pretty much me right now. except replace the remote with a laptop.

(Source: katvondevious, via alexmertekis)

13.3.12

Bickam Script Pro

I’m not sure I’ve touched on any fonts with multiple glyphs for each character as of yet. At least not on purpose, but Bickam has a wide range of glyphs, which means you are able to customise each word to your liking, making it perfect and simple-to-use for display type. The first time I saw this typeface (in a Computer Arts sample booklet), there were a good few characters I really did not like, although I was an admirer of the main shape and look of it. For example, I really hated the way the descender of the lower case P massively curved around the left, more like a lower case G’s descender. However, now I have realised it is just one option of a range of lower case Ps, I see the potential of having different glyphs in the same word, or set next to one another.. they can work together, intertwine, overlap etc, and when used well, this can illuminate a word, a create a handwritten feel which is something the digital age suffers from a lack of. One more thing I want to mention is the ultra-italic slant of these characters. It gives the type a really nice flow, nicer than some other script types I have come across, and your eye seems to follow the lines as they are ‘written’, more like a road than a word. The lower case M is a great example of this - up, down, up, down, up, down, and on.

I will try and find a better image of this font though, this one isn’t a great example. Google it if you want some more info.

12.3.12

Fat Face

As it sounds, Fat Face is a chubby looking type that for me, looks best set all in upper case. The huge stems from which the much thinner lines of the letter protrude, seem to be rooted into the ground like an old tree trunk, especially with characters like A, I and T. There is a nice example of its use in the magazine ‘Futu’, in which the colour is restricted to just red and black; perfect for this typeface because of its strength and power, as well as its simplicity.

11.3.12

Brandon Grotesque

An immediate likeness to other similar geometric-style sans serif typefaces such as Futura are obvious, and this follows the same better-legibility responses. As with many of the more… expensive (shall we say) typefaces, each weight is more suited to a different use, for example, regular and light are nice when used for body copy text, whereas the bold and black weights sit better as headline fonts.

The small x-heights gives impact and elegance, and i love how the upper case B (of Brandon) lines up perfectly with the lower case letters. Where upper case letters are used solely, the tracking can be left a lot looser than with sentence or title cases. This shows how flexible the face is, helped by the number of styles available to the user.

10.3.12

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Branding Type

So today I had a trip to YSP, in search of the Jaume Plensa typographic sculptures… but once I arrived and walked around a little bit, I found that they had been taken down around 2 months ago. Gutted! However, I did discover the beautiful branding design of the YSP itself.. and it’s use, especially when in white on a dark background, as with the website homepage (which is kind of similar to my own website design). I’m not entirely sure exactly what typeface it is, but (and I might be wrong) I think it’s an edited version of Helvetica. I say edited, because it has a much more robotic, mechanical feel to it than the rounded, resplendent Swiss type. The Upper case forms are cropped at the edges slightly, most evident in the upper As and Ys, which just give the type that new personality when setting it against any contemporaries.

It also works beautifully on the logo, when set inside the block circle.

Another extra mention to the layout of the leaflet in the top image - which is a fold out map of the park and a ‘what’s on’ newsletter. Really nice design, clean and simple and looks great.

9.3.12

Cooper Black

Legibility vs Readability. This is something I have read about and spoken about in class recently, and this typeface is a very good example to sum this up.

Cooper Black is an extremely thick-set font that, to me, feels like a bit of playdough that’s been slapped down on the table and then stretched into a bit of shape. The fat serifs on certain letters, particularly the lower case b’s and d’s, exist in order to keep the letter from toppling to the side and giving it a foundation on the baseline. It is a very classical, yet very very modern typeface, which is quite strange.

The readability/legibility debate is most evident in the Beach Boy’s album cover design. The use of this font is fine for the logo/album title, but as soon as it is continued onto the tracklisting the use of this type is ruined. For such a fat font, once it is of a smaller pt size, it becomes almost blended into one ‘wiggly blob’ as my mum put it.

‘Some type is meant to be seen and not read’ - Just My Type

This is very appropriate, and is the perfect back up to what I am trying to say about this font. The easyJet logo also highlights a good use of this font - the bigger the better.

All in all, Cooper Black is a very legible typeface, but it is not a readable typeface.

8.3.12

Couldn’t help but carry on from yesterday - this is from the same designer, Ruslan Khasanov. This one in particular caught my eye because it moves. There are a few more amazing examples of his typography on his website though if you want to check them out, they’re well worth a look: http://ruskhasanov.com/8719/home

This reminds me more of smoke, or (and this is pretty specific) during football matches when a bald player is sweating and the light catches it as it evaporates into the air. Again, it is about the form of the letter, and the way it beautifully expands into almost illegibility, and creates these fantastic shapes and clouds that only represent their original idea of a character. 

7.3.12

Pixel Distortion - by Ruslan Khasanov

This is gorgeous. A lot less about the letter forms, and more about the form of the letters.. if that makes sense. This is experimental type - not ‘to be used’, but to be viewed; in effect, it is more a piece of art than a piece of typography. I would love to find out a bit more about this though, because I bet a really simple process has been used to get this effect. The attention to detail shown here is very obvious, with features like the tiny pixels of bright colours that appear on distortion such as this on computer screens, (and i think this is my favourite bit about this type) that only appear when you mess something a little bit too much in greyscale. Some of the other images of this appear to show it messing up even more, and more of the pixels reacting to something… it reminds me of something my old housemate did where he made the image on the screen react to the soundwaves of a song he had produced. (which was pretty cool by the way..).

backdated type-of-the-days coming up shortly. it’s turning into four-types-on-one-day-every-four-days.

6.3.12

Buchstabengewitter by Ingo Italic
(Click title for link to video)

It’s nice that this has a video to accompany it. I think that’s a really cool idea and it brings the typeface to life. It’s not a particularly ‘useful’ typeface, but as a work of art it is great. It’s really fluid and ‘funky’ (i hate that word), and seems as though it could have been created using something like Adobe Flash? Which is strange for a typeface.

It’s also interesting that this is an experiment into legibility of characters - with the amount of curves/lines and shapes that are produced within each second of the movement.. Strangely it would be easier to see each character if the video was sped up rather than slowed down. By speeding it up, the lines become more blurred, and obviously the areas with more lines become more blocked out, therefore illuminating the letter shape more. This video is just about the right speed, because it still leaves some work to do for the viewer, but they are legible.