AirW1 is a huge new development just off Regent Street between Golden Square and Piccadilly Circus. It’s one of the largest developments to come to the West End. The identity is a modern take on Art Deco, drawing from the architectural heritage of the building and its modern redevelopment. The clients are the Crown Estate and Stanhope.

dn&co devised the name and identity of the building, including a bespoke typeface called Art Deco. Production includes a book spec’d with a tailor-made debossed quilted cover and cold glue binding, and the installation of an Exploratorium; a unique marketing suite encouraging visitors to explore the building and local area through interactive elements and augmented reality.

Thank you to Joy and Simon at dn&co for the high res images and help putting this together for us.

http://www.dnco.com/
Follow dn&co on Twitter

Regular

Thanks to Henrik Kubel for the exclusive reference / specimen images and his insight behind the latest A2-Type release, A2 Regular

Information

Regular 7 weights + Italics

Designed by Henrik Kubel

Released April 2012 A2-TYPE

www.a2-type.co.uk

Regular:

A Geometric Sans! with its basic structure inspired by some of our favourite hot metal fonts: Memphis, Karnak, Stymie, Scarab and Paul Renner’s Futura — Regular started as a Slab Serif font in late 2011, however I soon realised that it wasn’t going to bring anything particular new to the faces already available on the market so my design was placed in a drawer.

A couple of months passed and on a visit to Antwerp in Belgium, I was reminded of the distinct lowercase ‘g’ featuring in some of the afore mentioned typefaces. High up on a wall was a shadow of a past sign, but a Sans version! This interesting discovery inspired me directly to go back to the font and my early ideas and basically work the Slab Serif font that I had already started, into a Sans! Regular is in many ways a revival but it is also a font that has contemporary references and key words like: Rational, Readable, Refined, Relevant, Reliable and Responsive was part of the check-list during my design process.

The carefully crafted range of weights; Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold & Black is ideal for books and magazines and it also lends itself very nicely to screen based projects — The family of fonts incorporates true Italics for each weight which is distinct when set in running text.

Regular suggest a Modernist approach to design — but is open for interpretation.

James Edmondson is a student Type Designer and Letterer with a skill well beyond his years. Currently studying at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, his work is intricate and the application is such that each line, stroke and form seem so simple, relaxed and natural. No easy task.

With a recently new site published, he also keeps a blog which is well worth a look through too.

All their fonts are for personal use unless stated. If you would like to use them for commercial you can contact them.

I came across this collaborative type project called Yo Freckles a while ago and it’s been interesting to see how it’s developed. According to the project owners the now compiling a typeface from the submissions so I guess we’ll have to ‘watch this space’.

How well all of the various styles of character will gel into a typeface I’m not sure, but even so there are some great individual characters.

I Love Type Series 1 — 6 | Viction:ary

The excellent series of ‘I Love Type’ books continues with the release of ‘I Love Gill Sans’ and ‘I love Franklin Gothic’. Beautifully illustrated with contemporary and inspiring design examples utilising each classic typeface. The collection includes I Love Futura (Vol. 1), I Love Avant Garde (Vol. 2), I Love Bodoni (Vol. 3), I Love DIN (Vol. 4) and I Love Franklin Gothic (Vol. 6).

Roll on ‘I love Akzidenz-Grotesk’ (vol.7)??

Information

I Love Type Series (vol.5): I Love Gill Sans

Edited and designed by TwoPoints.net

Centering on Gill Sans and its modern variations in graphic applications, I Love Gill Sans is the fifth volume of the I Love Type series, prefaced by Jan Middendorp, a specialist in the development of type and graphic design.

I Love Type Series (vol.6): I Love Franklin Gothic

Edited and designed by TwoPoints.net

Named in honour of American printer, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin Gothic had been a popular sans serif typeface for headlines and display settings. Designed by Morris Fuller Benton (1872-1948) and released by American Type Founders in the early 1900s, Franklin Gothic originated as two designs – for display and text – and later grew to a full range of alphabets, including condensed, Wide and Book, over the century, widely adopted as corporate typeface and for logo design even today.

With its focus on Franklin Gothic and its modern variations in graphic design, I Love Franklin Gothic reintroduces the type in the current with a foreword by Allan Haley, former vice president of ITC and currently the director of Words and Letters at Monotype Imaging.

http://www.victionary.com/

http://www.twopoints.net/

Have a look at this wooden letterpress calendar (without expiry) designed by Pavel Emelyanov at Eskimo Design Studio (Russia, Murmansk)

As described on Pavel’s website; ”It has typesetting fields of year, month and days. User just changes once in a month name of month and assembles days field, including end of previous month, current and the start of next month. Contour letters of calendar makes its full name, second stroke sets aside for year and month, third stroke contains days’ names.”

Pretty neat!

Bespoke type by Village creates a range of custom types in styles, from more traditional (for American Express’s Membership Rewards program) to very contemporary, (for the Syfy television network,) with stops in-between, including the work for the Alliance for Climate Protection, to the typeface we created for the New York City Opera, which IS their brand.

To see more visit: Bespoke Type by Village and Village

From the San Francisco Chronicle — A brilliant insight a man who has been working with Monotype casting machines for over 62 years.

A recent Thursday at 10:23 a.m.: In the basement of Arion Press, where they still print books the old-fashioned way, Lewis Mitchell slid open a box of parts used to change the font size on the Monotype casting machines he has maintained for 62 years. “I thoroughly enjoy the sound of the machines turning, and seeing the type come out is a joy,” Mitchell said. He can tell by the sound of the moving springs and levers if something is awry with his machines — a skill he said all good technicians should have.

Four different owners have run the business since Mitchell walked through the doors at age 18, and he has had several opportunities to leave, including a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that he declined. Now 80, Mitchell can’t imagine retiring from the job he loves so much.

When Mitchell started making this kind of type, it was really the only way to print things, and now he doesn’t know how many books he’s helped print over the decades. There were once type-casting operations in most major U.S. cities, but now the practice is almost extinct. There are only two companies left in the world that cast type for printing presses, and Arion is by far the largest.

Mitchell has four grown children and nine grandchildren, but he calls the 20 type-casting machines his “babies.” “I treat them with kindness. I don’t use a hammer on them or an over-sized screwdriver.” The first machine, which started the company during 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, is still its best machine — proof that Mitchell’s methods work. “My dad taught me from square one if you going to do something, you’re going to do it right or you don’t do it.”

Prada Candy Typeface by Gareth Hague | Alias

Thanks to Gareth Hague for sharing his images / information on the development of the Prada Candy Typeface

Gareth Hague | Alias

We have been exploring the idea of making a Prada typeface, a work in progress.

Extending a brand’s logo to a typeface feels like an obvious branding solution. It extends a unique asset of a company, the way it presents its name, beyond just its name so that this uniqueness can be presented throughout its content. In fashion this has been done with great success by Burberry, with its stretched Bodoni caps.

Of course not every logo suits this treatment. For example, sticking with fashion, Cassandre’s beautiful Yves Saint Laurent logo has such a particular calligraphic style and letterforms locked together in such a specific way that its best treated as an independent and separate graphic device. The heavy Futura caps of the Jil Sander logo again suit a stand alone and separate treatment.

Branding in fashion is complicated by the larger fashion houses in particular having a myriad of product – separate fashion lines, fragrances, cosmetics, eyewear – and defining themselves differently to a different audience through this different product. This can make for a confusing array of wordmarks and supporting typography which lose any sense of a brand’s singularity of purpose, content, and direction. Burberry and Chanel for example show how a consistent graphic presence focusses a vision and clarifies a brands message to the consumer, even between different product ranges.

David James has been working with Prada since 1996. For a lot of that time we have been discussing the idea of a Prada typeface – what it might look like, whether it was an appropriate idea. Unlike the similarities between the lettering used for, say, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs, and others, the Prada lettering is striking and specific to that company. In branding terms, where uniqueness and distinctness are primary concerns, a Prada typeface could be a powerful tool in presenting that message throughout its written communications.For the Candy fragrance, with its very un-Prada pink colour and illustration, the Candy word in the Prada typeface reconnected the branding to Prada. For various fashion films with very little graphic content, again the type in the Prada typeface adds an extra connection to the brand.

In terms of drawing, logos of course exist as themselves only, so the rules of their drawing are narrowed to the extent of – usually – a very few letters. From the letters supplied, there should be enough information to best-guess the rules to complete the font – size/shape of serif, character width, and so on. For the four letters in the Prada logo there are similarities with various ornamental serif fonts from the late 19th – early 20th centuries, but with more inconsistency of drawing than you would expect in a fully drawn typeface – the round inner bowl of the P and R that is straight in the D, the wide difference in thickness of line. When making an alphabet maintaining these differences of drawing, this produces inconsistent but not necessarily unworkable letter shapes. Removing these inconsistencies would make the typeface a different idea to the logo. It would normalise the typeface, removes what makes it special and surprising. Normalising also means giving an extra usability, making the Prada typeface in this work in progress version upper case only and most suitable for headline, impact use

«An edding can write on anything.» Thanks to the new Büro Destruct font «edding 850» it even keeps that promise on your computer. End of story? Quite the opposite, actually: Together with Hamburg based ad agency «kempertrautmann» & «shift» this idea is the core of a new campaign «Type-For-Type.com» for the german brand «edding» – famous for their permanent markers.

Our design/development of the font was portrayed by director Kai Sehr that paid us a visit with his crew in Bern 2011. Kai Sehr is well known for his music videos (from Bad Religion to Backstreet Boys…) and commercials. With his documentary «Skateistan» he got highly awarded at film festivals around the globe.

Type-for-type describes the deal: You contribute something to the collaborative realtime text-editor. Once you’re done, the «edding 850» opentype font is available for download. It comes together with a PDF-magazine that features the most liked designs from the project gallery, basically the blog side of the site, where everybody can upload anything using the font. Sounds complicated? It isn’t. Have a look: BD edding Elk is already part of it.

14/41 – 14 Years, 41 Logos is the first book from Mash Creative (www.mashcreative.co.uk) founder Mark Bloom.

Produced as a limited run, the book showcases 41 of his favourite logos designed during a 14 year career. Includes five golden rules of logo design and an insight into how he approaches an identity brief.

148mm x 210mm, 100 pages, P.U.R bound with white foil debossed logo to the cover, this beautiful soft back book has been printed with an enticing mix of GF Smith Colourplan and Olin rough papers.

Available to buy from :  www.thisisourshop.com

Also available to buy from Design Museum Shop, Magma books and Artword Books.

This lettering project by Karen To illustrates words which have been removed from English dictionaries. We like it.

See more words and definitions here.

Fenland

Fenland is the latest typeface design from Jeremy Tankard Typography

— a 14 font typeface

Thank you to Jeremy for the images, information and contribution to this feature.

Fenland information and licensing

http://typography.net/fontfamilies/view/39

Extract from ‘Footnote’

Jeremy Tankard Typography Newsletter

From the very early stages of the design the intention was to create lettershapes whose underlying structure is approached differently. Modified in some way to achieve a fresh look. For instance, take the idea of how a shape is changed over time. Picture the lettering found on gravestones and how it is weathered and eroded by nature. The wearing away of these shapes may result in some elements vanishing, lines thinning or breaking and gaps appearing. Also think of the inscriptions found on tombstones laid out on the floor of churches; how these are worn away over the years by passing footfall.

In contrast to this natural process, could a similar idea be achieved mechanically. However, repeating a process such as photographically reducing and enlarging, again and again, results in an expected soft and blurred shape. A sans serif lettershape will become more rounded and soft, whereas the details of a serif letter will shrink and fade away. The result is expected and is dependent on the structure of the shape.

If the structure of the shape is changed, then arguably a fresh rhythm could be found. If the shapes are constructed instead of written, the relationship between thick and thin strokes could be readdressed. This would go some way in creating a different structure that could be explored across a range of weights.

Structure

One of the principal ideas that underpins Fenland is the way a metal tube collapses in on itself when it is bent. This notion was applied to a letter’s structure by shifting the emphasis of the stem weight.

The sketch above (picture 1) shows how the inside curve at the top bends inwards as the outside curve is flattened. This shift of emphasis creates a thin point where it would normally be thick.

As well as a change to the modulation of the stem weight. The construction of some shapes was reconsidered. For instance, an ‘f’ is generally drawn in two strokes; the arch curving over and down with the crossbar added. To break this momentum Fenland’s ‘f’ is constructed in three strokes; a crossbar, a straight stem and a hook.

Samples and information

Individual PDF showings are available on line at http://typography.net/fontfamilies/view/39. There is also a limited edition printed sample available, please email info@typography.net if you would like a copy.

Promotional codes for the launch of Fenland

There are discount codes available
Go to the Fenland page at typography.net to use them

To receive 50% off Fenland
use promotion code Fenland50
until end of day 21 March **

To receive 25% off Fenland
use promotion code Fenland25
until end of day 30 March **

HypeForType releases its 5th volume of Exclusive Faces fonts featuring custom designs from Anthony Burrill, and Steven Bonner just to name a few. A fantastic 5 for those who are discerning with their kerning fontal fabness!

England’s Burning by Stephen McCarthy, a graduate from 2011 LCC MA Contemporary Typographic Media course.

His 32-page research paper for Unit Editions covers the events of last August through the use of pictograms. It opens with the police shooting of Mark Duggan in London and covers the demonstrations, looting, clean up campaigns and sentencing that followed.

This is what we at typetoken® feel truly describes — “The distinction used to clarify the meaning of symbols of formal languages.”

You can purchase this lovely project at Unit Editions.

The fantastic new ‘Editions of 100′ screenprint by Daniel Freytag | Berg pays homage to the ‘Letraset’ Dry transfer lettering sheet.

The A2 Print has been screened in black and white onto Kaskad 225gsm Puffin Blue matt fine art paper, to mimic the original Letraset pale blue backing trace paper (see original’s above)

More info / purchase here

Seeing the print reminded me that I managed to salvage a massive stack of Letraset from a design studio clear out many years ago – not sure what I planned to do with them but it just looked too good to bin? Thought I’d get them out and take a few photos / to share and maybe do a flickr set later? – strictly for my fellow type geeks — enjoy!!.

Belgian artist, Fred Eerdekens, works with materials and light sources fashioned and combined in such a way that they create intriguing shadow artworks.

A selection of Eerdekens’ work is on display in the exhibition ‘Words and Dreams’, opening at Gallery Magda Danysz in Paris.

Source: Design Boom

In July 2011 the good folk at AV Browne asked Fontsmith to explore the creative possibilities for a MAC typeface that supported the architectural style of the space and one that retained a definite graphic quality.

Fontsmith designers Phil Garnham and Fernando Mello set upon developing a modern geometric type style that integrated and provided support to AV Browne’s angular brick concept, which is based around 30° angles. Project design director Chris Killeen of AV Browne explains – “The two main elements to the visual system take their cues from the building itself, the materials and the angles within the space. The first is a bespoke typeface using combinations of 30° angles to create characterful letters. The second is the wireframe pattern based on the bricks used within the building”

The logotype also uses the bespoke typeface with a few added extras. The fold in the logo mirrors the angles used within the font and brick elements which implies the context of the larger arts space environment as well as creating a nice consistent yet evolving relationship throughout the identity.

You can catch all the latest developments at the MAC here

http://www.fontsmith.com/
http://avb-group.com/

‘TYPE MATTERS!’ BY JIM WILLIAMS (MERRELL PUBLISHERS)

The following text is (Jim Williams own words) taken from the book and explains how the book originated and how it came to be published

Preface

My passion for type was born while I was studying for my A level in Technical Drawing. The teacher, Mr Dykes, ran a small letterpress workshop at the school and would leave on his desk proofs for small bits of jobbing printing. Unsurprisingly, I found the contents of his desk far more interesting than my struggle with the mathematics of designing gears and ratios. Thank you, Mr Dykes!

I went on to study graphics and typography at what is now the University of Central Lancashire, but was at that time Preston Polytechnic, and had the good fortune to be taught typography by Alan Livingston and Ben Casey.

After graduating, I immediately went to work for one of London’s most respected advertising typographers, the late Maggie Lewis, who was known as ‘the queen of type’. This feisty lady had a fearsome reputation for typographic excellence but, on occasion, would bake apple crumbles for me. I think she was concerned that this shy young lad from Liverpool wasn’t eating properly.

My grounding in classic 1980s advertising typography was completed with spells at Steve Legate’s studio and working under Len Cheeseman at Collett Dickenson Pearce. Perhaps my time in advertising is one of the reasons I love big type so much, and it has informed my approach to typography ever since.

Type Matters! came about when I was asked by a design company in Manchester to give a series of talks, one of which was about tips that could help its designers with day-to-day typography. The presentation sat on my desktop for several months afterwards, and when I returned to Staffordshire University (where I lecture part-time) after the summer break, I spoke to the awards manager, Barbara Ridley, about the presentation and the merits of it being printed for use by our students. With her usual enthusiasm and friendly encouragement, Barbara managed to find the funds for its production.

It was then featured by Creative Review, and that was when I discovered the amount of interest in this subject. I began receiving requests for copies from all over the world. Many of the people who subsequently sent me feedback said they found it easy to understand and encouraged me to think about developing it into a book.

Many things have informed the content of Type Matters!, including what I have learned from the people with whom I’ve worked, the glaring mistakes I’ve seen and the questions I’ve most commonly been asked by students. I hope you find it useful.

— Jim Williams

Publishing Information

Merrell Publishers

Soft flexi binding

160 pages  22 x 17 cm (8.75 x 6.75 in)

ISBN: 978-1-8589-4567-5

Published April 2012

Sofia is a building designed by architect Cesar Pelli for One Development Group located in San Pedro, Mexico.

Anagrama explain what they regarded as the three key aspects of their thinking around this brand project.

Logotype: the keys and the coat of arms are inspired by San Pedro’s coat of arms.

Typography: we developed a custom typeface designed especially for Sofia, it is inspired by british san serifs.

Layout: the text and information arrangement is inspired by the typographical treatment used before grids were popularized by the swiss grid system.

www.anagrama.com

Information

Gratuitous Type is a pamphlet of typographic smut. Celebrating the letter in all its forms, GT focuses its dirty mind on typography, art, language and publishing.

Issue 1 was released in winter 2011 and features work from Alexis Anne Mackenzie, Buchstabenmuseum, Chicago…Times…Trixie, Christian Hansen, David Smith Atelier, Evelin Kasikov, and Triboro. The issue includes a 12 page centerfold of Cuban Book Covers of the 60s and 70s and is finished with a hand-applied and numbered belly band. Printed offset in an edition of 500.

Issue 2 will be released this week and features Astrid Stavro, Buffalo Zine, El Celso, Damien Gautier (Éditions 205), Kathryn Murray, Martine Mathijsen, Rob Lowe (Cagoule, Anorak, Fire & Knives), Visual Editions, and Wayne White. The issue includes a screenprinted insert hand-lettered by Kathryn Murray, and a special peel-out centerfold project from Mark Pernice. Printed offset in an edition of 1000. Each issue is hand-numbered.

Purchase Here

www.elanaschlenker.com

This monotype typeface created by Synoptic Office, where the height of the letterforms is determined by how often a letter is used, is definitely a looker!

As described on Synoptic’s website, “this typeface maps the rhythmic ebb and flow of English.”

I find this fascinating, I hope you do too!