13 posts tagged “typeface”
This was a great find at Take Note in Lower Hutt today. Take Note is a post office and gift shop run by my friend Mandeep but I have never bought a book from there before. I was surprised to find it displayed prominently and being an automobiliac I paid the $40 for it.
Some articles are prescient—the warning that Honda could be a big player if it chose to build saloon cars, and the war for oil and how it might run out (from the first fuel crisis in the 1970s)—and others are less so, such as the warning that a Channel Tunnel would be a folly. Others are plain out of place in today’s politically correct world, namely the nude models that adorned cars at motor shows.
There are even old advertisements, including one for women—flogging copies of Good Housekeeping. It was very sexist and the idea that cars were designed to pull birds was very much in evidence.
It’s hardcover, so it should be a proud collection of 1960s’ and 1970s’ motoring journalism in my home.
Show us your favourite font.
Submitted by [this is connie].
You mean favourite typeface. There is a difference (font implies type style and point size).
Believe it or not, it’s not one from my own company’s range. I have always liked Helvetica and the Swiss school of design, and decided to improve on the design for Lucire. The typeface is called, predictably, Lucire. A 2006 advertisement follows (it’s the headline typeface).
The above was a re-type again. Why is Vox shutting down when I click ‘Save’?
This wasn’t on YouTube when I last blogged about A Man Called Sloane, America’s coolest spy since Matt Helm pretended to be Dean Martin pretending to be Matt Helm, but here are some trips down memory lane for a few of you …
[Cross-posted] This has been official for a while (or so I think—not that I ever heard what the Electoral Commission thought, but I did see it on its website). However, I wanted the party to approve the news first before sharing it with you all. The following is the overseas release which was rewritten from the one sent to domestic newsmedia. One that includes a mention of the Bush–Cheney campaign of 2004 was sent to US media.
JY&A Consulting revamps logo for New Zealand’s Alliance Party
Wellington, May 9 (JY&A Media) New Zealand political party, the Alliance, is looking more modern and relevant, thanks to its new logo by JY&A Consulting (http://jya.net/consulting).
Devised by JY&A Consulting’s Jack Yan, the new logo signifies a new beginning for the democratic socialist political party.
Mr Yan says that he has been a keen observer of general elections in the UK, US and New Zealand since the 1980s and that played a part in his team’s design.
He says the Conservatives in 1983, Labour in the UK in 1997 and 2002 and Labour in New Zealand in 1999 and 2003 had certain commonalties in their campaigns, centring around typography.
He also said that in those years, the party’s name was important, not the symbol—hence the traditional Labour rose was not present on that party’s election materials in 1997 and 2002.
By abandoning the old A symbol of the Alliance and concentrating on the word, Mr Yan says that the party looks more professional and ready.
The Alliance has contested every General Election in New Zealand since 1993. However, due to party changes it is trying to rebuild itself for the country’s General Election later this year.
‘We have two major parties in New Zealand that vote pretty much the same on all issues,’ says Mr Yan, ‘and minor parties that get ignored because of a lack of visibility. I wanted to change that. Why should minor parties be laboured with second-rate brands?’
The logo is based around the Frutiger typeface and its lettering is predominantly in red, with a red dot over the i in Alliance to signify its environmental awareness.
He says the letter i also shows the humanizing aspect of the party.
‘As a piece of design I think it looks more cohesive than the committee-led logos of National and Labour,’ he says, criticizing the major two parties in New Zealand.
‘I was given a lot of freedom, which is a good sign of how the party leadership handles matters. It clearly believes in trusting the right people.’
As well as heading JY&A Consulting’s parent, Jack Yan & Associates, Mr Yan co-wrote Beyond Branding in 2003 and is a director of the Medinge Group, a branding think-tank based in Sweden.
In October 2007 he was a keynote speaker for the Alliance Party at its annual conference.
The opening title to Ashes to Ashes (BBC1, Thursday, 9 p.m.) has made it on to the internet and makes an interesting study.
The comparisons to Life on Mars are obvious. Star Keeley Hawes narrates an introduction, as John Simm did with the original parent series. It’s taken from a line of dialogue that she delivered to herself in the mirror in the first episode—I think most of us saw that coming.
Edmund Butt’s music is obviously a homage to his original theme for Life on Mars but with a more energetic electric guitar.
The typeface chosen is interesting: the 1983-released Neue Helvetica. It’s not exactly what I would have chosen for the 1981 theme. However, this was also expected from the pilot’s opening, as well as the way the words Ashes to Ashes appear on screen, playing on a 1980s computer program.
It’s clear that this is a related show even if you never saw the first episode and the designers have conveyed its feeling pretty well. Essentially, this is Life on Venus.
A YouTube member has been posting some beautiful Maurice Binder title sequences, including those from my favourite movies, Arabesque (mysteriously not released on DVD) and Charade. I love the modernist nature of Binder’s work, and while he is best known for the James Bond gun-barrel sequence, there was a lot more to the man’s designs.
The following two are mated to Henry Mancini scores for Stanley Donen films.
In all cases, there is a sense of timelessness, which shows just how suited the principles of modernism were to title design. These ideas are still often observed by some of the most famous designers out there, such as Wayne Fitzgerald.
For those who remember the pre-desktop publishing days, have you noticed that specifying type and doing CSS work is quite like going to a smaller typesetter with a limited range of typefaces? You are limited on what you can choose, use images when matching the client typeface is a must, and the results are not always what you predict.
Darn, now I find out we have 12 Chinese fonts on our head office computers and I see one that may have been better for our cards (third from the top)! I think back to even a few years ago when typesetting this on an English-language machine would have been impossible. (My name is set above.) Ignorance is not bliss.
[Cross-posted] I am getting new cards tomorrow—digitally printed. While I prefer offset, the cost is just too unreasonably high compared to digital. And they mark another little step at Lucire as we retire the “eyes” screened image that has been part of the stationery since the 1990s.
The eyes were put on to the stationery to save costs. When the cards were designed, in an age of offset printing and spot colours, we had a plate already made featuring the eyes from the corporate ones (at Jack Yan & Associates). They contributed to the cards and actually lifted the design, plus they gave a clear link back to the parent.
After nearly a decade (the first years of Lucire saw us simply use JY&A cards), it was time to abandon the image, given that the reason for their use no longer existed. Digital printing is a very different creature, allowing for endless customization. And most of the team favoured a clean look. I just wish the type was sharper with digital, but the layman will never notice.
We used the traditional Lucire typeface for most of the sans serif details, including the ‘A JY&A Media publication’ endorsement. A second title will follow pretty much this look. The serif typeface is Kris Sowersby’s Slabb, which was launched in Lucire’s print edition just under a year ago.
I was tempted to see a watermark, featuring the cardholder’s name in 48 pt type, slanted at 8 degrees, as the background for the left half of the card, but we removed it after discussion. I think the removal of all screens was the correct decision.
The cards are also multilingual: they are meant to reflect the languages spoken by the cardholder and most Swedes will agree I am a long way away from being able to feature their language. It does mean that my degrees no longer feature on mine—I may have to give out my corporate ones if I need something in a more academic context. Having fancy-pants degrees seldom comes up in a fashion magazine discussion.
Bored with this design? This link will alleviate that. The creative business cards there are clever, just not totally practical for our purposes.
Hopped over to Magnetix with Monica (assistant) today to find that the good old Observer newspaper has returned to their shelves.
For ages, Magnetix did not have Pommy newspapers, either the qualities or the tabloids. There was an absence as the qualities began reducing their size, and I have a feeling the importer did not want us regular Kiwis to know that Great Britain no longer had broadsheets. What would happen if we thought their newspapers had all reduced to Euro-sized tabloids and Berliners? Shock! We might think that Britain had joined the Common Market!
The dailies began disappearing. Then the Sunday papers. As each broadsheet ceased publication in its larger size, there were no more on sale here.
It was surprising that the Guardian group papers went, too, since they have tended to be at the forefront of good design for many years—first with the Pentagram redesign (someone once said the adoption of Helvetica made it fascist-looking), then with the commissioning of the Guardian family of typefaces from my friends Christian Schwartz (who started in licensing digital type around the same time I did) and Paul Barnes (whom I do not know as well).
When I wrote an article on The Guardian’s most recent redesign for Desktop in Australia, I had to ask Christian to send me electronic examples, rather than hop down to the local store to buy a copy and scan samples. OK, so I saved myself a bit of money, but there’s still that satisfying feeling being able to see someone’s work in the medium it was intended for.
Now, bring back The Times—or will the sight of that in tabloid format shock us Kiwis too much?
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