typography – Page 5 – Alphabet City Press

18 August 201418 August 2014

Caged M

I don’t know what this m doing here, trapped inside and looking out, but I feel a little like it today. Sydney is doing its all-or-nothing weather thing, and today it’s bucketing down. The sensible course of action would be to stay indoors and keep dry: but I have things to do which involve going outside and braving the elements. From a typographic and design standpoint, I like this scripty m, and would like to know what it’s story is. I saw nothing around it to give any clue, although the building did have a security camera and alarm—perhaps to make sure the m doesn’t make a break for it.

9 August 20148 August 2014

Kembla

Frederick Thomas Wimble was best known as an ink maker and printers’ furnisher, supplying the printing trades throughout Australia and New Zealand through his company FT Wimble & Co. He also produced fonts, identical to American and British ones, but with Australian names. Examples of these are Canberra Old Style (Century), Jenolan Old Style (Goudy), Wimbles Scholastic (Century Schoolbook) and Oceanic Shaded (Antique Shaded). Kembla Open Face, his re-naming of Caslon Open Face, is my favourite—if only because it makes me wonder what it was about the steel town that inspired the naming choice!

21 June 201421 June 2014

Solstice

In Australia, winter officially begins on the first day of June, but elsewhere the change of season occurs on the solstice. Whichever way you want to mark the coming of winter, today is a beautiful day: currently a mild 16°C, clear skies, a slight nip in the air, warm in the sun. The sun rose at 7:00, solar noon occurs at 11:57 (when the sun will be a touch more than 152 million kilometres away), and then, less than ten hours of daylight later, the sun will set at 16:54—still the afternoon, really. Today’s solstice occurs at 20:51. And not surprisingly, there is a typeface called Solstice.

3 June 20143 June 2014

Quality

You never see butchers touting themselves as ordinary or run-of-the-mill. Prime cuts, superior grade, blue-ribbon, choice, select, A1 and quality are the usual descriptors. This butcher is Armidale is no exception. The lettering is confident, friendly and inviting, reassuring shoppers that quality is not intimidating or likely to break the bank.

31 May 201431 May 2014

Google

Earlier this week the Google logo underwent an adjustment. The bottom of the l and e didn’t quite line up, so to fix it, the g was moved one pixel to the right and the l was moved one pixel down and to the right. The change is almost imperceptible—much more subtle than my rough mock-up shows—but the spacing was altered to allow the logo to appear more evenly positioned on small screens. Despite the fact that Google didn’t publicise the change it seems to have received an inordinate amount of publicity! The current Google logo has been in use since September 2013 and was designed by Ruth Kedar. It utilises the font Catull, an oldstyle serif designed for the Berthold Type Foundry in 1982 by Gustav Jaeger.

19 April 201418 April 2014

Texas sized

This week I went to the Royal Easter Show for the first time since Sydney Showground relocated from Moore Park to Olympic Park—which has to be at least 15 years ago because the move took place before the 2000 Olympic Games, for which the park was constructed. The Show, first held in 1823, is an annual event where ‘city meets country’. My favourite events are the woodchopping and working dog shows and the district agricultural exhibits, but just milling with the crowd is its own entertainment. The food on offer verges on the scary, however. The vast array of junk food includes fairy floss, spiral chips on a stick deep-fried to golden perfection (don’t ask), hot dogs slathered in something that looks like sauce, giant buckets of popcorn, burgers, enchiladas, ribs, pluto pups and donuts. This is just one section of the over-the-top signage of one food stand, which fortunately was located a decent distance from the animal pavilions. The graphic depiction of BBQ and a jaunty typeface was not enough to lure me, although had I not just eaten a sensible serve of sushi, I might have been tempted by a pulled pork roll.

10 April 201410 April 2014

Italic and oblique

A true italic is an angled typeface designed to accompany its roman counterpart. It is designed with its own features and character widths, and is often quite calligraphic in appearance. An oblique is usually a slanted version of the roman face, often with very little change to the design of the letter shape. Of course, as with all things, there are exceptions to the rule: Helvetica and Optima are two examples where the oblique is actually an italic. Programs like InDesign make it possible to slant any typeface, which can come in handy if the type family does not contain an italic weight, but where an italic has been drawn, it is usually much more complementary to the roman face it is matched with.

3 April 20143 April 2014

Diamonds

I didn’t win the lottery this week so I won’t be buying any diamonds from this fine establishment. It’s free to admire the lettering, though. How modern it must have been at the time! A close look reveals a somewhat strange drop shadow, but the inaccuracies only add to the appeal.

10 March 201424 February 2014

Bowling

I’m not sure when lawn bowls made the shift from being the denizen of oldsters in white uniforms (hats compulsory) to the kind of recreation anyone can enjoy, sans-uniform, even sans-shoes, beer in hand. But now everyone’s playing, and I’m not averse to the occasional game myself. (I even belong to a bowling club, but that’s another story.) This bowling ball belongs to one of my oldest friends, and although I don’t know where she got it, her uncanny radar for flea market bargains was no doubt utilised. The K closely resembles Copperplate Gothic 29AB with it’s even, straight strokes, small serifs, and the way the leg joins the arm quite high up. Here the arm joins the vertical stroke lower than in the digital version.

23 February 201421 February 2014

Aloha

In the Hawaiian language, aloha means more than just hello and goodbye: one interpretation describes it as the joyful (oha) sharing (alo) of life energy (ha) in the present (alo). The Aloha Spirit refers to the attitude of friendly acceptance for which the Hawaiian Islands are renowned. Typographically, the word Aloha is usually written in colourful, ‘friendly’ handwritten or script typefaces, often embellished with illustrations of hibiscus flowers, ukulele-playing hula girls and sunsets—imagery which has as much to do with the Hawaiian climate and landscape as a state of mind. Shown here is Hawaiian Aloha BTN, by Breaking the Norm, a font library created by Brian Bonislawsky of Astigmatic One Eye and Stuart Sandler of Font Diner.