Key art (print)

Anchorage is a 2021 feature film directed by Scott Monahan and written by Dakota Loesch. YENCE Studio provided the art direction and design.

Jacob (Scott Monahan) and John (Dakota Loesch) are two low-level Florida drug hustlers with a busted Crown Victoria and a dream. Their plan is to drive a trunk full of opioids stuffed inside Teddy Bears to Anchorage, Alaska, to cash in big in the Land of Gold. A split-second act of violence in the high desert of California derails their trip and sets the brothers on a crash course with tragedy. Anchorage is a journey to the heart of a family, the heart of addiction, and the heart of the American Dream... or whatever is left of it.

Powered by stunning performances, wild locations, and haunting cinematography, Anchorage is a jarring and drug-addled exploration of brotherhood, aspiration, and the degradation of a generation. Unsettling but existentially captivating, this authentically raw road movie thoughtfully traverses the dark and often unseen world of drug addiction, harvesting beauty from the struggle of trying to achieve an inglorious dream.

In his directorial debut, actor Scott Monahan stars alongside Dakota Loesch, who penned the script. Anchorage was shot chronologically in only five days with a cast and crew of ten people for $20,000 cash. The film would go on to win eleven awards and ten nominations, including the German Independence Award for Best Feature Film and the Best Actor Award at the 2021 Oldenburg International Film Festival.

See the official trailer:

Main title

Trailer

Trailer

Trailer

Trailer

Trailer

Karuta is a traditional Japanese card game where players listen to short descriptions read aloud from a reader’s card. Each turn, players race to grab the matching card with the corresponding picture or text, and the player with the most cards at the end wins.

Font Karuta is a variation designed for typography enthusiasts. Instead of pictures, the reader announces the font name and description on the reader’s card, and players compete to pick up the card displaying that font. The player who collects the most cards wins the game.

This edition is the “extension package” featuring only blackletter designs.

From top left to bottom right: Respira Black, FF Brokenscript, a couple letters from Breitkopf-Fraktur, Blackmoor, Claudius, an e and an exclamation mark from Old English, Wallau, Amador, Fakir, San Marco, American Text, Caslon-Gotisch, Engravers Old English, Marian Black, Fette Fraktur, Lucida Blackletter, JAF Herb, Gutenberg Textura, Alte Schwabacher, Goudy Text, Fette Kanzlei, and a tiny bit of Fette Gotisch. Featured in the game but not shown in the images are Deutsche Schrift and Wedding Text.

The box front features the title in Amador, with Clairvaux for the list of included typefaces. The Japanese font appears to be DNP Shuei ShogoMincho. The Font Karuta logo is in Akko.

The German-language game instructions are set in Gutenberg Textura with a headline in Blackmoor, in caps of alternating colors.

Cookbooks tell us how to cook. Blasphemy tells us how to break the rules. A 104-page act of defiance, it fuses culinary experimentation with cultural provocation, challenging everything we accept as sacred in food.

In cooking, as in life, we are bound by tradition. Rules passed down through generations define what we eat and how we prepare it. Blasphemy dares to question those rules.

The book’s design mirrors its irreverence. Inspired by the Bible, the ultimate rulebook, it twists traditional typesetting, injects chaotic layouts, and revels in rebellious aesthetics. Almost-illegible overlays, mirrored text, misalignments, and pixelated photographic errors make it feel as though the book is fighting against its own existence. The book design features Amador and Eskapade Fraktur.

Its creator? Olly Wood has no professional culinary experience to his name. The very act of authoring and designing this book is, quite fittingly, blasphemy itself.

The iconic poster for the 2022 Big Steppers tour, hosted by Kendrick Lamar and sponsored by Amazon.

The poster [designed by Chris Burnett, with creative direction by Dave Free & Kendrick Lamar, see comments] mixes a wide variety of typefaces, most prominently including multiple weights of Roc Grotesk by Nikola Kostić as well as Jim Parkinson’s Amador.

EP cover [More info on Discogs]

NewJeans is a five-member South Korean girl group, releasing music under the native ADOR record label. Promotions for the group first started on 22 July 2022, with their first music video “Attention” being released on streaming service YouTube. Their eponymous debut EP was released on August 1, 2022.

Under the management of South Korean art director and graphic designer Min Hee-Jin, NewJeans donned on a Y2K-inspired image. It trickles down from fashion to the typography used in their promotional artworks, favouring flourishes and display types prominently used in the late ’90s and early ’00s.

Unlike typical brands, many people were commissioned to create several logos for NewJeans, giving their identity more fluidity within its early millennium look. The wordmarks encompass styles found in the era, from the likes of brands like Bratz, Heelys and The Powerpuff Girls, to name a few.

While custom lettering was used, there are still many fonts being applied on the logos. An anonymous Twitter user named @newjeansfonts has taken the liberty to search and curate all the utilised typefaces on a dedicated website. A Reddit user has also compiled the various logos in its animated form, likely extracted from the artists’ Instagram pages. Their official logo consists of a hybrid of various fonts being used in different glyphs, altogether being faux-condensed.

Top row: Village / Amador / not a font / newjeansfonts suggests Dollie Script with modifications, but that’s unlikely

Middle row: not a font / not a font / possibly a mix of Honey Pocaline and Times New Roman / not a font

Bottom row: Conthrax / not a font / newjeansfonts suggests Sloop Script and Elevon with modifications, but at least Sloop seems unlikely / Sharp Grotesk Book 25 and Medium 20, plus the alternate w from ITC Avant Garde Gothic

Additional logo designs shown in their interactive website, newjeans.kr. It is included in its website feature, “My Album,” an online NewJeans album cover maker.

Screenshot of NewJeans’ intro card (with their official logo) for their performance of “Attention” in Music Bank (KBS World). The fonts in use appear to be Genty, Helvetica, Alagard, Brush Script, and Fairfax.

Screenshot of NewJeans’ stage design for their performance of “Cookie” in Inkigayo (SBS). It features one of their logos affixed with neon lights.

The Daily Times is a study of the buzzword fake news. The newspaper showcases real and fake news stories across the political spectrum over the past 10 years. With the 7 Different Types Of Mis And Disinformation defined by Claire Wardle at First Draft as a lens to view these articles, The Daily Times is a commentary on how we can often be blind to when fake news bleeds into our media diet.

The cover of The Daily Times displays truthfulness through traditional newspaper typefaces like Escrow by Cyrus Highsmith, a typeface originally cut for The Wall Street Journal, and Amador by Jim Parkinson.

This work was completed as a self-elected study while on my Masters at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Inspired by yellow journalism, each spread teaches the reader about mis and disinformation. The 7 steps lie on a spectrum of intended harm, beginning with light political satire and ending with harmful fabricated content. Each step is highlighted in numerals set in Aktiv Grotesk from Dalton Maag.

Fake news stories are highlighted in yellow to help guide the reader.

As the reader gets closer to the final spread, the intended harm of how fake news manifests instead increases, seen through the manipulation of Escrow on the left side of each spread.

By the final spread The Daily Times is void of color. Which of these articles are fake? What is the truth?

Anyway.Post is a bi-weekly newsletter focused on design news / resources / jobs digest in China. The simple landing page is designed to embrace the ‘old school’ newspaper feel and reading experience just like the e-mails themselves.