Masayoshi Kodaira at TypeSHED11

Hold crap this guy is the biz. Without a doubt Masayoshi has the BEST way of presenting his work I have ever witnessed. Not that he needed it. His work is outstanding. His understanding of print processes and finishing is phenomenal. My account won't do it justice. My cheap, blury snaps are hardly worth showing. Hunt out all the work you can find and study it. And try to be half as good. I wish.

Bruno Maag at TypeSHED11

I have always respect what Bruno has had to say (I even have a set in my Suitcase of ‘fonts that Bruno recommends’ that I gleaned from an old issue of Baseline) so was keen to see him in person and witness his passion, and man, is that guy passionate about what he does.
He spoke primarily about the global village and how one shouldn't neglect the cultural aspect of an area by forcing Latin alphabets on them, nor by just dropping in whatever alternative tanslation you can find. An example: Dalton Maag is working on Dubai's metro system where the signs need latin and arabic information. If one is going to do it properly the arabic needs to match the latin (or vice versa) in which case one will have to create it from scratch. And to do it properly one needs to know about the language, the letterforms, how it is written (the angle of the pen is differnent by 15 degrees for a start). So Bruno's team are all off to learn Arabic.
He also had some strong words to say about the 2012 logo and the typeface, but that is old news.
Oh, and he is more passioanle about food. Seriously, if you see him ask him about food. He knows one or two things.
Photos on Flickr.

Indra Kupferschmid at TypeSHED11

Picking a typeface, the right one, not just anyone can be a mare, but like the Lone Ranger on Silver Indra Kupferschmid came the the rescue with some thoughts on how to think outside the box. She is also responsible for the new font classifications, like the one the FontShuffle iPhone app I think. If there was one idea to take away it was “don't worry, people generally will read it anyway,” a thought that helps me sleep at night.
Photos on Flickr.

Kris Sowersby at TypeSHED11

Always the entertainer, Kris has trouble zooming out and was keen to share this with the audience. His job as the kingpin at Klim is to lock himself away and massage a typeface into something new. It is the minute details that turn him on. So he is always surprised when this creations are set free and become more than he foresaw. Like the new typeface for Methven.
Methven was rebranding and wanted a bespoke typeface, something that had loops/drops (hey it is all about water). Taking National, a face he designed (so he knew he wouldn't get sued!)he worked it into a new direction then left it in the hands of Tana Mitchell to work her magic.
More on Flickr.

Experimental Jetset at TypeSHED11

I have been lucky enough to see this Dutch trio on a couple of occasions and they never fail to amuse and inspire. They focused on their influences this time; the things that they saw that got them where they are. Like how an anarchic backwards 'a' inspired them to turn their text upside down, or how the jewelry in an exhibition was only viewable from outside the gallery, leaving the inside virtually empty, and how the language of two-tone, and Prince inspired their punk minimalism. And how this led to other things.

Bat Macumba & Experimental Jetset from Caspian Ievers on Vimeo.

See them on Flickr.

Kelvin Soh at TypeSHED11

One half or Auckland outfit The Wilderness, Kelvin leans heavily on the side of design as art. This talk, entitled design in the space of friction, focused on the idea that something is only useful if it is used, but not necessarily for what it was designed for.
The designer might make suggestions but at the end of the day the control is in the hands of the audience. An obvious example is that of skaters in urban environments using the architecture to their own advantage, but Kelvin showed a great piece that filled the gap between exhibitions at an Auckland gallery. In essence a non-poster, empty with a different frame or border each time. Tween posters. In his own words they celebrate uselessness. But after few have been put up the viewer then adds meaning to them, i.e. there is no exhibition at the moment but there will be soon. Ironically, having completes a series of them they were all exhibited in the gallery.
More at Flickr

Christian Schwartz at TypeSHED11

Type designer extrordinaire Christian spoke about how the Font Menu gave us choice. Type is clothing for words, but like clothing we all have different tastes. Some of these tastes are regional; like Franklin Gothic in USA, Gill Sans for UK, Vendrome in France.
See more at Flickr.

Sarah Maxey at TypeSHED11

Sarah collects everyday words and phrases and draws then, exaggerating their importance and often imparting a different meaning to them in the process. And she is very good at it too.
See more at Flickr.

Stephen Banham at TypeSHED11

Stephen is a storyteller, and self-proclaimed type evangelist, which is pretty handy as he’s the guy behind the type foundry Letterbox. Funny dude too. He opened my eyes to the worlds biggest logo, a whopping 2 miles across. each letter is 180m x 140m, with a stroke width of 12m. That’s like a motorway. And if you don’t believe me look at this (I love GoogleMaps). Apparently is isn’t a logo (say Reaymix) as that wold be illegal, rather it is a 4 way landing strip for the flying doctors or somesuch. Yup.
Apparently there is also some dude who has trained birds to fly in logo-formation. As long as you are called ‘V’. Actually VOLVO, NIKE and ANZ hav all been done (but I don’t have photos to prove it). He also recounted a slightly disturbing story about the recall of brands by school children and how accuratly many could draw the logo from memory. While the Nike swoosh is not surprising the ligatured db of Cadbury was accuratly reproduced by one, which is just nuts.

Type is an expression of our language, and our language is our culture.

More photos on Flickr.

Leonardo Sonnoli at TypeSHED11

February 11–15 2009 saw the birth of TypeSHED11, a “clued-up concoction of [typographic] commentary” with international speakers talking frankly about their work/inspiration/knowledge.
Leonardo Sonnoli’s An egg is not a potato presentation was an insightful talk about the books that he loves (one of which is a book of sounds: it has no words but is made of different paper so the pages make different sounds as you turn the pages) and the typographic/design work that was influenced by them.
More photos and comments can be found on Flickr.

TypeShed11

Wellington has been playing host to some of the biggest names in type and typography on this planet at TypeSHED11. And what a privilege to hear them speak over the last three days.
Experimental Jetset, Bruno Maag, Paul Elliman,Leonardo Sonnoli, Stephen Banham, Christian Schwartz, Kris Sowersby to name just a few…
I will do my best to add footage and images so you too can experience some of it too. Wow.

Fizzy Shit

I am in two minds as to whether this is a prank to see how many designers rant (as we like to do) but what the hell. Here’s my two cents.
If you are slow on the uptake a leaked brand manual for Pepsi had made its way onto the web. I heard about it form the always interesting Ben Terrett. Holy crap! What a blast. It is well worth downloading yourself and have a read (get it here). See if you can keep that smirk off your face.
Apparently “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations.” It that what drawing circles on top of curvy lines is? I get it. No, wait. It thought it was just doodling. “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of doodling.” There, that makes more sense.
To compare, what I believe is a weak re-brand that had tried far too hard, to a universal constant like GRAVITY, yup that mysterious force that governs the entire universe, shaping everything, even Hawkins struggles with it, to compare the effect of Pepsi’s new doodle to that of gravity it just fucking insane. Oh well, it got me. Have a read yourself and see what you think. Then tell me if you have an uncontrollable urge to go out and deliberately buy something else just to prove a point. Gravity, you ain’t got control over me, watch me fly.
Don’t even get me started on their new understanding of the golden ratio…

CPBI

Stumbled across this logo at LogoPond. “Call & Post business incubator is about bringing companies and people who can help those companies together to form strategic alliances.”
Feels somewhat familiar too me, but I can’t quite place it…