Mr Retro

Very nice vintage looking style by Pavel Fuksa, a designer from the Czech Republic.



More here.

Rocknroller/Graphicdesigner

I stumbled across this cool poster by Michael Tierney. A homage to that movie.

Trendwatching me

It comes as a huge surprise to see my work gracing the screen of the legendary Trendwatching October report. In particular because it is about NOWISM*, and the piece in question was created over 3 years ago. Perhaps I really am a futurist after all.

*“Consumers’ ingrained* lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

Type on the Moon

There’s been a bunch of chatter about the ‘other’ poster for the brilliant film Moon. Which, if I am being honest is the main reason I went to see the film, and boy is a visual feast, specifically the typography and the interfaces. I hunted about and found that FontFeed has beaten me to it pointing out that it is Micro­gramma/Eurostile Extended that make the experience so original and, well, just right. Go see the film. seriously.

Font table

Fontplore Showreel from Mphasize on Vimeo.
Not exactly an essential piece of office equipment but would be more useful that the stereotypical table-football/tabletennis table that sits in the corner gathering dust in many agencies. That said I did work in an agency with a Scalextric track which was cool…

Paul Elliman at TypeSHED11

Paul Elliman is an artist and a writer, who uses letters and words in their most abstract forms to create pieces of art. I’ll be honest and admit that I didn’t know of him before he presented his work and ideas but having seen him talk I feel I have missed out a bit. Years ago I got my masters in perceptual psychology, and my dissertation was on object perception. The work I did then on lanellas and typical contours was pretty much forgotten until Paul’s presentation. Typical of his work is the distillation of an object representing a letterform to a single cross-section, its silhouette it you will, and then creating a message/idea from a collection of these forms (he never uses the same form twice). Much like Build’s Objectified piece.
He further abstrated the idea of messaging in a piece where the male and female voice artists commonly heard on the metro in Barcelona gave instructions from Spain to his house in London. Very interesting stuff and a name I will not forget.

Donald Beekman at TypeSHED11

Donald is pretty much single-handily responsible for all the drug (legal) and alt-drug branding and packaging to come out of Holland, through his company DBXL. And a fine man for the job really. Being in a variety of bands since his youth led him to combine his influences of music/psychedelic/acid house/punk etc into packaging that makes your eyeballs throb. But don’t just take my word for it, check out his website for a trip back in time or on my flickr for some eye-candy.

Experimenta at TypeSHED11

I have a soft spot for the guys at Experimenta (you won't see much in their site, it seems to be a blank one for now, so see our flickr). I have seen Duncan show his wares on more than one occasion and appreciate the craftsman approach, the constant struggle of setting up and maintaining design integrity. Their work is top notch too, although I sometimes feel it is a little cold. Not in the piece shown above though: they managed to get the symbol from the U.N.C.L.E into the branding for the Global Leaders Consortium. Nice.
There are obvious comparisons to the legends Experimental Jetset (and not just in name) but it is early days – they are not even 2 yet) and they have got a bright future ahead of them in my opinion.
More on Flickr.

Sydney Shep at TypeSHED11

I'll be honest and admit that the idea of sitting though a 45 minutes history lesson of what I tend to regard as a naff bit of laziness didn’t interest me much, however I was to be proved very wrong. Sydney presented a very interesting piece indeed and if you were to take home anything let it be this:

“The smiley was born on 16 February 1882”

At least that is what her research in the much loved St Brides Library tells her.
More on flickr.

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.