Type Connection

If you created a Venn diagram of The Dating Game aficionados and type connoisseurs, you might find just a sliver of overlap. But that small overlap would go crazy for the the Type Connection website—and so should you. Type Connection encourages you to explore the compatibility of typefaces by creating combinations both harmonious and contrasting. The site combines choose-your-own-adventure pathways with insightful nuggets of type history. You'll come away laughing and learning something. Chuck Barris would be proud.

Less Than 100g

We definitely have the collector's gene. We're not talking a Hoarders-like compulsion to gather stuff, just the propensity to collect and make sense of objects. Our collections include tiki mugs, squished pennies, obituary aptronyms, and advertising images of cannibalistic animals. Naturally we were excited to explore the site Less Than 100g, a curated assemblage of "tiny and beautiful stuff". Each issue of the blog (a dozen in all) is thematic: guitar picks, bookmarks, Polaroids, buttons, etc. The site proves that sometimes the biggest collectors are drawn to the smallest objects.

Thanks to Kim for the tip.

Magazine covers

We usually feature sites that are heavy on inspiration for type or poster design. In this post, we feature a selection of magazine covers taken from nascapas. The Brazilian site captures the best magazine covers from around the world, posting up to a dozen different issues a day. Covers often include captivating photos, lively type treatments, and intelligent conceptual illustration. (Plus some funny-looking words from countries that don't talk American.)

Click on covers for a larger view.

Digital Wood Type Catalog

The city of Austin has always been good to letterpress, and this holds true even in the digital age. The University of Texas at Austin has digitized its Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection. Besides images of the specimens, the site includes a great history of American type, profiles of different font families, and plenty of resources for further study. This is a true gem of an introduction to wood type.

Samples above are from the collection

The Duckpin Dueler

Our impending trip to Las Vegas always brings up the inevitable question: what would you do if you won a million dollars?

My answer is above.

Toyota's put together a great site where you can design your own racecar for the price of providing them a fake e-mail address. After you pimp it out, you can take it for a 3-D simulated test-drive, complete with burnouts. It's a wonderful way to spend an hour or twelve. Kinda like dreaming about what you'd do if you won a million dollars.

News Dots

Slate recently introduced a fun little infographic feature. The News Dots service aggregates news stories from the previous 3 days to create a multi-level visualization of current events. Here's how they put it:

Like Kevin Bacon's co-stars, topics in the news are all connected by degrees of separation. To examine how every story fits together, News Dots visualizes the most recent topics in the news as a giant social network. Subjects—represented by the circles—are connected to one another if they appear together in at least two stories, and the size of the dot is proportional to the total number of times the subject is mentioned.

What separates this visualization from other treemaps like Newsmap is that News Dots shows interconnectivity. The smaller series of images above show how the array changes from day-to-day. The only constant? Barack Obama remains the Big Dot on Campus nearly every day.

Below is a screen capture of what happens when you mouse over a dot. The connections are highlighted in red and are listed in a pop up box. Typographically the site could use a lot of work, but the idea behind it is solid.

Typedia: A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces

The latest -pedia recently landed, and it has touched down in our little design constellation. Typedia aims to be "a community website to classify typefaces and educate people about them."

Each typeface in the as-of-yet comprehensive listing includes a sample, the designer(s), foundry, release date, etc. There are several ways to classify and organize faces, and should be of help to those seeking a window into the universe of fontography. For those of you already in that universe, your contributions to filling out the site are most welcomed.

Don't Skip It

If offered the chance, most people will skip Flash intros on websites, and for a very good reason: they suck. But this is one that I just couldn't bring myself to bypass.

As you probably guessed, the rest of the site is good, too.

Successorize Yourself

Need a little inspiration today? Create your own motivational poster.

Getting Started in Letterpress

Being a hobby printer is a huge leap that many want to take. And for most, it's a worthwhile and fulfilling avocation. But as with all commitments, it's good to look before you take that leap. One place that ties together all the disparate resources out there is this post from Joie Studio. (Its two years old, but still timely.) Pictured is a piece of her work -- which, if you follow her advice, you could be producing in no time at all. Well, okay, in some time.

Going Crackers

I've spent my share of time staring at the DC Metro map, trundling through the tunnels and avoiding eye contact with fellow passengers. The British apparently suffer the same fate, but do a more constructive job of channeling their boredom. Behold Animals of the Underground, a terrific site dedicated to spotting fauna within the Tube map. Any good animals you know of state-side?

Type is Art

Need a quick lunchtime diversion while dining al desko? Try your hand at Type is Art. The website lets users explore typography by experimenting with the 21 parts that make up roman letterforms. A simple interface lets you take a descender (or serif, or stem, or shoulder, or ear, or arm*...), scale it and rotate it to your heart's content. Then you can combine it with other letter parts until you're satisfied with your typographic masterpiece. Or at least until your lunch break is over.

* Riffing on the anthropomorphic naming of many letter parts, the above menagerie is drawn from the site's user-created gallery. The aggressive bugger on the left is mine.