Sunday Type: mirror type
Don’t Command I ⌘ B
Welcome to May’s first Sunday Type. Yes, it’s May already! First is this great poster found via the equally great Designer Daily. The lower version is the poster as viewed in a mirror (or flipped horizontally in PhotoShop). A nice idea:
New Type
Some new typefaces this week. The first is Mário Feliciano’s Flama available from Village. Flama is a sans serif comprising 20 fonts, and comes in 45 weights across 4 widths (that’s a lot). It also supports…well, I didn’t count, but lots—lots and lots of languages.
Next is New Standard a Didone from ParaType, Russia’s leading type foundry:
Originally designed ca. 1940, it was widely used in the former Soviet Union. Now available from FontShop.
Inspiration
Love these posters from Brooklyn-based Christopher David Ryan. Simple type, simple idea, brilliantly executed:
More t-shirts. This time from Collapse Design in the UK:
Some time ago I mentioned chocolate scrabble. How about this chocolate keyboard from Michael Sholk:
Via Architectradure.
Some great posters from Change the Thought:
Legibility
FS Mencap is a joint project between type designer Jason Smith and the charity Mencap. FS Mencap is designed for ease of reading and is aimed at young learners and those with learning disabilities.
The only thing I found a little baffling was this comment:
FS Mencap…is set to challenge Arial as a new standard in legibility.
Since when is Arial a standard for anything? Or perhaps it means that Arial is commonly used and in that way is a ‘standard’. Anyway, it’s great to see this kind of partnership. A lot of work has gone into this typeface. In fact, some really good type has come out of FontSmith; I particularly like FS Clerkenwell:
Be sure to take a look at the PDF specimen too.
If you have a thing about apostrophes, and you slap your forehead every time you see them omitted, misused and abused, then do take a look at apostrophe atrophy.
Feel the pain.
Sunday Type Links
Things to Look at—via BrittleGirl
Typographers, Lend me Your Pain—Jon Tan on CSS3
Type Bodies Compared—did two Nonpareils make a Pica?
TDC Event: An evening with the great Louise Fili
Word Clock screensaver—thanks, Colleen
hami.sh—nice looking site
For all you iPhone users, the iPhone version of the FontGame is also now hosted on iLT. Kari has tweaked and beautified it and you can play it at http://ifontgame.ilovetypography.com/.
I do hope the iPhone comes to Japan soon!
Competition
Today’s prize is two copies of dot-font: talking about fonts—a wonderful collection of type-related essays by John D. Berry. It’s a great book!
OK, so this is what you have to do to have a chance of winning it: Name the three typefaces used on the cover of ‘Talking About Fonts’.
Please email your answers to m{AT}ilovetypography.com with ‘dot-font’ in the subject line. I’ll announce the two winners during next Sunday’s Sunday Type.
Today’s Typeface:
First up is the stunning FF Maiola by Veronika Burian:
Coming Up
Next week is iLT’s regular 15 Great Examples of Web Typography (Quarter 2). So, get ready to digg, and let’s show the world how good type on the web can be.
And Finally…
I was going to post a Jumbo Type Crossword today. However, I couldn’t finish the submission form in time, so I’ll post it next week. I think you’ll enjoy it. If you do, then I’ll make it a regular feature. If there’s a generous sponsor out there (type foundry, book publisher, or philanthropist), I might even be able to offer prizes.
And Finally, Finally…
Have a great Sunday or Monday wherever you are; and thanks for reading iLT.
—Karen Cheng
28 Comments, Comment or Trackback
Hamish M
Thanks again, John. Lovely compilation today.
I loved those posters from Christopher David Ryan as well, though as a non-Mac user it took me a moment to see that, um, squiggly thing as the equivalent of Ctrl in Windows — of course it wouldn’t look as nice with Ctrl. Haha.
FS Mencap does indeed look very legible. Though “challenging Arial” certainly seems an odd thing to do. Oh well, at least they aren’t challenging Comic Sans. Now that I’d like to see! Haha. (For those who don’t know, me and John have a secret love affair with Comic Sans, right John?) ;)
Oh and if you like the apostrophe atrophy, you’ll probably like the blog of these guys who are going around the world correcting typos. Pretty funny stuff.
Also, thanks muchly for the link up. I’m currently working on a portfolio in a similar vein, and then I’ll be working on the blog.
And I gotta say, the iPhone font game works great! Awesome work Kari.
Looking forward to next week, thanks John.
May52008
johno (iLT)
Hamish
Thanks. Looking forward to the portfolio site.
For those wondering what you’re on about—using love affair and Comic Sans in the same sentence—a late night Twiiter conversation about the (deprecated?) blink tag inspired this. Best viewed in Netscape or IE ;)
May52008
Leo Petr
That poster really messes with the heads of people who can actually read Russian. It’s not the usual kind of fake Cyrillic lettering because it’s mirrored, but it’s nonsense in Russian too. Argh!
May52008
Chris Papadopoulos
Great set of articles. I now have a whole bunch of interesting stuff to read tomorrow. Just scanning down the list, I especially liked those cute little posters and shirts. That’s the type of subtle cleverness I wish I had thought of.
PS: After a ridiculously long and emotionally stressful day, it was a pleasant treat to see my little article here. Thanks. I actually just mentioned your ligature article for a Rails programming technique article on my website, so you might be interested in that as well.
May52008
LaurenMarie - Creative Curio
Haha, the Russian poster is great! Always like seeing creative things like that. And I laughed when I saw those posters by Christopher David Ryan. Great stuff.
Ugh, misused apostrophes. I should’ve taken a pic with my phone of this banner I saw at a local restaurant. In a hideous scripty font it said, “Open for Mother’s and Fathers Day.” Just because they have multiple fathers doesn’t mean we all do…
Hehe, I went to that correcting typos blog, Hamish. Funny!! I like to see if I can catch the typos before reading the story. Boy am I a geek…
May52008
Ricky Irvine
I just came across FF Maiola after days of searching for a versatile typeface (with support for Greek) for an upcoming project. Very nice looking face. Glad to see it here!
May52008
kristarella
The Russian poster is cool as are those t-shirts.
I hate misapostrophication too, but is it just me, or is there nothing wrong with the apostophes on that truck?
May52008
LaurenMarie - Creative Curio
Eek! For some reason at first I thought “it’s” was wrong, but you’re right, Kristarella! It IS correct! It’s = it is, which is what it’s meaning to say.
May52008
johno (iLT)
Kristarella & LaurenMarie
The problem with those ‘apostrophes’ is that they aren’t apostrophes. Add to that the double hyphen in place of an en- or em-dash.
May52008
Giania
The “cyrillic” font in the don’t drink and drive poster looks an awful lot like a type face called Worker Poster. I’d link you to the original place I found it, but it looks like the creator’s site (I think he was the creator) was hijacked for someone’s music scam.
If I find the rar or zip or whatever it is, I’ll upload it and get you the link so the type sleuths can compare and contrast.
May52008
Robert
Wow really got inspired with this weeks Sunday Type. I really loved Christopher David Ryan’s type poster, genius indeed. Also really nice print work from Change the Thought. Well time to get back to work and eat my chocolate keyboard. :)
May52008
kristarella
Oh, haha. Okay. I’m not enough of a type guru to pick those kind of typographical errors… grammar/punctuation I can do :P
May52008
nicetype
Fontsmith produces great type, they also did the new Xerox type, which also seems to be based on FS Albert, just like Mencap. Although I still believe a double-storey a is more legible. And I too wonder what kind of standard Arial can set :)
May52008
Manuel, Æstheticrew
I have a hard time staying online these days, it is so warm outside and i was already swimming out in the sea, and you know, i bought a new bicycle and all that fuzz about summer coming up and trying to shape up me sorry-ass browsing-through-the-winter body. Bleah…
But i would never miss a sunday type — but wait, it is already tuesday, isn’t it? Damnit. Well anyways; nice shirts by Collapse! And Flama looks very intriguing as well!
Hillarious link by Hamish, these guys who are going around the world correcting typos are killing me :)
May62008
Mothership
The Russian poster has something about it that intrigues me. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but now that I have seen it, I’m sure I’ll wake up at 3.45am tomorrow with the answer!
Great work.
May62008
Sander
Looking forward to the Jumbo Type Crossword, I’ve used cpformsII to get the contestants to participate and it worked very good for me, recommended.
Thanks for the great type summary, have a great week!
May62008
LaurenMarie - Creative Curio
Ah, they are prime marks. You’re right, John (well of course you’re right about typography-related stuff!). I thought there was a catch that I didn’t get…
May82008
kristarella
It’s hard to blame people for using the wrong punctuation marks when keyboards don’t even use them by default! What is up with that?
May82008
ankara nakliyat
good article.
May262008