

The new back-end means this is not just your average upgrade with some new features. The SQL-database makes it very stable with (much) faster searching, browsing and activation. In addition, a new component – the “core” – is always running in the background – ensuring consistent font management even if you don’t launch the UI. This saves you a LOT of system resources.

Plus, it was built specifically for Leopard and as a result can take advantage of all the whiz-bang capabilities of Leopard: smoother display and high-quality rendering makes the previews truly awesome.

The all-new auto-activation plug-ins are the stars of the production. These are completely re-built as well. Yes, they still leverage FontSense for precise matching and yes, they will auto-activate fonts in linked and embedded objects. But they now also communicate with the core meaning you are have 24/7 activation and deactivation (why would you not put away your toys to keep the room available for others?).

To announce this new version Extensis have produced a spoof trailer for the imaginary movie Bravefont. It begins with the archetypal menacing voice-over thundering “In a world torn apart by so many typefaces, only one tool could keep them together.” and then continues with piling up movie clichés. Alas, the fake promo is far less clever nor funny than it pretends to be, as it doesn’t really gel and comes across as merely a bunch of disparate elements. Furthermore the production values look a bit cheap. Fair enough, it’s just a self-produced spoof video, but it really falls short when compared to similar efforts like the gleeful type comedy Font Conference at College Humor. And if you want to see really funny movie preview humour, you should definitely check Pablo Francisco who met the movie previews guy in real life. But I digress.

And then there’s also that one embarrassing detail, around 0:44. As the voice-over announces “Bravefont, starring Stone Serif, Lucida Blackletter, Gill Sans…” the featured fonts zoom towards you. Except, that’s not Gill Sans. That’s Myriad. Yup, the substitute font that is inserted when the selected font is not properly loaded. In a promo for font management software?

Ouch…

And this is the second leg of our little balancing act we started Friday. As we’re barely a month away from the American elections, it was to be expected that politically charged subjects might pop up, even on a primarily type-oriented blog. We are ultimately part of the world. So we thought it would be a sound idea to post two entries with different world views one after the other, to prevent people from accusing us of any bias. (Hey, is there an echo in here? ;)

I was sent a link to The Hidden Cost of War, a worrying piece of motion graphics posted on GOOD. GOOD is a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and non-profit organizations pushing the world forward. Since 2006 they’ve been making a magazine, videos, and events for “people who give a damn”. The GOOD website is an ongoing exploration of what GOOD is and what it can be.

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is more than 10 times that estimate. The information video The Hidden Cost of War examines what’s behind the ballooning figures. It draws on Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme’s exhaustively researched book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict; which breaks down the price tag, from current debts to the unseen costs the American people will pay for many years to come.

This collaboration between GOOD and Athletics explains the complicated matter in a motion graphics piece of just under three minutes. Using highly stylized information graphics and animated typography in flat cyan, red, grey, and black, it is designed in the shift-rotate-and-zoom style that seems so popular these days. There is no whizzing or morphing 3D graphics in sight. Trade Gothic Bold is used throughout the whole video, except for some Trade Gothic Bold Condensed No. 20 in the beginning. It proves once more that this vintage straight-sided sans by Jackson Burke is a terrific design, a timeless classic that performs very well in varying contexts. The video is narrated by Andy Bouvé, and features “You Can Not Believe It”, by Copy – one of the most unsearchable band names on the ’net – of the record label and art collective Audio Dregs.

See also threetrilliondollarwar.org.

We’re doing a little balancing act today. As we’re barely a month away from the American elections, it was to be expected that politically charged subjects might pop up, even on a primarily type-oriented blog. We are ultimately part of the world. So we thought it would be a sound idea to post two entries with different world views one after the other, to prevent people from accusing us of any bias. ;)

UK publishing house Hodder & Stoughton have published a new paperback edition of the Bible with a remarkable cover designed by Crush Design & Art Direction Ltd. On their website the Brighton based creative agency explains:

“We were set a tough challenge with this brief to create a fresh new look for The Bible and make it a best selling summer read. Our illustrations made this book the summer’s must have accessory for any non card carrying Christian.

Crush was formed ten years ago in Hoxton, London and relocated to Brighton in 2001, but their client-base remains primarily in London and overseas. Founder Carl Rush attributes their success to being “a small company with big ideas and a great working atmosphere; we have music playing, good vibes and work bloody hard putting in long hours”, he admits. Crush is made up of five designers and illustrators working for clients that span TV, music, publishing, advertising and packaging. Their illustration agency AgencyRush got them the commission from the religious division of Hodder & Stoughton.

The idea behind this edition of the Bible was to encourage people who might never have owned a Bible to feel comfortable buying a copy. Whether or not you believe in its content, you can’t deny its significance – even in today’s world – yet many people would probably be reluctant to buy a more traditional looking Bible. Eventually 4000 copies were sold; the booksellers liked the innovative approach and seemed very happy to stock the Bible. Crush experienced a fantastic reaction from the public sending them e-mails, asking where to get the book and commenting on how strong the cover is.

The complete cover illustration without any typographical elements (click the image for a full resolution version).

The inspiration for the cover illustration came from the back cover copy lines. Carl Rush considers them one of finest write ups he has seen, and would certainly make him interested enough to read the book. The text mentions “Mankind’s poisoning of a beautiful world” and asks “The cause of wars and intolerance, or the most important book ever written? How well do you know the bible?” So the idea germinated to conjure up a really contemporary image of the Garden of Eden. On the flip side of the image Crush tried to illustrate the possible “poisoning and destruction of a beautiful world”. Therefore the illustration shows Adam and Eve fat with the overindulgence of a consumer society gone out of control. The trees have died from pollution and skulls illustrate the destruction of the animal kingdom.

Carl Rush admits that the question he heard the most was: “How did you get away with this design?” The studio proposed three visuals and the client picked Adam and Eve – it’s as simple as that. They didn’t make Crush change a thing. Indeed – as unbelievable as it may sound – there were no corrections. Crush just put some more detail into the image and polished it. Unfortunately they didn’t get to add the type as it was taken care of by the publisher’s in-house art department. Carl told that if it was up to him he would have kept a very simple sans serif, so he’s not sure what font they used.

Detail of the cover illustration
The cover is an arresting design. The first thing that hits you are the glowing colours and the surprising vertical division in a positive and a negative mirror image. The illustration style is an unexpected blend of naive art and information design reminiscent of the pictograms developed by Otl Aicher for the 1972 Munich Olympics. Examining the illustration up close reveals a number of intriguing details begging for interpretation. Crush definitely succeeded in what they set out to do – the eye-popping cover looks fresh and inviting. And even if some people may dismiss it as eye-candy, it is damn good candy, and a very effective design.

Via FontBlog.

From the onset it became clear that ScreenFonts a.k.a. Characters On The Silver Screen was a very popular category on Unzipped, my blog for FontShop BeNeLux. This made me decide to add a second category, My Type of Music, which examines the covers of recently released records.

While on Unzipped I look at the covers of albums currently being released in Belgium and The Netherlands, here I’ll stick to the American releases. Again my main focus is the type used on the covers, but you can bet I’ll have my say on the overall design as well. Same deal as with ScreenFonts: when there’s nothing interesting to tell about specific album covers I’ll squarely ignore them. It’s not like I haven’t got anything else to do.

The album covers below are from the first half of September.

The delicate and colourful illustration which adorns the otherwise white cover of Fast Paced World, the fourth album by Canadian folk quintet by The Duhks reminds me of stained glass windows or Art Nouveau lead came and copper foil glasswork. It gives an airy and luminescent quality to the design, and almost makes me forgive the album title and band name set in equally delicate grey – but ultimately uninspired and self-indulgent – all lowercase Helvetica. And I personally would have had “the” and “ducks” connect differently. If you’re going for minimal typography you should thoroughly think through every minute detail.

After having the covers for their first two albums Psyence Fiction and Never Never Land designed by Futura2000, UNKLE have chosen painted artwork by Massive Attack member Robert del Naja a.k.a. 3D for their new End Titles: Stories For Film and its predecessor War Stories. No type to be seen, yet truly mesmerizing covers. See also Shynola’s engrossing – but quite unsettling – video for An Eye For An Eye, with animation based on characters by 3D.

That Lucky Old Sun by Brian Wilson has a slightly off-kilter cover. Which is quite appropriate for this artist. Although I’m not so much a kitsch lover myself, I really love this one, with its vibrant colours and sunny motifs, and the clunky blocky outlined and shaded sans caps filled with politically incorrect bright yellow and blue gradients.

Equally colourful is the globe on the cover of Shall Noise Upon by rock trio Apollo Sunshine. It nicely contrasts with the black background which is crammed with very busy white hand drawn illustrations – lots of cosmic imagery to be found. The refined shapes and sharp serifs of the classic centred Perpetua Titling caps work wonderfully well with the drawings.

It’s funny to see how mainstream pop acts can get it wrong even when almost getting it right. The design for The Block by resurrected boys band New Kids On The Block actually isn’t that bad at all. The horizontal division with black-and-white portraits on bright red and orange backgrounds is somewhat reminiscent of classic crooner acts. Yet I have the same remark as with the Duhks album. By making the type a touch smaller the word groups “New” “Kids On The” “Block” in Compacta would’ve synchronized nicely with the vertical colour bands. Now it just looks wrong as “On The” slams into the third band and the “K” carelessly – and literally – crosses the border. This is again one of those cases where attention to details would’ve made for a better design.

As the collage that graces the cover for Strawberry Weed by Swedish rock outfit Caesars is obviously hand made I can only wonder if the title and band name were actually typed or digitally reproduced with FF Magda. The design, with its faded, crudely cut out family photographs and yellowy strips of text exudes a feeling of tenderness and loss, resulting in a beautiful and affecting cover. A lesser-known bit of trivia about FF Magda – it’s one of those “smart” FontFonts that can be layered to achieve a multitude of outline and inline effects.

Somewhat in the same vein is the surprisingly un-metal-like cover for Lost In The Sound Of Separation by Underoath. The hand painted design looks very arts-and-crafts-like, with the colourful V shapes hinting at an ethnic influence. I suspect the type is either custom-made or a customized version of an existing font; its slightly unbalanced and intentionally awkward shapes reminding me of the heydays of grunge.

The cover for Hummingbird, Go! by Swedish singer Theresa Andersson is also hand painted, depicting a stylized landscape of brightly coloured hills. But I like this one considerably less, and ITC Grimshaw Hand is integrated in the image in a pretty unimaginative way.

I included the next two covers for the photography rather than for the typography. proVISIONS by Howe Gelb’s Giant Sand features a striking image of a woman in a blood splattered white apron holding something that looks like a big dead fish in her bloodied hands. The strength of the picture lies in the fact that both the head of the woman and head and tail of the fish are cropped, thus abstracting the image and lending it a detached atmosphere. I don’t agree with having these humongous painted Trade Gothic characters run over the full width at the bottom, but hey, that’s just me.

And the cover for Sex And Gasoline by Grammy-winning country singer Rodney Crowell looks very rock’n’roll. Not only does he seem pretty dazed and confused – probably due to sleep deprivation, loud music, use of illicit substances or all of the above – but when you look past his tangled hair and feverish eyes you notice the shapely curves of female hips. Yup, that’s one of the perks of being a musician for you. ;) The punk-style typography – Goudy Old Style and Franklin Gothic – was distorted, probably by crumpling the paper and/or moving the original whilst photocopying, so this isn’t Frankie.

I wonder inhowfar the designer of This Is A Fix by The Automatic perused the Barbara Kruger Graphic Standards Manual, as the photograph overlaid with Futura Bold and Bold Italic in a red box looks heavily influenced by the work of American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger.

The cover image for Invisible Cinema is as immaculately groomed as jazz pianist Aaron Parks himself. The earthy monochromatic quality of the picture is very stylish and makes Parks’ face pop up from the background. Above the worn door behind Parks all caps ITC Avant Garde Gothic is combined with Elephant, the peculiar take on British grotesques by Gareth Hague.

The Chemical Brothers go pop art with their new greatest hits compilation Brotherhood. The covers of the singles included in the compilation are reproduced as a checker board of colourful silkscreen prints. It is somewhat reminiscent of U2’s Achtung Baby, but a nice upbeat cover nonetheless.

Like I wrote in my last My Type of Music entry on Unzipped I find Knowle West Boy by Tricky a way too safe album cover for such an adventurous musical talent. There’s a moderate dose of weirdness in the image depicting Tricky wearing a Venetian mask, but the very safe overall composition and big Helvetica Condensed caps don’t really do it for me.

Hey, isn’t this a contender for the LTypI pool? The font on All Or Nothing, the sophomore album for English trio The Subways is Edward Johnston’s type for the London Underground – yep, that’s the British ‘subway’ for you. A-ha! Johnston’s seminal design was originally digitized in 1997 as P22 Johnston Underground. The 1999 version ITC Johnston had the advantage of coming in three weights. Yet the definitive digital version is the recently released feature-rich OpenType Pro family P22 Underground.

BTW I think Brent and Cole would agree this is one awesome image.

Two beautifully designed and illustrated covers in a row. The symmetrical and geometric design Lightbulbs by Fujiya & Miyagi looks like a contemporary take on Art Deco, with gracious sans caps spelling out the band name. Admire the curvacious ampersand. Fun detail: the luminous pattern around the lightbulb refers to the strobe dots on the side of a turntable platter.

And Carried To Dust is perfectly consistent with the Calexico “corporate identity” of having stencil graffiti-style illustrations on the cover. The strict geometric hand drawn lettering nicely complements the design.

I don’t know about this one. I can’t decide whether I find the album cover for Mothertongue by New York composer Nico Muhly a little intriguing, a little unsavoury or a little self-important. TheallcapsInterstatewithnowordspaces at the bottom of the cover makes me lean toward the latter.

I really need to have either my eyes or my head checked. Yes I know the image on Death Magnetic by Metallica represents a coffin shaped hole with iron shavings revealing magnetic patterns around it. For an album called Death Magnetic? Oooh, how original! What amount of research went into this! Nevertheless, when looking at it from a distance I keep seeing a… errr… well… is it just me?

Read more about the fine-tuning of the classic Metallica logo on Brand New.

The Hungry Saw by Tindersticks on the other hand uses an ingenious metaphor for heartbreak which is translated in a low-key but beautiful image, literally carved in stone and written on the wall (anyone know any more clichés?). The type is obviously hand made, yet looks quite similar to the joyous FF Providence.

Jean-Michel Folon gets updated for the 21st century on the album cover for O Soundtrack My Heart, the first international effort on Warp Records by Australian group Pivot. Simple, effective, and drop dead gorgeous.

I just wanted to mention that Hey Ma, the first album in nearly 10 years for British rock band James (a) looks really creepy and makes me feel uneasy, and (b) the band name is set in a customized version of ITC Baskerville – yup, the version with an x-height so big you can drive a truck through it. And the letters on the wooden blocks are Cooper Black of course.

The album cover for Gift Of Screws by ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham strikes a delicate balance between mainstream and indie. The different elements that make up the design – sepia tinted portrait of the artist and classic looking all caps Fedra Sans – are to be expected on a mainstream release. Yet the out of focus and out of centre quality of the photograph gives the design that welcome extra bite. And the position of the type makes it even more interesting – the top of the characters are cut off by the top edge of the cover, part of the type runs over Buckingham’s forehead and hair, and the white letters on the light grey background almost completely fade away. Although at first sight the composition may seem a bit disorderly, I find the typography actually very thoughtful and solid.

Far less thoughtful and solid is Year Of The Gentleman by R&B singer Ne-Yo. We have similar design elements that make up the album cover, but this time the end result is truly disorderly and forgettable. Setting the artist’s name in Helvetica caps is an uninspired move, and let’s be honest, it just doesn’t look good. Fair enough, the album title in Bickham Script is adequately composed, using the correct swashes (which hardly is the merit of the designer as they are handled automatically in the OpenType Pro version). But the way they’ve both been lumped together in that nondescript and cluttered area of the image just ruins this cover.

This proves that to achieve good and readable typography you have to carefully balance the different criteria, just like in a mathematical equation. In both examples the readability is diminished, and the context determines how successful the designers deal with this.

In the Buckingham cover the white letters on light background indeed tend to blend in (negative value), so this is compensated by using large type (positive value) in a simple and straightforward composition (positive value). This in turn gives the designer enough leeway to cut off the top of the characters in the first line (slightly negative value) and use pretty tight tracking and leading (slightly negative value).

Conversely, in the Ne-Yo cover the type is positioned in a busy area of the image with contrasting light and dark elements (negative value). The juxtaposition of the sans caps and swashy script looks convoluted (negative value), and part of the black type is poorly readable against those dark elements (negative value), especially so since the shape and size of those dark elements is very similar to the shape and size of the letters, thus creating visual interference (negative value).

Typography may not be quantum mechanics, but it sure helps to have some basic notion of how mathematics and physics work. ;)

Type announces the Type-Tart Card contest

St Bride Library and Plus International design festival invite you to participate in a design contest that promises to be loads of fun. And even better – at the same time you help support the St Bride Library, London – one of the world’s most important resources for the graphics industry.

St Bride is the world’s foremost graphic arts library and a rendezvous for all those involved in contemporary graphic communication—designers, printers, publishers, journalists, academics and students. Located in Fleet Street, the traditional heart of the UK’s printing and publishing industry, it is a place where anyone from Britain or abroad with either a professional or passing interest in design can meet and where all aspects of the practical, cultural and technical achievements of the industry can be studied. It is also a place of inspiration that has encouraged many designers, motivated generations of students and stimulated numerous authors.

Please help to maintain this vital and invaluable resource by participating in the type-tart project.

Tart cards in a London telephone box © Ritchie Sieradzki (Unexploded)

Design a tart card either for a typeface or a letter of the alphabet. If you are unfamiliar with these things, tart cards are the means by which London prostitutes advertise their services. Step in to any Central London call box and you can contemplate up to eighty cards inviting you to be tied, teased, spanked or massaged either in luxury apartments, fully-equipped chambers or the privacy of your own hotel room. So pervasive are these things, and so curious is their typography, images and copy writing they are now regarded as bona fide items of accidental art and have something of a cult following. Once on the periphery of design, the cards have influenced the work of many mainstream artists including Royal Academician Tom Philips and Sex Pistols designers, Ray and Nils Stevenson. Perhaps they can inspire you too? Maybe Sabon would invite you to caress its counters, or Palatino would advertise its ‘Mega Serifs’. Bodoni boasts some magnificent finials, Baskerville’s swash can really inflict some pain, and Century Schoolbook would undoubtedly keep you in after class. Perhaps you see something seductive in the curves of the ‘S’ or the ‘A’ exhibits dominatrix tendancies. However you see the alphabet there is a type-tart in every letter.

Tart cards in telephone box on Baker Street, North London
© Stef Zucconi (Famous for 15 Megapixels)

• A6 (105 x 148 mm) landscape or portrait
• Typographic, illustrative, photographic, or a combination of techniques of your choosing
• Hand or machine made
• Single- or full-colour
• Side 1 – image and text Side 2 – sign and date
• Supply hard copy only, electronic versions will not be accepted

All entries will be exhibited at the Plus International Design Festival, Birmingham 5-8 November 2008 and the St Bride Institute, London in early 2009; after which the collection will be auctioned and proceeds donated to the St Bride Library. Prizes will be awarded for the top 3 entries, which will be assessed by a panel of judges from St Bride Library and Plus Expo Ltd.

Header image: New tart cards in telephone box in Victoria, London
© Stef Zucconi (Famous for 15 Megapixels)

Maybe we can clear this up once and for all. A Fontblog reader asks: “For the new corporate identity of one of our customers we suggested setting all headlines on posters, mailings etc. in all caps, and using this characteristic to typify the organization.”

Now it has been stated repeatedly that all caps setting is less readable than mixed caps setting. Neither is it recommended for emphasis in text, although here the unpleasant appearance is mostly used as an argument.

Is all caps setting really so poorly readable that one can’t use it in headlines of let’s say maximum three lines, or is the unfavourable effect negligible? Has anybody done any serious investigations on this matter, or can anybody show us any convincing examples where it works really well?

Already 36 comments (in German) on Fontblog.

Header Image: Capitals waiting to be hung on a shopfront on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg
© Paul D. Hunt

One of the most original type-related pools on Flickr is LTypI: Lack of Typographic Imagination (the acronym of course being a nod to ATypI). The Flickr group collects pictures of logos where the name – or parts of the name – is derived from the typeface used to set the logo in. A recent example is Berlin Tegel Airport’s Market Place, as Ivo Gabrowitsch discovered the logo is set in FF Market.

Lack of Typographic Imagination: The David Rockwell monograph Spectacle by Bruce Mau set in Rockwell.

Ivo created the Flickr group together with our resident editor Stephen Coles. If you possess any examples in your picture archives we strongly suggest you contribute to LTypI.

Header image: Berlin Tegel Airport’s Market Place uses FF Market by H.A. Simon
© Ivo Gabrowitsch

My computer woes are over, so now I’m scrambling to make up for lost time. I’ll start posting my ATypI’08 reports and have them alternate with the other stuff that’s been accumulating the past week. Please bear with me while I get up to speed.

My stay at the Rossi Hotel had a few surreal touches. My room was fine, stylishly decorated, albeit a touch on the small side. Some of the staff didn’t master English very well, but they all were very friendly and forthcoming.

The first bizarre occurrence was when I tried to log onto the internet late on Thursday night. This made Firefox go crazy like a… errr… fox, alerting me that the free hotel wifi was of questionable repute and asking me over and over if I was really really really sure I wanted to establish a connection. If I were superstitious or paranoid I might’ve thought this to be an omen for the frying power cord disaster. ;)

Then, wanting to take a shower the next morning, I quickly considered myself fortunate to be neither claustrophobic nor Bald Extended. A person could seriously get stuck in such a tiny shower cabin with such a narrow door! And although breakfast was included in the room rate, we (the FSI crew, not pluralis majestatis) found out that was only half true. Every morning we asked for the croissant, and every morning we got to hear “No croissant, only toast”. Which was served dry with only butter, because any supplement like jam, honey, fruit, juice, et al had to be paid for separately.

Main hall at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace © Victor Gaultney

As usual at the physical registration for the conference we were handed the much anticipated goody bag and T-shirt. Unfortunately the latter only came in large and extra large (Bald Condensed, remember). I saw many attendees who were also quite slim, so I think it wouldn’t hurt to have medium sizes in sufficient quantities. Or ask for the size when registering for the event. The goody bag was a really nice red canvas shoulder bag with several handy compartments, but its contents proved to be a bit meagre in comparison to previous years. Highlights were the catalog for the National Student Type Competition Dedicated to the Tercentenary or Russian Civil Type, and a handy red umbrella. See the goodie bag dissected on Fredrik Andersson’s Typografism blog which switched to English for the occasion. And the names on the conference tags were set large enough, thus minimizing the risk on “no-I’m-not-staring-at-your-boobs-I’m-trying-to-read-your-name” incidents.

After the aforementioned bad news that Robert Bringhurst nor Erik Spiekermann would be presenting, the conference kicked off in earnest with Jerry Kelly’s presentation.

Jerry Kelly presenting at ATypI’08 © Victor Gaultney

Jerry Kelly’s first slide “Type Revivals. Where did they come from? Where have they been? Where are they going?” summed up nicely the basic premise of his presentation. Although graphic designers and typographers are familiar with the concept of historical revivals of earlier typefaces, he questioned how well we truly understand this important segment of type design. And an important segment it is, since according to Kelly it may well be that there are more type revivals in use today than original designs. Determining what exactly can be considered a “type revival” is not a question of right and wrong, but a question of semantics.

Kelly proceeded to pinpoint the very first revival. This was not easy, as there is not much documentation to be found in early type literature. A special type made in 1741 – modelled on early calligraphy – can not really be considered a type revival as it is a facsimile of calligraphy. Another candidate is Caslon (late 18th century), which is the typeface that has been the longest in concurrent use. Yet it was not a true type revival neither but merely a resurrection, as it was not redrawn but made from existing punches. Kelly concluded that for a typeface to qualify as an actual revival it must be a newly drawn version based on an old disused font.

The first genuine type revival was designed in the late nineteenth century by William Morris, specifically for his private press editions for Kelmscott Press. Morris pursued the ideal form of a roman type in books printed by Nicolas Jenson around 1470-76. But instead of merely copying Jenson’s roman Morris attempted to master its essence. He called the Venetian revival his Golden type. Kelly explained that this very first example reveals the four key elements of a true revival: researching the finest specimens available, using photographic enlargements to appreciate the true forms, seeking the essence of the design, and adapting the design for current use (omitting for example the archaic long ‘s’).

By 1900 Morris’ methods were adopted by others, and soon even copies of copies began to emerge. American Type Founders’ 1907 Bodoni cut ushered in the golden age of type revivals which lasted from 1915 to 1990. Classic examples are Deberny & Peignot’s Garamond (1912–1928), the Bauer revivals, et al. Monotype also had its own revival programme overseen by Stanley Morison from 1922 to 1932. The general consensus back then was that the finest type to base your finest revivals on were Jenson’s late fifteenth century romans. Yet Morison didn’t share this opinion, as he preferred the first roman cut by Francesco Griffo and used by Aldus Manutius for the publication of an essay by the Italian scholar Pietro Bembo – Bembo.

Yet the search of the purest version of a typeface to work on couldn’t prevent errors being made in early revivals. Now and then there were mistakes in the available reference material. Sometimes those sources were copies of copies, or even included the odd character in the wrong font. Kelly showed for example a printed specimen that served as a basis for Monotype’s Plantin, and it was obvious that the two lowercase a’s were different. According to him Monotype used the wrong ‘a’ in the referenced original, while Matthew Carter’s ITC Galliard which draws on the same source has the correct ‘a’ shape. The most errors were made in the numerous revivals of Garamond, which led to the peculiar situation that the most faithful one is not even named Garamond, but Granjon. Of course one of the main difficulties is which point size to use as reference, as there are dramatic differences in their design. This can still be seen in the optical sizes of contemporary digitizations.

Kelly called the two most successful revivals Carter’s ITC Galliard and Jonathan Hoefler’s Requiem, although Kelly considers the latter, being based on calligraphic type, not a revival in the strict sense of the word. After mentioning Epigrammata which he holds in high regard, he concluded that there are still enough interesting models to be discovered to base revivals on. It is inevitable that – beside fine modern designs – there will always be room for good revivals.

Having Jerry Kelly go first was an excellent choice by the conference organisation. The conference theme being “The Old and The New”, Kelly set the benchmarks for all consecutive presentations involving type revivals; defining the concept, clarifying the terminology, and grounding it in historical context. He struck exactly the right tone, delivering a thoroughly enjoyable and amply illustrated presentation which was accessible without being dumbed down.

Discussing the ethical aspects of type revivals and the perceived value of type with John Downer (center) and Ken Barber (left) © Victor Gaultney

After Jerry Kelly’s historical observations on type revivals, it was John Downer’s turn to look into the ethical aspects. The subtitle of his presentation – “Type Designers and The Subculture of Freeloading” – immediately set the tone. Downer set out to investigate what is fair game for revivals and what isn’t. He referred to the very interesting article he wrote for Emigre to coincide with the release of Tribute by the late Frank Heine. John Downer did some legwork and made some suggestions for Frank Heine as Heine already was very ill when working on Tribute. Although the typeface looks authentic it is not a strict revival. Downer categorizes it more as a caricature, a parody. The source material was very crude with tremendous room for interpretation, so Heine made a humorous take.

John Downer’s article Call It What It Is sees type revivals broken in two main categories: designs closely based versus loosely based on existing designs; in other words knocking off versus reviving. Downer’s position on the matter is very straightforward: only dead and obsolete typefaces are eligible for revival. What’s more, he strongly advocates the protection of intellectual property being extended to at least one generation. For legitimate revivals the designer must get permission when permission is needed.

Downer then proceeded to show examples of strict and loose revivals. His comment about freeloaders being parasites foreshadowed that his presentation would be quite controversial. With regards to extending the protection of intellectual property he proposed a period of 100 years starting from the original release of a type design. His rationale was that 100 years is a nice round number, and he humorously added that anyone who makes 100 is doing very well. Elaborating on his main point Downer explained that generally a type designer creates his first good typeface at 30 years of age, and has had all his children by 50. So by the time the copyright expires those children are at least 80 years old and have fully benefited from the fruit of their parent’s labour.

Taking the work of Adrian Frutiger as an example, Downer elaborated on the well-known recent case of Microsoft’s application for protection of Segoe as original font designs, which was rejected by the European Union trademark and design office. Who decides if a design resembles an existing too closely? Indeed it takes a trained eye to distinguish the differences, and we need experts to assist the judges in their decisions. Downer repeated that the original design must be cold to be eligible for revival. If the body is still warm type designers shouldn’t touch it.

That’s when technical problems arose, as if John Downer were not allowed to reveal any more examples of rip-offs. The carousel of the slide projector he was using for his presentation jammed. During an attempt to get it working again, all the slides suddenly fell out of the carousel, making it virtually impossible to get them in order again in the limited time that was left. As a result the end part of his presentation was very confusing, with slides jumping from one subject to another and back again. He talked about designers in the eighties mimicking Zuzana Licko’s bitmap fonts, and rip-offs inspired by Arial, which itself is a clone of Helvetica, thus making those rip-offs copies of copies.

Downer ended his presentation with the (in)famous quote by Frederic W. Goudy: “The old fellows stole all our best ideas” and touched upon the unauthorized language extensions of popular typefaces. His statement “Get permission!” was a not to be misunderstood stab at certain Cyrillic and Greek extensions popping up without any communication with the original designer. Indeed those are a shorter bridge than Arabic or Hebrew language extensions, as many characteristics and even complete characters in Cyrillic and Greek are (nearly) identical to their Latin counterparts.

Because John Downer misunderstood the question I asked him during his presentation, I asked again what were his thoughts on type designers appropriating not the design but specific features of popular typefaces. I explained that when I originally saw the extended ligature sets of new type designs by Kris Sowersby and Dino dos Santos, I was taken aback by the similarity with the extended ligatures set in the wildly popular Mrs Eaves. After overcoming my initial shock, I remember wondering if Licko could actually claim intellectual property on the concept of specific letter combinations as ligatures. Downer’s stance was clear and consistent with his presentation – he was adamant that those designer’s should at least ask permission to Licko and acknowledge her as being the originator of this specific feature.

Header image Attendance at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace © Ilya Ruderman

America seems to have a particular habit of designating hundreds of special days in celebration of niche interests to the extent that every day of the year is packed with unofficial holidays and observances. Well here’s one I can get behind: National Punctuation Day. Not only is it purely typographic in nature, it also offers me an excuse to trump my favorite forgotten punctuation, the interrobang. Wikipedia describes it well: “a nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark or exclamation point (known in printers’ jargon as the bang)”. Here’s a little history:

In 1966, Richard Isbell of American Type Founders issued the Americana typeface and included the interrobang as one of the characters. In 1968, an interrobang key was available on some Remington typewriters. During the 1970s, it was possible to buy replacement interrobang keycaps and strikers for some Smith-Corona typewriters. The interrobang was in vogue for much of the 1960s, with the word “interrobang” appearing in some dictionaries and the mark itself being featured in magazine and newspaper articles.

I submit that the reason the interrobang didn’t catch on is due mostly to its design. The smashing of straight and curved vertical strokes atop each other is hardly a graceful combination, and it gets especially messy at text sizes (‽). Were it drawn more thoughtfully like those of Christian Schwartz’s Amplitude and Fritz, the interrobang might be part of our standard punctuation today, a member of the basic Latin character set, and common in our written vernacular.

Interrobangs from Amplitude and Fritz by Christian Schwartz for the Font Bureau.

Which brings me to some other punctuational news. According to the Punctuation Day site, “Punctuation Man breaks with Associated Press, endorses serial comma!”

In support of the National Education Association’s “Read Across America” program on March 3, the nation’s leading authority on helping school children, teachers, and parents learn proper punctuation skills declares that the serial comma should be taught, used, and accepted universally.

Amen. I have long been a champion of the Oxford/Harvard/serial comma and I’m pleased to have anyone, no matter how silly their title, behind me. Go, fight, and win!

Header image: Students at a school in Auburn, Michigan celebrate National Punctuation Day.

And then, suddenly and very unexpectedly, disaster hits. I was feverishly typing notes of the presentations yesterday afternoon when another person using a computer on the left side of the conference room noticed the distinct smell of burning plastic. We immediately looked for the source and discovered the extension chord everyone was plugged into was literally smoking. By the time we disconnected the computers it was too late. All the power supplies had fried.

This means I have only a limited time before my battery will run out again. I managed to replenish it this morning, as Joan Spiekermann graciously lent me her power plug. By limiting the time I work on my computer I hope to be able to continue taking notes, but that’s about all I’ll be doing today and tomorrow.

So, that’s all you’ll hear from me for te foreseeable future. Sorry’boutthat, really can’t help it.

Every year in fall, the type conference crowd convenes at ATypI, one of the type world’s main annual events. Now in its 52nd year, ATypI’08 | The Old and The New is being held in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. The beautiful Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace provides the setting of the conference. As usual the ATypI TypeTech/TypeTools Forum – a two-day event dedicated to font technology – preceded the main conference. I think one day I will have to attend because, even though it is specifically aimed at type designers, it provides fascinating insight into the inner workings of designing and producing digital fonts.

The main conference opened with a keynote presentation by Oleg Genisaretskiy, In praise of the letter, on the evening of Thursday 18 September. Unfortunately I missed it because my plane arrived quite late in the evening and I couldn’t make my way to the conference venue in time. I did however manage to hook up with various friends and acquaintances still hanging around after the reception and joined them for a late supper. The night concluded with an enchanting boat tour under the 500 bridges of the Venice of the North.

St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer 2005 © Aleksey Smalianchuk

On a side note, anyone interested in a personal experience with the city should head over to Jürgen Siebert’s excellent St.Petersburg diaries entries on the FontBlog. That is, if you read German of course, but then you probably read the FontBlog already, so why am I even mentioning this? Anyhow, even if you don’t read German you should Babelfish it and do the effort because it is really worth it, even if some of it gets lost in translation.

On Friday morning a spot of bad news was announced in John D. Berry’s Welcome and opening address: Robert Bringhurst and Erik Spiekermann, two major speakers, couldn’t fulfill their speaking engagements due to personal reasons independent of their will. They were going to be replaced by Roger Black with a talk about type and the web, and Akira Kobayashi relating about his work with two type design legends Adrian Frutiger and Hermann Zapf.

Although I will not be able to do live blogging, I decided I’d cut back a teensy bit on the socializing to try to be more timely with my reports. This will however have repercussions on my entries, because I don’t know if I’ll manage to get hold of pictures or illustrations. If I do though, if worst comes to worst I’ll add them subsequently.

Catch you later.

Header image: Church of the spilled blood in St. Petersburg, Russia, 2002
© Jan Van den Meerssche

The refreshed FontFeed settled into its new home ten days ago and we’ve already received some lovely housewarming gifts in the form of good words from some of our most beloved fellow bloggers:

“As if we needed more proof that they’re pretty sharp over at FontShop. Erik Spiekermann, Yves Peters, Jürgen Siebert and Stephen Coles have launched a sponsored, but independent new typographic group blog called The FontFeed. Bookmarked and subscribed.” — Jim Coudal, Coudal Partners

“(…) this is definitely a site to add to your RSS reading list, or should you be so inclined, your bookmarks. It sounds like it’ll be very much worth it.” — Ministry of Type

“Very very warm congratulations to Yves, Stewf and Jürgen Siebert, (…). Mr Spiekermann has chosen well, but would you have expected any less?” — David Earls, Typographer.org

“It is full of interesting and insightful information.” — anew designs

“Well, I couldn’t pick a better team for a new type website (…)” — bürocratik

“The blog that all the blogs are talking about today: Erik Spiekermann, Stephen Coles, Yves Peters and Jürgen Siebert from FontShop International have set up The FontFeed.“ — Quipsologies, Sep.09.2008 No.23

“Erik Spiekermann (…), Yves Peters (…) et Jürgen Siebert (…), que des pointures, (…), ont montés un blog intégré à la structure FontShop: The FontFeed. Faites péter les flux Rss :-)” — La cuisine du graphiste

“This promises to be very good, definitely one to subscribe to for typophiles everywhere.” — Jason Santa Maria

Thanks for the generous reviews! We’ll do our best to live up to them.

If you’re into vintage paperbacks with illustrated and often hand lettered covers – and you don’t mind some trash and lewdness – have a look at this fantastic gallery of Ember Library paperback cover art. Published between October 8, 1965 – Our Man From Sadisto, the first title published in the famed 0008 series – and September 15, 1967 – The Passionate Pioneer –, almost all of the books featured work by American illustrator Robert Bonfils (he did 93 of the 96 titles).

Having started his illustration career in Chicago in the mid 1950s, Robert Bonfils was hired in the early sixties by Hamling Organization as art director. He produced paperback book covers exclusively for a variety of imprints within the Hamling group, such as Nighstand Books, Leisure Books, Adult Books, Candid Readers and Companion Books and others, commonly known today as Greenleaf Classics.

As cover art on Greenleaf Books was never signed and no records were kept, it was only in the mid eighties, when information surfaced among specialty book collectors, that Robert Bonfils was identified as being the artist of the book covers. As a result it is unknown how many covers he did for this company, but estimates run up to at least 1,000 covers. Most of the original art for the Greenleaf covers has mostly been lost, although a few pieces have survived.

Of particular interest for amateurs of typography and lettering are the titles on the paperback covers. While a few feature the usual suspects – Trade Gothic, Franklin Gothic, Melior, Bookman, Cheltenham, Century, Bodoni, Stymie et al – gorgeous hand lettering graces almost two thirds of those covers. There’s a great variety of styles at play, from chilling terror type over casual brush lettering and poppy sans caps to intricate vignettes. These examples have Rian Hughes, Jason Walcott and House Industries written all over it, three of the most fervent archaeologists of popular culture, and this gallery is a wonderful opportunity to discover some of their influences.

Via Coudal Fresh Signals

Parts Of A Character is a typography project that originated as an educational print, aimed at typography students, created by artist and designer Susanne Cerha of Silo Design, Inc. The print in turn inspired José Rodriguez of JRVisuals to create the public interactive project Type Is Art.

On the website visitors are invited to create their own visuals, using the 20 basic typographic shapes that make up the characters of the Latin alphabet. Those character fragments become abstract elements, removed from their communicative capacity. They can be freely scaled, rotated and arranged to form new and surprising compositions. There is an educational aspect to the website as well, as the different parts of the characters are named and explained at the bottom.

The visuals can be saved to a gallery. As creations trickle in to Type Is Art the most original, funny, lewd, obscure, poetic and majestic designs are featured on the Parts Of A Character products. Those can be purchased via the Parts Of A Character web shop.

This Saturday, September 20th, BBC2 broadcasts the documentary The Machine that Made Us: Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press, produced by Wavelength Films. I believe this to be the first time that people outside the UK will be able to watch it, because up till now it has only been shown on BBC4, and  the online version on the BBC’s iPlayer can’t be viewed if you’re living outside the UK. So program whatever recording device you have hooked up to your telly – especially if you’re attending ATypI’08 St.Petersburg at the end of the week.

Here’s the description for the show, part of BBC4’s Medieval Season, on the BBC4 website:

“Stephen Fry examines the story behind the first media entrepreneur, printing press inventor Johann Gutenberg. He finds out why he did it and how – a story which involves both historical enquiry and hands-on craft and technology. 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. He then sets about building a copy of Gutenberg’s press.”

As always the charming Stephen Fry displays a genuine interest in his subject, and he doesn’t hesitate to get down and dirty, cutting type, handmaking paper and aiding with production of the actual press. Fry’s endearing enthusiasm makes this one definitely worth viewing.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the critics had to say about the film after it premiered on BBC4 on Monday, April 14th:

“this terrific documentary” — Simon Horsford, Telegraph

“a fine documentary … a reminder that television too, sometimes counts as a pretty decent invention” — Brian Viner, The Independent

“the best documentary of the night” — Andrew Billen, The Times

“an absorbing documentary … a winning combination of wit and wonder — Stephanie Billen, The Observer

“Stephen Fry gets Beeb 4’s Medieval season off to a splendid start” — Mik Duffy, The Scotsman

“a remarkable story” — The Guardian