David Airey, graphic designer » Typography

HypeForType font giveaway

David Airey — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:01:01 +0000

To celebrate the release of its Exclusive Font Collection Volume 3, online type foundry HypeForType has kindly agreed to give you a choice of typeface from its collection (you can choose any font in HypeForType’s catalogue except the few priciest ones — in the “exclusive” set).

Five of you can each scoop a freebie, and all you need to do for a chance to win is leave a comment telling me the last typeface you used for a design project, mentioning why it worked.

I’ll draw five winners at random this coming Wednesday (9th June), updating the post with the names and emailing each person individually.

Here’s a small sample of the type goodness on offer.

Akimoto (with 3 weights)

Affair

FOSU

Oxygen (with 6 weights)

Regardless of the draw, the HypeForType categories (above) are definitely worth a browse.

——

Update: 09 June 2010
I’ve emailed each of the five winners with details on how to collect. They are Don Fennucci, Sam, Julien, Jaz, and Gonzo. Congratulations! Thanks very much to everyone who commented.

——

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Hatch Show Print

David Airey — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:59:05 +0000

A fascinating eight-minute look at Hatch Show Print, a 130 year-old working letterpress shop (established 1879) in Nashville, Tennessee.

Photo via Marshall Sokoloff’s stunning photo collection

For those reading via email, watch the video on YouTube.

More info about Hatch Show Print on UPPERCASE.

Photo via Marshall Sokoloff

Whilst on the topic of letterpress, and letterpress wood blocks in particular, here’s a gorgeous office wall-hanging that made me look.

Perhaps more interesting than the wall-hanging is the comment thread on Design*Sponge. Quite a few letterpress artists express their sadness at this use of wood blocks, and say it encourages people to break up block collections to make more of a profit.

Beautiful installation? Bad practice?

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

The art of the title sequence

David Airey — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:39:29 +0000

If you’re like me, you get to the cinema early so you don’t miss the opening credits. The title sequence for Catch Me If You Can, in particular, is one of my favourites, and here are a few others worthy of a mention, plus an insightful interview with Saul Bass — king of titles.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Thank You For Smoking (2005)

Typographica did a little font spotting for that.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Casino Royale (2006)

North by Northwest (1959)

“The final credit (for the director) appears as a portly man (Hitch in his trademark cameo) races in attempt to catch a bus, only to see the doors shut in his face.”

Full description on notcoming.com

Gotta love those Hitchcock cameos.

Se7en (1995) — suggested by Luke

United States of Tara (2008) — suggested by Antonea

Lord of War (2005) — suggested by Anaska

The Pink Panther (1964) — suggested by Fernanda

Snatch (2000) — suggested by Deirdre

Saul Bass on titles

The king of title sequences, Saul Bass, talks in depth about some of his work in this 35 minute presentation.

More title sequence inspiration

And if you have a favourite opening sequence, I’d love to know.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

30 inspiring Flickr groups on typography

David Airey — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:03:57 +0000

Inspiring typographical Flickr collections, for designers and type nuts. The following groups contain more than 50,000 images showcasing typography. Just about enough to quench your type desires.

1. Typography and lettering (33,000+ images)

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2. Found type (12,300+ images)

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3. Typophile — for the typography obsessed (4,900+ images)

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4. Urban typography (3,250+ images)

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5. Typography of the world (2,800+ images)

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6. Typography * (2,300+ images)

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7. Chinese typography (1,950+ images)

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8. Signage and typography (1,700+ images)

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9. Vintage type (1,500+ images)

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10. Experimental typography (1,400+ images)

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11. Hand drawn type (1,400+ images)

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12. Type specimen (1,260+ images)

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13. Your typography (1,250+ images)

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14. Arabic typography (1,000+ images)

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15. Pictograms and public space typography (950+ images)

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16. Japanese typography (900+ images)

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17. Historical type and lettering (890+ images)

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18. Folk typography (500+ images)

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19. Wood type (480+ images)

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20. Bad type (450+ images)

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21. Fonts & typography (320+ images)

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22. VCUQ typography one 2008 (290+ images)

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23. Typography Friday (270+ images)

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24. The center for vernacular typography (260+ images)

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25. Typography abuse (200+ images)

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26. Crimes against typography (150+ images)

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27. Italian typography design (140+ images)

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28. Hannover type and lettering (90+ images)

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29. Czech typography archives (45+ images)

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30. Typography of the 50s (45+ images)

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More Flickr inspiration on this blog post:

99 Flickr Groups for Design Inspiration

You’ll also find more type references in my typography archive.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

The alphabet, but not as we know it…

David Airey — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:13:47 +0000

The alphabet in light writing, found on Nir Tober’s Flickr page. If light writing is your thing, check out this previous post of mine, with some light writing YouTube videos.

The hairy Futura typeface, found on Behance, courtesy of Reset Blog.

Human crafted typeface, found on Hijack Your Life and courtesy of Brand Flakes for Breakfast.

Type in the sky alphabet, from looking up through the gaps in buildings, found on Slanted and courtesy of Noisy Decent Graphics.

Eine’s East End of London shopfront shutter letters, found on Dave Gorman’s Flickr pages.

Sign language alphabet, created from match books (larger version of the sign language alphabet). Found on C71123, after a lot of “folding, gluing, and holding until dry.”

The Alphabet Photo Gallery by Abba Richman at pbase.com. A four month project with fantastic results.

Inspired by Abba Richman’s collection, prior to this, Thomas Fredriksen created his own alphabet photo collection on pbase.com.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Helvetica NOW poster design contest

David Airey — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:29:23 +0000

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Helvetica™ typeface, Linotype™ invited designers worldwide to take part in the Helvetica NOW poster design contest.

More than 1,000 posters were submitted to the contest, and they’re on the ballot for the first round of voting. With your help, the 200 posters with the most votes will advance to the second round. Then there’s a final round of voting to declare a winner. The winning entries will be announced in the January 2008 LinoLetter.

Whether you’re a fan of Helvetica or not, it’s worth a visit for a little poster design inspiration.

More design inspiration in my poster design category.

Image credit: David Barath

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

13 typefaces for graphic designers

David Airey — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:09:51 +0000

With thousands of different typefaces on offer, it’s vital to have a select few that act as pillars in your collection. The following 13 typefaces (shown in alphabetical order) are ones you’ll find many graphic designers have used.

#1 Akzidenz Grotesk

Akzidenz Grotesk, the first ever sans-serif typeface to be widely used, was originally released in 1898, by the H. Berthold AG type foundry. At first glance, it can sometimes be mistaken for the Helvetica or Univers typefaces.

More on Wikipedia

Head over to Typophile if you want to learn more about the roots of Akzidenz Grotesk.

Akzidenz is available to buy from Linotype, under the name Basic Commercial. The font family was renamed based on Linotype’s digitization of the typeface, which can also be bought under the Akzidenz name from other type resources.

#2 Avenir

The Avenir typeface was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988. Linotype interviewed Adrian Frutiger and asked him about the reasons for the new design of Avenir, its special characteristics and potential uses. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Looking back on more than 40 years of concern with sans serif typefaces, I felt an obligation to design a linear style of sans serif, in the tradition of Erbar™, Futura®, and to a lesser extent Gill Sans®. These have purely constructed characters from which the element of a handwriting movement has been removed. Obviously this could not be an outstanding new creation, but I have tried to make use of the experience and stylistic developments of the 20th century in order to work out an independent alphabet meeting modern typographical needs.

The city of Amsterdam uses Avenir extensively in its graphic identity. BBC2 has also begun to use Avenir as its main corporate font for its channel logo and identity, another shift away from the once universal use of the Gill Sans font across all of the BBC’s output.

You can purchase the Avenir family from Linotype.

#3 Bodoni

Bodoni is the name given to a series of serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni in 1798.

This typeface has a narrower underlying structure with flat, unbracketed serifs. The face has extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall geometric construction.

More on Wikipedia

Dave Farey at Fonthaus has written an interesting article, discussing the confusion in the market over the many different types of Bodoni that are available.

…there are numerous siblings, third and fourth cousins, plus poor relations of doubtful parentage, cloaked under the protection of the Bodoni name, creating confusion and ultimately disenchantment.

You can see the different font family weights and also buy Bodoni from Linotype here.

#4 Caslon

Caslon is a family of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon (1692–1766). His earliest design dates to 1734.

The Caslon types were distributed throughout the British Empire, including British North America. Much of the decayed appearance of early American printing is thought to be due to oxidation caused by long exposure to seawater during transport from England to the Americas. Caslon’s types were immediately successful and used in many historic documents, including the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

After William Caslon’s death, the use of his types diminished, but saw a revival between 1840–80 as a part of the British Arts and Crafts movement. The Caslon design is still widely used today, and for many years, a common rule of thumb for printers and typesetters was to “set it in Caslon” if no other font was specified.

More on Wikipedia

There’s an article on Typophile about Caslon, where this is mentioned:

Caslon’s type was popular in every sense. It was popular in the eighteenth century (until it was eased out by modern faces in the early 19th). When the fashion of “old face” revived in the 19th, many in England and America looked to Caslon’s type as the model. And, at a time when lay people probably knew less about font-names than they do now, “Caslon” was a name quite a few people did know. George Bernard Shaw, for example, absolutely insisted that his work be set in Caslon.

At the time of writing, there are 71 Caslon families available for purchase.

#5 Clarendon

Clarendon was created in England by Robert Besley, for the Fann Street Foundry, in 1845.

One of my logo design portfolio pieces makes use of the Clarendon typeface, and you can see it here: Davidson Locksmith logo design.

Different weights are available to buy from Linotype.

#6 Franklin Gothic

Franklin Gothic was designed by Morris Fuller Benton, in 1902. “Gothic” is an increasingly archaic term (used widely in the past but quite rare today), meaning ‘sans-serif’, which is found primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Victor Caruso drew the multi-weight family for the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1980. Caruso’s redrawing of Franklin Gothic for ITC consists of a slightly enlarged x-height and a moderately condensed lowercase alphabet.

More on Wikipedia

The ITC Franklin Gothic is available to purchase from Linotype.

#7 Frutiger

Frutiger was designed by the Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger. It was commissioned in 1968 by the newly-built Charles De Gaulle International Airport at Roissy, in France, which needed a new directional sign system. Instead of using one of his previously designed typefaces, such as Univers, Adrian Frutiger chose to design a new one. The new typeface, originally called Roissy, was completed in 1975 and installed at the airport in the same year.

Frutiger’s goal was to create a sans-serif typeface with the rationality and cleanliness of Univers, but with the organic and proportional aspects of Gill Sans. The result is that Frutiger is a distinctive and legible typeface. The letter properties were suited to the needs of Charles De Gaulle – modern appearance and legibility at various angles, sizes, and distances. Ascenders and descenders are very prominent, and apertures are wide to easily distinguish letters from each other.

More on Wikipedia

The Frutiger font family can be viewed and purchased on Linotype.

#8 Futura

Futura was designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. Although Renner was not associated with the Bauhaus movement, he shared many of its structural elements, and believed that a modern typeface should express modern models, rather than be a revival of a previous design.

Futura’s success spawned a range of new geometric sans-serif typefaces from competing foundries, and remains one of the most used sans-serif types into the 21st century. It is used prominently in the graphic identity of Volkswagen and Union Pacific. The former Swiss airline, Swissair, also used Futura from the 1950s to the 1990s.

Boeing commercial Airplanes almost exclusively use a variation of Futura (medium, Lt Bt, Demi) in their flight-deck labeling, for both information decals and instrumentation. Futura remains an important typeface family and is used on a daily basis for print and digital purposes as both a headline and body font.

More on Wikipedia, Futura poster designed by Adelle Jurgens

Visit Linotype to view different Futura weights, and purchase the font family.

#9 Garamond

Garamond came to prominence in the 1540s, first for a Greek typeface that Claude Garamond was commissioned to create for the French king François I. The commission was to be used in a series of books by Robert Estienne. The French court later adopted Garamond’s Roman types for their printing, and the typeface influenced type across France and Western Europe.

More on Wikipedia

View and purchase the ITC Garamond font family on Linotype.

#10 Gill Sans

Gill Sans was designed by Eric Gill in 1927-30. Gill was a well established sculptor, graphic artist and type designer, and the Gill Sans typeface takes inspiration from Edward Johnston’s ‘Johnston’ typeface, used for the London Underground, which Gill had worked on whilst apprenticed to Johnston.

Eric Gill attempted to make the ultimate legible sans-serif text face, and Gill Sans was designed to function equally well as both a text face and for display.

More on Wikipedia

Purchase the Gill Sans font family.

#11 Gotham

Gotham was designed very recently (2000) by New York type designer, Tobias Frere-Jones. Gotham’s letterforms are inspired by a form of architectural signage that achieved popularity in the mid-twentieth century, and are especially popular throughout New York City. (Designer Tobias Frere-Jones credits the sign on the Eighth Avenue facade of New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, an especially clear example of this style, as an artifact which inspired the Gotham project.)

More on Wikipedia

Gotham is the typeface of choice for the Freedom Tower cornerstone at the World Trade Center site, and can be bought through Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

#12 Helvetica

Helvetica was created by Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, the typeface’s name was changed by Haas’ German parent company, Stempel, in 1960, to Helvetica – derived from Confederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland – in order to make it more marketable internationally.

More on Wikipedia

Here’s an image showing the subtle differences between Helvetica and Akzidenz.

The Helvetica font family is available for purchase through Linotype.

#13 Univers

Univers is the name of the typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1956. Both Univers and Helvetica, which are sometimes confused, take inspiration from the 1896 typeface Akzidenz Grotesk (listed above). These typefaces figure prominently in the Swiss style of graphic design.

The Univers type family consists of 14 weights, plus 14 corresponding oblique weights, and 16 variants with central European and Cyrillic character set.

In 1997 Frutiger reworked the whole Univers family in cooperation with Linotype, thus creating the Linotype Univers, which consists of 63 weights.

More on Wikipedia

I was unsure about the exact typeface used for the London street sign (shown above), and had to ask others what they thought. If you think it’s something other than Univers Bold Condensed, please do let me know.

Check out the Univers font family on Linotype’s website.

Futher resources on typefaces and typography:

UPDATE:
What I haven’t addressed in this post, is why these typefaces are great, and I’ll talk about that in future blog posts. There was some confusion amongst others, who thought I was saying to use these choices above all else. What I really mean is, these are excellent choices, for many different purposes, but don’t rule out the huge range of other typefaces available.

Have your say

Lists can be very subjective, and this is just a sample of the fonts installed on my computer. Do you agree / disagree with my choices? What would you add to this collection?

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Typography resources

David Airey — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 23:16:58 +0000

Here are a few select typography resources, providing you with typography tips, tutorials and advice.

Typograpy tips and advice for graphic design students published on this site, and inspired from a conversation on Ben’s Noisy Decent Graphics.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface by Michael Beirut. Michael writes regularly on Design Observer, and this is another of his excellent insights into typography.

Web Design is 95% Typography, at Information Architects. A very interesting read, with some excellent online and offline resources.

A few good fonts from Thinking with Type. Tens of thousands of digital typefaces are available for use on desktop computers. Most of them are junk. Here are a few nicely chosen fonts from a great typography resource.

The Trouble With Em ‘n En (and other shady characters) by Peter K Sheerin at A List Apart. Hypens are not dashes… hyphens are not dashes…

Typography Articles and Essays from TypeCulture. A nice compilation of downloadable PDF articles and essays, with snippets to pique your curiousity.

Eric Gill got it wrong; a re-evaluation of Gill Sans from Typotheque. Quite a focused article, obviously, but it’s a revealing look at Gill Sans with some interesting alternatives.

20 free fonts for download pieced together by Vitaly Friedman. With so many free fonts available, it’s nice to see a collection of carefully chosen font downloads.

Where do you go for typography tips?

If you know of any other good typography articles or resources I’d most certainly appreciate you commenting, and of course, if you have any thoughts on the above resources, I’d also love to hear from you.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Typography tips for graphic design students

David Airey — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:48:18 +0000

A week or two ago, London-based graphic designer Ben Terrett, of Noisy Decent Graphics, asked his readers this question:

What typographic advice would you give a third year design student?

I read the comments with great interest and here I’ve picked out a few of the most useful typography tips.

“Don’t underestimate its importance. The best ideas, the most beautiful imagery, the most harmonious colour combinations will be blighted by inferior typography. So work at it, study it.

“Look at all those great names in graphic design history; Tschichold, Schleger, Rand, Fletcher, Aicher, Muller-Brockmann; and look at their beautiful type. They understood the need to understand it.”

— RICHARD WESTON of ACE JET 170

“Picking up copy of Type and Typography can be immensely helpful. It’s got a particularly useful section about the styling of details within text.”

— ALISTAIR HALL of WE MADE THIS

Click the above image for a closer look at letterform anatomy.

“As always, make sure you play with silly ideas on paper too, they get the creative juice flowing.”

— FERNANDO LINS

I completely agree. The importance of using a pencil and paper in graphic design is something I can’t stress enough.

“Look at historical design masters, don’t dismiss them because they are old or because you have seen it all before. Richard Hollis’ book on Swiss Graphic Design is great because it covers so many masters and shows you so many examples of work.

“I also second the suggestion of getting a boring book about rules. The details is what I look at. If you haven’t got them down then they will stand out, but that’s just me: a dusty old fogey. If I see an en dash used properly I appreciate it. Robert Bringhurt’s book, The Elements of Typographic Style, is great for this.”

— JAYPEG

There’s a quote from a Russian graphic designer that struck a chord, shown in a comment by Alicia. It reads:

“The black space can never be beautiful until the white space is beautiful.”

Other recommended typography books include:

Also, Michael Beirut wrote an excellent article on Design Observer, titled, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface“.

What typographic advice would you give to a design student?

Update: 01 May 2009
The Type Directors Club lists an excellent array of typography books.

David Airey, graphic designer » Typography

HypeForType font giveaway

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Hatch Show Print

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The art of the title sequence

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30 inspiring Flickr groups on typography

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The alphabet, but not as we know it…

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Helvetica NOW poster design contest

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13 typefaces for graphic designers

#1 Akzidenz Grotesk

#2 Avenir

#3 Bodoni

#4 Caslon

#5 Clarendon

#6 Franklin Gothic

#7 Frutiger

#8 Futura

#9 Garamond

#10 Gill Sans

#11 Gotham

#12 Helvetica

#13 Univers

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Typography resources

Where do you go for typography tips?

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Typography tips for graphic design students

Visit the design bookstore

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Top 3 graphic design mistakes Americans make

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