Helvetica is in the water

Drain type! This is how you know when a typeface is overused...it gets into the water stream. Awesome type installation by Jessica Tresser at College of Fine Arts in Sydney. All cut out by hand!

Two-Dollar Magnet Type

Screw metal type and wood type - bring on the two-dollar magnet type revolution!
Join the revolution:
YOU WILL NEED:
(1) Bag of kiddy alphabet magnets (available at all good supermarkets)
(2) Ink
(3) A creative brain to think of any words which use any letter of the English language only once! (Pseudonym is my favourite!)

Then stick it down, ink it up and print! It will be reversed when printed so scan & flip (or read it in the mirror :-))

West End Type

Research book of signage & type in west end. Was the lady really painting that on her house?

Apathetic Type

Clarendon Medium and Futura Demi Bold met last thursday and decided to fight apathy, then kinda just decided to not. P.S Elephant key ring was based on Elephant designed by Matthew Carter which was later renamed Big Figgins. Carter's digital type foundry should be up an running soon.

Fruity Type

Recording the conversations of the store holders at the fruit market...on a paw paw. 

An elephant never forgets...

Wax prototype of ampersand key ring... can anyone pick the typeface influence?

Typographic Expression of Anger

Last week FedEx failed to deliver my ISTD submission from Australia to London. They had my package in their store all week and failed to notify me that it had not been sent! So, along with a letter of complaint, they will receive the box (which never got sent) covered with hand-drawn type expressing my anger. Typomania at its worst!

International Society of Typographic Designers Submission

My summer of typography involved making this book – it's a submission for the ISTD and is in response to a brief involving researching the links between 1920s and 1930s typography and contemporary practice. Its main focus is the connections and departures between New Traditionalism and the New Typography. Yay for Stanley and Jan!

Wood Type

String Type

Name the Type Designer...

The first person to name the typographer in this lino cut will win a wonderfully typographic prize. Here's a hint: he once said A type which is to have anything like a present, let alone a future, will neither be very "different" nor very "jolly".

Ambroise

Ambroise is a beautiful typeface! It was designed by Jean Francois Porchez in 2001 – there is an interview with Jean-Francois on iLt at the moment. His latest font Sabon Next (OpenType version of the 2002 face) was released by Linotype in December last year.

Carbon Paper Poster

Univers Extra Black Italic printed on carbon paper. Mass production heaven!

Dancing Ampersand

Tasty Type 2

Font Clock

Font clock by Sebastien Wrong. Apparently on one day of the year all the digits and letters line up in the same typeface!

Seeing Double

Today at the train station I saw this Virgin Blue credit card billboard. Standing only a metre away from the sign, I became slightly dizzy when I noticed there were two layers of type, one offset slightly above the other.

After reading the ad I realised it was intentional – alluding to the fact there are two credit cards which accelerate your points.

Clever idea ... but it's hard to distinguish from a far distance and up close it just makes you feel ill!

Tasty Type

I made these chocolate cupcakes with type cut (with as much precision as possible) out of hard icing. The type size is 180pt - perfect for cupcakes with an approximate diameter of 60mm. Can you name the typeface?

ILT Phone Wallpaper

Cute new phone wallpapers from I Love Typography.
Fi fi fi in Le Monde Livre Classic with an Anziano ornament.

Concrete Poetry

Experimental type poster/concrete poem based on For Someone - a poem by Paul Dobbyn. Made as an AO poster.

Reject Wood Type Prints

Made this book (A5) out of the reject prints from experimenting with wood block type and a stamp pad today.

Geotype brings the Bug to Life!

Perhaps inspired by the Bembo zoo, I made these typo-poems with Geotype transfers (Venus Bold Extended 96pt), my label maker and Tiffany Demi (11pt) & Heavy Italic (50pt). It's actually a poem I recited when I was 9 or 10 years old! The poem is called My Brother's Bug.

Checkout Letraset's type transfers

For the Love of Topography?

It was a sad day for typography when I saw these incorrectly labeled books in Borders recently.


















I sent the Store Manager a suitable irate letter and the label was changed within 24hours. Another victory in the fight for type!

My diary for my research project on typography in the 1920s & 30s.

Serif & Sans Serif on the Street

Yesterday I came across something very peculiar on a Sydney street sign.

















The "L" in Liverpool St is a serif typeface, while the remainder of the word is sans serif. The peculiarity appears on both sides of the sign as well.










Thankfully, the error was exclusive to this particular sign, while the others remain all the same sans serif typeface.

So did someone steal the "L" and the Council appeared to be out of sans serif "L's" for the replacement? Seems odd.

I shall investigate and see what happened. Keep you posted.

Which company's logo lived here once?

Today I bought a mini label maker. Best toy ever!

Melbourne Museum of Printing

These are photos I took while visiting the Melbourne Museum of Printing.

Wood Type & Helvetica Light

The bus driver really disliked the typeface on these street signs in St Kilda, Mebourne.