Ace Jet 170

10 by 10

I won.

FS Clerkenwell, to be precise. If you follow Fontsmith on Twitter you'd have enjoyed their anniversary typocompetition a couple of weeks back. It was simple but tricky at times: throughout the week snippets from their beautiful 10 years in type anthology teased us with abstracted font features. 

I was delighted to win, Clerkenwell is awesome. But even better, I signed up for a copy of the celebratory box set and it arrived at the tail end of last week. It's an amazing thing: superbly printed by Team Impression and stupendously designed by Thompson Brand Partners. Ten booklets tell the stories of ten unique fonts. This morning saw the launch of an accompanying microsite so if you're not able to get your hand on the real thing, you can still learn about Fontsmith's dedication to their craft and find out what makes them such exemplars of the fine art of type design.

Nothing Special #07

This is a weird one. I've been picking this up in our local charity book shop, then putting it down for weeks. It's that modernist cover. It feels like it's designed by someone interesting, but there's no credit. And then there's the oh so strange content. Kind of Shrigley-esque. Only it's all by Canadian Eskimos. Which makes it not as funny perhaps but equally peculiar and compelling.

A friendly Canadian has rightly pointed out that the artists are actually, of course, Inuits, not Eskimos. My feable excuse for the error is that I worked with information that was 43 years old. Apologies to all the Inuits out there. Keep up the good work!

Tooled Up

 

 

 

 

Nice bit of perforated hardboard there. Ideal for, say, a wall of tools. Imagine this: A whole wall, covered in perforated hardboard, proliferated with many hooks and pegs. Each hook or peg supporting a hand tool: a spirit level, micrometer, steel rule, height gauge, vernier calliper; carver clamp, warrington hammer, ball & claw pincer, insulated snipe-nose plier. Just imagine it; an entire wall of tools: Wire stripper, 6-way ferrule crimping tool, hand brace, spokeshave, threaded nut rivet kit, combination square, hand mitre saw. A threaded rod cutter. You never know when you might need a threaded rod cutter.

I mean, a vast panorama of precision-made usefulness, stretching for as far as the eye can see. A boundless vista of engineered practicalness at your fingertips. Each rigorously manufactured device designed to facilitate the expediting of a particular task. And all presented on a peg-board backed toolscape.

Fwaor!

 

Gladwell

I've not read any Malcolm Gladwell. The new Paul Sahre designed/Brian Rea illustrated box set could change that. 

(Via The Casual Optimist).

On thirty four different ways to cross the Thames

We love a bit of Nigel Peake in the studio. I think he's mates with one of the architects next door and we know his printer pretty well. But of course, it's his strange and wonderful work that's most interesting. Self-published Bridges is just out and captures the man's special take on "XXXIV Crossings of the Thames".

System Font

Typotheque is easily my most favourite type foundry. Amazing typefaces, exeptional attention to detail, lovely type specimens. The latest (limited edition) for the sans/slab/rounded type system Irma is one of the best yet.

 

The Lesser Spotted Bass

There's no point me spouting on about the genius of Bass. We all know it. Even if you only know a few posters or title sequences, if you're a graphic designer of at least "a certain age", you know how important Saul Bass is. If you're lucking, some time in 2004 you were at the Design Museum for the exhibition. Jonathan Jones, writing for the Guardian, slagged it off a bit at the time. I thought it was amazing. Perhaps Jones had a point but I didn't care - it was a ton of Saul Bass, on show, together. Wow.

I vaguely remember there was some promise of a book after the show. I think (and I could be getting mixed up here) you could even pre-order it on Amazon. But it didn't happen. Perhaps somewhere out there, there's a proper explanation of what happened.

Of course, fast-forward seven years and here it is. A mightly volume. And even if it doesn't read well (I've yet to test that) it's a ton of Saul Bass, on show, together. Wow.

As I've just hinted, I haven't had time to explore the book in any detail but one thought did occur: if you remove all the stuff we all know, take out all the film stuff, what's left is still pretty amazing. So rather than dwell on the posters and titles you may already know, here's some quieter things I at least had never seen before.

It's a hefty book but with a relatively modest price tag so I'd say it's more than worth buying. It's an essential chunk of graphic design history and it's beautiful.

Found Type Friday #96

We're fast approaching the big One-Double-Zero FTF. Well, when I say "fast", I mean fast like evolution is fast or like the blue whale is fast or like how our tomatoes ripened fast this year.

So, "slowly" is, of course what I really mean. Slow like the speed it's taken me to get this copy of An Elementary Essay on the background of English Literature posted.

 

 

Pure Gold

Hard to resist a Pan Fleming, especially with cover like that and a 40p price tag. And Johnny's just reminded me (unintentionally) that I'd posted this way back in the dim and distant past.

Wolverartmap

Claire from Substrakt very kindly sent me a copy of their Art Map of Wolverhapton. OK, I kind of wangled one off her using a contact, charm and some begging. Mostly a contact and begging, I'm not so good with the other. Whatever the combination it worked. Another excellent map for the collection, this one revealling the public art and culturally interesting corners of the city not so far away from where I was born. 

Eff Eye

I didn't go to Build this year. Mainly because I'm an idiot and can't plan ahead. According to reports, it was the best one so far and rumour has it Wilson Minor stole the show. Us non-attendidiots will have to wait for the video releases to see just how good he was. I got to a couple of peripheral events: the Film night was good (as I've already mentioned) and so was Spiekermann who talked about type and swore. He's always good.

After Spiekermann, it was the First Ever Build Conference Beer Festival, complete with locally brewed guest beers and mats beautifully printed by top letterpressers Typoretum. For those that don't know, the Eff Eye ligature is the logo/motif of Build organiser Andygoodonpaperandeverything's company Fiction.

Lightweight #02

A recent addition to one of my most pointless collections. I only have a handful of vintage light meters but each is a masterpiece of everyday engineering. I'm not even much of a photographer - What need do I have for a light meter? None. Which is good because full functionality is of no interest to me. No. To qualify for membership of this particular assemblage only the following criteria must be met:

a) It must be a light meter

b) It must be old(ish)

c) It must have swiddly bits

It would be fair to say that (c) is actually the most important characteristic.

Fixed

Old news I know but BÖIKZMÖIND - man alive! - what a beautiful film. I'm no hard-core cyclist - more a fat, small-time total-amateur - but this peek into the fixed wheel sub-culture of Bristol exposes an enviably warm and ultra-enthusiastic community. Caught it tonight on the Build Conferene Film Night bill, along with P22's Making Faces and a special preview of the sure-to-be-amazing Linotype: The Film. Great to meet and hear Doug Wilson too.

The Colour Years

Pantone devotees and all round colour aficionados Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker have set out in Pantone: The 20th Century in Color, to identify, decade by decade, the 20th Century's defining colours. Viewing each period through multi-tinted lenses, the company's Executive Director and its Colour Trend Consultant have studied the icons of each time from fashion, art, design, music, cinema and television to pinpoint the Pantone references that best match the styles, trends and personalities that dominated.

It's like a hundred years of mood boards with each spread displaying colour-matched objects, paintings and photographs alongside Pantone swatches, themes and a supporting synopsis. It's a book with broad appeal, probably as interesting for its snapshots of popular culture as its Colour Matching System fanaticism.

Pantone: The 20th Century in Color is published by Chronicle Books.

Oh, the horror!

That's Christmas sorted this year and all thanks to The Ministry of Stories, We Made This and probably some other people too. Monster Supplies, online. Gruesome.

Kind of Amazing

Yesterday David reminded us all (how on earth had I forgotten?) about Display, Kind Company's impressively curated archive of mid-20th Century graphic design, well yes, awesomeness. A word so easily over used nowadays but wholly appropriate when applied here. This is stuff to, literally, quicken the pulse and send your heart into palpitations.

Two for the Price of One

So it seems that my feed IS being a little over generous. I'm not quite sure why. I had two feeds detailed in Feedburner so I've deleted one, perhaps that'll make a difference. Perhaps it won't. Thanks to those that confirmed that duplications are occuring. If someone could tell me if it continues, I'd be enormously grateful.

Feed One and Feed Two

Are two feeds better than one? Probably not. Especially if they're merely duplicated. I got a message from a kind feedee today reporting that he was getting duplicates from Ace Jet. Is anyone else?

The Berlin Trawl

Herb's latest guide will take you on a back street tour of the one-time Prussian, now German capital's unknown pleasures. Design and illustration by Brooklyn-based Ed Nacional.