Type+Image

Some nice free fonts

2010-11-11T10:03:00.002-06:00

http://designm.ag/resources/free-fonts-for-professional-design/

I've downloaded several of these and have gotten some good use out of them. Mostly for display, of course.

Posted by Tim

Package Design

2010-11-11T09:58:00.001-06:00

Typefaces & Graffiti & Websites

2010-11-10T21:05:00.007-06:00

If you're looking for quality free typefaces, give The League of Moveable Type a look. Their typefaces are all open-source, and they've adopted a manifesto of usability and adaptability.

There is a short interview of graffiti-artist Niels Meulman over at My Modern Met about Calligraffiti, his style that involves a combination of graffiti's energy with calligraphic letterforms:

Need a typeface? Don't want go through all that trouble of research and weighing design concerns? There's a better way! Use Julian Hansen's "So You Need A Typeface" infographic.

Posted by Jordan

Map: Wikipedia Debates

2010-11-10T18:07:00.005-06:00

Infographic for Wikipedia's publicly updated subjects. Some of the lamest examples of editing that has gone back and forth on Wikipedia. Pertaining to religion, ethics, culture, technical and even spelling. Size of the box relates to how big of an issue it was. See it larger on Information is Beautiful

Posted by Anne Ulku

Self-Description vs. Redundancy

2010-11-10T16:34:00.005-06:00

This series of graphs from Randall Munroe's xkcd is entirely self-descriptive. As the mouseover text on the original image says: "The contents of any one panel are dependent on the contents of every panel including itself. The graph of panel dependencies is complete and bidirectional, and each node has a loop." That is, if you decide that you want to change the size of the black pie slice in the first panel, you then have to change the height of the first bar in the second panel (which changes the height of the second bar), and then change sub-panels 1, 2, and 3 in the third panel (indefinitely changing the sub-sub-sub-etc. third panel). What I love about this is how it's such a complex intra-active system without relating any useful information to the viewer. The workings of this map (or comic, or graph, or drawing) are entirely internal.

What makes this funny to me is how Munroe uses the traditional language of visual information (i.e. maps , charts, graphs) to present something inward-looking, and really, pretty useless. It's not a wolf in sheep's clothing -- it's existentialism in sheep's clothing (interesting to think about, very abstract, and not at all directly relevant to your life). But he's not trying to trick the viewer into thinking that it's anything more than that. A cursory glance may make you think there's something more going on here, but read the text and you'll see that all the things this map refers to are located within the map itself.

The great-great-great-ancestor of this map could be Magritte's "The Treachery of Images."

It's not a pipe, but it looks like one. The original image is a painting of a pipe, which you can't smoke with. Similarly, Randall Munroe's map is not a map -- it's a map of a map. Or does that make it a map? You can make a map of a thing, but you can't make a pipe of a thing (apples notwithstanding). Maps, drawings, paintings, charts, and graphs are all forms of visual representation, and yet visual objects themselves, which makes it tricky to deal with when an object visually represents itself.

I forgot what I was talking about!

Posted by Scott

Evolution of Nokia phones

2010-11-10T16:26:00.003-06:00

I thought this was kind of a cool visual representation of how a certain kind of technology has evolved over time.

Not that clever as far as maps go, I suppose, but still interesting.

Posted by Dave

Where are the Minneapolis maps?

2010-11-09T21:47:00.004-06:00

I found this great data visualization and map in Wired about the calls made to 311 in New York (You can read the whole article here).

But then I realized that so many of the classes we've shared for this class revolved around New York and I thought: where's the love for the Twin Cities?

I couldn't find much, except my this map of Minneapolis that my friend Andy converted into a board to play the Minneapolis version of Risk.

I guess it's up to us. Let's find some cool ways to represent the awesomeness in the Twin Cities.

posted by Molly

Maps and type

2010-11-07T22:12:00.004-06:00

Given the dual nature of this blog, I thought this map would be particularly interesting. There are some better pictures on some of the credit links.

(Brought to you by Axis Maps through Infosthetics through Fast Co. Design through Gizmodo.]

--Posted by Marin

Typography in Motion

2010-11-04T13:58:00.003-05:00

This is a really great video. It reminded me of our first project, handmade typography, but in motion!

Posted by Tim

Sculpture- Steel Letters

2010-11-04T02:05:00.002-05:00

Mark Andrew Webber - paris map- Linocut

2010-11-04T02:00:00.002-05:00

Get your own map!

2010-11-03T21:13:00.003-05:00

Today one of our classmates mentioned he might be willing to be a guinea pig for my map project that explores the relationship between emotional closeness and geographic distance. If you are interested in this, what I'd ask you to do is list up to 300 people you know with their city and state (or zip code), pick why you know them from 5 categories (work, family, K-12, college/grad school, other), and assign them a "closeness ranking" from 1 to 7. I've created a Google spreadsheet here where you can enter data. If any of this doesn't make sense, I've got answers and you can email me here. --Posted by Marin

An Early GPS

2010-11-03T18:52:00.001-05:00

Posted by Lisa

maps bring meaning to election results

2010-11-03T18:28:00.001-05:00

The NY Times had some great maps that helped to make sense of last night's election results:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/03/us/politics/election-results-house-shift.html?ref=politics

posted by Molly

The Seven Bridges of Königsberg

2010-11-03T17:17:00.005-05:00

In the city of Königsberg, Germany, there is a part of the city surrounded by a river, which flows away in three directions. There are seven bridges in the city. Here, use this image as a reference:

Euler, a mathematician, posed the following problem: is it possible to navigate a path through the city crossing each of these bridges once and only once? Assume you're not allowed to cross the river unless it is via one of the bridges above. Spoiler: you can't do it. There's a proof of why that I used to know several years ago, as a young man growing up on the mean streets of Milwaukee, but those days are over. Now I'm more interested in this problem's taking a very geographically-based network and removing it from geography.

This is the same map as above, only with all geographic references taken out. You can't see your house from here, but you sure can try to find a path across the bridges. Here the yellow dots represent regions of the city, and the lines connecting the dots represent paths across bridges. I'm interested in doing something similar on a large scale, say, the US Interstate System. We'll talk in class! I'll probably repeat exactly what I say here because we're just going to look at the pictures! Excellent!

Posted by Scott.

Ford Foundation grant map

2010-11-03T17:16:00.003-05:00

One example of a foundation showing their grants in a map view.

I'm interested in presenting the same data but in a more engaging, interesting way.

Posted by Dave

Making Blogs a Better Place

2010-11-03T16:48:00.005-05:00

Typographer Jessica Hische is out to make blogs a more beautiful place. In addition to her personal blog, Hische has the Daily Drop Cap, a blog that features a new handcrafted, capital, initial cap each (working) day of the week. Hische, in addition to manufacturing her own beautiful, full-fledged typefaces, commits to creating these caps daily for "the beautification of blog posts everywhere."

It's worth checking out, and I would recommend looking at her full typeface sets on her personal blog as well.

Posted by Caryn

Timelines of Time Travel

2010-11-03T16:04:00.010-05:00

I was trying to figure out how to deal with timelines, and I came across David McCandless. He refers to himself as an information designer and has a great blog entitled Information is Beautiful.

I enjoyed his take on time-travel in movies, which is shown on the left. This one captures method of time travel through the color of each curved line, which is labeled with the film or tv show that took that trip through time. He also labels as paradoxes the interesting relationships between the time travels in each movie/film. He has created a similar timeline for Doctor Who.

Check out David at his TED talk about turning complex data sets into visualizations. He also has an interactive display entitled Snake Oil? that is worth a look.

Another visualization by David McCandless is his graph of peak break-up times based on facebook status data, which I thought had some amusing observations.

Posted by Sylvia

Map: Flavor

2010-11-03T15:01:00.009-05:00

Mapping flavor-- or also known as a Carbon Foodprint.

The flavors of food are not unique per product--it is the right combination of flavor molecules that make each product have its particular taste. That means, each product can be easily replaced by a combination of other items.

This chart shows the flavor of an orange.

There are ten key flavors to combine that are needed to recreate the orange flavor. Each color in the chart represents a key component with its flavor named per category- i.e. herbaceous woody, green, floral citrus, etc.

To obtain the flavor of an orange, you must take one component from each color category. The length of the line in the graph represents the amount of that flavor. The longer the line, the more you will need.

Posted by Anne Ulku

Various Type and [gasp] a Map.

2010-11-03T10:11:00.007-05:00

A few things I've found this week:

Swedish designer Hampus Jageland has created spice packaging that uses clearly defined grid characteristics and interesting-but very slight-variations in typography. What's surprising about all this is that the packaging is intended for the visually impaired.

Irina Vinnik's sketchbook work deals explicitly with typography at times, but also with form and shape that still carries a very letterform-like feel.

Lastly, and it solidarity with Cartography, the unholy union of TYPOGRAPHY & MAP:

Posted by Jordan

Three random-ish map things

2010-11-02T16:27:00.005-05:00

First, I'm not sure this counts as a map per se, but it's cool, and related to scale, which is a mapping-ish thing (you have to follow the link, it's not a picture):

http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

I like it because it's kind of a "Powers of 10," but interactive.

Second, while exploring what turned out to be a dead end for my class project, I found this amusing set of tools, which includes a midpoint calculator, a bearing/distance calculator, and a random geographic point generator (which I want to figure out a use for somehow, someday): http://www.geomidpoint.com/

And finally, for Lisa in particular, this is kind of the inverse of your map project (from the Strange Maps blog again):

--posted by Marin

Directions

2010-10-31T17:28:00.004-05:00

Here is the map I kept promising to show Neal in class last week but then kept forgetting. It is what inspired my project idea of movie settings v. filming locations. The map shows all the locations in CA that stand in for different locations during movie filming.

But then today I was walking through the Mall of America to find some pants and I saw this ad for a fancy shaving shop called "The Art of Shaving." If I had needed a shave, I probably would have gone in, but I didn't. Anyway, the map inspired a very new direction that I think I like much better than the old. So we'll see how it goes.

Posted by Lisa.

I'm a believer

2010-10-28T17:44:00.004-05:00

The Believer is my favoritest magazine. The covers are designed by David Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) using illustrations by Charles Burns! There are no ads; just original content about literature, the arts, and ideas. Everything is set in Clarendon and printed on hearty paper rather than a glossy, thin paperlike product. It's lovely to hold, view, and peruse.

meister josh

Avant Garde spread

2010-10-28T15:11:00.002-05:00

Because I'm mildly obsessed now, here is the cover and an inside spread from Avant Garde magazine.

Posted by Tim

Map of Cannibalism - a traditional example

2010-10-27T17:09:00.005-05:00

Here's a traditional example of a geographic map, which represents the global spread of cannibalism. I'm posting it as it may end up relating to my topic.

To quote from the Strange Maps blog 299 - Niam Niam: the Cannibal Map of the World:

This map, from the German/Austrian publisher A. Hartleben, dating from the early 20th century by the look of it, presents a map of the range of anthropophagy, both contemporary (in red) and historical (in yellow).

A more up-to-date map would have to include Armin Meiwes, the German internet cannibal.

Posted by Sylvia

100 years of music using London Underground map

2010-10-27T16:21:00.004-05:00

The challenge: chart the branches and connections of 100 years of music using the London Underground map.

The result:

The full map (PDF) is linked in Going Underground blog from the Guardian's Culture Vulture.

Posted by Sylvia

The Family Tree

2010-10-27T15:57:00.002-05:00

Which came first, the idea of displaying genealogy as linking familial relations from top to bottom chronologically, or the term 'family tree'?

Here's a pretty typical family tree, comprising what looks to be around 9 generations. The farthest back in history is at the top-most part of the 'tree,' and the most recent at the bottom. Weirdly, this is completely inverse from how trees actually grow (you know, from the ground up), but the analogy has stuck so well that it's very easy to find 'family trees' that are stylized to resemble physical trees.

This one's a pretty lazy example, with the 'family tree' being superimposed onto an illustration of a tree. Poor Scotty must have been kicked out of the family or something.

This one's great for a number of reasons. The entities represented are actually connected via branches that wind around each other to signify familial relations, and the creator realized the backward nature of the 'family tree,' choosing to instead build it from the ground up. You can see Donald Duck in the second row from the top (second-to-youngest generation), third from the left. There's a nice depiction of different families that Donald's lineage stems from by means of separate trees, the branches of which get jumbled together. In addition, the fact that we skip a few generations going from Pintail Duck (bottom, middle tree) to Humperdinck Duck is shown by the branch momentarily disappearing behind leaves: that chapter of history is obscured to us.

Family trees are a way of tracking relations between members of one or many families, but once you go enough generations back, or enough cousins sideways, it becomes increasingly difficult to accurately, visually portray the information. For instance, it's likely (though I'm sure you don't want to hear it), that your biological parents (or you and your partner), have a common ancestor within written history. Super-likely if you and your partner have the same ethnic and cultural background. For the family tree, this means that a 'branch' would split (via children, grandchildren, etc.) and eventually rejoin. Visually, this would mean 'branches' crossing over each other.

Is it possible to create an organized family tree that includes dozens of generations and thousands of people, given the super-prevalence of incest?

Is a tree the best visual metaphor we can come up with?

How would a family tree of families be depicted visually? That is, instead of representing individuals, representing families (and how do you begin to define that?)

Posted by Scott.

Magazine Spreads & Etc.

2010-10-27T14:41:00.006-05:00

First, a few interesting magazine-layout-related articles I've found:

The Creative Design Blog has a short article about an early 2010 Ikea ad that-while keeping text to a minimum-does some interesting things with an underlying grid-like structure across the spread:

The IDSGN Blog details a lecture given by Jason Santa Maria (a video is available at the bottom of the page) about applying magazine spread design sensibilities to the web:

If you're looking for some good inspiration for your spreads, check out this page on Best Design Options.

Lastly (and kinda unrelated), The Economist has an article about how the letterpress and its mechanical aesthetics have been (partly) misapplied in the digital age: Letterpress Revived.

Posted by Jordan

Scott McCloud, Linux, and e. coli

2010-10-26T20:24:00.008-05:00

Scott's Chris Ware post from last week got me thinking about comics as maps. I was reminded of the work of Scott McCloud, a graphic novelist in his own right, but better known for his critical, academic writings about the medium of comics. The "map" (I suppose technically it is more of a chart, but that's a kind of map, right?) at left moves from abstraction to representation along the vertical axis and from drawings to words along the horizontal. Taken together, it is a pretty awesome representation of the vocabulary, grammar, and meaning available not just to comics artists, but to any visual artist.

The second map compares the Linux OS with e. coli bacteria. I don't fully understand this, but I think it is fascinating.

Both of these maps came from http://blog.visualmotive.com/

Posted by Dave

Map: Marian Bantjes' Influences

2010-10-25T22:36:00.011-05:00

Marian Bantjes- an elite artist, designer, typographer, illustrator and writer- has mapped out her obsessions, travels, personal artistic influences, themes, working materials, styles of work, etc. A visual representation, and work of art, that truly represents who she is as an individual. (Map dated from August 2006)

See it on her website: Influence Map

Posted by Anne Ulku

Populations as 3D Spikes

2010-10-25T22:14:00.005-05:00

Two maps that represent populations as 3D spikes. Pleasing to the eye, no?

Posted by Lisa.

Minimal Text Spreads

2010-10-25T13:14:00.006-05:00

When browsing magazine spreads, I find myself preferring the minimal designs. I like the effect of a two page spread with a minimal amount of text within a text dominated magazine.

Posted by Caryn

Perceived geogrpahy

2010-10-24T18:24:00.005-05:00

Following up on the theme of maps charting perceived geography, Frank Jacob's "Strange Maps" blog on bigthink.com recently ran a series of European maps with countries labeled from different perspectives, mostly national. (Fair warning: many, if not all, of the "perspectives" on the maps fall well within the realm of stereotyping and name calling, which is not behavior I endorse.) I've copied just the "U.S. Perspective" map below, but the whole series is quite extensive, and most of the rest are from various European perspectives.

posted by Marin

Something cool

2010-10-21T16:04:00.002-05:00

http://www.mckean-art.co.uk/

posted by megan

Google Font Directory

2010-10-21T12:08:00.003-05:00

More information on web-based fonts. Of course Google has a huge initiative in this area. This website explains Google's Font Directory and how the fonts can be used in CSS under an open source license. This is cool. And Typekit has partnered with Google on it too.

posted by Tim
p.s. I know it's ironic that I took a screen cap of an editable typeface to post it as an image on this blog...

Very Small Array

2010-10-20T16:32:00.008-05:00

Very Small Array is a blog by Dorothy Gambrell, the creator of the webcomic Cat and Girl. Most of it is dedicated to various interesting maps she creates, many relating to New York City.

Recently she did a series of maps based on local dining establishments. She followed up on a few of them with a chart mapping percentage of Starbucks and Chinese restaurants as a percentage of all restaurants of a given area, along with each area's median household income, which was an interested way of looking at things

I was also particularily fond of this map of the college stickers on cars in a neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Posted by Erich.

Applying Type to Product

2010-10-20T10:22:00.009-05:00

In parallel with my current Intro to Graphic Design course, I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about real-world applications of type within commercial layouts and presentations.

A great resource is the blog The Dieline, which has MANY examples of international packaging design. It's interesting to see how the innate "qualities" of a piece of packaging are deeply tied to the chosen type; how the type "loads" the object with meaning before you've truly read the text:

Also, designer Tyler Thompson developed the site Boarding Pass/Fail earlier this year based on redesigning the airline boarding pass to be more elegant and easy-to-digest. There are several examples that exhibit significant differences in their use of type and grid:

My redesign attempt is: here.

Posted by Jordan

Chris Ware's Maps

2010-10-19T23:32:00.002-05:00

The climax of Chris Ware's 2000 graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth traces the genealogy of Jimmy's adopted sister Amy to the late 1800s, revealing that Jimmy and Amy are actually related. Using symbols and images rather than text, Ware creates a map for the reader to follow, with one scene leading to another chronologically but branching out thematically, calling out motifs in the novel and representing characters with just enough marks for them to be recognizable and unique. The map in Jimmy Corrigan is one of specific people and relationships, representing on a larger scale the changing social landscape of 20th century mid-America.

As a comic artist, Chris Ware's entire body of work could be consider maps: they represent (people, places, ideas). Some are more literal than others, like his (rejected) Fortune magazine cover:

Visually and with text ("Toxic Asset Acres," "Fábrica de Exploitación"), Ware's map of America attacks the magazine and its values at the height of the Recession. Another map (from Building Stories) charts the changing occupants of an unchanging apartment building:

This map's architectural objectivity and accuracy is juxtaposed against the ideas of nostalgia and subjective experiences the places we live. Almost all of Ware's work captures this melancholy, but the craft of his art strives for geometric purity and almost mechanical (but always hand-drawn) linework. I'm interested in maps that can accurately depict emotion and personality as well as space, geography, and architecture.

Posted by Scott.

world map by population

2010-10-19T20:36:00.003-05:00

What I like about this map is that it takes otherwise familiar, unsurprising data and presents it in a novel way.

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of stretching this model -- which in my mind amounts to forcing two conceptually irreconcilable or at least disparate data measures into the same representation -- to see how far it can go and still make sense.

Posted by Dave

Map: Biggest Drawing in the World

2010-10-19T18:32:00.007-05:00

This is a map that has created the largest self-portrait in the world.

A GPS system, traveling around the world through delivery trucks and other modes of transportation, became the trackable strokes of the medium, or the "pen". A very long list of specific coordinate travel destinations given to the delivery vehicles, marked the points of the image on the map. The GPS was able to track the entire journey - lasting 55 days, going through 6 continents and 62 countries with a total length of 110,664 km.

Biggest Drawing in the World

Posted by Anne Ulku

Maps of Music History by Dave Muller

2010-10-18T15:41:00.008-05:00

I first saw an example of Dave Muller's Rock-n-Roll timeline in an Edward Tufte book on visualization. I was fortunate to see it full-scale at the ICA in Boston a few years ago. I like how he showed the connections between music movements and how one style of music developed from an earlier style of music.

I couldn't find an image of his Rock-n-Roll timeline, but the image here is of another map that he created, which is called As Below, So Above.

Here's the blurb from the ICA webpage:

The work will incorporate a diagrammatic timeline of chart-topping rock hits—found in Reebee Garofalo and Steve Chapple’s book Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Here to Pay(1977)—from the 1950s to 70s, including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and the Supremes. Reproduced at epic scale, it will be hand-illustrated with rocks, grass, and plants, as if a landscape cut in cross-section. Consecutive years will extend before and after these decades into a timeline horizon. In the "sky" space above, framed paintings resembling stars will radiate the names of music categories—rock's latest offshoots within the Boston music scene. Below the horizon will be illustrations of albums by "underground" artists of cult, if not commercial, fame.

Here's the link to the ICA page on As Below, As Above: http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/muller/

Posted by Sylvia

Maps and Mattresses

2010-10-17T21:47:00.007-05:00

Guillermo Kuitca had an exhibit at the Walker this summer, which is where I first saw the piece above. It's a little hard to see from the photo, but those are all small mattresses painted with what look to be pretty standard road maps, and upholstery buttons marking the major cities. The next photo is of a different piece, but it has the same general idea and I think you can see the map part a bit better.

The thing you can't tell from either photo is that Kuitca often uses real place names but imaginary geographies. One piece that was at the Walker exhibit used place names from Minnesota and the upper Midwest, so when I first looked at it, it seemed familiar until I looked closer and realized that places were all in the "wrong" place.

And finally, another map that I like because it is based on perceived geography rather than physical reality:

Posted by Marin

Maps, maps, and more maps

2010-10-14T20:09:00.008-05:00

The examples of Salavon's work we saw in class yesterday reminded me of Byron Kim's Synecdoche. To make this piece he went out on the street and asked people if he could take a sample of their skin color. Each square of this panel is a different person's skin color (taken from their arm, since, as he explains, people's face color changes too much when they speak) MOMA has a short audio clip of him talking about the piece that you can hear here.

Below are three works created by Maya Lin for an exhibition called Systematic Landscapes. She's an artist/architect taking traditional map content (geography) and depicting it in some neat artistic ways. She also designed the Vietnam Memorial in DC (a map of that war? a map of the lives lost?). You can check out her site here.

This last piece is probably my favorite. She took an old atlas, 2D space representing 3d space, and cut into it in order to restore it to 3d space.

Finally, I found the below image stored on my computer in my random inspiration folder. I have no idea what it is from or where it is from but maybe it came from science textbook (?). Either way I think its awesome and map-y.

Posted by Lisa.

GOOD and This American Life

2010-10-14T19:43:00.003-05:00

The magazine GOOD has some great maps and infographics. They convey a lot of information very elegantly.

You can see more examples here.

And for a non-visual example, here's an outstanding episode of This American Life about mapping. It includes an interview with Dennis Wood, the man who made the jack-o-lantern map we saw in class.

Posted by Molly

2010-10-14T18:13:00.002-05:00

I was looking for a discussion of the issue of appropriation in typography and came across this article. Copyright, intellectual property, and the modern notion of ownership are up against the potential for instantaneous, universal dissemination of information made possible by the internets. There is a larger discussion of the notion of "open source" and how it relates to typography (and design in general) on the site where I found this article.

Confucius say, "He who owns grasps nothing."

comrade josh

Psychedelic

2010-10-14T17:25:00.001-05:00

This is my new typography hero.... http://www.wes-wilson.com/

posted by Megan

Typographical Miscellany

2010-10-13T22:54:00.005-05:00

Typophile has an interactive program made by Jonathan Hoefler detailing various typeface styles: Type 101.

I Love Typography has posted a lengthy - but really interesting - article on the anthropological and historical basis for letterforms: The Origins of ABC.

Lastly, there's a sizable discussion occurring online regarding The Gap's recent redesign: a functional, identifiable logo turned into another Helvetica-centered identity. Thoughts?

Posted by Jordan

More Background on Battle of Helvetica vs. Arial

2010-10-13T16:08:00.003-05:00

Here is the article I mentioned in class, the title of which reveals a certain bias:
The Scourge of Arial

It's written by Mark Simonson, who's a Minneapolis-based typographer.

He's got another one on how to spot Arial. Handy.

Posted by Tim

Typography, meet Conceptual Cartography...

2010-10-12T20:06:00.004-05:00

Greetings! This has been an exciting semester of design at MCAD. We are currently in the throws of Typography with a new course—Conceptual Cartography—beginning this week. The good news is that each class will be sharing this blog through the end of the term. I am confident that the Cartography students will be inspired by the Typography students and vice versa.

Enjoy!

Neal

Attention former Graphic Design class students!

2010-10-12T20:04:00.002-05:00

For those of you from previous courses who participated in the rebranding project, I wanted to share with you that MySpace.com has recently updated their logo.....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/09/new-myspace-logo-unveiled_n_756871.html

I hope all is well,

Neal

You have to mean it.

2010-10-07T20:32:00.003-05:00

Red, capitalized, bold serifs mean business.

Posted by Caryn

futura

2010-10-07T16:02:00.002-05:00

Whoa...

2010-10-06T21:11:00.004-05:00

I was inspired by some of these groovy posters to do a project on psychedelia, created in the 60's in response to the widespread use of the term psychedelic.

Filosofia

2010-10-06T11:59:00.006-05:00

This is Filosofia. It's designed by Zuzana Licko, who is mentioned in our book several times. I love all the variations, but the italic form is beautiful and there is also a unicase version, which I think is so cool.

This is an invitation designed by someone at my work, which shows some italics ("please be our guest") and the unicase variation ("impossible black tulip").

Posted by Tim

Neutraface

2010-10-05T19:40:00.014-05:00

One of the typefaces I've found most interesting lately, both historically and aesthetically, is Neutraface. It appears to be a typeface capable of bridging disparate types of content, products, and presentations:

Posted by Jordan

Type Objects

2010-09-30T12:44:00.006-05:00

I like this because it's literally an object made out of typography.

This is cool. And it's made out of the filler text we talked about last week (lorem ipsum).

Posted by Tim

Letterpress Xmas

2010-09-30T12:33:00.003-05:00

My wife and I received this Xmas card from our friend, Monica. She's a letterpress printer and occasionally makes pieces like this. I think it's supposed to be Satan Claus.

-joshysan

2010-09-30T10:07:00.002-05:00

2010-09-30T09:16:00.002-05:00

Typeface/Typographer Posters

2010-09-29T20:08:00.004-05:00

Posted by Neal.

Letters as Architecture

2010-09-28T17:54:00.012-05:00

Cameron Moll creates immensely intricate pieces of typographic architecture.

More pictures can be found at his website - including a video detailing his use of the letterpress.

Posted by Jordan.

Typography objects

2010-09-23T20:30:00.008-05:00

This room of typography is hand drawn by Thomas Broome. You can see more of these typography pieces on the artist's website.

Typography constructed torsos are featured in this Dockers ad. Rather than just using the outline, it would have been cool if they were a bit more elaborate so they looked three-dimensional.

Posted by Caryn

Sweet Type

2010-09-23T14:44:00.003-05:00

I found these images as I was searching for inspiration for my own project.

Posted by Megan

handmade typography

2010-09-23T12:15:00.003-05:00

white and black.. its a good work simple and cool.. and good combination with hands

Even More Handmade Type

2010-09-22T12:39:00.009-05:00

A few more examples of interesting handmade typography that I've found floating around the interwebs:

Amandine Allesandra has designed a shirt intended to express, through body-movement, the entire alphabet:

More pics and a video can be found here.

A well-made yarn-based type, established through geometrically filling the "negative" space. Found, of all places, in a Macy's window display:

More photos: here.

Lastly, the Eye Magazine blog has a really interesting article detailing recent work expanding typography "dimensionally":

Posted by Jordan

more handmade type

2010-09-20T15:37:00.006-05:00

Another good use of shadow in capturing the white-on-white type. And nice contrast with the gummi colors.

This is just really cool.

posted by Tim

ANCHOR, by Lucia Cai

2010-09-19T13:40:00.004-05:00

ANCHOR, Lucia Cai 
A uni-case multi-dimensional typeface inspired by the average New Yorker’s daily journey through the urban jungle. The name ANCHOR is derived from the way that the floss is tethered to the foundation yet when viewed from above the letter forms seem like they’re suspended in midair. ANCHOR plays with light and shadow, which manipulate each to create elongated and condensed variations on each letterform.
Materials: Pine Wood, Finishing Nails, Embroidery Floss, Varnish, Gold Acrylic Paint, Canola Oil, Wood Putty.

>>I'm feeling particularly inspired by typefaces that have a sculptural element to them. I suppose most if not all handmade types will be 3-dimensional (even ink has depth, right?) but I like typefaces like this accentuate the sculptural possibilities.

posted by master josh

Handmade Typefaces

2010-09-16T20:42:00.006-05:00

Not the most legible, but certainly unique. (Made by Dave Wood)

Candy letters for Megan.

This one is similar to our PSA project. The medium used is public transit tickets.

Posted by Caryn

Handmade Typography

2010-09-15T21:50:00.003-05:00

By the famous Marian Bantjes for the equally famous Stephan Sagmeister!

From the website "design work life".

Text message by Ginger Anyhow.

Posted by Neal.

BANG!

2010-09-15T19:55:00.001-05:00

http://www.designswan.com/archives/words-make-art-typography-portrait.html

Posted by Megan

Helvarial Quiz

2010-09-14T11:36:00.004-05:00

Ironic Sans redid several well know Helvetica logos in Arial in a quiz to see how well you can tell the two fonts apart.

I did pretty well but, but I think I may need some tracing paper before I get 100% on this one.

Posted by Caryn

Well someone had to post the sequel

2010-09-14T11:24:00.002-05:00

After we watched College Humor's Font Conference, I obviously sought out the sequel, Font Fight.

Helvetica and Arial fight to the death!

...literally.

Posted by Caryn

...in...SPACE!

2010-09-13T17:07:00.006-05:00

What point size of Helvetica would it take to reach the moon?

Helvetica! In! Space!

Useful in applying typography? Likely not.
Useful as trivia for a dinner party? Maybe

Posted by Jordan

Wilderness Downtown

2010-09-13T11:30:00.004-05:00

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

This is a neat music video showing off the capabilities of HTML5. There's a cool section where it asks you to write a letter to your younger self. If you use the keyboard there's a nice animated type effect. They recommend you watch it in the Google Chrome browser.

Posted by Tim

What the font

2010-09-10T10:39:00.008-05:00

Someone else posted this link on the blog last year but it's worth posting again. It's a site that helps you figure out what font is being used. It's also available as an iPhone app.

This is kinda fun too. Make a usable font from your own handwriting.

[picture unrelated]

posted by josh wenck

Typocalypse

2010-09-10T10:24:00.010-05:00

Apropos of last night's class, typefaces are intrinsically linked with certain feelings, impressions, and "personalities". Some of them are not entirely positive....

The entire series can be found at Lars Willem Veldkampf's flickr page.

Posted by Jordan.

Fall has fallen

2010-09-09T19:09:00.002-05:00

Posted by Neal

Offensive or clever?

2010-08-04T15:23:00.007-05:00

I can't remember exactly what we were supposed to post about... but here's an Absolut vodka ad that's caused some controversy in the US even though it was only intended for a Mexican audience. Honestly, my first thought was "I don't know if I should feel offended..." but different places view their history differently, so I actually think it's really clever as far as the meaning to their intended audience.

Also, I'm really excited for margaritas and showing our CDs tonight! :)

Posted by Hannah

por favor mantenganse alejado de las computadoras

2010-08-04T12:06:00.005-05:00

I found all of these ads by searching for hispanic advertising agency... and lo and behold, Google found me the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies...

Acento Agency of Los Angeles, CA -- for Senorial Sangria

"There are passions impossible to imitate."
-- Comparing the Sangria to football.

Groupo Gallegos Agency of Long Beach, CA -- for futuramente reading campaign

"To Read Gives You Wings
When a child opens a book, they discover new worlds. [Worlds] of knowledge and fantasy. Encourage them to read."

I like the placing of the books-- makes them look like, ah ha! WINGS! :)

Al Punto Advertising, Inc. of Tustin, CA -- for Farmer John

"Foods more rich [delicious], children more content [happy]."

I like the ad because it plays off of a typical South American depiction of the Virgen de Guadalupe, which many know as an indigenous interpretation of the Virgin Mary. It's very colorful and the board has "my mom" in script with her as the bringer of good food, if you will...

Acento Agency of Los Angeles, CA -- for MCI

Here again, using the culture to connect to the audience. Family is very close in Latin America and they play, through the text, on the fact that, "A telephone call is more than a connection. It can be a reconnection, a help, a knowledge. It can be a union, an ongoing project."

Unfortunately the design with white text against the light hand with a detailed background makes it so it isn't so readable online.

But the text is well thought out -- "That you can utilize the phone like a wonderful tool. A key which can open many doors. And leaves them open."

posted by amanda.nerud

ode to margaritas

2010-08-03T20:55:00.005-05:00

posted by erin e. gerrits

Bad Poster with FEZ

2010-07-28T20:26:00.003-05:00

I was looking over what everyone posed last week and I realized that mine was not on there. Maybe it didn't work, but here is an example of a bad poster.

Does the guy on the right look like Fez from "That '70's Show"?

CD Designs

2010-07-28T19:14:00.004-05:00

Be CAREFUL when designing the face of the CD!

I thought this was a unique way to display the album title

Everyone knows this CD Design

Posted by Kelly

What Graphic Designers do by Ellen Lupton

2010-07-28T19:02:00.002-05:00

"Designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace... Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali. The complicated process is worth money. That's what clients pay for."

Posted by Neal.

Album covers I like :)

2010-07-28T18:18:00.004-05:00

by Megan Leffler

trippy album covers

2010-07-28T13:19:00.002-05:00

Paramour - Riot! -- I like this one because of the use of text and color to move you back and forth and it totally feels like a chaotic riot.

Traffic - Low Spark of High Heeled Boys -- never heard of this band or album, but totally dig the 3-D aspect of it.

Weird Al Yankovic - Off the Deep End -- I have to slip some WAY into this one... This is one of my fave albums, and the parody of the Nirvana album cover with the baby going after the money is epic.

Lifehouse - Smoke&Mirrors -- I went and saw them in concert with Daughtry a while back and their back drop was a huge mock up of this with the reflection of the smoke (you can kinda see it on the cover)

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion -- Never heard of this group or album before, but it was waaaay too trippy NOT to include this....all optical illusion...

amanda.nerud

Some favorites

2010-07-28T08:28:00.007-05:00

Counting Crows debut album (and my all-time favorite), August and Everything After

Cover of Van Morrison's single, "Bright Side of the Road"

I don't own this album, but their new song, "Stop for a Minute" gets stuck in my head all the time! And I thought this cover was really cool and fitting of the album title.

Posted by: Hannah

welcome to the crash arcadium

2010-07-21T22:28:00.003-05:00

posted by erin e. gerrits

Overly cluttered messes

2010-07-21T12:49:00.003-05:00

It was really hard to look for bad posters, my eyes kept going to the well done ones that I liked! But here are a couple that just have WAY too much going on for my taste.

Posted by: Hannah

yeah, not so great...

2010-07-21T11:04:00.004-05:00

so for as much as you hear about 'bad posters' they're actually kinda hard to find... these are the two I could find...

You can't really see what's written because it's blue on black and different various blacks...

this one, while simple, is kind of confusing. it's about pollution, but that soil looks pretty nice, and although there's nothing but dirt for a few miles, this could be a freshly tilled farmstead and a pesky little weed...not pollution....

--Amanda Nerud

prevent..... this.

2010-07-19T21:23:00.006-05:00

posted by erin e. gerrits

2010-07-14T18:19:00.000-05:00

Touching - shows emotion

I really like this poster! Cool idea!

posted by kelly

FLUGTAG

2010-07-14T18:06:00.007-05:00

Typography:
When I was designing brochures I found this helpful-

19 Fonts in 19 Combinations

I saw this on the wall in the Saint Paul skyway and though it is not a poster I have to commend Red Bull for thinking outside of the box (literally). Sorry for the poor quality image I have yet to upgrade to the new iPhone...

Now for some posters with awesome typography...

by : Megan Leffler

not yur average lolcatz....

2010-07-13T23:05:00.003-05:00

WHILE I LOVE me some lolcatz, I'll refrain from actually including them in my post...while some are quite good, some are just ridiculous....these are better...

the type is fun on this one...gives it more than if you just wrote it plainly.

This one I thought was really cool. I was upset I couldn't find a bigger one to see more of the facts. But it's about gun deaths.

I thought this one was cute...but if you're not 'in' with the Apple lingo, you may not fully understand this till someone explains it to you, and then it may not be as funny as it would be otherwise...

But I suppose most designers are the Apple 'in crowd'....

From a design standpoint, very neato. Crank is the movie name, it's the sequel-- so two fingers up--arching the 'energy'....simple. creative. gets the point across quick.

This one was fun too, but-- like the gun/skull design-- has a message...

amanda nerud haz scoured teh interwebz fur dese..fur yur bettermints...

Obama and Trees

2010-07-13T20:10:00.007-05:00

The famous Obama posters... very patriotic

Came across this in my research on "urban forests" if it hadn't been done already, it would have been a great idea for my own poster!

Posted by Hannah

would this be a good iKea here?

2010-07-11T18:21:00.003-05:00

posted by erin e. gerrits

Typefaces

2010-07-07T18:14:00.003-05:00

Typical Typefaces

Posted by: Kelly

type and design

2010-07-07T14:58:00.004-05:00

two similar ideas with circular type...

And then three neato quotes made into appealing posters...

courtesy of a. nerud

Typography in 3D

2010-07-06T13:53:00.002-05:00

I'm pretty impressed with myself for figuring out how to post a video on here :)
Cool video full of typography for Lexus's hybrid that I stumbled upon while reading many, many, healthcare marketing blogs (in case you were wondering).

So true...

Posted by: Hannah

true love of type

2010-07-05T19:58:00.005-05:00

one of my favorite wedding invites.... their story is told through type only. (vs pics, too) so cool.

posted by erin e. gerrits

Color and Emotions

2010-06-30T17:53:00.004-05:00

As I was researching I found the following:

"Every single cell in our bodies need light energy in order to grow and survive. Color energies therefore affect our whole body."

A few ways to bring more color into your life are to:

Paint your walls vibrant colors
Eat brightly skinned organic fruits and vegetables
Decorate your home with items in complementing color contrasts
Colored light bulbs are great alternative to boring yellow light
Dress in shades of color that rule the day
Be vigilant about the colors around you, such as green grass and the blue sky.

This is a chart that further explains what we talked about in class last week with color and emotions. Today my day started off as a nice (brownish) yellow for joy - it then progressed to the medium red of annoyance.

Sorry I cant be at class - I am a bit annoyed about it.

Kelly