Link courtesy of Peter Franc
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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... |
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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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