Squiggly Bits

This poster makes reference to the paucity of diacritics in English. And, when they are employed, they’re often used on loan words—like the French café, for example. Here’s a little pre-Sunday Type challenge for you: name all the diacritics (or diacritical marks), and name the typeface used.

Poster designed by Michael Ciancio (you’ll need to click on the English Language link on the left to see the poster—the site uses frames).

Thanks to Kate Allen who said she thought of me when she first saw this poster. I take that as a compliment :) I guess I should offer a prize. Any suggestions?

See you on Sunday!

Type & Lettering

I will begin with a recently launched web site, LetterCult. Thanks to regular link contributor Peter van Impelen, I’ve had the pleasure to read this fine blog. There are already interviews with Mark Simonson and the wonderful Gemma O’Brien of Write Here Right Now fame.

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Gutbustingly Good

Invariably, these kinds of post are couched in grandiloquence, “The World’s Best, most stunningly awesome typographically awe-inspiring found type.” And although, the search engines might love it, I just can’t do it. So here’s some stuff I found that I rather like—and I hope it inspires you.

Aaron Martin:

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Final Registration

What a hectic couple of weeks. Well, time to forget all your worries, sit back and enjoy some type and lettering. The winner of the Designing Books competition is mentioned at the close of today’s article. Thanks to all those who have sent in links and suggestions.

The other week I mentioned  Typoretum. I mention them again because they have some lovely new printers’ flowers letterpress cards:

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A new face from exljbris

Apologies for the lack of a Sunday Type last week. I’ll be back on track from this Sunday, when I’ll also announce the winner of Designing Books.

Just one brief announcement today. Hot on the heels of an extended Anivers, Jos Buivenga releases Museo Sans, the other half of his incredibly popular Museo:

Museo Sans comes in 10 styles, two of which are completely free.

For numerous other quality free fonts, see Jos Buivenga’s site.

MA Typeface Design

A new web site to showcase the work of this year’s students of the MA in Typeface Design at the univeristy of Reading.

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A Brief Review

A book that carries the names Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross on the cover is enough to get just about anyone’s synapses salivating.* Designing books: practice and theory, published by Hyphen Press is the best single volume on the subject of designing books. Why save it for the concluding remarks. Hold this book in your hands, flip through it, take note of the colour of text blocks, the proportions … in these simple acts there are invaluable lessons to be learned.

The book comprises three main sections. The first two are concerned with fundamental principles—symmetry, asymmetry, proportion, form, etc.; the third is a collection of real examples of good (oftentimes, exceptional) book design. The writing is concise and intelligent; the illustrations informative and relevant; and the design of the book itself is a product of Hochuli’s consummate skill.

Learning to design books is not a particularly complicated affair. The fundamentals—all of which are covered in the book—can be learned with little effort. However, the same can be said of, for example, chess: learning the moves is nothing more than filing away the rules in memory. Mastery, however, is a lifetime’s work. And as grandmasters of book design and typography, one is in good hands with Hochuli and Kinross.

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Words as Pictures

Thanks for your feedback to my questions about posting frequency and the length of these Sunday Type posts. I’ve decided to shorten Sunday Type just a little (though I will sometimes supersize it), and also post relevant newsworthy items throughout the week—if there are any, that is. I’m also considering ‘mashable’ posts using tags. So, for example, you select the Marian Bantjes tag, and you get to see a post that comprises all the Bantjes bits from various iLT posts. If there are some smart WordPress coders out there, then let me know how I might go about achieving this—please.

Let’s get started today with work from Chinese artist Tsang Kin-wah:

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