Pleaseletmedesign used the “Toyota iQ” car, four colored dots, cameras, Open Frameworks and a race car driver to make this experimental typography. Download the iQ font: http://www.iqfont.com.

Preserve, Protect and Defend…

Type is Art: Parts of a Character is the brainchild of the folks at Silo Design, Inc. and JR Visuals, LLC. They call it a public interactive art project because visitors of this site are encouraged to use their imagination and create a piece of art using nothing more than the pieces and parts of 21 different characters. If you would like others to be able to see your masterpiece, you can save it to the Type is Art Gallery. Presently, there are 3,300+ works in their collection. Some get pretty clever. The monstrosity above is my own little creation. What do you think?

Kind of fun, easy to use and not a huge time investment. Also a good way for students to learn the anatomy of a letterform.

As designers, we like to think we’re pretty observant—at least more observant than the average joe anyway—especially when it comes to typography. Well, WE better be! Test your powers of observation with this interesting little quiz called, The Empire Poster Quiz. It challenges you to identify a movie by just one letter from its movie poster, taken out of context. Trust me, it’s REALLY tough. I only got 14 correct out of 46. Maybe it’s because some of these typographic solutions are utterly forgettable…well that’s my excuse anyway.

Let me know how you score. You must click return after every entry to see if you are correct, then add up all of your green checks manually at the end. Think, think, think and have fun, but don’t cheat! Clicking on the letter will reveal the poster when you have completely given up.

Hint: Some of these movies are very recent and some are classics, but all were big box office hits. There, that’s more information than I had when I took this quiz.

www.empireonline.com/features/posterletters

Fast Asleep by Funki Porcini (released July 2002).

Obviously not new, but this album cover is new to me. Once you see the typography embedded in all that vintage recording equipment, you have to marvel at the craftsmanship. Could this really be a life-size constructed set (with tons of complex Photoshop work, of course)? However it was created, it’s pretty amazing.

I discovered the image today on iLT and dug a little deeper to try to find out something about the artist who created it. From the album’s liner notes: “The Uterus Goldmine modelled and designed by Openmind (132 layers and still counting).” Couldn’t find much else, so please let me know if you know more…

The Uterus Goldmine also refers to the name of the artist’s recording studio in Grimsby, U.K.

Thanks Dana!

Font Conference

Stupid fun from College Humor. The crazy Wingding guy at the end is the best! Check it out… www.collegehumor.com

FontStruct is an ingenious little font-building tool made available for free to registered users by FontShop. It’s SUPER user-friendly and allows you to create your own fonts from simple geometrical shapes. It’s VERY basic, but kind of fun and quite addicting.

Once you’ve created an alphabet, FontStruct generates a TrueType font for you, ready for any Mac or Windows machine. No application to download. Simply register at fontstruct.fontshop.com/sign_in/fontstructor to start playing.

You can keep your FontStruction to yourself or share it with other users. Explore the The Gallery of fonts made by other users and download them or copy them and make your own variations. Some are pretty obnoxious, but there are a a handful of really elaborate ones. Check out the Structorosa family by pauldhunt and all of the fonts created by nathancox. Amazing what some people have managed to do with this simple tool!

Kinematic typography refers to the art and technique of expression with moving text.

My design colleagues have been sharing these short typographic films with me for months. Simply mesmerizing. Thanks everybody!

If you start digging, you’ll find hundreds more of these on YouTube. You could spend hours, so I’ve tried to narrow it down to a few of the better examples. Many utilize very similar techniques. Here are a handful that I never tire of watching. These in particular, pair typography with some of our favorite scenes from movies and TV shows. I believe these are student projects (I apologize but it’s really hard to find proper credits). Enjoy…

Ocean’s Eleven

Psycho

The Office (Benito Mussolini’s “War Statement” as interpreted by the incomparable Dwight Schrute)

The Big Lebowski (animated by Koos Dekker)

Best explanation of what “typography” is. This clever motion piece was created by students, Marcos “Boca” Ceravolo and Ryan Uhrich, for the 4 Motion Design class at the Vancouver Film School.

“Typography is what language looks like.” —Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type

“A good typographer is someone who communicates a point of view with skill and imagination, and makes the type taste good.” —Jeffrey Keedy