Super Awesome Graphic Design Blog for Graphic Design Students, Graphic Design Tutors and their Feelings
The 20 Things project was a challenge to break ground with new technologies and deliver a rich, educational experience that these technologies make possible. The Fi team rose to the challenge and produced a web app that is as fun to play with and explore as it is interesting to read.
Working with typefaces is about as basic as it gets for graphic designers. A solid knowledge of type, a keen eye for which fonts are appropriate for each project and an awareness of what’s available to us are rudimentary components of the job. Many fledging creatives use only what they have in their system fonts library and a handful of passable faces saved off a cracked disc of thousands of dubious free fonts. Working this way, a designer can produce perfectly good results (some say this can be achieved through Helvetica alone) but it’s the wise designer who maintains an awareness of modern-day type foundries. Between them, foundries release beautifully crafted, extensive and noteworthy font families year on year. Whilst many cost money (staff at foundries have to earn a living too) some are reasonably priced and others offered for free. And besides the fonts, through their websites type foundries offer all sorts of helpful advice and a glimpse into their fascinating profession, which is what I aim to show here, in the first of two articles on the topic.
A type foundry designs and/or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like those made by Linotype and Monotype, and were designed to be printed on letterpress printers. Today’s digital type foundries accumulate and distribute typefaces (typically as digitized fonts) created by type designers. Some type foundries also provide custom type design services.
The CastleType homepage (top) and samples above from (clockwise) Latin Ct, Sculptura and Goudy Trajan. Imagery used with kind permission of © CastleType.
San Fransisco-based independent type foundry CastleType was established in 1990 by Jason Castle, and specialises in revivals, classic styles, decorative fonts and custom font design. Custom services offered are extensive, taking in logo digitization (whereby customers supply their logo and a digital version is added to a favourite font) and the digital rendering of existing typefaces.
The revival and classic styles are remarkable for their elegance and the display faces are bold and confident. Jason is currently busy expanding his Goudy Trajan family with Cyrillic and Greek characters and the release of Sonrisa —a precise and friendly looking sans serif— is iminent.
A shot from Dalton Maag’s website, the limited edition Tephra prints and pictures of a custom font designed for the University of London’s Central School of Speechf & Drama in use. Imagery used with kind permission of © Dalton Maag.
London-based Dalton Maag has been designing fonts and logos and “supporting and assisting people in deepening their typographic skills” since 1991. In that near-two decade period they have seen exciting growth but what makes them remarkable is their branching out into both Cairo and Brazil—endeavours to contribute to emerging visual and typographic cultures in each country’s continent. Through doing so, Dalton Maag’s resumé has expanded to take in the vast typographic expanses of both the Arabic alphabet and South American languages.
A page from Emigré’s exuberant looking website and samples of their fonts. Clockwise from upper left: Mrs. Eaves, Ottomat, Puzzler and Priori Acute. Imagery used with kind permission of © Emigré.
Yes, that Emigré, the iconic, much-mourned design journal Emigré. Some colleges and universities become so preoccupied with teaching their students of the cultural significance of the journal that they neglect to mention that the entity lives on in online form, with an archive of articles from the journal, an excellent shop and large collection of surprising and esoteric fonts available for download. These are of a diverse nature, though one thing that seems to permeate much of the collection is the jaunty angles which adorn the fonts’ serifs.
Tiro Typeworks’s graceful and formal homepage and a glimpse of their acclaimed ornamental typeface Restraint. Imagery used with kind permission of © Tiro Typeworks.
Tiro Typeworks was established in 1994 by John Hudson and Ross Mills and has evolved into a highly regarded foundry with a reputation for custom typefaces and font solutions. What makes them stand out from other comparable foundries is their expertise in multilingual computing and publishing, which they have specialised in since 1997. Their work in this area includes extensions to existing Latin typefaces and new typefaces for Arabic, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Burmese, Cherokee, Cyrillic, Ethiopic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Ogham and Tahi scripts. Impressive stuff. An ornamental typeface of theirs that really stands out is Restraint, described as “an ornamental font which happens to contain letterforms. It is 100% fanciful all the time and not for the timid of heart.” A tour around Restraint, as well as the wider work Tiro are involved in, is highly recommended.
Fontsmith’s homepage, a medley of typeface samples from the foundry (Rufus, Clerkenwell and Jack) and examples of the custom typeface designed for Film4 in action! Imagery used with kind permission of © Fontsmith.
Fontsmith is a leading London-based type design studio founded in 1999 by Jason Smith. The studio consists of a team dedicated to designing and developing high quality typefaces for both independent release as well as bespoke fonts for international clients. In addition to their wide range of exceptional typefaces available through their website, Fontsmith are also noteworthy for having custom designed typefaces as part of rebranding projects for such celebrated clients as Channel 4, Mencap and BBC 1. Your writer uses a Fontsmith typeface —Clerkenwell— as part of his identity.
The formal though playful homepage of OurType (the black ‘try’ and ‘buy’ circles at the top bounce around with the movement of the cursor), OurType’s Parry font as seen in De Bug magazine and a self-promotional poster from the Foundry. Imagery used with kind permission of © OurType.
Founded in 2002, OurType states it “has a vision that is different from most other font companies. It publishes newly designed fonts that are tailored to contemporary needs. Yet it respects traditional values, and strives for the highest quality of product. So it stands equally apart from those who are enslaved to the new and those who merely try to recreate the past. OurType fonts are useful, durable and attractive tools for anyone using type now.” The website contains lots of playful movement and the fonts offered are indeed contemporary yet formal.
A further six type foundries will be previewed in the second article in the series. Watch this space!
James Victore is a man of action. He believes that knowing about jazz and wine and auto-racing can make you a better designer. That graphic design is about experiences and stories and using your hands. That the best designs punch you in the gut – or, at the very least, stop you in your tracks.
It should come as no surprise that some of the best designed and looking websites are those of design studios themselves. Untrammeled by meddlesome clients making design-threatening requests and free to divert the necessary time and budgets into things, studios are able to focus their designers’ collaborative energies into producing —often— groundbreaking sites. We’ve generated video clips of each design studio website I thought really distinctive, both from the masses and each other. Happy perusing!
JUMP is an Australian national mentoring program for artists aged 18-30, who are in the first five years of their professional practice.
Brasil, the sunniest of the amusingly-acronymned BRIC nations (Brasil, Russia, India, China), is currently enjoying unprecedented amounts of goodwill on the international world stage, not hindered by its increasing confidence in areas like diplomacy and manufacture, nor Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes winning the Olympic bid for his city. But enough of the geo-political preamble, “This is a design blog!” we hear you cry. Rest assured readers, we haven’t forgotten my duties to you, just providing the wider context to introduce some impressive contemporary work in the visual fields, from both studios and freelancers, to have recently emerged from this Latin giant.
Introduction image © Kiyoshi Takahase Segundo.
To maintain a curious eye about the world, to look and attempt to decode the terrain around you is what separates a great designer from a mere ‘good’ one. That, at least, is what my old university professor once told me, and it seemed like a sage morsel of wisdom at the time. Still does. The world is awash with things to decode and contextualise, so, to take just one of them, and with our heads cocked quizzically to the side, let’s look at neon signs. Dazzling yet ubiquitous, and produced in a range of typographic and illustrative styles, neon has been utilized by advertisers for decades. It’s time for a fresh appraisal. (left) Image © Marc Weinreich.
One of the most rewarding aspects of being a graphic designer is the sheer scale of gorgeous and tactile materials to work with and print on. There are dozens at your disposal, some in common usage and others waiting to be discovered and put to graphical use by future pioneers. Because of their widely diverse nature, substrates can be used to suggest all kinds of meanings and signify all kinds of signs, from luxury and good taste right through to anarchy and roughness. Substrates help to reinforce the messages you wish to communicate. I’ve hand-picked seven of them for the last in our unashamedly image-teeming short series of articles on substrates and finish. So without further ado…
A short and sweet article of the main Do’s and Don’ts in Web Design by Angela Lisl tracked back from the Creative Support website.
As varied as they are exciting, print finishes encompass a wide range of processes for designers to investigate and use. A finish may be applied once a substrate has been printed, to provide the finishing touch to a graphic object. They can be used to add a decorative aspect to a piece, or a textural quality. In some cases a finish might aid graphical function, or even represent an integral component of a piece’s form. Seven print finishes have been chosen for this article based on their powers to captivate, dazzle and add weight to ideas. Read on, take notes, and choose one for your next project to turn a mere good response into a graphical tour-de-force…
Mention the word ‘recruiter’ to a creative and you’ll always get a ‘marmite’ type reaction. You either love’em or you hate’em. Why such a strong reaction? Do you really need a recruiter to find a job, or is it better to just go it alone?
Binding, the collective term given for the range of processes which hold and fasten a publication’s pages together, is essential for, well, holding and fastening your publications’ pages together. Whilst on the surface not as compelling a design component as, say, print finishes, a little closer inspection reveals a range of distinct processes which exist for different uses. These binding methods aid function; decisions on binding necessarily affect a printed piece’s robustness, longevity and form. Used creatively, they can even add an aesthetic finishing touch to a piece and help amplify messages and intentions. The closer inspection I mention above, and which binding merits, is what this article’s all about.
We searched high and low to find you the best looking design studios in the world. If you don’t see your studio here and you think you are a contender, send us a pic and we will add it on
So you find yourself pitching for a job and have come up with an ingenious solution to a fiendishly tricky design conundrum, and all you want to do is get on the phone to the client and sing it to him from the bottom of your lungs. Slow down there pardner. To convince your client of the barnstorming excellence of your proposed solution, more often than not you’ll need to take him through things step-by-step in a presentation. Presentations are important to get right, and represent the ultimate test of your communication skills. Many a fine idea has been admonished or dismissed through poor presentation. Gulp down the words below to ensure this doesn’t happen to yours…
Save perhaps his personality, the freelance graphic designer’s portfolio is, undoubtedly, the most valuable asset in his professional life. I have written elsewhere that the portfolio is the freelancer’s shop window, an intimate glimpse into his or her being for all who view it. We have to love our portfolios, agonise over what goes into them, and tend and nurture them as we would a sapling we’d once planted. Nothing should be left to chance, not even tiny details, as it’s these, at times, that we may be judged on. So let us not delay any longer, but instead plunge into the sober, matte black folds of the portfolio…
At the same point each month, every month, an employed person receives a wage packet from his payroll department, and his his bank account is credited with his salary. Safe in this knowledge, he can plan his finances around this fixed point. For the intrepid freelancer things are a little different, for he must send out invoices to his clients, and then wait to be paid. So far so straightforward, but there are several factors to consider with regard to invoicing, which I’ll be taking you through below. After all, getting paid on time is what keeps us all afloat, and what freelance designer doesn’t desire that?
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