Tuesday, January 26, 2010

derby type

i'm obsessed with roller derby. i skate with a brand-spankin'-new league, the C-U Rollers, and hope to be kicking a** on the flat track before too long (practice, practice, practice!). all derby leagues, while diverse in spirit and personality, have a similar aesthetic: beauty, skulls, and blood. here are three way established leagues and what our league hopes to become. notice the no-nonsense, all-caps type on all three. it seems to indicate strength. it's also a little messy and crude, which communicates roughness, as well as an ANTI-high maintenance, ANTI-stereotypical Barbie girl attitude.



Friday, January 22, 2010

beauty type

okay, i'll admit it: i totally am a cosmetics junkie. i love skin care and hair gunk and makeup and basically any potion that i can afford (and can't afford, for that matter). so i'm channeling my lust for beauty products into a lust for typefaces on beauty products. here are three of my faves.







origins plays up the fact that their stuff's purely nature-based and without a ton of chemicals. the typeface, which i believe to be Cyan Sans Bold, is stark, simple, and sparse.














philosophy is similar, though not so focused on nature. the packaging on philosophy products consists solely of copy. as a copywriter, i was always taught that too much copy was BAAAD. but for philosophy, it works. the products possess a clinical expert's feel, yet the look is clean and beautiful. the typeface is most likely Janson URW T Light. (it also resembles Indigo P Regular, or even Garamond MT.)






i'm just wildly guessing here, but the deva logo typeface looks uncannily identical to the one designers love and loathe: Helvetica. deva's products are designed specifically for curly hair, so the plain lettering might suggest simplicity and ease--something curly girls desperately need with hair care (trust me. i have curly hair, so i know).

ITC veljovic copywriting

Lively. Dynamic. Classic.
In other words, it's ITC Veljovic.

And it's your typeface for advertising, magazines, brochures, even menus and resumes. Quirky? Yep. Large X-height. Absolutely. Readable? You bet.

Jovica Veljovic, Yugoslavian type designer extraordinaire, developed ITC Veljovic in 1984. Strongly influenced by fellow designers Hermann Zapf and Henri Friedlander, Veljovic sought to create a crisp, sprightly typeface in which the letters appeared cut in stone. He lives in Germany, where he teaches type design, calligraphy, and typography at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

i had a dream last night...

...that i developed my very own typeface called "queen of siam." i can totally visualize it! how nerdy is that?

Sunday, January 17, 2010

the drool brothers


i'm the co-genre director at WEFT for rock. part of the job entails getting brand-new releases from indie-label bands. sometimes we even get little treasures, like band buttons, postcards, and stickers. lo and behold,  i found this sticker in our new-release pile today. isn't the typeface fab? it reminds me of 1960s british invasion bands—the kinks, the who, manfred mann.

the serifs are lively; they almost look like little legs jutting out of the letters. and i love how the "R"s curve. i haven't found the typeface's name yet, but it looks like something that house industries developed. (i love, love, love their typefaces.) the "the" looks like it's in a different typeface.

i haven't heard the drool brothers yet, so i don't know if they're any good. with this sweet typeface, i kinda hope they're awesome. the typeface actually sets high expectations for me: i expect fun. i expect melody. i expect suits and ties. we'll see...

Thursday, January 14, 2010

typography I

i officially started gds 110: typography I on tuesday. whee! i will now understand the reason designers barf when they see comic sans.