Day: November 1, 2006

I know that Dave from Helveti.ca is finishing up his first book design project over here, so I am shamelessly scooping, and shamelessly stealing these pictures of awesome typofabrics from India, Ink.

Even though I can barely sew on a button I’ve been fantasizing what I could do if I bought up every stitch of it that this eBay seller could get her hands on, especially once I discovered that she has other kinds as well:

Friends, students, admirers, and mockers already know of my vast collection of type-themed t-shirts, but now I’m imagining myself wearing a full suit made out of type cloth. Perhaps all Helvetica, with a nice shirt made out of the serify stuff, and a tie and pocket square made from the numbers? Or at least some sheets and pillowcases. What with the tattoos, the t-shirts, and flights of fancy like this, I realize that I’m on the verge of becoming a Batman villain, albeit one with much more style than this loser. Still, if anyone can make this happen I will be your slave for life.

Of course, I’d much rather have a Cooper Black leather jacket. (Thank you folks, I’ll be here all week.)

Now that we’ve started drawing and sketching for our practical work, I’ve been spending more and more time thinking about the kinds of forms that might work well for the problems I’ve been talking about so far. In many ways, it’s a very open-ended question: it’s not a unique problem to want clarity and legibility in type for dense text situations that may not be produced well. For the kind of technical publications I’m targeting, a certain kind of “classical” or “traditional” feeling would probably be received well, but I’m determined to sneak in as many technical adaptations (addressing issues of reproduction quality, optical sizes ranging from titles down to elaborate superiors and inferiors, legibility of individual letters as well as words) as I can.

Continue reading “You Can Judge a Book by Its Counters”