Happy Halloween!

What says "let's carve up some pumpkins" like a giant batch of free Halloween typefaces? Nothing.

Lego-Realistic Photos

Charles C. Ebbit's light-hearted, if acrophobia-inducing, photo of the RCA building under construction has been the subject of umpteen parodies. The above recreation uses nothing but Legos and a keen sense of humor. You likey? Here's 10 more photos recreated with Legos.

Ampersands and Treble Clefs

Awhile back we posted a piece on ampersands, linking to a wide-ranging history of the symbol. In the comments section, anonymous wrote, "Stretch your imaginative eye and you will see the treble clef in the ampersand." Though there's no historic link between the two, anonymous' comment stuck with me.

The comment was in the back of my head as I sat reading Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. The book serves as part style guide, part encyclopedia, and part inspiration. There are history lessons -- Jonathan Hoefler cut the "fffl" ligature in his Requiem italic typeface for use in the only two words that contain "fffl" together. There are priggish admonishments -- "use titling figures with full caps, and text figures in all other instances." But mostly the book serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding the finer points of typography.

So what does this exceedingly thorough and thoughtful book have to do with our rather unenlightened blog? In a passage about the ampersand, Bringhurst makes the following point...


Seems our anonymous commenter sensed that connection as well. (Though in typical form, Bringhurst was far more derisive in his description.) Good instinct there, anon.

Now, for 1000 bonus points, can you name either of those two words that contain the string fffl? (Hint: they're German-language words.)

I Swept With Your Wife: A How-To

Over the summer we designed and printed the curling posters above. It was odd to think of curling when the mercury was pushing 90, but during the season there's not a lot of time to do projects like this.

The final product was made using a lino cut, wood type, and an array of inks, passed twice through the proof press. Here's how it went down...

First we drew the curler on a piece of paper, backwards:




Then we took white Saral transfer paper and carefully traced the drawing so its outline transfered onto the lino block:



Next, we inflamed our carpal tunnel syndrome by cutting out the parts of the lino block that we did not want to print:



Then we locked the finished block in the press bed, inked it up with a brayer, and printed it on the poster:



After that initial pass, we laid up the wood type in the bed of the press. After inking the type, we laid the paper back down and made a second pass with the cylinder. The various color combinations were created by mixing and matching colors as we went along. All in all, we created 20 posters.



Paper is from the French Paper Company; assorted wood type; handcut lino block; hand inked in 2 passes on the cylinder press. 12.5" x 19".

A Night of House

One of our favorite font houses is holding an exhibition at the Type Directors Club in New York City this Tuesday night. House Industries will be showcasing their work in an exhibit titled "Type as Object". Perhaps better still, they'll selling their distinctive type-related items (including the blocks shown above). Many more of their wares can be found here, including the best nativity set ever. And thanks to Mom and Dad M., you can see it up close and personal at Duckpin HQ.

Like Clockwork

Just a little eye candy to close out the week. Nothing says, "No time for the old in-out, love, I've just come to read the meter" like Fabiano Hikaru's tribute to A Clockwork Orange.

Enjoy the weekend.

Steamroller!!!

Here's a poster project from leftcoast members of AIGA, complete with video footage. They employed the steamroller method of printing a large linoleum cut. (Wonder if we can get one of those into the Duckipin basement?) The best part is how they added the color: by dripping paint from a nearby building. We're telling you, Mark, this is the solution to your woes!

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.

Wedding Shower Card

There's often lotsa super-sized stuff in weddings: the cake, the bouquet, the bride's ego. So why not a huge card to match?

We made this card (roughly 12"x14") for a recent wedding shower. The idea was that a whole office would sign the back, so it had to be large enough to accommodate everyone's well-wishes. Using a variety of wood type, it's a 2-color job sent through the proof press in a single pass. The fall colors match those the couple picked out for the wedding. Some lockup photos appear below.

Bon voyage, love birds!

(Don't fret, this bride's ego is in full check.)

Crafty Bastards

We had a fun time at the Crafty Bastards Arts and Crafts Fair in DC this weekend. Beautiful weather brought out a slew of buyers looking for the latest in octopuses, Edgar Allen Poe, anatomically-correct hearts, and animals in formal wear. There was plenty of great printed work , too, including the above examples. At the top is work by illustrator Robert Ullman, with Rar Rar Press' letterpress postcards in the second photo.

One of the highlights of Crafty Bastards is the B-Boy Battle, which always attracts a big crowd. Seems everyone loves to see the kids spin -- even the free government money guy, Matthew Lesko:

Everyday Low Standards

WalMart is legendary for keeping their expenses lean. Take their "greeters". Legend has it that Sam Walton was too cheap to pay for security guards at his stores, so he enlisted the help of retirees to work for peanuts as doormen. The wisdom was that shoppers are a lot less prone to shoplifting when they have to walk out past a smiling grandmother.

Unfortunately their parsimony seeps into every corner of their business, including their brand identity. The WalMart logo has undergone a few facelifts in its time, most recently in 2008 (top left). What was once a logo with some spirit and regional character (bottom left) has morphed into the lifeless, uninspired blahdom it is today. I understand not wanting to pay a lot for something, but how many design students would jump at the chance to submit designs for a WalMart logo? How about a design competition for WalMart employees to come up with something? Certainly some submission would be better than the dreck they ended up with.

The annals of logo design are filled with successful design work done on a shoestring. Nike's logo was done by a student for a paltry $35.00. Or one can dismiss altogether the idea of paying, as Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell did when he took a page from the Sam Walton handbook. Security guard and amateur artist Frederick Bouchat submitted his own design concept to the Ravens (right), only to be stiff-armed by Modell. From Wikipedia:

Bouchat had submitted his design to the Maryland Stadium Authority by fax after learning that Baltimore was to acquire an NFL team. He was not credited for the design when the logo was announced. Bouchat sued the team, claiming to be the designer of the emblem; representatives of the team asserted that the image had been designed independently. The court ruled in favor of Bouchat, noting that team owner Modell had access to Bouchat's work.

So c'mon Walmart, you can come up with something better. Heck, at the very least steal something better. It won't cost you anything. Or perhaps the readers of this blog have some ideas...

Pop a Small Cap in Your Ass

A bit ago we talked about Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. Like every other facet of typography, he offers an exhaustive treatise on the proper use of small caps. A breezier and generously illustrated explanation can be found on the i love typography (but apparently not capitalization) blog.

While it might seem a trifling matter, small caps with improper proportions are a huge eyesore. I've seen many documents that have a poorly metered word screaming out for undue attention. For something that's supposed to be diminutive, a bad small capped word can stick out more than its bolded cousin. Heck, you may as well use the fake highlighter and paint it yellow. Can't wait to read what Bringhurst has to say about that.

When Captchas Go Wrong

Huh? Did a 3 year old make this? Does your keyboard have these letters?

The Shapeshifter

It's nice to mess with your perspective once in a while.

While many artists prefer to chalk their 3-D trompe l'oeil works on city streets, Felice Varini takes his to buildings. From one vantage point his installations look like someone has taken a photo and overlaid a perfect geometric shape. But as one moves through the space, the object becomes distorted. What was once a perfect circle now is a twisted gaggle of arcs in varying thickness.

It's a disarming way to think of geometry like Felice does: each pure shape is really a jumbled mix of line, perspective, angle, and fragments. The sheer complexity of making something appear so simple is what's so enticing about his work. Kinda makes that geometry class we took in high school seem downright easy.

Picasso Lino Prints

Swann Galleries' latest auction offers a tremendous selection of 19th and 20th century prints and drawings. These 3 pieces are among the nearly 700 lots to be offered this Thursday, and are superb examples of Picasso's skill with lino a block and a restrained palette. Since the auction estimate is steep -- upwards of $5,000 for each piece -- we've got a plan B for you: a signed copy of our Bob Ross prints for just half that price.

Feeling a Bit Dirty?

Your friends at Fred Flare have just what you didn't know you needed: 3-D type soap. Though I doubt anything with a "crushed ice" scent is going to do much about that ink underneath your fingernails, at least you'll look cool scrubbing up.

The letters on this soap don't appear to spell out anything in particular. If you were to make your own word soap, what would it say?

Birfday Card

What kind of card do you make for this sweetie who's celebrating her 5th birthday with a "Princess Castleway Tinkerbell Butterfly" party? Yeah, we had no idea either.

So we made this:


Paper is Crane Lettra (110#, pearl white); type is handset wood; 5.5" x 4.25" folded

Tiki Time, Part II

The tikis have found a new home. When last we left them, they had just taken a bath and were awaiting deployment. They've landed in a prominent spot in the front hall, filling the glass display case formerly occupied by some ephemera from the Squished Penny Museum. We updated the lighting in the case and the mugs seem to be enjoying the warm glow of their new digs. They did request some little umbrellas, though.

As always, click for a larger image.

Test Sheets

At the start of any job, printers run a couple test sheets through the press to check registration, ink coverage, spelling, etc. This process is commonly called make-ready, and ensures that a good print will be made. Basically, we make sure everything looks swell before we insert the good (ie. expensive) paper and print the job. Since we reuse the test sheets from job to job, they tend to collect bits and pieces from many different projects.

Every once in awhile, it's nice to step back and evaluate these test sheets as individual design pieces, rather than just as purely utilitarian devices. Oftentimes they look like a random jumble of overlays, but sometimes they end up having a rather pleasant aesthetic rigor. Pictured here are some of our favorites from the past year. (Click on images for better view.)

Below is detail of the upper left sheet. If you look carefully, you can even pick out portions of jobs that we've featured on this blog. Recognize any of them?

Tiki Time

Behold the annual Washing of the Tiki Mugs ceremony at Duckpin HQ.

We decided it's time for a changing of the guard on the living room mantle. Our collection of thrift store tiki mugs has stood sentinel over the firebox for the last few years, growing in number as we acquired new soldiers. But by midsummer they were spilling over and we had to search for a new home for them. We'll post a photo when they get situated in their new digs.

In the meantime, enjoy some tiki-inspired type. Mahalo.