Ace Jet 170

Found Type Friday #56

Shawn's in Chicago and has an ongoing found type project...er...ongoing. So far, he's got lots. Here's just some:

 

 

 

Superb! Many thanks Shawn!

If you've got it, send it.

Chicken Watch #12: Compound Path

  

Day 63: In order to re-establish the correct balance of power, we have decided to limit their domain.

Found Type Friday #55

Loïc's been listening to his favourite font-frenzied juju music:

 

But for me, it's this superb cover for War, that he found, that's my favourite. Check out the "clansman" in the queue!

Meanwhile, Stephanie spotted this worrying ghost sign in a Haitian Hospital:

And, Jill spotted some sinister stay-off-the-moors hand-daubed type:

Thanks Loïc and Stephanie and Jill!

Stuff are you having? Here it send.

Shunting pole on buffer spindle

I know, it just sounds wrong and this booklet makes it clear that's it's downright dangerous too, "A momentary lack of care may lead to tragedy". So be careful what you do with yours. I'm keeping mine in a locked cabinet until I need it.

 

 

Mike Dempsey was talking about scraper board yesterday which reminded me how overdue this post is.

Pintori

And if Nitsche wasn't enough, get on over to Grain Edit for Pintori!

Nitsche Reminder #01

Jane left a comment on Staff Edition and on her blog there's a link to Erik Nitsche on Flickr which I haven't looked at for a while now. Thanks for the (unintentional) reminder Jane.

1 for sorrow, 2 for joy...

Just don't mention C_ _ _ _ _ S_ _ _

How to reach over 18,000,000...

What I'd like to know is whatever happened to aerial advertising? 

The thrills, the danger...the marmalade.

 

 

 

 

Chicken Watch #11: Others

Day 56: When we are not tending our own we seek others of their kind.

Ben's Scraps

 

Ben's quite modest about this but I've been thinking about it a lot and it:

a) is lovely

and

b) says a lot about him

(Images used without permission, hope that's OK Ben)

Wordy Post #01

This is a very self-conscious bit of a thing. You see, as you know, I'm a graphic designer. And I work in a design studio. We spend our time trying hard to make stuff that is beautiful and relevant. We don't do advertising, direct marketing or anything (to speak of) that traditionally falls on or above "the line". We're well below it (do people still talk about "the line"? Does it still exist? - I think it does. Here it does).

I used to sit on it. Dangling my toes below while simultaneously waving my arms above it. Both dangling and waving was fun and I'm still as interested in waving as I am dangling even though, at the moment, I'm only dangling. I'm not sure how many dangler-wavers there are out there. I feel that a lot of designers are either one or the other. I'm probably wrong and anyway, if I'm right, that's fine, nothing wrong with it. Never mind.

Fuelled by an insecurity that manifests itself in a feeling that I don't know enough, I read a lot of stuff about the stuff we do (or would like to do). And again, I swing both ways; sometimes I read toe-dangling stuff, sometimes wavy stuff (marketing stuff).

What I don't know is if that's what everyone/anyone else does. Perhaps they do, in which case this waffle might be a big fat waste of time but it's here to be helpful. Of course, the trouble with marketing books (as I've probably mentioned before) is that even the best ones usually look sooooo shit, so my suspicion is that many designers give them a wide berth. And why shouldn't they? They're ugly and it's quite feasible, for those taught kerning and colour, to exist and even earn a decent crust without knowing a load of old marketing shite.

And yet, what's occuring to me more and more is how each camp (if indeed my microworldview is in any way accurate and these "camps" exist) has so much to teach/give the other. If nothing else, even now, after nearly [lots of] years of doing this kind of thing, I'm still discovering new and useful stuff in surprising places.

Here's an example: 

I've been reading John Grant's, eight year old, New Marketing Manifesto - The 12 Rules for Building Successful Brands in the 21st Century. Old hat no doubt to all those planners, marketists and whatnots out there, but I'm a designer; this is not a book that I would naturally encounter; I don't remember seeing it in Design Week or CR and anyway, what do I know of the dirty business of marketing? Well, of course, I should know something. I can't go about claiming to know a bit about branding without knowing about the ever evolving nature of the big "B" in the 21st C? How can I design the stuff if I don't understand how it works?

Even though it's eight or so years old, there's lots in it that I didn't know and many idea-stimulating thoughts. Some of it re-defining shifts in thinking for me; like the bit about how brands have become the new traditions by which we live our lives now many of the old traditions have broken down; how they should emerge as the by-products of innovation rather than be some kind of re-spraying exercise; how we should think in terms of genre before we think about form; and, best of all, the importance of authenticity. It's a great book for designers too because it advocates bold, new, emotionally-driven ideas over straight-jacketing, focus group/analysis directed stuff. Music to my ears.

Importantly, having consumed it, I feel better equipped for the briefs, meetings and presentations ahead.

One surprisingly interesting thing about the book is that I enjoyed it all the more because it's eight years old. Although he talks about stuff now gone (New Labour) and doesn't talk about now-stuff (Web 2.0), he presents ideas that were new then and have since been embraced, either consciously or naturally, with great success by exemplars of contemporary marketing/branding. Things we've witness emerge.

Anyway, the point of this ramble is that for us designers, slaving away on matters that have traditionally fallen below the you-know-what, there's much to be gleamed and embraced from the study of things going on above. Things that we can use.

And that's that.

Except, I should explain that the reason I got this book in the first place was because I wanted to read his latest but felt the need to see where Grant was coming from first.

His Green Marketing Manifesto is quite a different book and quite possibly more important. I'm half way through and it's opening my eyes to many things; I'd recommend it to anyone. Everyone. Massively over-simplifying things, the GMM explains the importance of marketing in our efforts to save our global asses by making green things seem normal as opposed to making normal things seem green (or "greenwashing"). He talks a lot about that then tells us how to do it.

He also describes who's doing what right now; some surprising people doing remarkable things. 

It seems to me that with this book Grant's made a kind of self-fulfilling thing; after all the talk in his first book of brands as "new traditions to live by", the Green Marketing Manifesto drops just that into your lap: a fresh and new way to approach the stuff we do everyday.

And he's even managed to make a marketing book look (a little) more like a book for a designer.

Staff Edition

In 1959 crazy paved caffeteria's, slacks and Clarendon were all the rage.

 

 

"Vernacular"

Is that the right word?

I was not good at English at school; almost as bad as I was at French (last exam: 3% - you probably got more for getting your name right). I'm better now (thanks to this). But I always hesitate to use that word when describing this kind of thing that I abso-fucking-lutely love, shown on the Book Covers blog this week...

So, is that the right word?

Chicken Watch #10: Up close and personal

Day 50: As we have learnt, Penelope is not camera shy.

Found Type Friday #54

Car crash type and numerous bits of interestingness this week. 

Firstly, from new visitee Finn:

 

 

 

Regular and railway station loiterer Loïc:

 

 

And BB/Saunders designer James:

 

 

 

All superb (and I am really very grateful to Finn, Loïc and James for taking the trouble to send stuff) but this week's prize* has to go to James for exceptional specimens.

Have stuff? Send here.

* Actually, there is not prize but the joy of giving.

acf acf

...or so, it appears, Mr Tankard would say. Rummaging around for the Architype stuff I found JT stuff. 

Lots of it.

      

Chicken Watch #09: Coop Innovation 02

 

Day 43: Hot on the heels of a new removable, therefore easier to clean, perch for the nest box I've built and installed a covered food trough. Now fully road-tested, I got a thumb's up from The Hood and feel now we have a mutual respect previous missing from our relationship.

Found Type Friday #53

Ugly but interesting (I think), desktop patterns like they used to be...

Big files available on Flickr.

Have stuff? Send here.

Sack Face

 

Not seeing much of Freda Sack last week got me thinking about The Foundry and, digging through some old cigar boxes, I managed to find this, one of the first promo leaflets for their brilliant revivals of groundbreaking type design projects carried out in the early part of the 20th Century by the leading lights of the day, including my all-time hero, I-wouldn't-be-doing-this-stuff-today-without-him, Tschichold.

At the time, the Fuse/Emigre glory days, the release of these for Mac was dead exciting. Can't find samples for all three Architype sets but do have them somewhere.

 

Land of the Pipe Smoking Giants

Not sure if I've mentioned this place before. 

Hidden at the far reaches of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (that we visit frequently) is an enthusiast-run miniature railway. Although you'd think I was, by the amount of rail-related stuff on Ace Jet, I'm not particularly interesting in all this, but our boys are and it's hard not to get sucked in, it's kind of magical. Mostly hidden in a walled garden, all the public see is a semi-circle of track that comes out of one red brick arch and disappears again through another. But we're sneaky. We always follow the rough path up the side, around the back to get the full picture. 

We were there on Saturday again and our boys were thrilled to be invited aboard. While they were looping around the lawn, I was taken into the workshop to investigate the lathes. It was excellent. And the enthusiasm of the pipe smoking, engine fiddlers that look after it all is inspiring.