Non-Roman Type
I’m pretty sure there’s a moment in every graphic designer’s life when they first realize what typography is. When they first recognize that letters can look different from typeface to typeface– not just in the “I’m going to format my term paper in Minion this time” way, but in the “this O isn’t the same thickness all the way around…” way. I still remember a time when I assumed that all fonts with ‘those little tail thingies’ were the same. It took a long time before I began to inspect letterforms carefully, before I realized that the Art of typography was something to be reckoned with. It took a long time before I realized that I really enjoyed it (once I took the time to understand what it was all about).
Lucky me, I had two of those “a-ha!” moments in my life. One was when I found out about typography; the other was when I realized that typography applies to all alphabets, not just the Roman alphabet. It was then that I asked my father whether he knew of any interesting Bengali typefaces, Bengali being one of the most commonly-spoken languages in India. Again I somewhat assumed that Bengali was typed in a standard font that catered more to getting the point across than to getting a feeling across. Wrong again. As it turns out, a Bengali-language newspaper has as many fonts on the front page as an English-language one. It made complete sense after the fact.
It’s incredible to see a language that you can’t understand– not only can’t understand, but seems simply like a bunch of brush strokes!– in bold, in italics, with emphasis. It’s like looking at a picture upside down: you can see that it’s supposed to be something but it’s too abstract to figure out, and instead you see it for its parts.
I still can’t read Bengali but I can admire it for its curling, complex forms. And finally I’ve stumbled upon Bengali typography which isn’t meant to be functional first, but instead beautiful. See more of these specimens at Brown Town.
HASbags: a step-by-step
Recently, I embarked on a project with a good friend. She creates beautiful, handmade bags that can be folded into an envelope-shaped piece that is easy to carry and quite convenient for things like groceries or library books. My friend asked me to make a hangtag for these bags so that, upon purchasing one of the pieces, the buyer could easily check out the tag to learn how best to fold the bag into its tiny, stowaway form.
After thinking about this for only a short while, I decided that the most useful way to teach people to fold the bag was to fold one myself and photograph the process. Simple enough, I figured, but little did I know that this process would span multiple media and graphics programs and become a project within a project. The image below shows one of my source photographs and its corresponding diagram, drawn in Illustrator.
The diagrams were fun to make; I’ve always enjoyed converting realistic images to vector illustrations. There’s something about distilling information down to the most useful and necessary parts that makes me excited to be a designer.
But enough of the nerdiness: on to step two. Below is an image showing how I reworked the large vector diagram to a smaller, even less detailed diagram that would eventually go on the hangtag, which is shown on the right.
The tag looked nice enough as an Illustrator document with a tan background to indicate the ‘cardboard’ look of a natural hangtag. However, to give a truly solid example to my friend I wanted to show her what a tag might look like in real life. Aside from letterpressing my own tag and handing it to her in person, I could only think of one way to give her the impression of the hangtag in a real context: Photoshop. Fortunately I’m well-versed in the ways of making interesting things look more interesting in Photoshop, so I threw my design on top of another image and doctored it beyond recognition to create…
… as far as I’m concerned, a very realistic-looking mockup of what will eventually be my friend’s hangtags. And there you have it. From the shutter of my digital SLR to the pen tool in Illustrator to the lens blur in Photoshop, this project has journeyed across many programs and landed safely on my website as the newest addition to my ever-growing portfolio. And the beauty of it is that no part of this process felt like work at all.
A world unto itself
Back when I was working at the evil empire (you’re raising service charges again?), my main form of expressing myself creatively was by hand-lettering flyers. It didn’t happen often but when I had a chance, I’d go to town. The best part was that the bands that gave me license to explore were the 60’s-style, free love, swirly-type people. Fortunately the creative gatekeeper was a fan of all of this, too.
I knew that hand-drawn type was a world unto itself and that I’d only scratched the surface. Reminding me of this are people like Jessica Hische, who delivers viewers back to a time of retro typography and visuals. The example up top is one where when I first saw it, I didn’t want to navigate away. It’s the kind of color you just don’t want to let go of– warm, inviting, gorgeous. If ever I’d wanted to explore a true living in typography, hers is the sort of work I would look to for an understanding of what’s possible.
Grid systems
In my opinion, grid systems are underrated. Lots of designers have a bone to pick with people who create text in Photoshop or use Comic Sans, but me? I feel like these people would be absolved of their sins if only they’d stick to applying their use of Comic Sans to a grid system. (Who am I kidding? I have a bone to pick with those folks, too.)
Again, on my quest to figure out how to balance web design and graphic design (they are definitely not the same thing) I’m finding some amazing sites that put forth best practices in design as easy-to-digest, web-centric experiences. The application of grid systems to web design is one of the easiest ways for designers to attain some semblance of structure and clarity in what could otherwise be a very chaotic situation.
On that note, it is worth visiting Fluid 960 Grid System and playing around a little. Even if you know all there is to know about grids, the beauty of the site might inspire you to think inside the box once again.
Hand-drawn letterforms
In school, I (and all of my peers) spent an entire semester hand-sketching and hand-gouaching letterforms. There were concepts embedded in the work we did in that class that will stick with me for a lifetime. It’s a classic case of, “you have to know the rules to break the rules”– if you don’t know how to create something perfect, you’ll be hard-pressed to understand how to make it beautifully imperfect.
Hand-drawn letters are pretty rare nowadays. I love looking at new typefaces and seeing the ways in which people ‘break’ otherwise classic fonts. But the real treat is in seeing the process by which it was done. I don’t miss the tedium of that meticulous work, but it does make for a gorgeous product. Check out more of Lee25’s work at his DeviantArt site.
Country Code Map
An aesthetically pleasing visual representation of the country codes of the world, via byte level. It’d be worth buying just to have the cheat-sheet at the bottom, in my opinion. It would make it easier to track which countries those pesky appeals for hundred-thousand-dollar wire transfers come from.
Custom Type
Typography is awesome. That’s really the only thought that comes to mind when I look at this post on Letter Cult showing off the best custom type from the first half of 2009.
Whenever I begin a new project, I try like mad to incorporate new typefaces, things that are unexpected or haven’t been used to death before. I have my fallbacks (here’s lookin’ at you Helvetica Neue!) and my easy-on-the-eyes standbys, but it’s always a struggle finding that perfect fit. Sometimes I feel limited by even the thousands of fonts at my disposal, at the same time wondering whether it’s all been done before.
The folks at Letter Cult have done a superb job pulling together these custom type designs. Looking at these images makes me think that it hasn’t all been done, and the best may still be yet to come.
Twisted Intellect
Upon trying to learn a load of CSS & PHP in a short amount of time (whilst never abandoning my good design sensibilities) I’ve happened upon a number of sites that have highlighted the happy marriage of the two. Twisted Intellect is an example of just that: a combination of beautiful design & type and sleek, clean CSS. I haven’t explored beyond the front page, but that in itself is reason enough to visit.
Jewelry branch
Recently I’ve been searching for the perfect branch to create a hanger for my jewelry, similar to this one from Viva Terra. The form is gorgeous, and I hope to find a similar branch that I can hang on my wall instead of using as a standing piece. There are some cheap knockoffs from Urban Outfitters and the like, but I have yet to find anything as organic and natural-looking as the one from Viva Terra. Apparently manzanita trees are where it’s at.