April 17, 2008 at 12:50 pm ·
Filed under Design
A friend of mine passed me an article the other day from Advanced Photoshop, which in general probably stands a little above my head, but it had an article which she (rightly!) thought I’d be interested in. I’m just going to share some choice quotes and put in some images that I’ve seen myself around the web recently that illustrate the point nicely.
Generally known as ‘display typography,’ it is becoming a potent and expressive element with much more concern for an aesthetic [as opposed to functional] approach.
Type Toys by Marcus Schaefer
Kapitza, a contemporary design partnership since 2004, specialises in picture fonts - “we have been developing an extensive set of picture fonts that lie somewhere between type ornaments, an image library resource and an art project.”
Scott Templin, Neighbourhood Type
Says Alex Haigh of Thinkdust, “When thinking of a design classic, Helvetica is probably what the majority of designers think of first. However, with due respect to the face, I’m quite bord of how it is constantly over used .. only a small majority of very tight designers I have seen recently seem to challenge the face in order to create something new and fresh”
Guardian Poster Executions by W+K London
And my favourite quote, from Tony Ariawan, creator of studio Area105, “it’s typography that differentiates graphc design and other visual art, like say paintings. Typography has its own functional and aesthetic means on translating verbal communication onto visual form.”
WordFriends from Target
April 4, 2008 at 4:14 pm ·
Filed under Design
UPDATE: Alison Jackson, mentioned below is exhibiting her amazing work at the Hamiltons Gallery nr Hyde Park from 16th April. Don’t miss it.
Back from Marrakech, back from Essaouira. These are wonderful places, as I gleefully explained to a good friend who is getting married in September and pondering honeymoon destinations.
All of the best photos of my trip are in my flickr (or on facebook, if you’d like to add me as a friend), but here’s two good ones:
Cascades d’Ouzzoud
Essaouira
The trip, funnily enough, sparked in me two renewed interests.
Firstly, in early Art Nouveau posters, about which I’ve been reading, recently, thanks to a huge book that my friends at the British Library bought me as a leaving present. I bought two posters that I’m going to get framed over the weekend.
Secondly, although there was a glaring lack of advertising billboards, posters or flyers almost anywhere (it intrigued me that I noticed this), the ones that did exist had been so obviously and poorly put together with that it made me realise how easy it is to manipulate photography well when you have the latest software (read: Adobe CS3).
But to do it really, really well.. that’s another story entirely. Take a look at Alison Jackson’s brilliant work, for example (a couple are NSFW). Now that’s some really high quality photoshopping!
March 26, 2008 at 2:24 pm ·
Filed under Comment, Fun
From the absolutely fantastic stuff white people like blog, a definitive (but unfinished) list of stuff white people like. My favourites are #63, #62, #9 and #2!
March 13, 2008 at 4:35 pm ·
Filed under Fun
Like this poster on Hampstead Road near where I live. Superb.
Can you imagine if this said ’some people are BLACK’ or ’some people are TURKISH CYPRIOT’ etc? I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Is it just preaching to the converted? Do you think this is going to win people over? Or is it just antagonistic? Difficult to put myself in a homophobe’s shoes (they’re sticky, old and unfashionable, for a start) but I reckon this would just wind me up even more.
The second thing - well, the Worship Street Irregulars beat me to it (typical!) - make sure you have the volume on.
And finally, it’s 33 degrees in Marrakech today. I need to buy me some shorts. See you in a week!
March 11, 2008 at 4:02 pm ·
Filed under Diary
There’s always a risk that a blog turns into a “I had jam rather than honey on my toast this morning and my girlfriend just dumped me” kind of blog. This would be uninteresting.
However there’s no guarantee that anything I say on here is any more interesting than that. I can only aim to mildly entertain and offer some interesting tidbits every now and then.
Anyway, things have been pretty busy recently.. but if I’m always busy then does that simply become normal? No idea if I’m more or less busy than anyone else. Made a pretty horrendous error at work on a website that we’re building (the brief: it’s a facebook for lorry drivers) changing the permissions such that nobody in the world could view the site. Thankfully everyone’s laughing about it now… but it’s one of those moments where it would just be easier if something bigger happened to distract the attention.
I’m heading back to Morocco on Wednesday, which is a godsend. Just hope the freak storm which “battered” london (for my part, I experienced light rain) yesterday doesn’t affect air travel later on this week. Here’s a photo of where I’m heading, and from there to Essaouira. Aaannd… now relax.
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