Skyrf Machine – Gijs van Bon

technology + type = an ephemeral, beautiful, and simple win. in the words of martin venezky: it's beautiful and then it's gone.



Much more over on Dezeen

spin magazine and ETC

The one magazine I subscribe to is SPIN. I've always enjoyed their articles and interviews because they give me insight into the nature of musicians / creative people. Spin always shapes issues around a central idea. For example, May / June  is "The Loud Issue." It celebrates artists that are advocates of "ear-bleeding modes of expression [...] driven by thought-provoking ideology as much as brute force." I always enjoy their carefully curated content, photography, and illustration. Plus it's always interesting to see who's on the latest cover.



Spin recently gave me one more reason to be a fan when they recently redesigned the entire publication. The new look and format is in my opinion a very smart reaction to the increasing digitization of information. Instead of attempting to emulate or keep up with the music blogs, the publication goes in the opposite direction. It seeks to become a physical, precious, and charming artifact. The printing techniques and the paper are much more physical: You can feel the matte paper in your fingers and see the overlapping inks. The larger format also allows the photographs to be really immersive.

The redesign is not only beautiful, it's smart too. Things like album reviews and news updates have been removed from the magazine and relegated to Spin's site because this type of information is faster and more fleeting. The content in the magazine has been carefully considered for print. The articles are long (in a great way) and more cultural, speculative, and contemplative. I wanted to know who was behind all of this, and I discovered that it was a design firm based in Brooklyn called Everything Type Company, or ETC. Check out their site for some really awesome work for the Walker Art Center, Yale, Dwell, and more.

Hooray for printed matter! Hooray for design that understands and capitalizes on the nature of it's medium!

a great resource

I remeber being in the thick of this semester and catching a glimpse of friend and fellow designer Matt Stay's buisiness cards. I remeber thinking to myself, "what's that rugged, decorative, typeface with depth?" Matt went on to tell me about the Lost Type Co-Op.

The Lost Type Co-Op is the first type foundry that allows it's patrons and supporters to name their price for a typeface. This is especially great news for me, a recent college grad (more on that in a bit) with approximately zero pesos in el banco. I do hope that they do alright, these pay-what-you-want sites depend on the goodness of those that can pay if they are able. When you make the choose to pay, you are supporting designers and recognizing quality. you can visit the site here!

karl martens is a cool guy.

Since being back in richmond, I've had the privelege to be interning at Scout Design. Charley and Angeline are some of the most kind and gracious people I have ever known, and they run Scout out of the first floor of their home in the fan. Aside from many other interesting things (which i hope to be posting on here soon) they recently turned me on to the work of Karl Martens. All of the work that I've seen of his so far is so incredibly fascinating. Charley and Angeline own a book of his, and it's such a vibrant, free flowing, and fearless object.

I've also stumble across Werkplaats Typografie, which to my understanding is  masters program and test lab for self initiated coolness. Martens oversees and supervises. In alot of the work, The traditional standards of aesthetics are often subverted. Like some other work that I've been digging lately, Werkplaats Typographie has a fascination with what some may see as being ugly, generic, or undesigned.

cool beans

i somehow (most likely through manystuff) managed to stumble across the incredible work of swiss design studio glashaus. Their site is a little jarring, but there is something charming in the kind of amateur multi-layer aesthetic that it has. In a way, it's like if someone threw photos one on top of the other on a table or something. It's just a virtual translation.

To me, their work is simple, funny, smart, and cool in that amateur/ lowbrow kind of way.  I've written breifly about this before, but I like the aesthetics of non-design. The defaults, the economic printing methods, the disregard for the unspoken "rules of graphic design. It's an interesting conundrum when a design chooses to design something so as to appear undesigned. It seems like a very meta, post modern type of idea. Something about the way they look. For me, they're beautiful because they're imperfect, human, ugly.

also, check this publication they designed for Roten Fabrik

so cool.

Every once and a while, the internet gods extend their hands and say to me, "brent I give you a gift." This gem is Vernacular Typography, and it explores and documents typography of the lowbrow, cabinet of curiosity variety. I love that an entire post was done soley on composition books and their famous textures. If you've got any interest in this type of thing, I highly recommend you check out the blog and the main site!

cool beans

i love typography posted an awesome year end article, and two points of which I thought I'd bring to your attention:

Fonts in use identifies typefaces in use, and is certainly a good source for fresh typefaces and treatments.

These numerals by Andy Mangold are free for download as an eps, and they are totally sweet.

follow up: simon walker

well, i did about two seconds more research, and I found that the type of the last post was made by a gentleman named Simon Walker.  He's got an amazing portfolio of logo and illustration work, and a lot of it  really speaks that visual language of old America, boy scout patches, and train signs.  Definitely worth a look!

stumble

beautiful type, gaspworthy.

via ffffound

what an amazing resource

the rob roy kelly american wood type collection.  here are some of my favorites, this one reminds me of the typeface on sufjan steven's new album:

new work.

these are my letterpress posters!  I used old woodblocks, chocolate ink, and old maps. The quote is one of my favorite lines from Dylan's Chimes of Freedom.  I'm selling them for $20.  Each is signed and numbered as part of an edition of 10!

cool beans

i stumbled on this tight site, making sweet typographic compositions out of meaningful songs!

stumble

old capitol records logo

sweetness

according to pentagram's sweet what type are you site, i am dot matrix, which is sweet and unexcpected. maybe i'll start using it....

via hypefortype

WANTAGE

slowly building my library...posts on sweet japenese editorial design to come

from hypefortype:

Type. A Visual History of Typefaces & Graphic Styles, 1628-1900

Two great books from Taschen, Vol.1 is currently on sale, Vol.2 goes on sale next month…

This exuberant selection of typographic fonts and styles traces the modern evolution of the printed letter, reproducing pages from exquisitely designed catalogs showing type specimens in roman, italic, bold, semi-bold, narrow, and broad fonts. Also included are borders, ornaments, initial letters and decorations, and many spectacular examples of their use. Victorian fonts, spectacular in their complexity, are accorded a prominent place. In addition, examples from lithography and letters by inscription carvers and calligraphers are also included and described.

Featuring works by type designers William Caslon, Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke, Peter Behrens, Rudolf Koch, Eric Gill, Jan van Krimpen, Paul Renner, Jan Tschichold, A. M. Cassandre, Aldo Novarese, and Adrian Frutiger.

stumble, major cool beans

a museum for old neon signs in vegas

cooooool beans again!

a collection of "the end" movie stills! more here.

hell, just just check out this whole site

via designyoutrust