Wednesday Webs: Fonts

June 6, 2012 Leave a Comment

font book

Sometimes junk mail is fun. Like when you get these groovy font samplers, which I absolutely adore. I got this one today from House Industries.

Besides the usual go-to’s, here are my favorite extra-unique foundries:

  • Font Diner: Retro fonts, like stepping back into, well, just what the name says, a 50′s diner. Mister Retro art goes along with it.
  • Letterhead Fonts: Beautiful fonts, historic in nature, with super tutorials
  • P22 Type Foundry: Inspired by art and history, beautiful fonts, but the site is hard to navigate (at least for me…maybe I’m the only one who hasn’t figured it out)
  • Typophile is everything related to type and they have this long list of foundries. It’s very long, which gives you an idea just how huge this industry is.

 

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Hamilton Wood Type Preserves a Magnificent Print

December 29, 2011 Leave a Comment

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wis.

This week I dragged my husband and son out of our holiday hibernation and up to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

What a cool place!

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wis.

The museum is located in an age-old manufacturing plant used by the Hamilton Manufacturing Company, now known as Thermo Scientific. The building is as interesting as the wood type.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Wooden letters are everywhere! The museum has 1.5 million pieces of wood type in more than 1,000 styles and sizes. It also has an amazing collection of advertising cuts from the 1930s through the 1970s.

pantograph at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Back in the day, type cutters used this pantograph router to cut new letters while tracing an old letter. Hamilton manufactured wood type until the late 1980s.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Hamilton made the drawer pulls too. Aren’t they a wonderful contrast to the modern label-maker strips?

Letterpress ink at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

 Ink and supplies from the old days.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

The museum’s 40,000 square feet is packed with antique machinery — presses, sanders, and so much more. They’re beautiful.

lithograph machine at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Lithograph printing: An era that followed letterpress.

Learn letterpress at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Hamilton offers letterpress seminars and opportunities to use its equipment. I’m so planning to sign up for a class!

Artists customarily leave a sample of their work so the museum walls are truly a gallery. Aren’t they fun?

Letterpress blocks, Hamilton Wood Type & Museum

Wood Type: I think they’re so beautiful! Their use in letterpress is such an important part of our printing history, and, interestingly, it’s an art form being revitalized today.

Thanks Hamilton Wood Type & Museum for making this happen!

 

 

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Wednesday Webs 9-28-11

September 28, 2011 Leave a Comment

Adunate Word & Design, playing with type

Since I’m still trying to finish my business logo, I’ve become rather obsessed with type. Typography is a refined art and designers like Louise Fili, one of my favorites, are a highly skilled breed.

Here’s more:

  • Thinking with Type, by Ellen Lupton: Everything you ever wanted to know about type and using it to communicate a message.
  • Mixing Typefaces: Combining typefaces can be hard. This helps.
  • Kerning is the horizontal adjustment of space between letters to improve appearance and readability. Well designed logos and headlines are always carefully kerned and I use this 3-letter method.
  • The font game: a fun way to learn typeface.

 

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Mackinac Pro: Bridging Sentiment and Design

September 26, 2011 Leave a Comment

P22 Mackinac Pro

Designers love typefaces. Writers love words. And Michiganders love their Bridge. Even though it’s been decades since I’ve lived in the Great Lakes State, when P22 Type Foundry announced its Mackinac Pro, I swooned with the nostalgic excitement of an 8-year-old girl in a Mackinac Island fudge shop.

What’s so special about this typeface? (Or font, as graphic designers acquiesce to saying these days.)

Well, to start, it’s got a mighty name—aptly so, since the type’s designer, Mike Beens, is from Michigan. And its advertising copy is worthy of an award: “P22 Mackinac Pro (pronounced Mackinaw) spans four centuries of type design, bridging the Old World with the New.” Gotta love it—making sure you pronounce the name correctly, as only a Michigander would!

But it’s the letterforms themselves that structurally are as beautiful as the bridge. Mackinac Pro is described as having ”smooth shapes, sweet curves and seamless transitions evocative of wind & water.” Yet, it’s an OpenType workhorse that’s as utilitarian for advertising, publishing and signage as the bridge is for motorcycles, cars and semis.

I like the double-story, lower case ”a” and “g” (my favorite for serif type). I also like the positive, upward arch of the lower case “a” and the italic “e” (too bad the regular version isn’t arched as well).

Most of all, I love, love, love the ampersand—it’s a Great Lakes wave all in itself!

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Dear Typography: A Fun Lesson in Influence

February 24, 2010 Leave a Comment

I often stress the importance of typography but next to this poster, I’m as effective as a nagging noodge. This poster absolutely says it all. Isn’t it great?

If you know who to credit for this cool design, please do share. In the meantime, you can buy it at The Birds and the Beasts, a fun online store for cards, prints and other paper stuff.

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