The Aughts in Review

Atop the heap of retrospectives for the decade that just ended (or didn't) lies this gem from the Magazine Publishers Association and American Society of Magazine Editors. "Covering the Decade in Magazine Covers" is a 10-year recap spoken in through the language of newsstands.

Obvious in this romp is the reliance on celebrity-image-driven design over a thoughtful inspection of the more complex and thought-provoking issues we face. For instance, we happen to think this image does more to capture the entirety of the social climate of the 2000s than any image of, say, Ms. Hilton or Ms. Spears. Yet nothing like it is to be found in the video. Indeed, this retrospective reminds us that the cult of personality dominates over substance on today's newsstand. If magazines themselves are to live to see the end of this decade, perhaps it's time they themselves become a little more substantive.

Time to Refocus... and Eat Yer Bacon

Ostensibly this blog is about letterpress and related design. We've spent a good share of time recently on the "related design" part, so let's get back to some good ol' ink on paper, shall we?


What better way to dig back in than taking a bite of some porky posters? San Francisco's 4505 Meats has 3 posters for sale, all celebrating that other white meat. They were produced at the venerable Hatch Show Print and available for sale here. At 26 bucks apiece, they're not cheap. But at least they won't clog your arteries!

National Design Museum

Of all the Smithsonian museums, perhaps our favorite to visit is the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. Unfortunately, it's not many others' favorite. The design museum is just about the least visited of all the Smithsonians, placing 17th out of 19. In fact, of the 30 million visitors to the museums last year, only 1/2 of 1 percent visited the design museum.

In an attempt to boost the museum's profile, the Smithsonian has appointed Bill Moggridge to the director's post. Besides bringing a career full of industry and interactive design experience to table, he's also a committed pedagogue of design's impact on our everyday lives. Making design relevant to the average person is not the easiest task, despite the evidence lying plain sight. Moggridge has certainly made his own contributions to this everyday realm. In fact, he designed the first version of what I'm typing on right now: the laptop computer.

Above: The GRiD Compass laptop, circa 1982

A Movie Film

We can't seem to kick this recent, um, kick we've been on. We've examined the typography of movie posters. We've explored the typography of movie titles. So now it's time to look at typography as movie. That's right, it's Typeface, the film.

The film centers on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum and the artisans who converge there for a celebration of the letterpress arts. Here's the trailer:

Font Songs

Typographers by nature are nerds. So perhaps it's only fitting that one of today's best type foundries is also one of today's best nerds. Hoefler & Frere-Jones inspired quite a few tweeters to bust out song title puns using names of typefaces.

Below is a list of some of the best from this summer's #fontsongs Twitter tag. (We warned you of the nerdom.)

• We will, we will Rockwell
• Rock the Caslon
• I Meta Girl
• ITC Clearly Now
• Tempted by the Frutiger ’nother
• Rockwell Amadeus
• Gill Sans in a Coma
• Get Down Onyx
• I Wanna Bold Your Sans
• Janson Queen
• Take a Janson Me
• Hotel Caledonia
• My Tahoma
• I’m So X-Heighted

When we told Duckpin's own Mom M. about this post, she spouted off a few of her own:

• Lucinda, You're Breaking My Heart
• I Had the Times of My Life
  

Think you can you outdo her? That's what the comments section is for.