insigne

Insigne Abstractions is a break from working with letterforms and a chance to play with pure abstraction. These ornaments are purely nonrepresentational, and are not letterforms. The abstractions are organic, and some would describe them as magnifications of microorganisms in black and white. There are 72 different ornaments this package. Some potential uses for these ornaments include alien alphabets, navigation buttons for a website, decorative elements, inspiration for logos or background textures.

I am not a fan of websites that require you to hover over the top of some area to get to content. The sole exception to this is some sort of expanding menu. I understand some reasons for it; it gets your audience more engaged in “discovering” areas, but it flies in the face of keeping the web simple and easy to read. I am sure there are some accessibility arguments against hovering to uncover site content as well. I’m usually not one to get all hung up on web standards and the semantic web. Not to pick on these guys; they do some super nice work, (see their fish packaging) but here is an illustration of what I mean: FSDesign. Strangely enough, there has been no massive blogger backlash regarding this issue. Allow me to be the first. So what’s the point, you say. How does this rant help me? Well, hovering disease afflicts designers primarily. I own a book named Don’t Make me Think! Honestly, I can’t remember a single thing from it, so this is not a ringing endorsement. I was looking th...

Apparently, Italy has recently revamped their identity. Let me sum it up: Its awful . I lived in Italy for a short time. This identity doesn't say Italy to me at all. Its a disjointed amalgamation that puts together and waters down way to many ideas. Italy certainly could do better and deserves better. One thing I remember about the World Cup is that the typeface on the Italian jerseys was not only cool, no doubt custom designed, but also said "Italy" just through those simple forms. And, it did it in a way that made Italy seem very interesting and modern . More identity shredding here .

For the person who has everything, this alarm clock awakes the snoozer with the smell of freshly cooked bacon. I can't make this stuff up: look .

Continuing our industrial design theme (although, recently, this blog seems to have turned into Jalopnik , designer edition) I noticed this New York Times article the other day. I don't really buy into the "small footprint" stuff, but I do like the concept of having a Frank Loyd Wright- esqe cottage in some back roads location with a nice little stream running through my living room. With high speed Internet , of course. Well, nobody sells those yet, but I was most impressed with BlueSky 's offerings. I would love to watch the rain come down behind some of those huge windows while working on my latest typeface. Speaking of which, we will return to our normally schedule programming on Tuesday. I took a week off to take care of some administrative and tax stuff.

An interesting article on designers favorite cars . I think the BMW 6 series should be ranked higher. At first I thought there surely had to be a mistake about the Audi TT , or "stretch bug" as I like to think of it as, but I looked up the latest styling and was impressed.

I first saw this about two years ago; at the time I liked it, but also was somewhat puzzled by its condemnation of the very thing Psyop does. I don't quite get why graphic designers are so hung up on "losing their souls" to evils of capitalism , and how Psyop thinks that this will somehow induce companies to use their services. Anyway, the tune is catchy, the visual style is interesting, the color scheme is cool, the message is entirely counterproductive, but here it is.

Some interesting Dubai architecture . Abu Dhabi Museum Project

Arendahl is a natural-looking, irregular connected handwriting script. The script has a fluctuating baseline and swirling ending swashes to give the lettering a soothing flow. Arendahl utilizes OpenType ligatures and alternates to prevent duplicate letterforms, and automatically substitutes the best letter combination or word glyph. Arendahl includes 64 discretionary ligatures based on the most common pairs in the English language, a full set of alternates for every English letter, ending swashes and ornaments. The Arendahl family is made up of eight fonts, including an alternate, bold weights and script versions. More information here .

I haven't been posting much; a few things have come up, from my computer dying on me to getting in a car accident. I am going to make a few progress posts so you can see the evolution of Arendahl so far. Round 1 (above). It was too aggressive , and more "Pirates of the Caribbean " than elegant and smooth. As of 10:00 pm on Sunday, this is what Arendahl looks like. There are 64 auto ligatures in this one, based on the most common letter pairs in the English language, and a full set of alternates. In addition to the opentype alternates, there will be another alternate font, for a total of eight fonts, including the bold weight and the "script" version.

The next insigne release will be another script, this one quite rugged looking. I apologize for the lack of progress updates; I have been experimenting with a new technique. It has taken some time to get everything to work as I would like it, but I finally have it nailed down and am moving into full scale production. I have also had a few computer hardware issues to deal with. I hope to have some samples soon.

EventCrazy is kind of like a search engine for all kinds of local events. A great stop to look for some inspiration or advertising venues.

Aviano is an extended titling face with influence from the power and timeless beauty of classical letterforms. Aviano features extended characters for a formal feel, sharp, powerful looking serifs and geometric and consistent letterforms. Aviano is named for a small town at the base of the Alps in northern Italy. Use Aviano as an alternative to Trajan. Purchase Aviano

All the ads are available here , courtesy of YouTube . Highlights Live the Flavor . Great concept and execution. Kudos to 5 Point Productions , a small video editing company that competed for and won the right to have their commercial air. CareerBuilder Ads. Good Fedex Moon Office Sierra Mist Beard Comb-over Coke Videogame Hideous Chevy HHR . Choose this one without knowing its history, and no alma mater bias, seriously. This was the "college ad." Some SCAD students were in the running , but they lost. I'm sure theirs was better.

Just recently, I was wondering why we don’t see more of... ...this... ...this... ...this... ...this... and this here in the states. Yes, guerilla marketing. As you can see, all of these images don’t have their point of origin here in the USA. Then, I got my answer . Seriously, when looking at few of these campaigns, although they are clever and probably very effective, some of them seem destructive and disruptive. I think that American advertisers recognize this, and understood that American culture doesn’t have time or allow disruptions or annoyances, making it a tactic that is rarely used stateside. There are also probably some legal, or rather enforcement reasons that make it more common overseas. Any other thoughts? Everything with the exception of AXE via adgoodness . AXE via ibeliveinadv .

Thanks to the folks at Typophile , I’ve been working out some of the kinks with Aviano. There were some definite issues with the extension. I think I have worked those out for now, but there are a few letters (STZ) that need some more “help.” Additionally, the numbers need to be balanced out a bit more. Still, I am pretty happy with this project so far. I greatly appreciate the help of a few extra eyes as well.

Yes, its superbowl ad season. What were you thinking of? The 10 Best Super Bowl Ads of All Time!