• Good use of bad words:
  • Why America is [Screwed] Graphically, At Least puts the "graphic" back in graphic design.  Coarse, but really funny.  [Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes] [Update: New video URL thanks to Mark Ross.]
  • Legibility: that’s how I roll.
• Check out JK Keller’s very cool Slitscan type generator for Illustrator [Via Maria Brenny]
• Photography:
  • Richard Roche shares 10 great photos of found type.  I love the "Alaska" boxcar especially. [Via]
  • The Gallery Hotel Art in Florence keeps its lettering on the DL, using bent wires that spell the hotel’s name in a shadow when lit by a spotlight.
• Logos:
  • Dig this "TypeFACE" logo.  (Much better than making an L on your forehead.)
  • This bit of UK pride riffs smartly on the classic "I {Heart} NY."
  • So does the CityRacks bike-rack project logo.

• Font Conference Disrupted by Kidnapper: "In a shocking development, Ransom hijacked the conference’s AV system and interrupted the contentious debate with a threat to Courier and his daughter, Curlz MT."  Deeply, deeply nerdy… but funny & well done.  Check out the video. (I’m gonna look at Futura in a whole new light.)
• Write Here, Right Now: Gemma O’Brien (?) is a true woman of letters.  Now she’s posted the making-of video.  Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark.

• In their Sunday Vintage Type post, i love typography shares more good links than you can eat.  It’s worth a click if only for that first gorgeous Karmann Ghia logotype.
• Hands of Fate:
  • I dig Douglas Wilson’s Vernacular Typography Polaroids–Polaroids taken of mostly hand-painted signs over the past four years all across the United States. [Via]
  • Do great typographers have great handwriting?  Judge for yourself.  [Via]
  • Type seldom looks worse to me than when a faux-handwriting or brush font gives itself away via perfectly repeated characters.  House Industries shows off how automatic character substitution through Open Type addresses the problem. [Via]
• On the Web:
  • Typetester lets you compare multiple typefaces easily.  (This is the sort of thing I’d love to see running in streamlined form as a Flash or AIR panel inside Creative Suite apps.)
  • Ralf Herrmann reviews kerning & Open Type features in Firefox 3 .  (A Web browser supporting ligatures?  I really never thought I’d see it.
• Think type is too easy to steal?  Fight back with a 17.5lb cast iron ampersand. Bam!
• Photoshop type chops:
  • Veerle shows off the use of Smart Filters on text in Photoshop CS3.
  • Create reflective liquid type in Photoshop.

• In their Sunday Vintage Type post, i love typography shares more good links than you can eat.  It’s worth a click if only for that first gorgeous Karmann Ghia logotype.
• Hands of Fate:
  • I dig Douglas Wilson’s Vernacular Typography Polaroids–Polaroids taken of mostly hand-painted signs over the past four years all across the United States. [Via]
  • Do great typographers have great handwriting?  Judge for yourself.  [Via]
  • Type seldom looks worse to me than when a faux-handwriting or brush font gives itself away via perfectly repeated characters.  House Industries shows off how automatic character substitution through Open Type addresses the problem. [Via]
• On the Web:
  • Typetester lets you compare multiple typefaces easily.  (This is the sort of thing I’d love to see running in streamlined form as a Flash or AIR panel inside Creative Suite apps.)
  • Ralf Herrmann reviews kerning & Open Type features in Firefox 3 .  (A Web browser supporting ligatures?  I really never thought I’d see it.
• Think type is too easy to steal?  Fight back with a 17.5lb cast iron ampersand. Bam!
• Photoshop type chops:
  • Veerle shows off the use of Smart Filters on text in Photoshop CS3.
  • Create reflective liquid type in Photoshop.

Letters as shapes:

• Cameron Moll talks about techniques for designing with type characters–creating shapes and illustrations using just letterforms.  "Don’t attempt this in one sitting. I take it back–this is the most important tip. Not only is type character designing extremely time consuming, it’s also monotonous work that requires a constant zoom in, zoom out dance to get things right."
• He points out some cool examples of these techniques in action, including the all-type design for the Seed Conference.  (I know I’m betraying my age & lack of CSS currency, but I’m surprised by the typographic fidelity that’s possible in modern Web browsers.)
• He also points to Veer’s Flash-based Type City, an interactive journey through buildings made from letterforms.  (Lovely letterpress prints of the pieces are available.)
• Related bits from the archives: Bembo’s Zoo is a fun bestiary from Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich & Matteo Bologna’s; click any letter to see it turn into an animal made from letters.  If that’s up your alley, peep their follow-up in the type-based portraiture in Words at Play.

On other fronts:

• Bembo: First Blood is just one of dozens of typographically inspired movie titles. [Via]
• Ever wanted to see the typographic love child of Garamond and Zebrawood? [Via]

• I haven’t tried it myself, but Macworld reviews & recommends Path Styler Pro for creating stylized type & logos.

Letters as shapes:

• Cameron Moll talks about techniques for designing with type characters–creating shapes and illustrations using just letterforms.  "Don’t attempt this in one sitting. I take it back–this is the most important tip. Not only is type character designing extremely time consuming, it’s also monotonous work that requires a constant zoom in, zoom out dance to get things right."
• He points out some cool examples of these techniques in action, including the all-type design for the Seed Conference.  (I know I’m betraying my age & lack of CSS currency, but I’m surprised by the typographic fidelity that’s possible in modern Web browsers.)
• He also points to Veer’s Flash-based Type City, an interactive journey through buildings made from letterforms.  (Lovely letterpress prints of the pieces are available.)
• Related bits from the archives: Bembo’s Zoo is a fun bestiary from Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich & Matteo Bologna’s; click any letter to see it turn into an animal made from letters.  If that’s up your alley, peep their follow-up in the type-based portraiture in Words at Play.

On other fronts:

• Bembo: First Blood is just one of dozens of typographically inspired movie titles. [Via]
• Ever wanted to see the typographic love child of Garamond and Zebrawood? [Via]

• I haven’t tried it myself, but Macworld reviews & recommends Path Styler Pro for creating stylized type & logos.

• Build fonts right in your browser via the very cool FontStruct. [Via Chris Kantarjiev]
• My friend Bryan sometimes grows what’s known as The Beard, a semi-autonomous entity with its own wants and needs (e.g. "I’m not quite ready to go, but The Beard is getting antsy"; "The Beard will speak now…").  This font would be perfect for him–er, them. [Via]
• The Sulzbacher Eszett celebrates forms of what I’ll always think of as "that German Big B thing."
• Say it with me, say it with your chest: I {Heart} Transitive Pictographic Verbalizations!
• One of my favorite artists, Jenny Holzer, projects the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska. [Via]
• Receding Hairline features Ten typographic mistakes everyone makes.  (C’mon, you know you’re curious.)
• Piranha Bar has fun mixing fun 3D-ish text with illustration in a pair of spots for Failte Ireland.  Background is in this article.

• I’m not quite sure what it has to do with bags, but I like the offbeat letter animations at Crumpler ABC. [Via]
• Making things from type:
  • London Kerning: check out a map of London constructed entirely out of type. [Via]
  • I came across this nice portrait in the Flickr Typography Friday pool.
• Historic:
  • BibliOdyssey surveys pretty lace typography.
  • Zeva Oelbaum photographs hidden Biblical marginalia. [Via]
• Design Meltdown presents a selection of sites featuring Giant Type.  I like Citrus7 in particular.
• Check out "Big Cyrillic pixels" from Fiodor Sumkin.

• 7 hours + a lot of gasoline = Fire Poi typography. [Via]
• The crew at Autobahn has created fonts by squeezing out what looks like ketchup & Aquafresh, then digitizing the results in Illustrator.
• I Love Typography wants you to feel the love with their iPhone wallpapers.
• For more love try Times Square and this collection of 15 love banners.
• "Liam Ealone": Give people a type-savvy brush-off with None Of Your Business Cards. [Via]
• My mom learned to type years ago and still uses the numeral 1 in place of lowercase L’s (which evidently weren’t on her generation of keyboards).  Mabye she wi11 enjoy a whole blog devoted to signs written in all caps, except for the l’s. [Via]
• Father and son (?) team paint the alphabet together in 4 minutes. (Maybe it’s because I’ve been up since 2am due to fatherhood, but somehow the result is cooler than it may sound.)
• Argentina’s Sudtipos foundry creates a swatch-rich environment.

• 7 hours + a lot of gasoline = Fire Poi typography. [Via]
• The crew at Autobahn has created fonts by squeezing out what looks like ketchup & Aquafresh, then digitizing the results in Illustrator.
• I Love Typography wants you to feel the love with their iPhone wallpapers.
• For more love try Times Square and this collection of 15 love banners.
• "Liam Ealone": Give people a type-savvy brush-off with None Of Your Business Cards. [Via]
• My mom learned to type years ago and still uses the numeral 1 in place of lowercase L’s (which evidently weren’t on her generation of keyboards).  Mabye she wi11 enjoy a whole blog devoted to signs written in all caps, except for the l’s. [Via]
• Father and son (?) team paint the alphabet together in 4 minutes. (Maybe it’s because I’ve been up since 2am due to fatherhood, but somehow the result is cooler than it may sound.)
• Argentina’s Sudtipos foundry creates a swatch-rich environment.

• The Uppercase Journal features a collection of great-looking vintage typewriter tins.
• Flickr features a “Folk Typography Pool,” consisting of lettering found all over the place.  I especially like the now-requisite Obama imagery.  The whole thing reminds me of how notoriously bad auto body shops’ signs are–a phenomenon honored in Brian Stuparyk’s free MC Auto font.
• Speaking of bad:
  • What results from bad kerning? Keming. Love it. 🙂
  • Apostrophe Atrophy is a photographic collection of bad typography. [Via]
  • That’s gonna leave a mark: Wrong Font Chosen For Gravestone.  (At least it wasn’t Comic Sans.)
• How excellently simple are these Oil of Olay ads?
• Design Week honors the top film title designs of 2007.  Pity that we can’t see them in motion here.
• Peep Craig Ward’s illustrative typography and typographic portraits. [Via]

New alphabets have emerged:

• With his Twenty-Six Types of Animals, Jeremy Pettis uses type for “channelling the essence of the beast.” [Via]
• The Daily Mail has amassed a rather amazing butterfly wing alphabet–each letter found in nature. [Via]
• Ow, ow, ow: if you’re not too squeamish, check out Thijs Verbeek’s Clothespin & skin alphabet. [Via]  (In a similarly painful vein (no pun intended), how about a little Mozzer on your lips? [Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes])
• The Politically Incorrect Alphabet is more cute than offensive. [Via]

Elsewhere in the world of type…

• Fun with cultural detritus:
  • I dig Symen “Enkeling” Veenstra’s lovingly crafted Spam Series. [Via]
  • The Surrealist riffs on the visual language of England’s gossip rags with this tabloid text generator.  (I’m waiting to see a Swedish version.)
• Also hailing from Jolly Ol’ is this rotting London grocery store sign.
• You’ll want to don safety glasses before inspecting these flair typefaces from the 70’s (scroll down til you hit the motherlode).  My wife will always refer to Bookman as “that yacht club font.”  [Via]
• Staying on the them of puke induction, what’s up with the font used for The History of Visual Communication?  Type is a little like wine with me, in that I never feel confident in my tastes.  In both cases I’m kind of reassured when I hit something and can say, “Okay, that’s just foul.”
• Type goes beautifully, organically creepy in this ad for The Spiderwick Chronicles.
• BibliOdyssey features a terrific collection of historic ornamental typography.
• Cristian Kit Paul chronicles Woody Allen’s typographic repetitions.  Apparently the choice of Windsor goes back to asking designer Ed Benguiat for advice over breakfast. [Via]

The frontrunners: Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain.  So says the Boston Globe, analyzing the type treatments of the US presidential candidates.  Of Obama: “Clean pen strokes evoke a well-pressed Armani suit.”  Of McCain: “Everything about this logo says you can buy a car from this man.”  [Via reader Tim]

Elsewhere in the world of type:

• 3Dishness:
  • Nik Ainley (previous) discusses his 3D typographic techniques on Digital Arts. [Via]
  • Nelson Balaban goes in a similar direction with Xtrabold. [Via]
  • John Caserta’s “Dimensional Forms” are 3D foam blocks that can assume the appearance of different letters when seen from different angles.  Check out the video on the left. [Via]
• FontShop has revealed their picks for Top Ten Typefaces of 2007.
• Tania Mouraud goes enormous with How Can You Sleep.
• Were these guys trying to be ironic? [Via]
• The Musalman, operating since 1927, is the only handwritten newspaper in Asia.  The Last Calligraphers tells its story. [Via]

• Years ago, the design group at AGENCY.COM (of which I was part) was treated to a fun and informative talk from typographer Jonathan Hoefler.  He showed & discussed snapshots of type found just in our area around NYU, and in 2000 his partner Tobias Frere-Jones undertook a study of building lettering in New York (see samples).  Now their company (Hoefler & Frere-Jones) offers Gotham, a typeface inspired by the city’s visual vernacular.  The site offers a cool way to test drive typefaces, Gotham included.
• Post Typography makes all kinds of visual goodness, typographic & otherwise.  Dig their Daydream Nation in particular, plus the subtlety of Home.  And though it’s not type per se, I like the look on this little dude’s face.
• OCD yeah you know me: Non-profit Broadcloth fills in letters like there’s no tomorrow. [Via]
• Mark Simonson’s Mostra offers Art Deco tastiness. [Via]
• Oded Ezer’s Typosperma project, designed “to create some sort of new transgenic creatures,” is… well, it’s real different.
• The Atlantic features a video interview with Michael Bierut about typography and design. [Via]
• Want to bump up the grade on your term paper?  Use a serif font like Georgia & leave the sans serif strugglaz in the dust.  (Hmm–I wonder how this applies to what people think of the blog.) [Via]

• Years ago, the design group at AGENCY.COM (of which I was part) was treated to a fun and informative talk from typographer Jonathan Hoefler.  He showed & discussed snapshots of type found just in our area around NYU, and in 2000 his partner Tobias Frere-Jones undertook a study of building lettering in New York (see samples).  Now their company (Hoefler & Frere-Jones) offers Gotham, a typeface inspired by the city’s visual vernacular.  The site offers a cool way to test drive typefaces, Gotham included.
• Post Typography makes all kinds of visual goodness, typographic & otherwise.  Dig their Daydream Nation in particular, plus the subtlety of Home.  And though it’s not type per se, I like the look on this little dude’s face.
• OCD yeah you know me: Non-profit Broadcloth fills in letters like there’s no tomorrow. [Via]
• Mark Simonson’s Mostra offers Art Deco tastiness. [Via]
• Oded Ezer’s Typosperma project, designed “to create some sort of new transgenic creatures,” is… well, it’s real different.
• The Atlantic features a video interview with Michael Bierut about typography and design. [Via]
• Want to bump up the grade on your term paper?  Use a serif font like Georgia & leave the sans serif strugglaz in the dust.  (Hmm–I wonder how this applies to what people think of the blog.) [Via]

Having just stumbled across the crazy-handsome I Love Typography, and having just talked about The Elements of Typographic Style being applied to the web, I have to slap my forehead–again–at my inability to get this blog to look consistent across browsers.  You might think that after 14 years of development, Web browsers would have made all this a non-issue.  You’d be wrong.

I’m specifically irked that I can’t get Firefox to display the titles of posts at anything approximating the correct size.  Check out how they look in Firefox vs. in Safari & Internet Explorer.  Typically it’s IE that gets taken to the woodshed for its standards-compliance, but in this case Firefox is the odd man out.  (Tell me, though, that both Windows browsers’ failure in 2008 to anti-alias the text is just an artifact of my running Vista on a Mac.  Please…?)

I’ve been using Cultured Code’s beautiful little Xylescope app to inspect my pages & tweak the CSS values.  Safari & IE respond obediently when I tweak the size of h3.title; Firefox, eh, no response.  And it’s obviously possible to get Firefox to honor font sizes; the author name on this page, for example, renders the same in Safari & Firefox.

I also failed to understand why the appearance of the comments area would differ between Safari and Firefox (the latter showing the text much larger).  Now that I’ve updated to Safari 3, though, I see that it displays the text as Firefox does.

I spent the early part of my career wrestling with browser incompatibilities, so I know this kind of thing shouldn’t surprise me.  I guess I just figured that, all these years later, something so simple should be a no-brainer.

Tangentially related: Man Against Weasel.

[Update: Thanks to Mark and Fredrik and their super quick & accurate suggestions, I’ve been able to nix the FF rendering problem. Viva the wisdom of crowds.]

• Calligrapher Donald Jackson approached the Benedictine monks of Saint John’s University and Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, with his life-long dream: to create the first handwritten, illuminated bible commissioned since the invention of the printing press.  You can see numerous samples & read more about the process in this Library of Congress exhibition.  The Adobe type guys have been screening a BBC documentary on the work here at the office.
• Experimental Jetset created the "John & Paul & Ringo & George" shirt, only to be "sincerely flattered" by dozens of imitators–many of whom they’ve cataloged on their site . I dig "Juan y Pablo y Jorge y Gringo" especially. [Via]
• In The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web, Richard Rutter attempts to apply the principles of rhythm, proportion, harmony, and more in a Web context.  [Via]
• Campbell’s Soup has created an excellent–and functional–anti-hunger display that uses soup cans to construct (and deconstruct) a word. [Via]
• Sharon Mount’s Tiny Buildings blog is all about her beautiful little creations–tiny buildings created from type-clad bits of paper. [Via]
• The March of Dimes renders babies with type to answer parents’ questions. [Via]
• If you’re looking for retro inspiration, check out Roadsidepictures’s Flickr set of 60’s supermarket signage. [Via]  See also his set of 60’s Polaroids of signs in Washington.

“Trajan Trajan Trajan…”–it’s the Marsha Brady of fonts, at least when it comes to movie titles & posters.  Kirby Ferguson rips hack designers a new one in this very funny video.  Mark Hamburg quips, “If we want ‘cinematic’ UIs, then we obviously need to revise our typography…”

In other typography news:

• A new tutorial promises to teach everything about text in Photoshop. [Via]  I haven’t probed & can’t vouch for its quality.  For more tips, see my 12 Tips for Photoshop Text, which Russell Brown demos & expands upon in this video.
• Jenny Beorkrem makes very cool typographical posters of cities. [Via]
• Rob Rohan talks about Nciku, a tool that enables you to look up Chinese characters by drawing them. [Via]
• Eric Gill: great typographer, reeeal sketchy dude.  I think I’m going to be raising an eyebrow at BBC posters for a while. [Via]
• Jon Tan has put together the Web Fonts Test Suite, useful for seeing the core Web fonts set with varying sizes/styles.   (Baskerville sure has a pretty italic ampersand.)
• Depending on your political leaning, you might enjoy this little bit of typesetting.  (Well, you might just enjoy the clever design treatment in any case.)

• Yugo Nakamura & Keita Kitamura’s Amazetype uses Amazon Web services to spell out artists’ names using pieces of their work.  Here’s an example done for "the Beatles".  [Via Miguel Marcos]
• Marian Bantjes has drawn up a lovely influence map, cataloging the contributors to her style.
• Pentagram’s offering a neat-looking wall calendar.  If calendars are up your alley, see also Massimo Vignelli’s inexplicably beloved (?) Stendig calendar. (Beware the pompous accompanying copy.)  [Via]
• I love the simplicity of The Italic Poster. [Via]
• I feel like pouring one out in mourning for Zapfino, the latest once-lovely typeface to get pummeled by every hack within range of a computer.  (Did it get bundled into CorelDRAW or something? >;-))  In its place, I quietly suggest Alejandro Paul’s Affair typeface (the same one seen in that Swash belt buckle).
• BMW uses a thousand words to describe everything but the driving experience.
• Paula Scher’s beautifully type-heavy paintings are on display in NYC. [Via]
• Flickr hosts a set of images showing spelling via body parts (nothing NSFW, mind you).   [Via Miguel Marcos]
• I don’t speak Japanese, but that doesn’t dilute the impact of this text-centric poster on global warming. [Via]

• Yugo Nakamura & Keita Kitamura’s Amazetype uses Amazon Web services to spell out artists’ names using pieces of their work.  Here’s an example done for "the Beatles".  [Via Miguel Marcos]
• Marian Bantjes has drawn up a lovely influence map, cataloging the contributors to her style.
• Pentagram’s offering a neat-looking wall calendar.  If calendars are up your alley, see also Massimo Vignelli’s inexplicably beloved (?) Stendig calendar. (Beware the pompous accompanying copy.)  [Via]
• I love the simplicity of The Italic Poster. [Via]
• I feel like pouring one out in mourning for Zapfino, the latest once-lovely typeface to get pummeled by every hack within range of a computer.  (Did it get bundled into CorelDRAW or something? >;-))  In its place, I quietly suggest Alejandro Paul’s Affair typeface (the same one seen in that Swash belt buckle).
• BMW uses a thousand words to describe everything but the driving experience.
• Paula Scher’s beautifully type-heavy paintings are on display in NYC. [Via]
• Flickr hosts a set of images showing spelling via body parts (nothing NSFW, mind you).   [Via Miguel Marcos]
• I don’t speak Japanese, but that doesn’t dilute the impact of this text-centric poster on global warming. [Via]

• Swash, meet buckle: Veer offers a kickass belt fastener.  If that’s up your alley, see also their type-spattered umbrella.
• Terri Stone of CreativePro.com has uncovered a number of fun, time-wasting type tools:
  • TYPEflake* lets you create snowflakes using letters, then email the results.
  • The Cake Writing Generator lays down your words in icing.
  • DanceWriter spells things out using bodies in motion.
• Speaking of bodies-as-type, peep Hijack Your Life’s Hand typography. [Via]
• Interested in cool hand-drawn type?  Check out WMMNA’s Hand Job review, with samples.
• Dig the old-school broadsheet sensibility of this White Mischief poster, and the hacked-up negative space on the Howl cover.
• Creative Techs talk about dealing with issues related to Helvetica in OS X Leopard.  [Via Lynn Grillo]
• The Type Directors Club has put out a call for entries for new goodness.
• The latest edition of Type Talk covers proofreaders’ marks and other tweaky but potentially interesting bits.
• Mentioned earlier in the week, the Adobe Design Center featuers an article on typographic design with Photoshop

• Swash, meet buckle: Veer offers a kickass belt fastener.  If that’s up your alley, see also their type-spattered umbrella.
• Terri Stone of CreativePro.com has uncovered a number of fun, time-wasting type tools:
  • TYPEflake* lets you create snowflakes using letters, then email the results.
  • The Cake Writing Generator lays down your words in icing.
  • DanceWriter spells things out using bodies in motion.
• Speaking of bodies-as-type, peep Hijack Your Life’s Hand typography. [Via]
• Interested in cool hand-drawn type?  Check out WMMNA’s Hand Job review, with samples.
• Dig the old-school broadsheet sensibility of this White Mischief poster, and the hacked-up negative space on the Howl cover.
• Creative Techs talk about dealing with issues related to Helvetica in OS X Leopard.  [Via Lynn Grillo]
• The Type Directors Club has put out a call for entries for new goodness.
• The latest edition of Type Talk covers proofreaders’ marks and other tweaky but potentially interesting bits.
• Mentioned earlier in the week, the Adobe Design Center featuers an article on typographic design with Photoshop

• Veerle’s got a tutorial on replicating OS X Leopard’s "inset text" effect via Photoshop & Illustrator. [Via]
• Typographica talks about embedded Web fonts . "The fonts you’re allowed to embed legally aren’t worth using; the fonts that are worth using aren’t embeddable." [Via]
• Thorsten Wulff’s posted a video interview with Gary Hustwit, director of "Helvetica." Speaking of that famous face, check out the Helvetica Mug.  See also Douglas Coupland’s thoughts on Helvetica.
• The Washington Post comments on those text-only Ketel One ads. "My dad started crying, I started crying, my brother started crying," says Carl Nolet Jr., who sounds on the phone like he’s not kidding. "It was exactly what we wanted to say. It was simple, it was black and white, it was genuine."
• Shotgun Magazine features a tutorial on creating a cool slow shutter text effect in Photoshop. [Via]
• On CreativePro.com, Ilene Strizver’s posted a variety of good tips for working with text in InDesign and Quark.
• Michael Perry loves hand-drawn type & has given his collection a salty name.

• Veerle’s got a tutorial on replicating OS X Leopard’s "inset text" effect via Photoshop & Illustrator. [Via]
• Typographica talks about embedded Web fonts . "The fonts you’re allowed to embed legally aren’t worth using; the fonts that are worth using aren’t embeddable." [Via]
• Thorsten Wulff’s posted a video interview with Gary Hustwit, director of "Helvetica." Speaking of that famous face, check out the Helvetica Mug.  See also Douglas Coupland’s thoughts on Helvetica.
• The Washington Post comments on those text-only Ketel One ads. "My dad started crying, I started crying, my brother started crying," says Carl Nolet Jr., who sounds on the phone like he’s not kidding. "It was exactly what we wanted to say. It was simple, it was black and white, it was genuine."
• Shotgun Magazine features a tutorial on creating a cool slow shutter text effect in Photoshop. [Via]
• On CreativePro.com, Ilene Strizver’s posted a variety of good tips for working with text in InDesign and Quark.
• Michael Perry loves hand-drawn type & has given his collection a salty name.

Amidst this whole non–stop Flash fest, let’s clear the palette with a little typography:

• Call him Quinnqueg: Justin Quinn’s typographic art (more here) is inspired by the doomed obsessiveness found in Moby-Dick: “By repeating a spiraling, swirling labyrinthian structure, Quinn places himself in the role of Ahab who continually redraws his charts which travel nowhere and only to go into themselves.”  Oh, and he uses only the letter E. [Via]
• It’s a typographic neutron bomb: Nike France zaps the person, leaving only artifacts & letters.
• The clean, curvaceous strokes of Marian Bantjes swirl through a whole campaign for Saks. [Via Maria Brenny]
• Dig the striking type & art direction in The Economist’s latest campaign.
• In Dr. Copperplate & Mr. Gothic, Armin Vit ponders good uses of the often-abused Copperplate Gothic. [Via]
• LL Tipografia offers some tasty wares; love the little running man in LL SanSiro.
• To create Ballers Delight, Mr. Chank Diesel led 50 workshop participants through some old-fashioned arts & crafts: “Each individual letter was constructed out of beads and gems on small canvas boards measuring 5″x7″. Letters were then photographed and the resulting pics were used for making a thuggish new grunge font with a big hip-hop influence.”
• Speaking of grunge fonts, check out StereoType‘s “Bagpack.” [Via]
• If you’ve been needing Elvish fonts (it’s okay–you know who you are), DaFont’s got your back. [Via]

Amidst this whole non–stop Flash fest, let’s clear the palette with a little typography:

• Call him Quinnqueg: Justin Quinn’s typographic art (more here) is inspired by the doomed obsessiveness found in Moby-Dick: “By repeating a spiraling, swirling labyrinthian structure, Quinn places himself in the role of Ahab who continually redraws his charts which travel nowhere and only to go into themselves.”  Oh, and he uses only the letter E. [Via]
• It’s a typographic neutron bomb: Nike France zaps the person, leaving only artifacts & letters.
• The clean, curvaceous strokes of Marian Bantjes swirl through a whole campaign for Saks. [Via Maria Brenny]
• Dig the striking type & art direction in The Economist’s latest campaign.
• In Dr. Copperplate & Mr. Gothic, Armin Vit ponders good uses of the often-abused Copperplate Gothic. [Via]
• LL Tipografia offers some tasty wares; love the little running man in LL SanSiro.
• To create Ballers Delight, Mr. Chank Diesel led 50 workshop participants through some old-fashioned arts & crafts: “Each individual letter was constructed out of beads and gems on small canvas boards measuring 5″x7″. Letters were then photographed and the resulting pics were used for making a thuggish new grunge font with a big hip-hop influence.”
• Speaking of grunge fonts, check out StereoType‘s “Bagpack.” [Via]
• If you’ve been needing Elvish fonts (it’s okay–you know who you are), DaFont’s got your back. [Via]

"When I hear ‘The 70’s’, I reach for my gun…"

I picked up a 1974 Car & Driver at a vintage goods store a few years ago, and after thumbing through the pages, I wanted to put my head in an oven.  Honestly, I have to thank my parents for letting me miss most of that godforsaken decade, beset as it was by Bookman Swash, brownness, and gas shortages.

Ah, but maybe things weren’t quite that bad.  Gene Gable presents a tour of 70’s typography*, showing the ways that evolving technology enabled new type treatments.  Check out part 2 for more horrific excellence.

In the vein of type treatments that cry out for a greasy bass line (or maybe an acid rock riff), peep these others I’ve stumbled across:

• Oscar Wilson; more here.
• Eduardo Recife [Via]
• The Tagtool blog ("Una noche de raw beats!")
• Wu-Tang Clan, as rendered for Scion

* Hey, is that the Photoshop family logo? >;-)

Time for another typographic gathering:

• The NYT includes a really interesting piece about the development of Clearview, a new typeface for road signs.  Typographica.org has a bit more.  (Tangentially related at best, but fun: Something Awful features a Photoshop contest for creating offbeat road signs.  Viva the Invincible Moose! [Via])
• Adobe has announced Font Folio 11, offering more than 2,300 fonts from the Adobe Type Library in OpenType format, includes 176 new fonts.  Here’s more info.
• CreativePro.com’s got tips on importing text into various Adobe apps.
• The past:
  • Sam Potts points out cool antique trunk labels. [Via]
  • Jon Hicks notes a vintage Typography photo set on Flickr.[Via]
  • John Downer, creator of the great Brothers typeface, has produced the similarly sturdy Iowan.
• The future:
  • Wired’s Geekdad section talks about how to help kids make their own fonts.
  • The subtly curvaceous Subtil has won the Type Directors Club 2007 competition. [Via]
  • Comic Sans is not your friend; thus spake John Stossel on graphic design [Via Anne-Marie Concepcion]
• The quick:
  • Dave Shea has gathered nice examples of type in motion.  Dig the Ocean’s 11 one in particular. [Via]
• The dead:
  • Skull-a-day blog has posted a groovy (and not so hellish) free skull font. [Via]

Time for another typographic gathering:

• The NYT includes a really interesting piece about the development of Clearview, a new typeface for road signs.  Typographica.org has a bit more.  (Tangentially related at best, but fun: Something Awful features a Photoshop contest for creating offbeat road signs.  Viva the Invincible Moose! [Via])
• Adobe has announced Font Folio 11, offering more than 2,300 fonts from the Adobe Type Library in OpenType format, includes 176 new fonts.  Here’s more info.
• CreativePro.com’s got tips on importing text into various Adobe apps.
• The past:
  • Sam Potts points out cool antique trunk labels. [Via]
  • Jon Hicks notes a vintage Typography photo set on Flickr.[Via]
  • John Downer, creator of the great Brothers typeface, has produced the similarly sturdy Iowan.
• The future:
  • Wired’s Geekdad section talks about how to help kids make their own fonts.
  • The subtly curvaceous Subtil has won the Type Directors Club 2007 competition. [Via]
  • Comic Sans is not your friend; thus spake John Stossel on graphic design [Via Anne-Marie Concepcion]
• The quick:
  • Dave Shea has gathered nice examples of type in motion.  Dig the Ocean’s 11 one in particular. [Via]
• The dead:
  • Skull-a-day blog has posted a groovy (and not so hellish) free skull font. [Via]

• Sam Potts sets cool type (“All projects 100% Times Roman-free,” he promises).  Check out his designs for pal John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise; the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.; and more.  Sam was kind enough to let me pick his brain at his studio in NY last week.  While we were talking, a shipment of Gmund paper (made in Germany from recycled beer bottle labels) arrived. “I’ll sleep with this paper,” he said, “if it’ll have me…” [Via Maria Brenny]
• Giant typography as high school prank: The students of Davidson punk rivals Darby via sabotaged flip cards. The stunt echoes the Great Rose Bowl Hoax of 1961.
• Take care when you rotate type, or you might end up with something like the WTF Mac Store. [Via].  Elsewhere in the Dept. of Signs Begging to be Misread, my wife remembers two signs in stairwell in Seattle right next to one another: one for “Gary’s Den” (the words stacked) and the other for “Rage” (some sort of boutique). With no distinction in background color it read as “Gary’s Rage Den”.
  “Every single time I stood in line at the Neptune,” she says, “I replayed the same line of questioning in my head about angry, angry Gary and his need for a Rage Den.”
• A bit of historical fun: the NYT features an image of the Women’s Typographical Union aboard a float in 1908.
• FontShop’s magazine devoted to all things typographic has a new issue, Font 006, cruising through the snail mail system.  Previous issues are online on the site. [Via]
• Steve Patterson has produced a nice, approachable tutorial on creating faux 3D text in Photoshop.  The cheese factor is refreshingly low.
• Typographica list their Favorite Fonts of 2006. [Via]

• In Words Are Pictures, Craig Ward creates beautiful type treatments.  I especially like his A-Z ligatures and Lucha Libre. [Via]
• The Photoshop Roadmap blog pulls together tutorials for The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web.  "This guide includes 78 Photoshop tutorials and 2 impressive collections of Photoshop Actions, plus 3 books on the subject." [Via]
• Digital Arts features a tutorial on making 3D type using Photoshop plus a 3D app.  I continue to look forward to a developer packaging simple 3D creation tools (extrusion, lighting, warping, etc.) as a plug-in for Photoshop Extended, so that all this stuff can be done in one place while staying re-editable. [Via]
• Type purists might squirm a bit, but Macworld offers advice on bulking up your font collection quickly & affordably.

• Cartype is "a comprehensive collection of reviews and study of typographical applications of emblems, car company logos and car logos."  I love the richness of visual & historical detail (e.g. check out the Alfa Romeo page).  Semi-related/previous: Logotypes.ru, which offers downloadable vector logos (perfect for tattoo-making ;-)).
• Russell Brown has created a "Dancing with Type" tutorial, showing how to wring some good stuff out of Photoshop’s type-on-a-path features.  (Forgot about those, did you?  Everyone does!)  Previously: Russell’s 16 Tips for Photoshop Type.
• This "Claire/Dave" ambigram is really nicely executed.
• The Yazigi Language School promotes itself through drawings made from text.
• With Blaktur you can almost taste the blood sausage. [Via]
• Type foundry Tiro (featured in the latest Adobe Magazine) offers a beautiful specimen sheet of their lovely Plantagenet face.
• For hot T’s-on-tee’s action, check out Skreened’s shirts. [Via]

• On Slate, famous authors discuss their favorite fonts.  As expected, they can wax entertainly rhapsodic about typefaces.  But Courier?  Yes, well, I guess it’s not distracting anyone with its raw beauty.
• Thomas Phinney has posted tons of info from the recent TypoTechnica conference, including Adobe’s presentations at the show.
• Body Type catalogs "intimate messages etched in flesh." [Via]
• The latest installment of TypeTalk offers useful tips on word spacing, unit differences between Quark & InDesign, and more.
• Kerrang! Dig a whole site’s worth of Comic Book Fonts. [Via]
• Ever wonder what typeface a particular company uses?  Here’s a handy list.  One addition from personal experience: British Airways uses Mylius.  (Of course, the list being a Wiki, I should probably just add that…) [Via]

• On Slate, famous authors discuss their favorite fonts.  As expected, they can wax entertainly rhapsodic about typefaces.  But Courier?  Yes, well, I guess it’s not distracting anyone with its raw beauty.
• Thomas Phinney has posted tons of info from the recent TypoTechnica conference, including Adobe’s presentations at the show.
• Body Type catalogs "intimate messages etched in flesh." [Via]
• The latest installment of TypeTalk offers useful tips on word spacing, unit differences between Quark & InDesign, and more.
• Kerrang! Dig a whole site’s worth of Comic Book Fonts. [Via]
• Ever wonder what typeface a particular company uses?  Here’s a handy list.  One addition from personal experience: British Airways uses Mylius.  (Of course, the list being a Wiki, I should probably just add that…) [Via]

• Beautiful type specimen books from the 1920’s appear in this Flickr photo set. [Via]
• Tiny type–from cuneiform tablets to spies’ microdots–is on display in Cabinet Magazine’s A Minor History of Miniature Writing [Via]
• Michael Bierut offers Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface, naming various ways to choose the right font. [Via]
• Aiming to make Web typography suck less, Jon Hicks (designer of the Firefox logo, among other things) has created a quick, useful primer on Web type. He’s provided related links as well.

• Beautiful type specimen books from the 1920’s appear in this Flickr photo set. [Via]
• Tiny type–from cuneiform tablets to spies’ microdots–is on display in Cabinet Magazine’s A Minor History of Miniature Writing [Via]
• Michael Bierut offers Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface, naming various ways to choose the right font. [Via]
• Aiming to make Web typography suck less, Jon Hicks (designer of the Firefox logo, among other things) has created a quick, useful primer on Web type. He’s provided related links as well.

Time for another round up of interesting typographical bits:

• Creative Suite 3 ships with quite a few fonts.  Thomas Phinney lists ’em here.
• The type designers at Vier5 are adamant that "you cannot work with modern pictures and at the same time use the typefaces of the last 50 years. The time for these typefaces is gone," and that only their new designs will suffice. The commentariat at Design Observer promptly takes ’em to the woodshed.
• I came across a short & interesting video on letterpress printing–worth a look despite the terribly mannered speaking style. [Via]
• A panel discussion at SXSW is captured in this podcast on why "Web typography sucks" [Via] . [Update: the presentation slides are here (thanks, Thomas).]
• Hoping to counter the suckage, CSS Zen Garden presents Tips for Timeless Type . It’s funny: we’ve come so far from when I started on the Web (tsk tsking at print designers who asked me to change the leading of body copy), and yet I still can’t get the point sizes on this blog to look consistent in Firefox vs. Safari & IE.
• CreativePro features a piece about opening up to OpenType–leveraging the power of this very rich format.  Scroll to the bottom for a quick visual demo of the power of alternate characters in punching up a type treatment–something I put to good (hopefully not gratuitous) use on the programs for our wedding.
• Ever wonder what comic book onomatopoeia would look like in Arabic?  (Who hasn’t, I know.) Wonder no more. [Via]
• The edict not to "risk sounding ridiculous" in various languages is illustrated through word balloons.  Hopefully when me talk German one day, I sounded a bit better than this. [Via Dirk Meyer]
• Think setting type on a computer can be a drag? Your ancestors faced tuberculosis & lead poisoning, not to mention death by Grape-Nuts.

In the wake of those great nautical posters, check out this collection of historic fruit crate art. It’s tough to name faves, though I really like Dynamo Apples and these double A’s & arrow.  I suppose Gay Johnny would resonate a little differently nowdays, though. [Via]

On an unrelated typographic note, if you’re having trouble identifying a font, you might find this Flickr group useful. [Via] Oh, and see also What The Font.  (Me, I just cheat and bug Tom Phinney ("I’ll trade you a Glyphs palette for six correct font ID’s…").)

//na// Savory type bits:

• Flickr is hosting a collection of 19th-century shipping posters, decked out in beautiful typography.  I wonder whether the Kingfisher (most thrilling billed?) knows this "15ft penguin." [Via]
• The AdGoodness blog spied a neat ambiform DND sign.  (More on ambigrams is here).
• "Akzidenz Grotesk, you’ve got me possessed…"  Eh, clearly, to the point of someone making a video complete with custom sountrack.  Personally, I’m holding out for an ode to Officina. [Via] (See also the Helvetica Movie.)
• Update: Those math-y Google nerds aren’t the only ones who can geek out hard with a recruiting ad: the folks at Lunar BBDO took a chance by typesetting posters in a dingbat font.  Check out the story for more examples of their work, and scroll to the end for a little challenge.

That’s the question on Sam Jackson’s mind in this little (and profane) typographic study.  See also a second, apparently independent take on the same idea. [Via]  On other typographic notes:

• Julien Vallee does distressed letters in this little stop-motion piece. [Via]
• Should you ever need to get your M*A*S*H on, here’s a useful collection of free stencil fonts. [Via]
• By the way, some folks have been meaning to ask: what kind of font are you?
• The latest CreativePro.com type column covers some good basics (widows & orphans, InDesign’s composition options, making Open Type fonts, etc.).
• See the typography category here for many more bits.

Author & Photoshop TV personality Dave Cross shares a wealth of tips for working with text in Photoshop in a 10-page PDF on CreativePro.com.   The chapter (excerpted from Dave’s book) gives succinct answers to a variety of questions (how to fill type with a texture, how to insert a copyright symbol, when to update type layers, etc.) and should be worth printing out for future reference.

For more tips, see my 12 Tips for Photoshop Text, which Russell Brown demos & expands upon in this video.  For more type bits, see the Typography category of this blog.  And while I’ve got your ear:

• Veer says, "Next time you have to explain kerning to a layman, you’ll have a live demo just a zip away"–and with the sweater they’re offering, they’re right.   Nice. 🙂
• CreativePro has also launched TypeTalk, a monthly Q&A on typography.  If you wonder things like which direction the apostrophe should face before "’70’s," for example–and yes, I do–the column should be a good read.