Link courtesy of Peter Franc
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LETTERBOX MOVES STUDIOS AFTER 14 YEARS After fourteen years in Flinders Lane, Letterbox has moved to larger and purpose-built studios atop the refurbished Hardwick Building in Brunswick (pictured). The iconic emporium building and surrounding streets have become a hub of activity for the creative communities. "It's like Flinders Lane was when we first moved in in 1994" says Letterbox Founder Stephen Banham, "vibrant, lots of artistic activity with a lot less suits". |
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NEW VIEWS 2 COMES TO MELBOURNE Melbourne Museum, 15 Nov 2008 – 15 Feb 2009 100 international graphic design practitioners including students, emerging and established designers are featured in this exhibition of posters, in which the future of the profession of graphic design is questioned. The featured work address a variety of key issues such as design and the environment, social responsibility, new technologies and education. The designs on display in New Views 2 were first seen in conjunction with the New Views 2 symposium held in London 2008, and are the result of an international call for posters. New Views 2 is a collaboration between the School of Applied Communication and Design Research Institute, RMIT University and the Information Environments Research Unit, London College of Communication. |
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TYPESHED11 – THE TYPE EVENT OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE Wellington, New Zealand / 13-15th February 2009 Featuring a rich and diverse range of typo-speakers, this super bold event sets out to explore the notions and voices of typography – no matter how small or vocal, how grand or local – across the disciplines, in graphic design and advertising, photography, film, literature, architecture, music, the visual arts – and beam it back out to the rest of the world via Typeradio. A full programme constructed from lectures, workshops, exhibitions and experimental installations will create the possibility for social and intellectual exchange with passionate typographers and designers from about the world.
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A unique annual award for the embrace of typographic coincidence. Rather than focussing on the formal crafting of typography, this award acknowledges the clever exploitation of the most fortunate letter and word combinations. Nominated by staff at Letterbox. |
THE WHITLAMS AND MSO This little beauty features all the classic hallmarks of a well-thought out piece of opportunistic typography. Cleverly creating an illustrative set of descenders in an all caps setting, this design is one of the best uses of Compacta I've seen in years. Nominated by Stephen Banham |
THE A-Z OF NEW ZEALAND STAMPS Like all great lucky letter award winners it always seems so damn obvious in hindsight. Designed by Clemenger BBDO (NZ), to celebrate the A-Z of New Zealand culture through stamps, it takes simple advantage of the position of the N and Z in a two-tier alphabet. A beautiful idea executed with restraint. Nominated by Sarah Findlay |
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FLUOROCITY |
As the old joke intro goes – a strange thing happened the other day. Only this time it really was quite odd. Well, at least from a typographic point of view anyway. Overnight the usual dark grey bitumen of Elizabeth Street in Melbourne was covered in a mad explosion of brightly coloured symbols. These ranged from mysterious arrows gesturing to unknown destinations right through to intriguing geometric diagrams perhaps explaining some arcane subterranean activity. Inbetween these are scrawled odd mathematic equations, the workings of which are there all to see. The result is like being inside a huge maths book writ large in fluorescence. We waited some time on site to see if there was anybody was there to explain the 'public works' rationale behind these markings. We're still waiting. It may require a camp-out to truly get to the bottom of these nocturnal scribbles. But in the meantime we can simply enjoy the abstract beauty of these markings – reminding us that some things are perhaps best left unexplained. Images courtesy of Stephen Horsley |
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BLOOD, SWEAT AND TINSEL With a marketing thrust akin to a contemporary pop star comes the long-awaited release of Jim Sharman's memoir Blood and Tinsel. A project spanning three years of writing and over a year in design, the book documents an extraordinary life over many decades of cultural change in Australia – from the early years of the Sharman boxing troupe through The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the finest operatic interpretations of Patrick White texts. The official Blood and Tinsel website Left: Rock posters for Blood and Tinsel, Brunswick. |
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NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL The image on the left is Brisbane. Putting this together with the word BAD underneath is not so much a nasty comment on this fair city of the North but rather an acronym for the Brisbane Art Directors and Designers Club. Their awards take place in September and the judging weekend was a very welcome escape from an icy Melbourne weekend. We look forward to seeing what comes of the creative output of Brisbane (or BrisVegas as it is often described). |
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LETTERPRESS WORKSHOPS IN MELBOURNE From the letterpress printer of the Orbit Oblique catalogue, IdleWild Press, comes a series of workshops on the process of letterpress. It should be pointed out that the woman featured in this info flyer is in fact not Carolyn Fraser. |
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TYPE THAT GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN For those who think that typography is just skin-deep comes this puzzling look at letterforms from an anatomical angle. Could make quite a great impact on extreme makeover. |
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A NERDIER SIDE OF TYPO-HUMOUR ... A very well produced film showing that fonts really do have personas.... Link courtesy of Sandra Kelso |
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FONT FASHION 2: With a economic recession just around the corner, it's important that we're frugal with our Frutiger, and miserly with our Melior. This typographic tshirt only uses two letterforms again and again... Link courtesy of Peter Franc |
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FONT FASHION 1: The integration of typography into the hearts and minds of the everyday expands yet again. This time in the world of fashion for winter – offering Helvetica scarves of upper and lower case as well as in numerals. The punctuation version may have been a bit draughty I imagine. Link courtesy of 1+1=3 |
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FONTSTRUCT GOES MAINSTREAM The Age (A Melbourne daily newspaper) recently had an article on the Fontshop application Fontstruct. Although the software will be great fun for the production of modular typefaces one can't help but have flashbacks to the early days of Fontographer in the early 1990's. Perhaps a greater contribution made by Fontstruct is a wider public engagement and entry point to the type novice. There is of course a nice little link to Fontshop faces that can't be produced by Fontstruct. Nice marketing device. Link courtesy of Stephen Horsley. Left: Structorosa by Paul D Hunt. |
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SYDNEY – THE ONLY CITY IN AUSTRALIA WITH DESCENDERS A full house at the Australian Museum in Sydney saw a presentation of pure typography featuring Stephen Banham (Letterbox) and James de Vries (De Luxe & Associates). The night covered aspects of the cultural content and possibilities of typography along with the finer points of editorial typography. Thanks to AGDA New South Wales for organising what was a very successful night. |
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BIG NIGHT OF TYPOGRAPHY AND SPACE ANIMALS AT CRAFT VICTORIA Letterbox has launched Orbit Oblique – a typography exhibition and book. Orbit Oblique is a typographic tribute to the animals lost in space. During the period 1949-1990 the space race between the USA and Russia saw dozens of animals being launched into space in the name of scientific research. These unwilling participants included not just monkeys and dogs but also cats, rats, frogs, worms, spiders, fish and even fruit flies. Many were never seen again. The exhibition, composed of a series of backlit typographic billboards, also features the public release of Bisque, a typeface that made history by being the first to have its international rights auctioned on e-bay in 2007. The accompanying publication, Orbit Oblique, is a hand-bound limited edition of 500 and features a letterpress-printed cover. It is one of a very few type samplers produced in Australia for the past several decades. Exhibition Dates: 17 April 17 to 17 May |
 See images from the opening here.Buy a copy of Orbit Oblique here.Craft Victoria website.
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GOTHAM VS NEW BASKERVILLE, WITH OPTIMA COMING IN AS AN OUTSIDER
Whoever said that typefaces can't be an ingredient in politics? (actually nobody) Link courtesy of Ryan Ward |
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Located at Swarovki Kristallwelten, Wattens, in Austria is this amazing typographic peice by Geneva artist Sylvie Fleury.The large format letters are actually covered in thousands of Swarovski Crystals. The concept was also used in an interesting city art project in Geneva. Link Courtesy of Ben Botting |
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DOHA DESIGN CONFERENCE
Letterbox Founder Stephen Banham was a guest speaker at the Tasmeem Doha International Design Conference in Qatar. The event fetaured designers and architects from within the Middle East and beyond. In additio nto the presentations, students were able to participate in a design charrette with a selection of the speakers. This year the charrette addressed the ever-present traffic congestion of Doha and the extraordinary pace of development in Qatar. Hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar the theme of the event is Design at the crossroads: the intersection of change and the future. Past conferences have included Bruce Mau, Jonathan Barnbrook, April Greiman and many others. |
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THE SWEET SOUND OF LETTERS
If you have ever wondered what a paragraph of text would sound like as music – here's something for you. Imagine being able to hear what your latest annual report would sound like played on a tuba. P22 has produced software that can generate text as musical notation. One can then choose the beats per minute and even the particular instrument to play it on. We've had the DJ, the VJ – so perhaps we're seeing the rise of the TJ (Typo-jockey). |
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ALWAYS A SPACE INBETWEEN
The Australian Graphic Design Association has recently produced a research journal on the hot topic of the relationship between design practice and academia. This contains some very insightful articles, both refereed and unrefereed. Thanks to Laurene Vaughan at RMIT for editing this issue.
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JUST THE THING FOR A SUMMER BBQ
Ever wondered how to spice up that bbq without the help of peppers and chilli? With apologies to our vegetarian readers, follow this link and then go to the 2005 entry at right and to the value pack link. It will be worth it. Link courtesy of Niels Oeltjen (himself a vegetarian) |
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HELVETICA AL FRESCO
Want to see Erik Spiekermann, Michael Beriut, Rick Poynor, Massimo Vignelli and a score of others discuss the virtues of a sans serif on the big screen all framed by the beauty of the Melbourne dusk skyline? Well, now is your chance – Helvetica is being screened on February 26th. Unlike the Australian premiere at Character 4 in 2007 director Gary Hustwit won't be there for a chat but it's a film well worth seeing nice and big.
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