Noteworthy – Page 3

Cool interactive kerning game

This is the perfect form of procrastination. Not only will you be putting off that important thing you need to do, you will be sharpening up on your typographic skills at the same time!

Type nerds alert! Here’s a super fun kerning game to try your hand at: type.method.ac.

Created in HTML5 by Mark MacKay this is the perfect form of procrastination. Not only will you be putting off that important thing you need to do, you will be sharpening up on your typographic skills at the same time. Each of your ten solutions will be compared to a crowdsourced solution and scored based on similarity. If you feel your solution is better than the one suggested by the game, you are able to submit it.

Air tickets reimagined as an app

Sometimes we need to cross the boundaries set by a particular medium or technology in order to challenge the status quo of design.

Earlier this month Sylion launched their new iPhone app Flight Card.

Flight Card is a beautiful, simple and intuitive flight tracking application for your iPhone or iPod touch. Search your flight by flight # or by route, track it and share with family and friends!

Flight Card

Sylion mention in their blog post announcing Flight Card that the concept was inspired by Tyler Thompson’s 2010 reinvention of his boarding pass. I love the minimal approach and the elegant condensed typeface used, which is very similar to Tyler’s original concept:

Boarding pass redesigned by Tyler Thompson

Since thermal printers and the systems that produce real-world boarding passes impose so many limitations on innovation, we will not be seeing Tyler’s redesign implemented at airports anytime soon. That’s why it’s awesome that we are able to employ another medium altogether, such as the iPhone, and challenge the status quo!

The return of brush script lettering

Is it just me or is the brush script lettering style making a comeback?

Is it just me or is the brush script lettering style making a comeback? Originally popularised by the advertising of the 1940s and 50s, brush script lost its appeal when the rational grid based Swiss Style emerged in the 1960s.

While brush script is often avoided due to its tendency to look, well, kind of corny, I am noticing many designers reclaiming its place in more thoughtful solutions. Brush lettering adds a sense of fun and irreverence, especially when coupled with more formal typefaces.

Here are a few examples I found today:

1. Brand New Conference 2011

The concept of the materials stems from the hand-drawn, brush lettering that was originally inspired by small grocery stores, bodegas, and buying things on sale by the pound. So we extended the idea of blowout sale prices to the t-shirt, tote bag, and sketchbook by just listing the production price on the front.

Brand New Conference 2011

2. “Golden Tree” music video

A professional display of 50 No Handed Bike Moves performed to “Golden Tree” by Martin Brooks. Video by Ninian Doff.

3. Suti font by Mika Melvas

Suti Font

4. Sweet Skateboard decks

Deck designs by Albin Holmqvist for a Swedish skateboard company called Sweet Skateboards.

Sweet Skateboards

5. Fonts for AnOther Magazine

Aspic and Asphalt fonts designed by AnOther Magazine’s creative director Gareth Hague.

AnOther Magazine

Just a fad or is brush script back for good? Any other noteworthy examples you can think of?

Diet Coke launches bold new can design

I know I’m quite late to the party on this one, but it’s still noteworthy when a global brand like Diet Coke takes design risks. Launched this month, apparently this can is a limited edition. Does that perhaps imply that Coca-Cola is not completely confident in the new design? I’m willing to bet that these will be pulled from the shelves at the first hint of sales dropping.

It’s a refreshing and purely typographic approach, take a look:

Already in stores:

Branded mini fridges:

And I’m not sure what the deal is with this one, maybe an alternate design that never made it to final approval (the orientation of the logo is different). Found on Creative Review:

For more on the topic of Diet Coke’s new look:

Win this awesome graphic design book

Graphic Design, Referenced is a visual and informational guide to the most commonly referenced terms, historical moments, landmark projects, and influential practitioners in the field of graphic design. Here’s how to win a copy…

Update – 22 September 2011: Competition closed! Congratulations to our winner Christina Vanko!

Graphic Design, Referenced

Typedeck has one copy of Graphic Design, Referenced to give away.

Graphic Design, Referenced is a visual and informational guide to the most commonly referenced terms, historical moments, landmark projects, and influential practitioners in the field of graphic design. With more than 2,000 design projects illustrating more than 400 entries, it provides an intense overview of the varied elements that make up the graphic design profession.

Authors Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit are co-founders of UnderConsideration.

How to win:

Follow Typedeck on Twitter and tweet about it
Like Typedeck on Facebook to increase your chances

The winner will be announced on Twitter and Facebook in a week’s time (on the 22nd of September 2011).

Graphic Design, Referenced

Six Word Story Every Day

There is an urban legend that claims Ernest Hemingway once wrote a short story in no more than six words and it goes like this…

There is an urban legend that claims Ernest Hemingway once wrote a short story in no more than six words and it goes like this:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Inspired to keep the legend alive, designer Anne Ulku, and writer Van Horgen teamed up in 2010 to create Six Word Story Every Day. The project was concluded and all 365 of their creations can be found at sixwordstoryeveryday.blogspot.com.

But that was not the end… Six Word Story Every Day lives happily ever after in 2011 in the form of a crowd fueled platform for word lovers to contribute their own works. Below are a few examples, and there are plenty more on the site with one new story being added daily.

Six Word Story Every Day

Found via designworklife.

Jason Santa Maria rethinks his website

Who would launch the tenth anniversary redesign of their website on a Friday afternoon? Well, probably only Jason Santa Maria. His twitter bio sums up his unfortunate predicament: “Designer by day, designer by night.”

Based in Brooklyn, New York, Jason has positioned himself as the godfather of modern typographic resources – here are a few of the offices he currently holds:

Co-founder of Typedia, which as the name suggests is an online encyclopedia of typefaces
Creative director for Typekit, a subscription-based service offering hosted web fonts
Lecturer for the Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC
Creative director for the online web magazine A List Apart
Co-founder/designer of ALA’s publishing wing A Book Apart

The other projects and events he is involved in are innumerable, so instead of trying to figure out whether Jason has a clone army or just never sleeps, go over and take a look at the latest incarnation of jasonsantamaria.com.

The previous version of his website/blog introduced the concept of a custom design for each article as opposed to having entries conform to a rigid template, but this posed an unforeseen problem:

In order to post something, I felt it couldn’t be short or just a quip on a topic, it had to be substantial. I fell into a design trap I unknowingly set for myself. – Jason Santa Maria

Here’s a screenshot of the new home page design which allows posts of various lengths to co-exist in one stream. It features one of my favourite fonts Chaparral for most of the text:

Personally I don’t think he is breaking new ground with this less-is-more offering, but when Jason Santa Maria redesigns it is always worth sitting up, taking a good hard look and perhaps even a leaf or two from his book…

Linotype: The Film

Doug Wilson of I Love Typography is directing a feature-length film which aims to uncover the surprising and passionate stories of the people behind the forgotten art of Linotype printing.

Doug Wilson of I Love Typography fame is directing a feature-length film about the Linotype type casting machine. Invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1886, the Linotype revolutionized printing, but newer technologies rendered these complex machines obsolete by the mid 1900s. Linotype: The Film aims to uncover the surprising and passionate stories of the people behind this forgotten art.

Doug and his crew have now launched a second Kickstarter project to fund the final push to cover post-production expenses. They are hoping for the film to premiere early 2012.

Bring it to Cape Town, Doug! I’m sure Design Indaba would love to screen it.

“Linotype: The Film” Official Trailer from Linotype: The Film on Vimeo.

Via: I Love Typography

Zerply – a professional network that employs typography to net users

From the end of the alphabet to the tip of your tongue, Zerply is the tech startup everyone is tweeting about this week. So, why do these guys think they can they give LinkedIn a run for their money?

From the end of the alphabet to the tip of your tongue, Zerply is the tech startup everyone is tweeting about this week. So, why do these guys think they can they give LinkedIn a run for their money? Well, because Tina Roth Eisenberg (aka Swiss Miss) says so. Her blog post about Zerply sent the online design community into a sign-up flurry causing Zerply’s servers to take some strain.

I must confess I was among those who took a renewed interest and signed up right away. I remember taking a look at Zerply back in February after Styleboost posted about the design, but I didn’t take much further notice.

Swiss Miss’s traffic has skewed their current user base toward creative types, but maybe they are the intended target audience after all? Take a look at the leading tags and skills currently listed:

Zerply tags and skills

They have certainly tailored the user interface (which is a breeze to use) and public profile themes to appeal to the designer’s discerning eye. There are currently four profile themes to choose from:

Zerply theme - The poster child

↑ The Poster Child by Mike Kus

Zerply theme - The Conservative

↑ The Conservative by Elliot Jay Stocks

Zerply theme - The American

↑ The American by Rogie King

Zerply theme - The Swiss

↑ The Swiss by Luke Beard

And here’s where they really exhibit an understanding of their target user: the fourth theme is locked.

Apart from the fact that the Swiss-style poster theme by their resident designer Luke Beard (the Zerply team all live together in one house!) is rather appealing, the mere fact that it is not available makes it infinitely more desirable. In order to unlock and use the theme, you have to get at least three friends to sign up to Zerply using the unique link they provide you.

Yup, we designers are such suckers for exclusivity. Needless to say I begged, blackmailed and coaxed three friends (ok, one was my sister and one was my wife – I picked easy targets) into signing up.

Check out my profile on Zerply. Goodbye LinkedIn? Maybe…

Dyslexie: A font for people with dyslexia

Dutch graphic designer Christian Boer has designed a font to help those who suffer from dyslexia to minimise reading errors. Drawing on his own experience of dyslexia he made custom tweaks to all the letterforms and punctuation of the western alphabet.

Dyslexie example 01

Dyslexie example 02

“Dyslexie” may not be a conventionally beautiful font, but an independent study by the University of Twente in the Netherlands has concluded that it is effective in minimising dyslexic errors. Who can argue with results?

Via Fast Co. Design and Studio Studio.