Category: ultratypographic

I’m a big fan of House Industries, not just as designers and fellow pop-culture enthusiasts, but also as a bunch of really good-natured, fun, talented guys. It pains me regularly that they release all these zesty, beautifully crafted typefaces that I rarely get a chance to use. Luckily, they also make the best schwag in the business, effectively building something of a lifestyle brand based around their typefaces. This Fast Company article about them is a nice little profile, in case you don’t know much about who they are. (And shame on you if you don’t.)

Believe it or not, corny jokes about typefaces are the kind of thing that are usually too geeky even for me. Nevertheless, I feel like I ought to just post something about this now before every other person in the universe starts sending me links to it, like they did with the font conference video. (I appreciate the thought, by the way. Don’t get me wrong.) So here you go: Typographunnies. [Thanks, Brad.]

Rejoice! The MA Type Design program at Reading has just unleashed a new batch of gorgeous, freshly minted typefaces! Behold!

I’ve had a real blast getting to know these guys during the past year, but since I wasn’t actually there in the studio with them all year I only had the barest notion of where everyone was going with their designs, and then I had already moved to London by the time everyone began the final frenzy of completing their fonts. It’s so exciting to see what great types they finally produced. Congratulations, gang!

Once you start thinking about typography, you begin to realize that it affects everyone to some degree or another: it’s not just the preoccupation of the font nerds in your life. (Just ask any of the many people I’ve turned to the Dark Side over the years. Once you start thinking about kerning there’s no return.) Typography is an integral part of communicating, and people often need to communicate. It’s nice, then, when people who get it take the time to explain its relevance in their own field. Case in point: Typography for Lawyers, written by lawyer and former type designer Matthew Butterick.

The few comments on the site so far are hilariously detail-oriented and pedantic, which you might expect from a project aimed at lawyers and typographers.

If you can find yourself a copy of the current issue of Baseline (number 55, Summer 2008) you’ll find a nice little profile of the stuff that goes on at the Typography Department at Reading.

[Baseline‘s website doesn’t seem to do permalinks, so here’s the excerpt. Find the article, though: it has more stuff and pretty pictures, too.]

The department has the longest established record of any university devoted to research into typography and information design. The staff summarise their interests as ‘design for reading’. Approximately fifty percent of the department’s activity is devoted to research and post-graduate work, so it is not surprising therefore that it has been awarded the top rating for research quality on two occasions (1992 and 2001) in the British universities’ Research Assessment Exercise.

The range of taught masters courses includes MAs in Book Design (course tutor Paul Luna); Information Design (course tutors Paul Stiff and Rob Waller); and Typeface Design (course tutor Gerry Leonidas); and an MA (Res) in Typography and Graphic Communication (course tutor Mary Dyson).

Reading is unique in having rich collections of historic lettering, printing and design. These include the archive of the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection; a collection of more than 20,000 items of printed ephemera; and several archives of twentieth century designers.

Research centres

The department also has two research centres. The Centre for Ephemera Studies is based upon the collection of printed ephemera which reflect everyday life in the past. More recently, Rob Waller has joined the department after twenty years in practice, and established the Simplification Centre. The primary aim of this is to conduct research on information design and make this accessible to organisations which communicate with the public on complex matters. One of the department’s impressive range of recent and currently funded research projects are described below (see issue 55 for the full article).

Just this past weekend I was saying how much I wished the Guardian family designed by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz was done with its exclusive contract with the Guardian and available to other people. Lo and behold, the time has come already. Yay!

That is, “Yay! I can imagine using them now,” but I doubt I have any projects coming up that could justify the cost of buying a massive type family, no matter how pretty and awesome it is. It will be interesting is to see how designers work with the Guardian family and make it the projects look like something other than the Guardian.

Today’s mission is to hunt around and see who’s actually selling it, and then invent ways to justify paying for a license.

Here’s one for the type designers out there, especially those of you who’ve dipped your toes into the murky depths of non-Latin typefaces:

The project is for outputing a variant Typeface from an existing open source Typeface, where the variant is replacing only 1 alphabet (upper,lower case, basic and italic) and putting a sanskrit alphabet (upper, lower case, basic and italic) that will have to be designed. . . . The budget is about $100 via Paypal, Moneybookers. Delivery for early/mid-next week.

Yeah, that’s not really how things work, my friend.

The rest of the request, and one of many appropriate answers to it is here, at Design Rants.

Update: Hmmmm, it’s all even weirder than I thought.