Drawn to type

Illustrated Type is everywhere, a trend seems to be forming lately teamed with artist determined to either make a typeface out of a bicycle, or create a single B out of bicycle parts (or whatever else is available.) The result of everyone's experiments is this enormous plethora of resources for every kind of artist, especially typographer's. It's as if we're faced with this hive of new ideas and emotions all begin to be put onto paper. But, the questions remains on whether or not that is appropriate.I couldn't even find a bicycle alphabet, frogs will do though. 

Think back to the reading of Bringhurst in using typefaces appropriately. Imagine you're writing a compilation of short stories about bicycles should we expect to see all of the O's in there with tiny spokes drawn in them? Or perhaps those tiny handlebars on the Y's? The truth is is that if we dared to fill our bicycle book with all this fluff and ornamentation our readers would be so overstimulated they probably wouldn't even make it past the first page. There eyes would circle around the "letterforms" in this endless cycle (no pun intended) that would take away from the point you were trying to make in the first place. Now, this doesn't mean that one should never use a flower ridden 'S' in their gardening book or an 'O' with the bat symbol in it, but think about the message you're trying to deliver, are you trying to show off the exquisite artistry or are you hiding your work behind flashy lights to jazz it up? The answer may surprise you. My opinion? Our work doesn't need shine and glitter to show it off, and as professionals the fact that we can take eloquence above gawdy is what will separate us from your everyday wanna-be. Illustrated Type is a beautiful medium, but let's show it off for it is, an image to compliment a letter form, and not a letter form to compliment an image.



My own personal favorites of Illustrated Type are those single letters redrawn, much like our assignment, here are some examples.


These are cover material, I'd put that 'A' on the front of my article, instead of on every 'A' in sight. Which do you think would be more appreciated?

Hand painted signs

Lately I have been so interested in hand painted signs. Margaret Kilgallen is one of my favorite artists and her work with hand painted type has been so inspiring to me. I recently attempted to hand paint a sign for a local gallery and even though it is very frustrating at times, I would love to continue to give it a try and improve. These are just a few of my favorite hand painted signs that I have found over the past little while.

Learn it from my hands

it is easy to learn by making or touching something with your hands. I, for studying the typography,  chose the letter R, and started draw and design it. Here is my result:

Type motion

Type Motion

I always loved animated or illustrated type. I found this poster and video for the Spanish Department of Finance, designed by the Madrid based Cocoe Studio. I found it fascinating that something as mundane as finical documents could be designed seemed interesting. Anyway, here is the poster below and the link for the video is here

Octave

Octave

I have always had a fascination with taking an element and infusing something completely unexpected into it. Two of my favorite things are Typography and Music, I thought it would be fun to explore the infusion of these two ideas for my blog posts. This exploration was inspired by the illustrated type Octave. Octave fuses the graphic elements of musical composition with the English alphabet.

Octave is illustrated by Ana Gomez. http://www.anenocena.com/1578/123434/_-projects/octave

This is a short blurb she wrote about the idealization of Octave.

“Octave has been created with the intention of fusing together the graphical elements of written musical composition with the English alphabet. My passion for illustration and typography made me naturally lean towards lettering, while music is a very important element in my creative process. When reading the newspaper or a book, a designer might unconsciously stop acknowledging the content due to the very nature of the letters. Often in observing the fonts used in books I've read, I've thought that for those of us who work with these fonts, they are analogous to the notes on a score in the eyes of a musician. They represent the graphic structure that builds the music by which emotions, ideas and feelings are communicated. In the same way, letters are the graphic structure with which texts are composed, making them tools to communicate emotions, ideas and feelings in their own right.”

Her website is http://www.anenocena.com/ where you can see more of her works.

30 Essential typefaces for a lifetime

The book, '30 Essential Typefaces for a Lifetime' explains what 30 most famous typefaces are and how they are used. This book contains information of Akzidenz Grotesk, Avenir, Bell Centennial, Bell Gothic, DIN, Franklin Gothic, Frutiger, Futura, Gill Sans, Helveticam Meta, Myriad, Trade Gothic, Univers, Vag Rounded, Adobe Caslon, Adobe Garamond, Bembo, Bodoni, Clarendon, Courier, Excelsior, Lucida, Minion, Perpetua, Sabon, Stempel Schneidler, Times New Roman, TRAJAN, and Walbaum. I have worked with most of typefaces from the list, so I decided to choose Bell Gothic that I have never worked with before.

     Bell Gothic is a typeface that designed by Chauncey H. Griffith in 1937. It was first designed for use in American telephone directories.Therefore, the main purpose of this typeface is for very small text containing large amounts of information. Milk Studio (top) is actually an example for a use of Bell Gothic in a way to have lots of information within a small text. Then, I tried to followed that 'Bell Gothic Main Purpose' with my birthday information (bottom).

 

Optima

A friend sent me this article and I thought it was interesting to share. I don't use it that often, but Optima is one of my favorite typefaces. The flare at the terminals are a little weird sometimes to work with, but that is one of the qualities I personally like. Some typophiles consider Optima to be seriffed. Either way, there is a certain dignity that the typeface carries and I found it fascinating that such care was put into the selection. There were other faces that could have sufficed as well, but then not thought could have been used other than using default Times. Enjoy!

http://www.bamagazine.com/v/vspfiles/recommend/aYDT9rLand.html