Sunday Type: ornament type
From Another Planet
I first came across this poster by Paul Grabowski for the Type Directors 54th TDC Show over at Armin Vit’s Under Consideration. It’s absolutely stunning. Viewed from afar, it looks as though it’s comprised of myriad typographic ornaments.
Closer inspection reveals that those ornaments are in fact letters. I cannot begin to imagine how long this piece took to design and assemble.
I’ve recently taken more of an interest in typographic ornaments, and even started designing some of my own. A good book to get you started is 2600 Typographic Ornaments and Designs (all royalty free designs). Stefan Hattenbach’s Anziano also comes with some beautifully drawn ornaments. Also try FontShop and MyFonts. P22 has a good set of ornaments inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement (think William Morris). Let me know if you find some real ornamental gems.
Love this shellfish alphabet from Giovanni Jubert:
Be sure to take a look at the entire Shellfish project, and the PDF, where you can see the alphabet up close.
Some lovely and some downright weird lettering. This is one of my personal favourites:
You can see more on Agence Eureka. Larger images are on her La lettre dans le decor Flickr set.
Typographunnies is the place to find type jokes and humour. You can even rate them. Here’s one to get you started:
A sans-serif face walks into the street and is hit by a Swiss Modernist truck. The carnage is grotesk… but you know, akzidenz happen.
Sunday Links
10 great, free fonts for font-face embedding—via
Dollar Dreadful Family Library
10 Great Free Fonts You Might Have Missed
Qual a tipografia certa para textos longos?
Nudist Typeface
An evening with Rian Hughes (video)
Ampersands with attitude—Smashing Magazine
Message on a napkin—thanks TypeTweets.
Olympic victory for Futura bold italic
Alphabet Particles is Action Script + the alphabet. Would like to have the option to change font:
Thanks to Vivien.
The Alphabet Series from Lazy Soosan. Each issue devoted to a letter of the alphabet, and beautifully illustrated:
Via A Cup of Jo.
Elastypography from Sarah Kahn:
I was also going to mention Sarah’s Screenshots poster, but just saw it pop up in my feed reader, so you can see it over at It’s Nice That.
From the Typography Shop (makers of the Helvetica Neue Descendingt-shirt) a new tee. Meet Across the Univers:
And the Postmodern tee designed by Postmachina:
Thanks, Marcus.
Like this simple cover from Daniel Bretzmann:
A type mosaics Flickr set:
Thanks to Parka.
The Photogram Alphabet. There x-ray like images are in fact Photograms—photos of shadows.
No camera is involved; instead the object is placed onto photographic paper and exposed. I’d like to try this myself. Via swiss miss.
The Fell Types
Be sure to check out Igino Marini’s redesigned and updated Fell Types web site.
The highly influential Fell Types, named after English Bishop John Fell (1625-86) have been harangued (for their raggedness) and praised for their form. If you don’t know the Fell Types, then be sure to take a look at Igino’s site.
Out of this world
Graham McArthur’s work is breathtaking. This piece is easily my favourite,
but also love the palette and complexity in pieces like this:
And although Graham’s work is out of this world, he does in fact live on planet earth with the rest of us—Adelaide, Australia, to be precise. I was reminded of Graham’s work after a piece on Typophile.
Free Font
Tim Ahrens’ Zallamander Caps is a set of OpenType fonts in six weights from extra light through to extra bold:
And the Fell Types, digitally revived by Igino Marini, are free to download. Be sure to read the license, especially if you wish to use them in commercial work. Even if you don’t use them, download them, print them, study them—you’ll learn a great deal about letter forms in the process.
They also come with some printers’ ornaments (Fell Flowers).
Coming next
I’ll see you again midweek for a piece written by graduates of The Hague’s Type and Media course. Have a really great week.
—Karen Cheng
35 Comments, comment / trackback
Alex Charchar
The TDC poster is such a beautiful piece, isn’t it? It’s almost as if it’s a little too much at first - ie. the mirrored Ps at the top almost feel too big, but the more I look at it, the more in love I fall
And Dover make some handy books, don’t they? I received a dover book today, from amazon. It’s the first one I own (after seeing them a few times in bookstores and online), and can’t wait to get a few more. Much better than the awful scans I have of some old floral patterns I normally resort to. The title image on the Fell Types link is a good example of the kind of thing I found in the book I got today.
I also really enjoy the Lazy Soosan illustrations, just beautiful..
Have a good week Johno
Aug182008
Ko
Love that TDC poster, very nice piece of work. I won’t ask how long it took to ‘construct’.
The Photogram Alphabet brought me back to school; I haven’t printed a wet black and white for years now - but they still do it at my old workplace.
Photograms are an amazingly expressive form of photographic print, but also notoriously difficult to make especially when overlapping more than one object.
The fishy alphabet looks great as well. It’s amazing people can still come up with new designs for letters (and many other objects, etcetera, as well!)
Now I’m off to explore the many links…
Aug182008
Daniel Campos
“Hey!
How do you do? I hope very well.
I’d like to say thank you for linked my blog here. It’s a honor for me!!!
Please, if you wish, send me an emai ‘cause I want know you e your job with iloveypography.com.
So, I wait for your menssage ok.
Regards
Daniel
Aug182008
Alec
Such incredibly beautiful pieces this week, Johno! That Grabowski poster is insane. (In a good way.) Love the Obama mosaic and the Agence Eureka work, too. And the MacArthur pieces. Hell, it’s all good. Excellent roundup!
Aug182008
Leigh
Not only is the Fell Types site very informative, it’s gorgeous use of typography makes the site a real joy to read :)
Also that TDC poster is AMAZING! A great way to start off the Sunday Type!
Aug182008
Dylan
Photograms courtesy of Mr Man Ray, previously called rayograms!
Aug182008
Scott
Wow, those shirts a fantastic! The red one (not shown here) of the Postmodern one is fantastic, and also set in Univers if I’m not mistaken.
Aug182008
FV
Wow. Where can I get that poster?
Seriously.
Aug182008
Plamen Tanovski
Nice to see that ornaments aren’t completely forgotten. I’ve made some time ago a CD cover using Linotype’s HotMetal Border and a draft for business card with Monotype’s Arabesque.
Also please consider, that Morris’ ornaments don’t count, because they are drawn. Only typesetted ornaments are real ornaments!
Aug182008
Tepi
Wow. Stunning—that shellfish text! And enjoyed the other things you shared as well. Thank you!
Aug192008
Lorraine
Hehehehe: that typography joke is just too funny. Great round-up as always.
Aug192008
Robert
That TDC poster is truly something amazing. A lot of love went into that.Thanks for all the Type links John, good stuff as always.
Aug192008
Andrea Gandino
That poster is absolutely stunning! Nice stuff, really!
Aug192008
Daniel Campos
Johno, Yesterday I left the wrong email. Now, this is right!
I’m waited your contact, ok.
Best wishes
Daniel Campos
Aug192008
Sasha McCune
Oh! Ornamentation! Let us please not forget the age-old resource, and a personal favorite of mine, Owen Jones’ Grammar of Ornament (1856)
http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Ornament-Owen-Jones/dp/0789476460/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
Aug192008
Stephen Tiano
Thanks for including the Fell Types, John. I am, of course, interested in faces for book production. I like the Fell and will perhaps look for a sitch, a book, that they’ll add something to.
I’m actually planning a blog entry on free fonts—extra points for whole typeface families that include both a serif for body text and a sans for display, like Fontin—for students and newbie book designers starting out with little capital who are setting up their “tool chest” on a dime. (And I’m not interested in 99¢ per font knockoffs or bootlegs.)
So I’m doing research on such free faces. And, anyway, 9 out of 10 new fonts are garish display faces that may be clever but tend to have limited shelf life. I think. (But, admittedly, that’s my text-based bias speaking.)
Aug192008
Thomas | Brush King
Great inspiration, thanks !
Aug202008
Nick Shinn
Postmodernist T-shirt?
No, it’s plain old retro.
Aug202008
Christoph Koeberlin
Be sure to check out Zalamander Caps in use: Logjammin’ 08
Aug212008
JMSV
The work of Sarah Kahn is a big discover! Thanks!
Aug212008
joanna goddard
these are all fantastic — and thank you for the link love! xo joanna
Aug212008
Patrick King
A belated thanks John, for featuring shirt #2. I trust you got my e-mail finally responding to your flickr mail?
cheers
Patrick
Sep42008
Darren Scott
Awesome!
Sep122008
Darren Scott
Awesome!
Sep122008