The standard typeface for road traffic signs in Indonesia is Clearview (Terminal Design), just like in the the United States, Brazil, Canada, Israel, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. It’s also used for the toll gate directional signs on the Cikopo–Palimanan Toll Road which opened in June 2015 as part of the Trans-Java Toll Road network and in accordance with the Ministerial Regulation No. 13/2014 about Traffic Signs.

The directional signs for the Cikopo-Palimanan Exit 98 (Kalijati Toll Gate) forms an exception: it uses the non-standard (supplementary) Arial. This typeface is used on road traffic signage in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Lao PDR, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Myanmar, Slovenia, Taiwan, Türkiye, and Ukraine.

Cikopo-Palimanan Exit 98 signage (500 m to exit toll gate ahead)

Apparently – and according to Google’s AI Overview which we try not to read but are reading more and more – “Love Carefully” was a slogan used by Planned Parenthood in the 1980s, for promoting campaigns centered around National Condom Week. The Dartmouth Libraries has this in the John R. Scotford, Jr. collection of his work in the sub-category “Non-Dartmouth organizations and events, 1964–1983”. Stamped on the lower right portion of the ‘sign’, however, are the words “COPYRIGHT 1972” – which is one year before Roe v. Wade. So everything we typed above about the 1980s might be irrelevant. Not irrelevant is the good and important and diverse work of Planned Parenthood. That this poster is by our favorite Dartmouth designer and set in Helvetica and Avant Garde just makes it that much more special.

Two road signs – the small white and the big brown one – for the name of Blatso Garden in Al-Nozhah street, Shaikh Zayed City, Cairo. The signs are set in the Castile typeface, and show the English name of the company, Blatso Garden, in Arabic letters (بلاتسو جاردن). Blatso Garden Zayed is a big open place used for hosting wedding, engagement (courtship), and birthday parties and the like.

Artwork at the médiathèque Hermeland. Commissioned by the city of Saint Herblain city for the exhibition Panneaurama [translated]:

As part of the Temps fort culture [cultural highlights] organized in 2019 by the City of Saint-Herblain, and with the desire to appreciate its exceptional environment, the media library has partnered with the Nantes graphic designer collective Super Terrain to invite 15 local, national, and international artists to interpret the concept of landscape graphically.

The exhibition was curated by Super Terrain and the médiathèque Hermeland. My contribution titled Routine was designed using my own Tme typeface.

West Ultra Black in use on the cover of Flip Wilson’s Cowboys & Colored People album, issued by Atlantic Records in 1967. Designed by Loring Eutemey with photography by George Rosenblatt. The title typeface was drawn by Dave West and must have been added to Photo-Lettering’s library shortly before: It’s yet not included in their Alphabet Thesaurus Vol. 2 from 1965. West Ultra Black hasn’t been added to Photo-Lettering’s digital range yet.

Back cover. The track list is set in Cooper Black. “Atlantic Recording Corporation” is in Microgramma. Cheltenham Condensed was used for “New Acts”.

Showing of West Ultra Black together with an italic companion named West Wichita as well as a swash variant of West Behemoth Italic Swash in PLINC’s One Line Manual of Styles, 1971. Above: Hobo Contour and Handtooled.

For art and China, 1989 was both an end and a beginning. The June Fourth Tiananmen Square protest is like the end of a decade of relatively open political, intellectual and artistic exploration, at the same time, it also became the starting point of a new era of development, international connection, and individual possibility. Among all branches of contemporary Chinese art, experimental art or conceptual art most sensitively responded to drastic changes in the environment of China, the vanishing of traditional landscapes and lifestyles, the rise of postmodern cities and new urban cultures, as well as the large scale immigration of populations.

With all these changes, contemporary Chinese artists were intensely concerned with their identities, their own images became a constant subject of their work. The result was a large group of self-representations in all forms of visual art, paintings, installations, videos, performances, and socially engaged projects.

In the spring of 1989, the exhibition China/Avant-garde was held at the National Art Gallery in Beijing. It was the first exhibition with independent curators after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The show could be considered as a retrospective of the new development in contemporary Chinese art during the 1980s.

In my student project made at ArtCenter College of Design, situated in the spring of 2019, SFMOMA is holding the 30-year anniversary of the China/Avant-garde exhibition held in 1989, No U Turn. This exhibition showcases works by eight contemporary Chinese artists, Ai Weiwei, Gu Dexin, Huang Yongping, Qiu Zhijie, Wang Guanyi, Wu Shanzhuan, Zhang Huan, and Zhang Peili. Their works reflect an urgent quest for individuality in this transforming society and continue to inspire and encourage young Chinese artists, who want to advocate social justice in their works, to carve a path in Chinese society nowadays and in the future.

Throughout all the decades since 1989, the Chinese government is trying to restrict those artists. What the artists did is like making changes to society on the cutting edge. Memphis, as a slab serif, like those artists and the year itself, is a transitional typeface between serif and sans serif. Visually, the geometric feeling and the flat serif echo the restriction very well.

When I have such a strong typeface as Memphis for my title, subtitle and poster usage, I really need a typeface that can go with it and at the same time, is easy for the audience to read as my body text. Univers gets along well with Memphis, in terms of the geometric shape. And it’s so clean and clear, which makes it really easy to be read.

The squarish shapes of Li Hei look similar to Memphis. The squarish feeling speaks to the restriction, while the boldness is very expressive, like the artists who are trying to break the rules.