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.

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.

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?

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...

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.