Victorian Menu

While trying to find out some Victorian typefaces, I came across this on the Typophile forums:

It demonstrates the use of a range of woodblock/Victorian-esque typefaces all working together on the menu card and identity for the restaurant. The display typefaces sit well in a contemporary environment while still shouting out to the viewer, lifting that section off of the menu. It contains many of the elements I have found to be part of the 'Victorian' look, decorative break lines, double-line boarder, the mentioned mix of sans-serif and serif typefaces and even the black and white 'pointing hand' at the bottom of the menu.

Victorian Graphic Design

I have been looking at Victorian graphic design as part of my H.G. Wells brief. While the brief asks for no 'Victoriana' designs, I have decided to look at the style to see if there are elements I can lift and use in my covers, to link back to the stories' heritage, while staying and feeling contemporary.

There is a post over at the Attitude Design Journal that catalogs some of the Victorian styles:

First thoughts seem to be common usage of heavy display/title fonts, mixing more than one typeface in a single design (that would anywhere else clash together, but in this style it seems to work) and use of decorative elements such as lines, thick-thin boarders, wavy lines, etc.

The Bible

Joe Gilmore had recommended a few books to me and he reminded me of a book I'd heard of, regarded as the be-all-and-end-all of typographic books, The Elements of Typographic Style. Apparently it is based on the journalists Elements of Style handbook, which I'm assuming is about English Language. This book looks abit of a beast so I've managed to get it out of the library so I can work my way through it. I'll buy it at some point but it's just abit pricey for me at the moment.

Looks abit fancy and everything too.

North Island Youth Forum

Sort Design have produced a brief for the North Island Youth Forum (NIYF) that is an example of the tone I am aiming for with my Action Aid Bollocks To Poverty Brief. The NIYF is a youth-led organisation which campaigns for the rights of young people in Northern Ireland. Sort have took a design based approach when tackling this brief, and by that I mean they have omitted any negative imagery nor have they tried to make the audience feel guilty. Instead they have produced some nice graphics and tried to engage conversationally with whoever views the work. Especially for a younger based audience, I feel that this works much better than trying to shock someone just because it is a 'charity' brief (I don't think that the NIYF is a charity, however this type of brief has similarities with one).

More of Sort's work can be seen on their website.

I am an element of...

These are a series of posters designed by Angel Alfaro. Designed around the idea of stripping down different practices into tools one would use in each respective category.

Another set of posters that feature really nice colour and vector work. Keeping it simple pays off. The very tight set text is consistent throughout and helps tie them all together again.

The full set can be viewed on Angel's profile at Behance and more of his work can be seen on his website, Atomic Element.

Typography & The Web

As a designer who is interested in typography, one of the most frustrating problems I have ran into this year now I have started to learn about web design is the issue of typeface choice for websites. Transitioning from mainly print-based work which has had been printed on a stock chosen by the designer and exists rather statically in front of it's audience, I know have to take into account the diverse ways may work may be seen under such as differing screen resolutions. Fonts also fall under this category as different computers, running different operating systems of varying ages all have a different selection of fonts available to them. If you choose to use a certain typeface for a website and the viewer does not have that specific typeface on their computer, the website will be displayed differently or perhaps, not at all.

Reading up on this I found about web-safe fonts which can be chosen to minimise design inconsistencies through a selection of commonly available fonts. What's interesting though is there is a way round this using a feature supported in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), a coding language used to style web pages. The @font-face rule. This allows the designer to specify a certain font, and then upload and link to that font on the server so that the viewer's web browser can request to download the font if it isn't available on that computer.

Alas though, this solution to the problem isn't without criticism, particularly from type foundries that often have license agreements that prohibit you to upload this typefaces to a server. There is an interesting article over on Ars Technica that talks about this issue.

To see what all of this has the (beautiful) potential to do, make sure you have the latest version of Safari, Firefox or Opera and head on over here.

Toyota IQ Typeface

As part of the new Toyota IQ's marketing campaign, Toyota commissioned a typeface to be created by the car. The result is an actual font you can download and use!

And here is a link to the font for you do download and use.



iQ font - When driving becomes writing / Full making of from wireless on Vimeo.



if it's hip it's here has a full post with loads of photos of the making and project.

Palm Pre Typography

Over the summer, the Palm Pre launched, not just a phone but the first of a line of devices running Palm's new platform, webOS. The Font Bureau were commissioned to create a family of fonts for the new platform and it is interesting to see how they work on a mobile platform.

Typophile have a more in-depth look over here.

Google Maps Typography

Rhett Dashwood has created a typeface using random shapes found within Google Maps that resemble letters. It was interesting to find out that all of these shapes are from one state in Australia, so with enough time, and people browsing, imagine the different typefaces you could create from the world!

Check out the project over on his site. Link.