Typography

How creative can you get with fonts and typography? Here is a short list of interesting illustrations made of text and different fonts.

Typography in Motion from ilovetypography.com on Vimeo.

Created by Ellen Lupton & Co.

In 1994, Paula Scher was commissioned to create a new identity and promotional graphics system for The Public Theater. 15 years on, and the design has been honoured by the Art Directors Club.

Pentagram squeezed 300 pieces of Public design work into a 45 second video collage (shown above). Via Logodesignlove.

Great article from the Creative Review about one of the most original design companies of the modern era. As a company name, the Designers Republic was a masterstroke. This mysterious entity sounded big and well organised and it had the air of being an outfit with a purpose and a plan. There was nothing modest or retiring about such a moniker and 1986, the year they started, was a good time for a designer to make this kind of statement.

Back then, mainstream design groups tended to have prosaic, ad agency type names such as Smith & Milton, Lewis Moberly and The Partners. Designers calling themselves Assorted Images, Rocking Russian or 23 Envelope invariably worked for the music business, their handles as weird and unlikely as the rock groups their cover art represented.

The Designers Republic went a step further, the very name a declaration that in this territory design was the administra­tion, the ruling party, the occupying power. Wherever or whatever this republic might be, it sounded like a bolt-hole for people whose one true purpose and satisfaction was design.

Finding out that tDR were based in Sheffield only thickened the mystery. They had no plans to leave the city, they said, and they stuck to their guns. People still asked them about this long after it had ceased to be an issue, but in the late 1980s there were few designers with national reputations operating outside the capital. Attracted by Sheffield’s thriving music scene and bands such as Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League, Ian Anderson had left London in the early 1980s to study philosophy at Sheffield University. He liked the pub and club culture, made friends and put down roots. Read more. 

Also see this other Creative Review article: The Designers Republic Remembered.

Via Abduzeedo

"Many of you will have heard of Kris Sowersby, and something tells me that we’re going to be hearing a lot more about him. He’s the guy behind the sans serif typeface National and the serif typeface Feijoa; he was also on the team of three that created (perhaps type of the year?) FF Meta Serif."

Via ilovetypography.com

Highly recommended font management software, FontExplorer® X has a simple but powerful interface (reminiscent of iTunes). The mac version is available for download but the pc version has been in Beta testing for over 6 months and the new version is yet to be made public.

Like many other countries (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia, Spain, The Netherlands ), New Zealand uses the FHWA Series (often informally referred to as Highway Gothic) developed by the United States Federal Highway Administration. Roadgeek Fonts - Get freeware versions, created by Mike Adams. British signs utilised Transport, free versions are available here. Find out more about road sign typography on Wikipedia.