Category: ultratypographic

Oh Guardian, my Guardian

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!

Guardian Egyptian

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.

Guardian Sans

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

Undervalued much?

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.

Glyphs on Film

Stempel Helvetica

I finally had a chance to watch the outtakes from Helvetica (the documentary that any and all type and/or graphic designers know about, but the rest of you may or may not know about), and I was pleasantly surprised.

The surprise was not that I enjoyed the film and the extra footage. When I first saw Helvetica last summer I really enjoyed it, and thought it might be the best way to actually make other people understand what I do and why I often feel so passionate about typography and design. It tells the story of Helvetica in a clear way that connects this one typeface — and the importance of typefaces in general — to the whole environment of printed, manufactured, and broadcast stuff that’s around us all the time. When I was back in New York for Christmas, I wished I had a DVD of the film with me so I could show my family and give them a better idea of what I’ve been up to since I left the country.

Stempel Haas specimen

The extra footage on the DVD was rightfully left out of the film itself. Much of it ventures off into other territory about type and design in a way that would water down the story of Helvetica itself. It’s all really fascinating, though, for people who have more of an interest in design. All the interview outtakes from people like Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Neville Brody, and even David Carson (I’m over him, but I still remember what a shot of vitality his work once was) are a rich source of information about design process — the way different designers work and think. They shed some light on an aspect on what we do that’s often obscured by people just paying attention to the end results alone, and it’s a treat to have this kind of off-the-cuff talk available somewhere other than the more exclusive realm of a professional conference or lecture, or the more formal realm of published work.

If you’re curious enough to check it out, Netflix has it now, or you could always throw a little support the filmmaker’s way and buy yourself a copy.

Perfection

The perfect simile to explain a thorny issue about type history to people who are familiar with fonts as things they pick from a list:

…there can never be a definitive Bodoni, Garamond, Jenson, or Fleischmann typeface, as their oeuvres consist of a multitude of single, size-specific fonts. It is like mashing up Othello, King Lear, Hamlet and a touch of The Tempest and publishing it as ‘The Shakespeare’.

Kris Sowersby, posting at I Love Typography

Busy Bee

Progress on my dissertation has been an uphill battle against two very demanding design projects I’ve been plowing through at the same time. One, thankfully, is on its way to turning out very well after a few hiccups on press preceded by lots and lots and lots of passionate input from the authors/clients. It’s been a lot of work, but the end result is very exciting for us all. (I hope. Oh god, I hope we’re all equally excited at this point.)

The MATD Group Specimen is underway

The other is a horrorshow of trying to polish a turd for a client who doesn’t quite know what they want, can’t quite agree about what they’re trying to do, wouldn’t give me any time to help them figure it out, and has reduced the budget to just about a bag of peanuts and a glass of tap water. But I care, so I can’t just let myself blow them off.

Meanwhile, there’s still a ways to go on my acutely insightful analysis of typefaces for mathematics that I need to finish so I can graduate.

Introducing Gina

introducing_gina.jpg

Another deadline finished! We turned in our typeface files last week, and I just turned in the specimen booklet this morning. Next it’s an essay on the development and production of the typefaces, and after that it’s on to my research dissertation. Needless to say, there’s no Summer vacation for me this year.

Even with the other deadlines looming, it’s an incredible feeling to have finally “finished” the typeface. (I use the quotes because there are still problems to address, and I’ll probably spend a lot more time fleshing out a real family of fonts instead of the two I have now.) This was an entirely new undertaking for me, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I look forward to getting better as time goes by, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done so far, and pretty grateful to everyone who helped it come together.

Before I spend the next week or so writing about the typefaces themselves, I’d really like to take a moment to say something about their namesake — my old friend/boss/mentor/inspiration Gina Brandt-Fall.

gina_sparky.jpgGina was an extraordinary woman who passed away in April 2001. Although she had been having an ugly, all-out battle with breast cancer for the previous two years, and knew her days were running out, I don’t think she was prepared for the sudden liver failure that claimed her in the end. I know I wasn’t. Gina, who I worked with for years, moved to California a few months prior, planning to start a new life in the wake of the cancer that she fought so aggressively. Her doctors discovered more cancer, though, burrowed further into her chest and lungs where they couldn’t get to it without major surgery that would have left Gina in excruciating pain for her last months. She opted for more chemotherapy instead, so she could have a few good weeks out of each of those last months — time to enjoy the sun, to be with her friends, to be able to pull together the fragments of the wonderful book she had been working on for so long. Even during her illness, Gina was incredibly vibrant, emotionally and intellectually engaged, empathic, thoughtful, insightful. Gone, just like that.

Gina and I took to one another immediately went I first interviewed with her for some freelance typesetting work in about 1996 or so. From the very first day, I was taken by her enthusiasm, humor, and quick mind as our conversation went from typesetting to typography to books to literature to life, and that spark never faded during all the years we worked side-by-side. I learned an incredible amount of new things from her, and I was actively encouraged by her to take those new ideas to new levels, and to always leave myself the energy to do what I love. And I laughed with her. Oh my, how we laughed when we were together! Even when we started out bitching and moaning about the workplace and the larger world, we were able to put things in perspective and mix joy in with the righteous indignation. She was not only a friend and a colleague and a teacher, but also an inspiration. That’s cliché, I know, but true: I aspire to her level of passionate interest in life.

Once I knew I was going to set aside life as I knew it to follow a dream, it seemed like the perfect tribute to Gina to dedicate a part of that dream to her. Not only was she the one who made me learn how to typeset math (or rather, she was the one who made me realize how fascinating it could be, and who encouraged me to keep learning as much as I could), but she was the one who showed me that it’s good to hang onto your dreams and jump at them when you have the chance.