Subscribe here
The nice people at Veer are offering one of these amazing KERN zip up tops (worth £69) for FREE when you buy any image or typeface from veer.com. That's a fab offer. I've had mine for a few days now and have enjoyed explaining it to everyone I meet.
Brilliant. And you could probably do with some new fonts.
Tom has a written a great little summary of examples of text in the world. Take a look, lots of good stuff like this.
Lauren sent me this lovely thing in the post which I'm only just getting round to sticking up here.
WARNING: These photos aren't as nice as the ones AceJet takes.
It's from an exhibition Tobias Frere-Jones held in Melbourne of his collection of photos of NYC signage. It's fucking gorgeous.
Since 2002 he's been documenting the lettering of NYC. Here's a pixelly explanation here.
Lovely stuff. Thanks Lauren.
That's a bit blurry because I've enlarged the picture below. The picture below is the scene, the picture above is how my Design Disease mind framed it.
If you think this, you should be taken outside and shot.
Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008 is a publication that's been dropping through letter boxes over the last few days.
Russell and I thought it would be interesting to take some stuff from the internet and print it in a newspaper format. Words as well as pictures. Like a Daily Me, but slower. When we discovered that most newspaper printers will let you do a short run on their press (this was exactly the same spec as the News Of The World) we decided to have some fun.
We only printed 1,000 and they're all individually hand numbered.
In this post I'd like to elaborate on the design of it and explain some things I learned during the process.
From the outset there were two things I wanted to avoid.
Firstly I wanted to avoid a pastiche of a newspaper, complete with a crossword and a weather section. I hate stuff like that.
Secondly I wanted to avoid looking it like a newspaper that a designer had been let loose on. Graphics every-fucking-where. Something you might see from a bad brand. There's one out at the moment from Lush that betrays the format. Horrible and ugly.
Not our newspaper, no, no, no.
But I wanted to make use of the familiarity of the newspaper format and the vernacular.
It's notoriously hard to design something from a complete blank canvas. No house style, no corporate fonts, no brand colours, nothing. So I tried to make life easy for myself wherever possible. We call this reducing the enemies. To me this is what good design is about, reducing the enemies.
The brief was to be able to read it in bed without glasses on. So I wanted the type to biggish and nice and clear. No Ray Gun typography around here. You remember, readable.
I looked around for typographic styles I liked. In the ideal world it would be law that all books have to state what font they're set in on the inside cover. In reality this doesn't happen much. Much less than you imagine. Even design books don't say very often. I settled on Plantin because that's what Monocle use. 9 on 11. Simple, classic and reliable.
I chose a 5 column grid becuase that seems to be the grid used by most good looking European newspapers these days. Although I was tempted by Hayman and Scher's 6 column Khaleej Times.
I wanted one type style across the whole paper for body copy, but I wanted to have some fun with the headlines. On most of these I've tried to add a little typographic humour or cute reference (which is kind of why I chose Monocle's Plantin for the body copy).
For example the headline for Mad Men: Pitch Perfect is set in Futura because that was one of the only fonts around at the time the series was set. (Remember the furore last year when it was pointed out that most of the fonts used in the programme wouldn't have existed at the time?). I set the headline for Matt Jones' article in the Dopplr font, and so on.
The cover is set in Gotham, because that was the font used throughout the Obama campaign and obviously the font of last year. It's in 96pt becuase that was the super size the NYT used when Obama got elected. It folds over to be read as two halves because Russell was speaking at a Guardian conference and I thought it would look cool if he held up the Written On The Internet 2008 half.
I very quickly realised how important ads are to a newspaper. And not just for monetary reasons. They usefully fill all those awkward little spaces where there's no text. Without them the document feels dull and lifeless. Unpunctuated like a copy of Ulysses. Too much text. A lot of the posts had pictures, but where they didn't we used pictures from Flickr or just white space. Again I wanted it to be like a newspaper, without pastiching a newspaper.
Similarly the bit at the top looked very naked without a running header. The printer requires each page to have a folio so I added a keyline and some of our favourite Tweets from the year. It felt better with that furniture.
This Tweet is a quote taken from Michael Bierut's book. It sits above his article.
We didn't edit any posts at all. So they're full of typos and a lot of the columns end in strange places. This is an odd phenomenon. In a real publication the Sub Editor would shout for a few less (or more) words to make it fit just right. No sub editing here. But as Jeremy points out "The result is a tidy but raw blog-like feel that deals with presentation in a very matter-of-fact manner." That's more eloquent than I could have put it, but that's exactly what I was going for.
Given the chance to design something however you want, you've got to have a little fun haven't you? So I made a small list of things I'd like to see. Some great big dirty Helvetica is always a winner.
I wondered what Emigre's Mrs Eaves would feel like in a more humble, less designery scenario. Looks great if you ask me.
All those Mars Phoenix Twitters were crying out to be printed. I added a few little extras in here that no-one has spotted yet.
A great big full bleed picture. Unfortunately you can't do full bleed, but this is good enough. I wanted this to be like a pull out poster.
And I wanted some nice 100/100 red. We took everyone's content without asking, which we were terribly worried about. We put a big disclaimer in there (and sorry again if you're reading this and you're angry with us) and we tried to make sure authors got copies before anyone else (again sorry if you haven't got one yet, drop me a line and I'll chase that up.) But we obviously needed a way a crediting people. So I designed this little device. This isn't the stuff of design legend, but it took a while to get right and it sort of holds the whole thing together. I deliberately only used two colours (reducing the enemies again) so the red added some much needed vibrancy.
The baseline grid. Oh yes, the baseline grid. Let's be honest this is the sort of thing you know you need to know about. And you do know about, you know, sort of. But. Do you really know about it? Of course you do if you work on a magazine or a newspaper, but when was the last time you used one?
I almost re-taught myself how to use a baseline grid. I certainly re-read all about it and it pretty much saved my life.
"Last night a Baseline Grid saved my life". Seriously, it's so important and so useful for a project like this. All that is obvious but I wanted to restate it.
One last thing. When you print one of these you have to go and see it being printed. For all us sufferers of the Design Disease, that's like manna from heaven. Watch.
Newspaper Machines from russelldavies on Vimeo.
Good eh? There are loads more pictures in this Flickr set. There's lots more I could say. But you're probably all bored now, so you'll have to catch me in the pub.
People seem to like it. It's appearing all over Flickr. Lots of nice people have described it as beautiful which is more praise than I could have hoped for. I particularly like Jim Coudal's "whip smart and beautiful". I'm very pleased with that.
I should also thank Alex who helped us with a few speads.
So, the Really Interesting Group is the new thing I'm a partner in.
It's an experimental organisational structure, aptly described by Matt from Channel 4 as doing "projects for fun, money, or both". I say experimental as we're trying to make the structure different from a typical creative start up limited company, but that's for another time.
If you'd like to know more before then, drop me an email or pick up the phone. And if you'd like a copy of the newspaper pop over here and send us your details.
* Title borrowed from Moleitau.
This was my favourite of the Christmas presents this year. My Mum bought them for the kids, whose names begin with A and S.
Made by a lady in Dorset from (I think) Michael Miller fabric. Not that I'm some kinda fabric head, I'm just trying to credit the right people.
The detail is great. Fun, cute and rich.
I'm often disappointed that 3D letters are too thin. Not these puppies, they're exactly the right thickness.
Wonderful.
What a great start, first day back an' all. From Andy Rementer.
My Mum bought me this card in the hope it would feature on the blog.
Seeing as it's of little typographic merit, I thought we'd have a little Christmas competition. No prizes.
Which font is the word 'Sparkle' written in?
I saw Quantum of Solace the other day. Reviews can be found elsewhere, so let's concentrate on the typography.
As the film moves from location to location these, quite intricate, titles appear informing you where the action is set. Sometimes they're simple text on screen as above. And sometimes they've part of the scene as below where a car drives over the word London.
During the film, without giving it too much thought, I liked them. They're well done, clunky in places, but they look like they've been considered.
I wanted to find out more so I googled. Turns out most people hate them. Here's a good example, "don’t even get me started on the distractingly tacky typography that accompanies every location change" and "wtf was up with some of those fonts?” Time, effort and research, thats what!". This made me question my first thoughts. Maybe they are cheesy and hackneyed? Maybe I shouldn't like them?
More googling explained that they were created by Tomato (which is where these grabs come from, thanks guys). I'm ashamed to admit that when I found out they were done by Tomato I was reassured. They must be OK if Tomato did them.
This, of course, is utter bollocks and I took myself outside and gave myself a good talking too.
It doesn't matter (at all) who did them. And I'm not even a Tomato fan. At the very least, I suppose you could say that Tomato are more likely to have researched the fonts at some length. But still, it's irrelevant really.
So I'm sticking with my gut reaction. My first instinct.
I like them. I enjoyed them during the movie. They're not perfect, but they're fun. I like them. Do you?
Portland, Oregon, USA has some of the best typography I've ever seen in a city.
There's loads of good stuff everywhere. I didn't manage to photograph all of it, but here's a small selection.
I liked this too. The best trouser measurement typography I've seen in a long time. Nice big serif numerals. Lovely.
And this. This is great. This explains lots about what's good about America in one simple piece of type.
To most people these fonts would look old fashioned. But they don't, they look great. And they look American, so that makes it relevant. They are classic display faces yet they've been used on a cooker. Fantastic.
The GM logo. GM make cookers? Cool. Imagine if Land Rover made fridges? That's an iconic American brand right there on the side of the cooker, with the logo nice and proud. Simple, fun, bold, good.
One of the occupational hazards of being a designer is that you want everything to be designed.
And worse than that you normally want everything to be well laid out, structured and with a good hierarchy of information.
I saw this the other day and whilst the typography leaves a lot to be desired it's a very useful piece of communication. Building number, street name and postcode. Brilliant. Common sense. Useful.
Because you see this a lot. It's a building number. This one happens to be 87A.
But what street is it on? Sometimes it's easy to work that out, but often it isn't. Especially if it's a big long street.
If you're one of those designers that's been a postman or a delivery boy you'll prefer street numbers to look like this.
Or, fuck it, let's go the whole hog. Name, number, rank, street, post code, inside leg. Yeah, that's better.
Let's pass legislation to make all buildings display their full address outside on metal plate. In the same colour, the same font. That would make life easier and it would look better. That's good communication, right?
But here's the problem. Scroll back up the page - all those signs are from the same street. Look at the difference. The inconsistency. The accidental. The unintentional. Looks great, doesn't it?
Sometimes it's better when things aren't designed. It took me a while to learn that.
It won't have escaped your notice that there's a crisis happening in the banking world. All the big household names are affected. It's slowly engulfing us all and it gets closer to home every day. I've resisted writing about it for a long time but I can hold off no longer.
Ladies and Gentlemen allow me to introduce the Kerning Crunch.
Let's look at Lehman Brothers first. A big, strong, confident piece of typography. Standing squarely at the helm, staring rivals in the face. No problems over here matey.
But look a little bit closer. In particular take a look at the A.
Is that acceptable? Too close for comfort? Should the authorities be called in? 
The O and T are gentler, but still a teeny bit close for my liking. The problem is that the Kerning Crunch causes us to question our existing value systems. Perhaps we've been sailing too close to the wind for a long time. How close do we want to get?
Lloyds are making the best of bad lot. They've done a decent job of rescuing that O, Y and D. But they can't save everyone.
The worst offender has been glossed over by the main stream media. But, have no fear, that's what this esteemed blog is for. Take a closer look at the L and A in Barclays.
Trouble lies ahead my friends.
Some of these banks are their own worst enemies. L, A, Y and S are never going to be an easy set of letters to kern.
But these guys are all about taking risks, aren't they?
Gary from Oxford sent this in. Simple question, is this the worst kerning you've ever seen?
Have you ever wondered how to make a 3D polystyrene S stand up in a window display?
Simple. You cut the bottom off. And it still looks OK because on paper the bottom of the S would sit below the baseline anyway. That's that mystery solved.
Absolutely bloody gorgeous isn't it. Many more here.
Wednesday saw the release of the first 'real' James Bond book in years. The first as in the first official book, written in the style of Ian Flemming. Officially sanctioned by the International Committee of Flemmings. Trust me, it's exciting news.
I bought a copy. And it occurred to me that it's the first time for a while that I've opted for the thing as opposed to the digital version. You know, audio book, dvd, iTunes etc. So let's take a look at the graphic design of said object.
First up the cover, or more accurately the dust jacket. I don't like it at all. The type is OK. I like the full cap DEVIL MAY CARE. I can't (quickly at any rate) work out what font it is. It's Gill Sans esque, but it's not Gill. The foil embossing works well and it's a decent tight little unit.
The woman / flower graphic is an OK idea, very Bond, but it's badly executed. The two different styles, one for the woman and one for the flower, clash horribly. It's not a seamless segueway. The shapes are nice but they don't seem to work together.
The dust jacket itself is glossy and shiny and doesn't really feel special. Nothing like those little special editions Penguin were doing a few years ago. I don't feel like I'm being rewarded for buying the actual thing. In fact, I binned the cover straight away, much to the chagrin* of my colleagues. I always bin the dust jackets. These days they look shit and they just get in the way. They're cumbersome and besides, the books look so much better without. Don't ya think?
Much better. There's that nice little 007 Penguin logo. I like that. Do you?
There are end papers too, which is a nice change. They're OK.
But, you know what, everything is OK and OK just isn't good enough. Especially when I've gone and bought the actual thing. You'd think that designing the cover for the first official Bond book in years was a dream brief for many a young designer, wouldn't you? And it's for Penguin too! Not good enough.
There are some special editions kicking around and they look pretty decent. This is probably the best one.
That's more like it. I know they can't make special editions for everyone, but they could have copied some of the graphic style.
What do you think?
* Devil May Care joke.
Recent Comments