Image of the Day: Imaginary Arabic Font — Vinyl Tears

Walking across the parking lot on my way into work this morning, I spotted this:

It looked like words in a foreign language, almost arabic-looking in its flowing nature. 

I recalled a recent interview with font designer Nadine Chahine that was posted recently on I Love Typography showing some examples of her work. Chahine is listed in Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business.

Creativity and inspiration can be found in some unlikely places; I wonder if anyone was ever inspired by torn, weathered vinyl?

The vinyl car guard.

You know you’ve raised a Font Snob when...

Today is the 12th anniversary of the listserv I host for the professional design community at Penn State. Below is a screen capture of a recent post by one of the 101 current members:

When asked in a later post, “How did the grub stack up to more sophisticated menu-ed establishments?”

The reply was: “Well, I wouldn’t rate it a Frutiger. But it was definitely up there with American Typewriter. (They were selling themselves short with Comic Sans.)”

Games: Kern and Shape Type

via very short list
Here are super-simple, totally addictive design-minded web games called Kern Type and Shape Type. Shape Type shows you ten letters per game, and you adjust each one, trying to get the curves to match up as neatly as possible with the ones the original font-maker designed. It takes just a few seconds (a minute or two at most) to play each individual letter. But don’t be surprised if an hour goes by…
Play Shape Type here, Kern Type here. 

Font Me Typography Mug

via the mehallo blog
I think my favorite part of this mug is the listing of terms for various point sizes, such as 3 pt Minkie, 5 pt. Pearl, and 6 pt. Nonpareil.
See three views of the mug here.

Daniel Wintle’s “Kern Over” Alphabet

spotted on Green Chair Press
DesignSponge had a Design Your Own Alphabet Contest last fall. Among the entries was “Kern Over” by Daniel Wintle, who picked the name because ‘kerning is the process of adjusting white spacing in a proportional font...’
Visit Green Chair Press to find links to the entries and winners. Just a tad disappointed that there was no ampersand in Kern Over...

Typographic Transit Maps

via a two winged fairy
“TRNSPRTNATION” is a series of typographic transit maps by Fadeout Design. The transit lines are made up of strings of text that list the stations of the transit system. Prints are available for sale on the website of Boston, Chicago, London, NYC, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
Visit the site here.

Alphabeasties and other Amazing Types

via a two-winged fairy
“This typographical trip will wow design fans... Innovations arrive several to a page, encouraging readers to muse on the power of type and all that letters and words can imply or insinuate.”
Discover more in this book here.  Another fun typography-inspired book by Sharon Werner is  “Bugs by the Numbers,” which can be found here.

Rene Siegfried’s The Serif Fairy

via green chair press
“The Serif Fairy has lost her wing, keeping her from performing magic. This book follows her through an airy, immaculately designed typographic landscape as she hunts for it. Along the way, she makes friends and has adventures as she wanders through the Garamond Forest, visits Futura Town and eventually ends her quest at Shelley Lake.”
Order your copy here.

Bike Type

via HOW
Scott Kirkwood creates T-shirts featuring bikes built of type.
Visit his Cranky Threads shop here.

Old English type body sizes

via typoretum
“Prior to 1737, little standardisation existed in the sizes of printing types and typefounders cast types to their own sizes and dimensions. In this year, the Parisian typefounder Pierre Simon Fournier introduced a new system that he derived from dividing two inches of the pre-metric French foot into one hundred and forty-four equal parts. Fournier gave the resulting unit a name – ‘points’ – and they measured 0.137 of the English inch, which is close to the present point system…”
Read the rest here. I love that the term Nonpareil is equivalent to 6 points.

Klotz Type Experiment

spotted by my son
Combine wooden blocks and perspective and what you’ll get is a fascinating Block Type Experiment by Marc Bottler.
See it here.

Alessandro Novelli’s The Alphabet

via felt and wire
“In just over a minute, Alessandro Novelli captures his (and our) love for typography and animation in The Alphabet, a spelling video inspired by children’s hornbooks..”
Read the rest, and watch the video, here. P.S. Can you spot the typo?

Heavenly Typography

From Urania’s Mirror: Monoceros,
Canis Minor and Atelier Typographique, 1825

via letterology
“Some people see faint outlines of unicorns in the heavenly constellations and others see dogs, or the canis minor. Yet Mr. Jehoshaphat Aspin looked up and saw a celestial type studio in the stars with a unicorn (monoceros) jumping over it…”
Read the rest here.

Practical Principles

via letterology
“From an alphabet of tongue twisters originally published in 1836 and revised 100 years later by the Mergenthaler Linotype Corporation. This 1936 edition of Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation was designed and illustrated by some of the most celebrated typographers and designers of the day…”
See more examples here, and see the entire book on view at Dr. Chris Mullen's amazing site, The Visual Telling of Stories, here.

How to create a ligature

via thisiscolossal
“David Schwen demonstrates how typographic ligatures are created. It’s all about the details…”
Find out more here. This really makes me smile.

Douglas Coffin, Lettercarver

via typeculture
“While this film may not be about type, it abounds with beautiful letters. Douglas Coffin is one of a handful of people in the United States who carve letters in stone with the same methods that were used in the Roman Empire. Two thousand years later, the most compelling results are still achieved through the design and carving skills of a passionate artist-craftsman…”
Watch this, and other short videos, here.

All Types of Wallpaper

via death by kerning

Check out the type-inspired iPhone & desktop wallpapers from typenuts.com.

Making Faces: Metal Type in the 21st Century

Via creativepro

The documentary film, Making Faces: Metal Type in the 21st Century, is now ready for DVD release and select theatrical screenings.

Read the rest here, more on the documentary here, and preorder a copy here.

Typography Deconstructed Letterpress Poster

via creativepro

“The Typography Deconstructed letterpress poster is the result of several months of research both on the subjects of the Anatomy of Type and Type Glossary. Inspired by the craft of letterpress printing and a love for typography, Typography Deconstructed aims at providing a resource for educating those interested in what makes type… well, type. Each poster has a comprehensive list of typographical terms with each term being represented by the anatomy of the letter that best describes it visually.”

Read the rest here, and visit the Type Deconstructed site here to learn more about the anatomy of type and their type glossary.

Type and Music

via The FontShop FontFeed


Always a good read, Yves Peters writes about type treatments on the covers of recent releases in his My Type of Music posts.


Read the rest here.