Qūentin Café from Mexico City is using the typeface Motorino for its logotype. Motorino was designed by Andrei Robu for Typeverything.

In 1968, Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni were hired by CEDIT to design “ceramic objects for small-scale production”; the result was the “Lapis” family of vases. Exactly fifty years after the creation of this marvelous design, CEDIT presents an authentic reissue. BRH+ has designed the precious, minute book that accompanies the distribution of the individual vases, set in ARS Maquette (by ARS Type) and Minion (designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe).

CEDIT is a brand specialized in the production of Made in Italy ceramic slabs, designed by nationally and internationally renowned designers.

Starting from the logotype and the typography, BRH+ designed a composite visual identity, which is developed on a large range of communication outputs: from stationery to monographic books about the collections. In these ‘Author Books’ storytelling and information come together in an essential and elegant design. The colors associated with each product evoke natural tones, highlighting the company's link with the values ​​of Italian style and craftsmanship. Accompanied by specific in-depth critical texts, the volumes add a rich array of images to the story of the individual ceramic projects.

For all CEDIT communication materials, we chose various weights of Angus R. Shamal’s ARS Maquette.

Master thesis on the situation and future of bottled water in Germany on the example of the “Aachener Kaiserbrunnen”, a regional water brand that was founded more than 125 years ago.

Target of the thesis was to design an unique identity concept, as well as a new bottle and to position Kaiserbrunnen as an attractive brand in the scene-beverage segment.

Master thesis at the FH Aachen, University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Design (2014).

Stefan Zimmermann
www.deszign.de

Mentoring
Prof. Ralf Weißmantel
Prof. Clemens Stübner

In an effort to unseat PayPal’s dominance in the business of person-to-person money transfer, Square just launched Cash, a service that lets you pay a pal by email. The website is as simple as the service: one page with a few full-screen messages, all set in a custom version of ARS Maquette (a typeface you can read more about in our report on Cloudberry).

The Square folks did the typeface modification right: they asked the type designer himself to do it. For the new design, dubbed SQ Market, Angus Shamal made several adjustments to his ARS Maquette, most visible of which is the tailless ‘a’. The design is also more compact overall — strokes on the ‘f’, ‘j’, ‘r’, and ‘y’ retreat into the body to allow for tighter fitting. The new design also has a new set of figures that replace ARS Maquette’s fresh and slightly unusual forms with tamer numerals that are more in step with rest of the alphabet. There is, however, one relatively showy number among the bunch: the flat-topped ‘3’.

The custom typeface is used for dollar amounts throughout the Square Cash process, from email to web. It’s a cohesive experience that instills confidence in the service. They should go one step bolder on the cents to optically match the weight of the big figures.

Thin is in. (Extra tight spacing is in, too.) A new lighter-than-Light weight of ARS Maquette, along with other modifications, was developed for Square Cash and will be soon be used across all Square, Inc.’s products and marketing. The proprietary typeface is called SQ Market.

Shamal also added a new weight to the light end of the spectrum. SQ Market Thin is used for the largest type on the site, with very narrow letterspacing. As brands like Apple revive the light and tight trend (on their site and iOS), the days of crowded type are back again.

SQ Market is based primarily on the Titling variants of ARS Maquette’s glyph set, in which ascenders and caps share the same height, and other strokes were extended or contracted share common alignments. This gives display type an evenness that is graphically appealing at large sizes, but I’m not sure it’s as successful in text where the large x-height combined with short ascenders turns word shapes into near rectangles.

ARS Maquette offers a Titling set of glyphs in which caps and ascenders align for headlines with an even fit along the tops of words. The spacing is also much tighter. This normalization creates a graphic harmony that can work well when large.

A customized ITC Avant Garde Gothic is used for Square’s corporate site.

We’ll probably see that oldie gradually fade away from Square’s properties as the SQ Market typeface takes its place. I think that’s a wise move for the brand.

The new typeface gets its name from Square Market, an online retail initiative that launched earlier this summer, seeking to connect small, local businesses with an international audience. Square Market is a much deeper site than Square Cash, but despite the additional complexity the design has the same stripped-down feel.

The unadorned, no-nonsense type serves as a generic, grounding element, distinguishing the global navigation, descriptions, and pricing content from the branding of each vendor (much of which is quite unpolished, as one would expect from a mom-and-pop shop).

Square Market strikes a balance between customization and overarching functionality, letting vendors display their own logo and cover image, but delivering all content via the core brand’s custom typeface.

Square’s new typeface isn’t the most thrilling, forward-thinking design, but it suits the brand’s needs very well. It provides clarity, simplicity, and a touch of humanism to an industry that sorely needs it. And it does this without sacrificing an air of confidence and authority, essential attributes of any company that handles cash — whether its cold/hard or electronic.

For other financial institutions with clear, friendly, cohesive typographic identities, see Simple and Ally.

Designworks:

“Established in 1923, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation is a leading philanthropic organisation in Australia. The Foundation applies a combination of grants, research, community education and partnerships with donors to increase life opportunities and promote social inclusion.

The Foundation approached Designworks to develop a brand strategy and identity that would help take the organisation forward in a bold and exciting way. The brand idea of 'Inspiring Philanthropy' was developed to signal a more modern and dynamic approach to fundraising and it's philanthropic activities.”

Posted as part of a little survey about websites for conferences on typography and graphic design – how do these specialist events present themselves typographically, in 2013?

The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) has selected Portland, Oregon, as host city for TypeCon2013. The identity for the conference is to be developed by Michael Cina. It’s too early to expect a full-blown conference website yet. The general TypeCon site uses a WordPress template, customized by Typostrophe using powerful webfonts by ARS Type.

Webfonts: ✓ (4 styles, self-hosted and via Typekit)
Designer credits: ✓
Typeface credits: ✓

Maks! is a Belgian publication focuses on issues and lifestyle of teenagers and young students from ages 14–19. The magazine has launched back in 2008, but for its restyle on September 2012 it shifted to 100% ARS Type.

ARS Novelty replaced their Futura for headlines and ARS Maquette became their body text and sub-headings typeface. Both typefaces are used playfully and creatively in the last three issues with extensive use of both their alternative characters and OpenType typographical features. The results are fun!

It's not every day, or every year for that matter, that a website's reviews section revamp get's so much coverage and evident importance from an international community. But we are talking about IGN.com, the leading online channel for anything entertainment, particularly anything video game related.

Last night IGN premiered their new Reviews format with the an extended review of the game Borderlands 2. With more than half a million followers on Twitter and nearly a million on Facebook (and who knows how many users worldwide), something like this becomes a major event. To IGN and especially their readers, this is a big deal, and rightly so. It's all about presentation and interaction with the public, isn't it? And with such a vibrantly active website community, that's not a small thing.

About the design: in fitting IGN tradition, it looks massive! The new format uses a responsive design that fits itself and the text size to your screen sizes. So much so, that when scaling the browser window to full widescreen size, you get your neighbors from across the street to join in reading what looks like a whopping 24pt size! Ok, this might need some tweeking, but it just goes to show the spirit behind the design.

The majority of the typography uses ARS Maquette Web with some help from FF DIN Round. The Header/Titles & Scores are huge but fitting. The red and black colors contrast well with the generous white space. The text is, as I said, set large and very readable with nice layout details the further you scroll down the page. Overall the new page looks striking indeed. Does this mean there are more changes ahead to the IGN website? I hope so, as large chunk of it can look kind of generic and stale by now.

It is obvious that the new Reviews format had a clear idea in mind — presumably a grander, more modern product presentation, clarity and attention to the essentials, while opening a broader community interaction. Judging by the response and 1550 comments so far, I'd say they've nailed it!

More details and background info about the new format design can be found here.

London based editorial designer, Mark Porter, known for his involvement with the successful redesign of The Guardian, selected Gerard Unger’s Coranto 2 for the recent design of the Belgian newspaper De Tijd.

On July 24th 2012 HGTV Canada, one of the biggest North American home-improvement TV Networks, officially launched their new on-air and online brand. Developed by the Canadian firm Tendril, the design team worked to bring to life their ultra clean and graphical design and apply it to all aspects of HGTV’s programming.

The design is extremely graphical, using a strong vibrant color pallet, a variety of graphical forms and dynamic animation to lift up its presence and add an additional informative and sometimes entertaining layer to their programming lineup.

Taking a noticeable important roll in the brand is the typography. Led entirely by the typeface ARS Maquette Pro (and ARS Maquette Web for the HGTV.ca website), the type is often big and in your face when announcing the programs, combined with a layer of information typography following strict brand guidelines for the shows' titles, weekdays and time slots.

We decided to use the font “ARS Maquette” as the cornerstone of our design. Its typeface is a 21st century take on the 19th century sans serif “Akzidenz Grotesk,” which was a sort of “Helvetica” in its time. We thought that ARS Maquette effectively embodied clarity, simplicity, and warmth: three adjectives we found perfectly suited to the new HGTV look. Once we began employing the typeface in the rebrand, we made sure to pay close attention to the content hierarchy by defining weights, sizes, and cases for each piece of information on the TV screen. This ensured that all on-air information would be as clear and pleasant to read as possible.

Overall, the result is a very striking and playfully accomplished piece of modern branding that offers a confident alternative to the rather conservative and overly sentimental look often associated with the home-improvement industry.

Read more about the brand on Tendril’s website.

This complementary movie presents the rebrand in motion.

—

CREDITS

Client: Shaw Media
Production Company: Tendril Design+Animation Inc.
Design: Tendril, Daniel Luna, Yaniv Fridman
Animation: Nicolas Girard, Yaniv Fridman

PROCESS. Palettes and layouts developed during the course of the project.

ON-AIR ELEMENTS. A sampling from the brand guidelines.

Jefferson Perky designed the new identity for interactive design studio Cloudberry. The logo, website, and printed materials all exude a friendly but capable attitude. It’s clear from the start that these guys build things with humans in mind.

A lovely page of text announcing the new brand. Slashes are set in a lighter font to avoid overwhelming the text.

Angus Shamal’s ARS Maquette is at the root of that expression. The typeface – a very 21st century take on 19th century sans serifs like Akzidenz Grotesk – embodies clarity, simplicity, and warmth all at once. The latter aspect is owed in part to Maquette’s stylistic alternates, informal forms of ‘a’, ‘l’, and ‘y’ as well as tailed italics.

Roman, Italic, and Display stylistic alternates available in ARS Maquette Pro.

Helvetica’s horizontal terminals are a defining characteristic, a part of its mechanical beauty. ARS Maquette’s strokes end more naturally, giving it a more informal personality.

Even when those more casual characters aren’t visible Maquette retains its relaxed stance via its proportions (a massive, nearly unicase x-height) and open shapes (strokes that end on an angle). It’s this kind of a terminal which gives Grotesques like Maquette a warmer feel than Helvetica whose strictly horizontal terminals make the typeface more rigid and cold, no matter how cozy the surrounding colors or copy.

The positive, user-friendly nature of the brand is taken one step further with the symbol, a ‘C’ derived from Maquette, trimmed and rotated to reference a smile. Stamping the symbol on business cards is a nice personal touch, adding some human variation.

CloudberryCreative.com is set entirely in a self-hosted web licensed version of Maquette. Paired with two colors and just a few simple spot illustrations, the typeface is enough to set the site apart.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

There’s just one aspect of the web design where the user (reader) was overlooked. Perky went full-on with Maquette, using it for every bit text on the site. The result is less optimal in tiny bits where this version of Maquette lacks the hinting required for high quality display at certain sizes. Lucida Grande/Sans would be a better choice for the small stuff until the upcoming web-optimized versions of Maquette is available. Even then, I wonder if the typeface’s relatively tight spacing precludes sub-14px text, no matter the hinting. A healthier dose of tone contrast between the type and background would go a long way as well. Fortunately, the site zooms quite gracefully. Bump it up a couple notches and the entire experience is a pleasant one.

The beautifully on-brand contact page at CloudberryCreative.com.

In all, Cloudberry is another good example of how a typeface can be the foundation of an identity.