Public Books homepage. Logo in Helvetica Ultra Compressed. MT Grotesque Extra Condensed for headlines and main nav. Grotesque Display Bold Condensed for bylines. OCR-B for nav and slugs. Plantin for text.

Founded in 2012 by Editors in Chief Sharon Marcus and Caitlin Zaloom, Public Books supports an international community of emerging and established intellectuals and artists committed to vigorous debate about works and ideas that deserve timely, intensive discussion.

The site, designed by Common Name and developed by Dan Brewster, makes liberal use of Monotype Grotesque (a family the studio uses for their own site). In this case, the main player is specifically the Extra Condensed style, which was originally issued in metal as an individual typeface (Series 383). This and other disparate Grotesques from Monotype were bundled into a single “family” when the fonts were digitized in 1992 and released as MT Grotesque.

The text face is Plantin, which suits the high-minded writing. It works well on article pages but is too small on the home page. If this site were to be designed today (2016) the makers would probably have chosen larger type and an airier, responsive front page, but I appreciate its newspaper-like density. The color and frames (each representing a category) keep things from getting too stuffy. Overall, I think the site has aged quite well over four years. Larger type and a minor update that adapts to modern screen sizes would be enough to keep it relevant for many more.

Homepage list view.

Filtered by category.

Tag index.

Blog.

Article page.

About page.

Visual essay.

Content management system.

O Rio antes do Rio is the result of a 3 year research about the city of Rio de Janeiro before colonization by author Rafael Freitas da Silva.

The designers decided to use typefaces with roots in Rio and chose Guanabara Sans from Plau for titles, folios and indexes, Pollen by Eduardo Berliner for the body copy.

The cover feature both typefaces. Guanabara Sans is die-cut on the cover to reveal a wonderful historic engraving depicting Rio's early natives on the title page.

Type and color (plus a bit of animation) does all the work in Matthias Giesselmann’s simple yet dynamic site for his formfunk podcast.

Episode page. Related links are indicated on the timeline with bullet markers. Very handy.

Navigation menu.

About page.

Footer.

Facebook preview image.

Twitter card image.

To celebrate the public release of Lab Grotesque, Stockholm Design Lab have produced a limited edition A3 Letraset-style dry transfer sheet of the typeface in 36pt.

Monthly published magazine LA Downtowner focuses on culture, food, drinks, fashion, and the people in Downtown Los Angeles. On the corresponding web appearance Agenda is used in different variations.

Jacket by Archie Ferguson. Interior by Virginia Tan, who said this about the design in AIGA’s 50 Books/50 Covers of 1996:

“Given the vivid and rough content of the book and the stark and stylish jacket design, I wanted the design of the interior to be strong and unadorned. The trim size seemed small for such a strong topic. I chose an extra bold sans serif face, ‘pushed’ the letters together, and made the title as large as I could, bleeding off all sides. The ‘H’ on the right side of the title spread suggested a confined, limited space, which I used as the type area for the title page. The part titles followed in the same position as the running heads and folios did. The text is plain and the book within the book at the end is designed to look like the typewriter-produced document it was supposed to be. The black-on-black binding design echoes the glossy/matte design of the jacket and the plainness of the interior, with the title on the front again in the same off-center position as the inside titles. I enjoy working with type as a medium and like the way this title created a design format in itself.”

Homepage, narrow view

The website of Lahti University of Applied Sciences (LAMK) in southern Finland was relaunched in November 2014. The typeface family in use is Dia, a tribute to early grotesques issued by Finnish-German duo Schick Toikka earlier that year.

Dia is a type series in miniature: It reaches from light condensed to black extended, but leaves out all the rarely needed intermediate styles. “Dia’s express pride in cherry-picking the quirk from premodern super­family poles reminds us to express more using less, with style”, says Robb Ogle in his Typographica review. The LAMK website uses all four weights to great effect.

The website design as well as the whole brand identity was done by a group of design students at Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Design. Type designer Lauri Toikka is an alumni of this institute.

Alphabetical menu or type specimen? 

Homepage

From the Graphic Means documentary Kickstarter campaign:

Graphic Means explores the history of graphic design production, before the advent of the desktop computer.

Imagine designing and printing a brochure—without a computer. How would you set the type—making sure it fit your layout? How would you crop the images? How would you place those images alongside your text? And what would you hand over to the offset printer when you were done? 

Up until just 30 years ago when the desktop computer debuted, this whole process would have been primarily done by hand, and with the aide of fascinating machines that used a variety of ways to get type and image on to the printed page. 

Mad Men gives us viewers small glimpses into this detail-oriented, time-consuming process—but working as a commercial/graphic artist in the pre-desktop computer era entailed a lot more than marker comps for client meetings. Graphic Means will explore these methods and the skilled people who used them.  

Paula Scher's new dynamic identity for the Queens Theatre is exquisitely modern. It uses Klim’s Founders Grotesk as the primary family and a subtly modified version of Optimo’s Theinhardt for secondary text.

The subtle modification of the ‘T’ in Theatre to match the ‘Q’ in Queens is a brilliant touch at bringing the identity to perfection.

Hardly two weeks after its release, we can happily record the first fine use of House Industries’ Vēlo, for a poster announcing a monthly screening and discussion series exploring the intersection of cinema, architecture and design, organized by Ennead Architects in collaboration with IFC Center.

The program gets underway on Monday, October 20 at 8:00pm with …

[a] special tribute to legendary designer Vignelli, including a screening of Gary Hustwit’s acclaimed documentary Helvetica (2007), about the nearly ubiquitous typeface of which Vignelli was a staunch proponent, including never-before-seen outtakes of Vignelli himself. Following the screening, Hustwit and a panel composed of longtime associate Beatriz Cifuentes of Vignelli Asscociates, noted typeface designer Tobias Frere-Jones, Design Matters’ Debbie Millman and graphic designer Paula Scher of Pentragram will discuss Vignelli’s life, career and legacy in a conversation moderated by Todd Schliemann, Design Partner at Ennead Architects.

Tickets are available from ifccenter.com.

“Athletics collaborated with Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber to create an identity and website for their podcast series. StartUp is a podcast mini-series about what happens when someone who knows nothing about business starts one.” — Athletics

The logo is in LL Circular and website text is in Aktiv Grotesk.

This is a fairly early use of Futura in the US where it wasn’t pervasive until it was copied in the 1940s by domestic foundries (beyond Baltotype’s Airport Gothic). ATF or Linotype Bodoni Bold is used for text.

The current visual identity for FontShop’s TYPO conferences was designed by Studio Adhoc in Berlin in 2011 and first implemented for the London and San Francisco editions in 2012.

See more examples of the materials.

“M.A.P are a creative management agency, representing the top tier of fashion photographers and styling talent worldwide. Commissioned by founder Julie Brown, YES proposed a complete overhaul of visual communication both digitally and in print. We developed a typographic identity based around a strong graphic contrasts — between the bold company letterforms and the more delicate supporting typography.” — YES

I like the typographic approach here: antique type constrasting with distinctly modern content. Though they may get better results from the screen-optimized Sweet Sans or Trio Grotesk (replacing the limited Engravers Gothic) and Harriet (for ITC New Baskerville).

A proposed redesign of the tickets issued by Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc, a major ticket sales and distribution company. The choice of Univers was inspired by Otl Aicher’s design for the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Poptip is using Alrght Sans by Jackson Cavanaugh in their branding, on their website and in their apps. From the Poptip website:

“Poptip is a Crowd Participation platform that helps companies understand and act on social conversation. Poptip's sophisticated software analyzes what people say on social media, so enterprise clients can engage in a two-way dialogue with followers and fans.”

Brand consistency: Just like the printed magazine, form’s new website uses Theinhardt. What else, you might ask. Well, Indra observes a different – sad – trend. In the happier case of form, it certainly helped that Heimann und Schwantes were responsible both for the magazine and the website.

University of Art and Design Antwerpen Sint Lucas is using Alright Sans through out their website, with Salvo Sans Black for catchy headings and category links.

A Saul Bass cover featuring his signature bands of color. The Gothic is ATF’s No. 545, see Lining Gothic.

This design was adapted for the book cover for the California Design 1930–1965 exhibition.