Poster – Typedeck

Vintage travel posters

Russell Johnston and Megan Jones have been collecting vintage Travel and Ski posters since 1979. The collection was started by Russell’s father Robert W Johnston, a Royal Air Force navigator after the Second World War…

Russell Johnston, a lawyer from Essex, and his partner Megan Jones have been collecting vintage Travel and Ski posters since 1979. The collection was started by Russell’s father Robert W Johnston, a Royal Air Force navigator after the Second World War. Russell and Megan are now building an online catalog of these posters by photographing each to museum-reference digital standard. Some of these are being revealed for the first time in over 50 years and as you can imagine, many of them have become a rather valuable investment as collector’s items. Here are a few examples:

Vintage Travel Posters

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Ed Nacional

Ed manages to find that golden midway: minimalist yet richly detailed, subtle yet bold, monochrome and colourful.

I have long been an admirer of Ed Nacional’s work. A freelance designer form Brooklyn NYC, Ed manages to find that golden midway: minimalist yet richly detailed, subtle yet bold, monochrome and colourful.

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Modern hand lettering of India

Two interesting type-related snippets came across my desk this week, both from India: hand drawn movie posters from Bangalore and digital fonts created from the lettering of street painters in Delhi…

Two interesting typographic snippets came across my desk this week, both from India:

1. HandpaintedType

The initiative of Delhi based designer Hanif Kureshi, HandpaintedType is a collaborative project aimed at capturing the rapidly-disappearing lettering styles of street painters across India.

The idea is to document the particular typographic style of individual sign painters. Each artist pruduces a character set on canvas, which is redrawn digitally and eventually released as a commercially available font. Apparently 50% of the proceeds from every font sale goes to the painter and the other half is invested in the continuation of the project.

Here’s an example of an original character set, hand painted in Old Delhi by an artist called Kafeel:

Hand painted lettering from India

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Telegramme Studio

London based collaborative studio Telegramme has a nice eclectic mix of posters, signs and illustration work in their portfolio…

London based collaborative studio Telegramme has a nice eclectic mix of posters, signs and illustration work in their portfolio. Go and take a look.

Telegramme Studio

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Vintage punk rock flyers get swissted

Hey, remember when Jack Black and Mos Def sweded VHS movies in Be Kind Rewind? Well, Swissted is kind of like that, only with punk gig flyers…

Hey, remember when Jack Black and Mos Def sweded VHS movies in Be Kind Rewind (2008)? Well, swissted, an ongoing project by NYC based designer Mike Joyce, is kind of like that…

Only, instead of recreating feature films in a low-fi fashion, he recreates punk rock gig flyers as Swiss style posters. So basically he is taking the punk out of punk, and what could possibly be more punk than that! Odd, but brilliant. (As a loyal supporter of both punk rock and typography, this is right up my alley.)

The number of flyers Mike has swissted is nothing short of astounding – at the time of writing this there are over 200 examples in the gallery! Of course he also has some rules: all posters are 35.5 inches wide by 50 inches high, all set in berthold akzidenz grotesk medium, all lowercase and all the shows actually happened.

Here are but a few examples:

Swissted

100th post and 2011 sign-off

This is Typedeck’s 100th post since launching in June this year – a great milestone and a good time to sign off for 2011. Thanks for all the support and positive feedback so far!

Hello friends. This is Typedeck’s 100th post since launching in June this year – a great milestone and a good time to sign off for 2011.

Typedeck has given me the opportunity to explore typography in a new and more intensive way than ever before. I have learned a lot in the past few months and best of all is I am applying this learning to my own design work.

Thanks for all the support and positive feedback so far! Have a fantastic festive season and a blessed Christmas.

Here’s to resuming Typedeck in 2012 with new vigour.

– Imar

To end off the year I have just thrown together a few random bits and pieces of interest. Click on the images to visit the source:

A free font based on the style of lettering seen on Cassandre posters:

Lettering by Astronaut Design:

From pilllpat’s Flickr photostream:

Two items from the Flickr photostream of junkyard.dogs:

Type specimen poster from a series featuring Changethethought studio’s favorite typefaces:

Mattel Electronics Football from Corey Holms’s Flickr photostream:

Some smokey lettering by Pablo Alfieri:

Explore Fontdeck’s typographic advent calendar:

Hot lettering by Studio Muti:

Editorial illustration by Telegramme Studio via Black Harbour:

Poster from Evajuliet’s Etsy store:

LetterMPress app for Mac and iPad:

Cover design for The New York Times Magazine Photographs:

Detail from Old Faithful Shop identity design by Ptarmak:

Time lapse video of Daniel Cassaro’s (Young Jerks) mural for the Ace Hotel in New York via Xheight LA:

MailChimp’s Voice & Tone styleguide site via Co. Design:

Detail from the Tom, Dick & Harry identity by Mike McQuade:

From Kyle Read’s inspiration Tumblr:

And finally, is there a new Tumblr logo in the works?

Screenshot of their maintenance page:

Lucha Libre letterpress posters from Mexico City

Hans Gremmen of Amsterdam procured this great set of Lucha Libre posters from a letterpress print shop in Mexico City in 2009. Hard to believe that an outdated printing technique can trump the efficiency of digital production in the 21st century. Here’s the proof…

Hans Gremmen of Amsterdam procured this great set of Lucha Libre posters from a letterpress print shop in Mexico City in 2009. I find the following account from Hans truly amazing:

The frequency of these fights is high, which means that new posters are made nonstop. The process of making these posters is therefore very efficient. The technique (letterpress) can provide this efficiency. There is no digital process, no plates, no pre-press. All the fonts, illustrations, sponsor logo’s, lines are already available in the workshop; they only have to be placed in the right order. The printer compiles the posters on the press himself, using these prefab materials. The colours (mostly rainbow-print) are also mixed on the press.

Hard to believe that an outdated printing technique can trump the efficiency of digital production in the 21st century. Here’s the proof:

The posters:

Lucha Libre letterpress posters from Mexico City

The setup:

Lucha Libre letterpress posters from Mexico City

The metal pieces are placed in position on the press.

Lucha Libre letterpress posters from Mexico City

A large selection of luchador masks ready to be placed in the composition on the press.

Lucha Libre letterpress posters from Mexico City

The ink is mixed and printing is a go!

Lucha Libre letterpress posters from Mexico City

Done. Maravilloso!

Funny letterpress posters stipulate new rules of work

Division of Labor based in Sausalito, California letterpressed these cool posters serving as a reminder of those little unwritten rules your colleagues may have forgotten about…

Division of Labor based in Sausalito, California letterpressed these cool posters serving as a reminder to your coworkers of those little unwritten rules they may have forgotten about…

New rules of work by Division of Labor

There are certainly a few people whom I would love to send this one to for Christmas:

New rules of work by Division of Labor

Via swissmiss.

Friday find: Boxing posters

Check out these awesome boxing posters from the 1930s and 40s.

The style of vintage boxing posters is one that has surged in popularity in recent times and can be found applied to everything from websites to wedding invitations. As Matt Willey of Studio8 Design points out:

The arrangement of the type is a result, I presume, of a simple need to get all this information on the poster – nothing more fancy than that. They are probably more appealing now than they were considered at the time.

1934:

Vintage boxing posters

1942:

Vintage boxing posters

Imagine the chilling experience of being pitted against someone called Dick Freezer (above).

1949:

Vintage boxing posters

Via Eye Magazine Blog.

Lovely posters letterpressed by Typoretum

Letterpress is essentially the very earliest method of printing text, invented by Gutenberg in the 1400s. Print shops like Typoretum are reviving this old fashioned art…

Typoretum is a print shop located in the small town of Coggeshall in Essex, England. They specialise in the old fashioned art of letterpress printing.

Letterpress is essentially the very earliest method of printing text, invented by Gutenberg in the 1400s. A print is created by inking reversed movable metal or wood type and then pressing it onto paper using a wonderfully complex machine.

Part of the novelty of letterpress prints are their tactile nature – the “bite” of the raised letters leaves a slightly embossed impression, and due to the manual work involved no two prints are exactly alike. These qualities have caused a recent resurgence in the popularity of this archaic printing technique.

Take a look at these nice letterpress posters for sale from Typoretum, and the snapshots of the process behind them:

Letterpress posters from Typoretum