Sculpture City Saint Louis 2014 was a year-long initiative to draw attention to the presence sculpture has in the landscape of the St. Louis region. Led by Laumeier Sculpture Park in collaboration with regional arts organizations, it brought new ideas to the interpretation and understanding of the works that adorn and define the community. Organized as part of this initiative is Monument/Anti-Monument, an international conference for artists, historians, curators, architects and other experts to share global perspectives on sculpture and its relationship to place. Warehouse is used for the organization’s logotype with Monotype Grotesque used as the main typeface across all communications collateral.

A book designed by Auckland-based agency InHouse, using Grist for its headline typography.

Modern: New Zealand Homes from 1938 to 1977 won the Gerard Reid Award for Best Book at the PANZ Book Awards. It also won the Random House New Zealand Award for Best Illustrated Book, the Mary Egan Publishing Award for Best Typography and was a finalist for Best Cover.

The release of the 2014 film adaptation of the detective novel Inherent Vice was met with enthusiasm by fans of filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson and author Thomas Pynchon. Modified to resemble a neon sign, Drescher Grotesk is used for the titles of the film's promotional art. Whispery Rolling Pen is used for supporting text. Paintings by veteran poster artist Steven Chorney supplied psychedelic imagery with a comedic flair, a perfect match for the film.

Artwork by Dustin Stanton, a frequent collaborator of Paul Thomas Anderson.

Based around a painting by Steven Chorney. Art direction and titles by BLT Communications.

Screencaps from the trailer.

A month or so into the promotional process for Inherent Vice, two new typefaces started to make an appearance. Poster artist/type designer Corey Holms's Ne10 (seen here in all-caps) and Ryoichi Tsunekawa's Sneaker Script both work for ready-out-of-the-box neon-inspired type. ITC Serif Gothic is also in place for the quotes near the top.

Drescher Grotesk is based on Super Grotesk by Arno Drescher from 1930.

Tumblr/Instagram-friendly square images are now very much part of the movie promotional process. An outlined Drescher Grotesk is used here. Rolling Pen for the hashtag.

Original motion picture soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood. This particular cover is for the vinyl release.

The choice of a modified neon-influenced Drescher Grotesk was inspired by Tal Goretzky and Darren Haggar's jacket design for the 2009 release of Thomas Pynchon's novel. The artwork is based around a painting by Darshan Zenith.

I was struggling to find the typeface used for this album art, and was about to assume it to be one-off lettering when I stumbled on Coro Moon in Photo-Lettering’s One Line Manual of Styles (1971). Typeface names prefixed with the designer’s last name were common in the PLINC library, though in this case it could be that the font was not by Columbia Records designer Ron Coro, but made for him. The name also indicates that it was developed specifically for this project. These are only guesses, but PLINC frequently supplied the type for Columbia in the 1960s–70s, including many sleeves by Coro and John Berg.

Type aside, Moondog (born Louis Thomas Hardin) is a fascinating story in his own right, and I advise getting to know him and his work. A documentary film about his life is currently in production.

Progam cover: Emily In White and FF Mark

Farewell event for the executive director of the American Academy in Berlin:
Invitation folder and event program.

Groundplan, labeling: Emily In White

Program layout: FF Mark

Invitation detail: FF Mark, Emily In White on transparency

Invitation in folder

Invitation detail

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.

Pentagram:

The ongoing series of typographic posters designed by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut for the Yale School of Architecture has made use of literally hundreds of different fonts since the series began in 1998. For the poster announcing the school’s fall 2014 lectures and exhibitions, Bierut and designer Jessica Svendsen wanted to try Maelstrom, an unusual new font by Kris Sowersby of Klim Type Foundry. The reversed-stress typeface makes the typically thick strokes of a letter thin, and the thin strokes thick. The font’s architectural quality is brought out in the poster, which stacks the letterforms and their heavy horizontals into a typographic structure. (The designers made some small modifications to the “E” and “F” to slightly improve legibility.) The school’s circular “Y” emblem also appears in Maelstrom.

A selection of book covers from the GAMA edition by Odeon. Jiří Rathouský (1924–2003) designed a number of them in the period from 1980 to 1992. The Odeon publishing house was founded in 1925 by Jan Fromek, its original logo was designed by Karel Teige. 

In the 1970s, Jiří Rathouský created a typeface for Odeon, which was exclusively used for the GAMA series. This monolinear rounded geometric sans was called Alphapipe. It is more than just another fashionable typeface in the wake of Avant Garde Gothic. Alphapipe was one of the first complex type systems featuring a number of ligatures and alternative glyphs, to be used like today’s stylistic sets. Thanks to this novel variability, Rathouský was able to choose arbitrary glyph combinations in order to achieve the best possible kerning and maximum graphic impact at the same time.

In 2011, Radek Sidun made a digital version for issue #7 of Komfort Mag. While the original Alphapipe was a single style, the new BC Alphapipe spans five weights, each with italics. Not only does it have all stylistic alternates, but also a set of small capitals.

Art director/designer: Cipe Pineles Burtin
Artist: Janet Amendola
Typographer: MKP

Catalogs and posters for Parsons School of Design, 1983–84

Designer: Cipe Pineles
Artist: Janet Amendola
Typographer: Tom Carnase

Art director/designer: Cipe Pineles Burtin
Artist: Richard Hess
Typographer: MKP

“The Great Discontent is an online publication of interviews about beginnings, creativity, and risk. Early in 2014, we were hired to help the publication translate its online interviews into a bi-annual print publication. The bold photography and typography take a nod from the website, while some of the design refinements and modifications will eventually make their way back to the site. Interestingly, the design has flip-flopped: the printed magazine was influenced by the website, and soon the website will be reimagined in light of the magazine—a true multi-format design system.” — Another

Creative direction by Ryan Essmaker.

Beautifully cinematic design for Not Coming’s 2013 in reviews.

I really dig this flyer for Jugendclub No Name in Großpösna, Germany. Amid the silly chaos of Latino kitsch is sense and order. Designers Lamm & Kirch made some careful decisions: digging up Cortez, a wedge serif Letraset face that was popular in its time but since forgotten, choosing the right styles of Champion Gothic for even optical weight throughout “MEXICO”, using a checkered pattern rather than more cliched Mexican ornamentation, and keeping everything readable while the party is still popping.

The ‘V’ in the Cortez font, by the way, is mirrored from the conventional shape in which the heavy weight is on the downstroke. I’m not sure if this was a conscious decision by the typeface’s creator Philip Kelly to acknowledge the sort of use that might be common in amateur wood type (flipping the letters the wrong way around), but it works for this emulation of imperfect letterpress design.

Image, Building, Object: Exploring Architecture & Design on Film is a film series curated by Michael Graham (Director, Balloon Contemporary), Tim Parsons (Associate Professor, Designed Objects, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and independent designer Casey Lurie in partnership with Black Cinema House in Chicago.

James Goggin’s tabloid-size posters are Riso stencil-printed by Working Knowledge. The stout headline face is Paul Renner’s underused Plak. Perhaps we don’t see a lot of Plak these days because it is available in only one weight/3 widths. A contemporary full-family alternative is Graphik (see Super weight), though it doesn’t quite have Plak’s personality, like the balled ‘r’. The text type is an unfinished monospaced face by Laurenz Brunner based on Letter Gothic.

Beautiful identity project by Thomas Lichtblau for small honey farm and online shop “Mein Honig” (My Honey) using Bold Monday’s Trio Grotesk by Florian Schick for print and as webfonts, plus Source Code Pro by Paul D. Hunt.

Read and see more in the extensive documentation on Behance.

The high-contrast lettershapes in this old Renault chrome nameplate have a stripe pattern similar to the one in Atlas.

K.H. Schaefer’s Fatima Versalien AKA Atlas, as published by the Fonderie Typographique Française in 1933. Image courtesy of the Musée de l’imprimerie de Lyon

The history of this Atlas goes back all the way to 1933 (eight years after the publication of The Great Gatsby), when it was designed by K.H. Schaefer for the German type foundry Schriftguß AG vorm. Brüder Butter as Fatima Versalien. In the same year, Fonderie Typographique Française published their version of Fatima Versalien under the name Atlas (and marketed it as a decorated complement to their simpler Art Deco sans-serif Apollo). Schriftguß later added a related oblique typeface, Ondina (Karl Kranke, 1935).

From Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway) …

… and Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan) …

… to Elizabeth Debicki (Jordan Baker), …

… Isla Fisher (Myrtle Wilson), …

… Carey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan) …

… and Leonardo DiCaprio (Jay Gatsby) – The Great Gatsby stars quite a few big names.

In 2001, Harold Lohner digitized the 6-line typeface, added a Solid style and made the fonts freely available. On the FontBros site, Lohner writes:

Atlas is based on a classic analog Art Deco font of the same name. My first version of it – the one with stripes – was originally named Farouk, but I’ve changed it to conform with period sources I have since found. I’ve also recreated the companion Solid font; both are completely redrawn with very clean edges.

Both the free and the optimized commercial version keep it true to the source and feature a very narrow ‘G’ and a rather wide ‘K’ and ‘M’. These glyphs – and maybe others – have been modified and normalized for this use, at least in some instances. Also has the number of lines been reduced to four.

In the trailer, the striped and the solid styles of Atlas are taking turns on a per-character base, and thereby intensify the metallic feel.

The official website for the film uses Newport Classic SG as a webfont for navigation (though a web license doesn’t seem to be available), and the slightly clumsy Governor for the Monogram Creator interface. Governor also serves as the “GREAT” in the film logo, but it’s not so great. Perhaps the more refined Mostra Nuova would be better for both of these uses.

The anti-design trend hits the gig poster scene. More Picnic posters here.