What is typography, really?

I don't often link to other stuff (than my own) on the internet, but this one is fabulous. Elegant, precise, and with a twist. If you ever wondered what typography is all about, this piece of art directed and animated by Boca & Ryan Uhrich tells it all. Enjoy!

Simple Signage Solutions #1

You don't always need an expensive designer, sophisticated software or an advanced stencil cutter to get the message out. "Saxoteket", the hairdresser's in my building, has just announced her January sale, using pink post-it notes with hand drawn letters, mounted on the inside of her shop window. It probably doesn't get more simple than this, and the result is excellent. And I just love the "U" on the first note – looks like an early futuristic font from the seventies.
The moral of this: Don't forget the low tech!

Best Magazine Covers 2007

Årets bedste (amerikanske) magasinforsider er netop kåret af ASME - American Society of Magazine Editors. Den fornemste pris - "Cover of the Year" blev tildelt The NewYorker for en forside i forbindelse med 5-års dagen for 9/11 - en tegning der viser Philippe Petit's linedans i 1974 mellem de to tårne som nu ikke længere er der. Enkelt og stærkt.

Blandt de 138 deltagende magasinforsider blev desuden kåret vindere i yderligere fem kategorier: Best Celebrity Cover, Best Concept Cover, Best Fashion Cover, Best News Cover og Best Service Cover, samt en specialpris for Best Coverline. Den gik til Texas Monthly fra januar 2007 og lød: "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, Dick Cheney Will Shoot You in the Face".

Kendetegnende for langt de fleste forsider, ikke mindst de præmierede, er en enkel og præcis prioritering, hvor hovedhistorien får lov til virkelig at være bærende og fylder formatet ud, evt. suppleret med få ekstra henvisninger til det øvrige indhold. Mange forsider bygger på en gennemtænkt og gennemarbejdet illustration, lavet til lejligheden, ikke "blot" det billede der tilfældigvis var bedst i dén uge.

Alle vindere og indsendte forsider kan ses på
www.magazine.org/bestcover

ASME kårede i 2005 de 40 bedste magasinforsider fra de seneste 40 år:
www.magazine.org/editorial/Top_40_Covers/

Skriftdesign i praksis - boganmeldelse

Et opslag fra Fawcett-Tangs "New Typographic Design" og tre fra Trine Rasks "Skriftdesign". [Foto: Lars Pryds]

Fra SNDS Magazine 3|2007
To nye bøger – og en cd – om typografi og skriftdesign landede hos boghandlerne hen over sommeren.

Af Lars Pryds pryds@mac.com
Grafisk formgiver Trine Rasks “Skriftdesign – grundprincipper og arbejdsproces” er skrevet som en hjælp i det praktiske arbejde med at modificere eksisterende skrifter eller designe helt nye.
Bogen første store afsnit beskriver skriftens historie og konstruktion, og giver et godt grundlag for at træffe beslutninger i den praktiske arbejdsproces, som dækkes i andet afsnit. Her lægges vægt på skitseringsprocessen – hvor Trine Rask opfordrer til at eksperimentere med løs hånd og blyant, så man ikke lægger formen fast i matematiske vektorforløb, inden andre muligheder er afprøvet, fremfor at gå direkte i gang på computeren.
I forlængelse heraf virker det logisk, at de fleste eksempler er håndtegnede – hvilket forstærker fornemmelsen af, at det er en kreativ proces, ikke en maskinel, der ligger til grund for godt typografisk design.

Umiddelbart bliver man lidt skuffet over, at bogen er produceret udelukkende i sort-hvid, men egentlig er det et naturligt valg, da typografi fundamentalt skal kunne fungere i samspillet mellem netop lys og mørke. En del illustrationer mangler dog kontrast, og fremstår derfor mere grå end det formentlig har været tilsigtet.
Cd-rom-udgivelsen “Skriftdesign med Fontlab Studio 5.0” indeholder en bearbejdet udgave af Trine Rasks undervisningsmateriale, samlet i et kompendium til selvstudium i PDF-format. De 60 A4-sider er – når man har printet dem – en glimrende minimanual at have liggende på bordet. Især når man skal prøve kræfter med Fontlab for første gang, men også senere ved arbejdet med de mere avancerede funktioner, som findes i det i dag førende program til skriftdesign.

Knald på eksperimenterne
Farver og masser af kontraster er der i ”New Typographic Design”, der er en skøn ophobning af eksempler (flere end 500 illustrationer) på godt (typo)grafisk arbejde, de fleste udført indenfor de seneste 2-3 år.
Her er eksempler på plakater, pladeomslag, bøger mm., men især er der mange magasinopslag, hvor typografien er brugt både stilrent og eksperimenterende.
Efter en fyldig introduktion – med tilbageblik på de seneste små 200 års skrifthistorie – er bogen opdelt i fire afsnit, der rummer eksempler på: Type as form; Type as image; Type as experiment og Type in motion.
Alle afsnit indledes med glimrende essays af David Jury, der har udgivet flere bøger om typografi, bl.a. ”What is Typography?” og ”Letterpress: New Applications for Traditional Skills” (begge 2006).
De 192 sider rundes af med et fint lille ”Glossary”, hvor man på engelsk kan få opfrisket betydningen af de typografiske begreber, man har ladet sig inspirere af gennem bogen.

Trine Rask: Skriftdesign – grundprincipper og arbejdsproces
Grafisk Litteratur, www.grafisk-litteratur.dk
158 sider, 25x21 cm. Pris: DKK 325,-
ISBN: 978-87-91171-03-1

Trine Rask: Skriftdesign med Fontlab Studio 5.0
Grafisk Litteratur, www.grafisk-litteratur.dk
60 sider, 29,7x21 cm. (PDF på CD-rom), Pris: DKK 125,-
ISBN: 978-87-91171-04-8

Roger Fawcett-Tang: New Typographic Design
Forlag: Laurence King, www.laurenceking.co.uk
192 sider, 29x23 cm. Over 500 illustrationer i farve
Pris: £ 25.00 (vejl.)
ISBN: 978-1-85669-468-1

Bragt i SNDS Magazine 3|2007, Oktober 2007.

SlideShare: Skriftdesign & Grafik

Faldt lige over SlideShare - som er en slags YouTube for slideshows eller pdf-præsentationer. Fin måde at dele præsentationer efter en konference, for eksempel, i stedet for at skulle email en hel masse pdf'er rundt til folk. Mit første bidrag er denne lille forelæsning, holdt på DjE - Den Journalistiske Efteruddannelse - i februar 2005. Godt nok mangler ordene, men billederne er der.

Et g i Venezia

Fandt dette elegante dørhåndtag på en butiksdør i Venedig - det er de sjoveste ting man får øje på, når man vælger ikke at gå med ind i hver eneste lille forretning der har åbent. Denne her var dog lukket - fornuftige italienere går jo hjem og holder middagspause når varmen er værst. Kun vi andre vader videre... Men et smukt g, det er det.

Bogstaver i Stockholm

IMG_7283.JPG, originally uploaded by Lars Pryds.

Gik gennem Gamla Stan i Stockholm for nogen tid siden, og så denne væg med bogstaver. Aner ikke hvad de betyder, eller hvad det er for en gammel tavle, men på en eller anden måde er de fascinerende. Selvom det er Helvetica...

Et smukt K på Østerbro

Et vaskeri på Strandboulevarden har dette smukke K på facaden. Faldt over det på en af mine sjældne løbeture i lokalområdet.

Et L i IKEA

Vi var i IKEA. En på mange måder foruroligende oplevelse, indtil jeg opdagede, at gulvet i lagerhallen var fyldt med bogstaver. Ikke rigtige bogstaver, men "vinkler" malet på gulvet rundt om de steder, hvor der skulle stå en palle eller tre med varer.
Og så er det her altså lige en test på, om man kan sende et billede fra mobiltelefonen direkte til bloggen. Det kan man ...

B/W poster design

Sometimes I wish we were back in the good old days, when everything was in black and white – newspapers, movies, television, etc. etc. So when once in a while, big movie companies make a poster like this one for Rocky Balboa (released in Denmark January 5, 2007) in black and white, I love it. Here's my tribute to the simple, yet beautiful poster.

Helvetica 50

The catalogue for my graduation from Design School in Kolding in my design. Helvetica in combination with handdrawn lettering, which - years later - materialized in the font family Tolleone.

I really used to hate the Helvetica typeface. Why? Because it is so simple and pure that it has absolutely no personality. Because it is so simple and pure that it is absolutely perfect. The latter is the reason, of course, why everybody is using it, and this, I think, was the main reason I got off on the wrong foot with Helvetica.

In all my years (11) at Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, one of my primary missions was to force Helvetica out of the newspaper, and I actually succeeded, first in the Sunday supplements from 2001, and in the rest of the paper three months before I quit my job there in 2006.

In my memory, the last time I used Helvetica in any kind of printed matter totally in my control must have been in the posters and catalogues for my graduation in design school in 1987. That's twenty years of trying to avoid Helvetica.
That was before I started digging through the archives, though, just to see what fonts I had actually chosen instead. There were a few more cases of Helvetica, it turned out, but for most projects, I have tried to find alternative classic sans serifs with more personality or character: Frutiger, Gill, Futura, Officina Sans, Avant-Garde, Goudy Sans, even, the new Gotham - or Congress Sans, which was my elegant choice for Jyllands-Posten to go with Stone Serif. Unsurpassed.

Helvetica has its fans, of course, one of them has even made a film about it, and when a typeface survives as the most popular and widely used font for 50 years, I salute it. I may even try to use it creatively some time in the future! The strength of being a neutral, perfect design is that it will never steal focus from whatever you put beside it. Happy birthday, Helvetica!

Links:
Helvetica - the film
BBC News: Helvetica at 50
Helvetica at MyFonts

SNDS Magazine 2|2007

The SNDS Magazine issue no. 2|2007 is at the printer's and will be on its way to the nearly 600 members of SNDS Friday. It's packed with info and articles: Eight pages related to the recent design conference in Stockholm, including lots of photos; a (very relevant) discussion article by Kristofer Pasanen on what we - the members - really want from SNDS; a great article by Anders Enström about the 2-3-5 layout grid that revolutionized most of the Swedish newspapers - and a "Q&A for A&A" - the new and past presidents of SNDS: Anders and Anna.
There's also an aggressive ad for next conference, which will be in Copenhagen next year. [more]

Apart from doing the layout of the magazine (including the Copenhagen Crash ad), I wrote a single article for this issue - about the typographic one-day seminar at DGH (The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark) in April. The text is below in this post, below a preview of the article, and I even published a Danish version some time ago also on this blog.


Type summit Copenhagen
On April 26th, six stars on the typographic sky met in Copenhagen to speak to 100 people from Danish design companies, media and design schools. The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark hosted the TYPO:07 seminar.
By Lars Pryds

German designer Verena Gerlach was the first speaker, taking us on a fascinating trip through the city of Berlin, where she had studied the street signs in both East and West Berlin.
The East German signs were characterized by very narrow typography, in order to make room for the long names of the communist members who the streets were named after. Gerlach’s study had resulted in the font families FF Citystreet Types East and FF City­street Types West.

Another Gerlach font, FF Karbid, was inspired by the lettering of store signs and advertising, painted directly onto the wall. Most of the East Berlin signs disappeared when the Berlin wall fell in ‘89, but fortunately “Frau Gerlach” managed to photograph many of them before that.

Gerlach’s last project was Blinkenlights, in which the façade of an empty building were transformed into a large matrix, with a powerful lamp behind each window. The lamps were turned on or off by the public’s email or sms, controlled by a website and a large computer setup. With the right timing, anyone could actually send a message to one’s loved one and have it displayed in the windows, when “coincidentially” crossing the Alexander Platz next to the building. Gerlach was not the initiator of the project itself, but designed a font that took the name from (and based its design on) the Project Blinkenlights by the Chaos Computer Club

To read or to see, that’s the question
Dino dos Santos from Portugal gave a short introduction to his new typeface Leitura, which is the Portuguese word for reading. One of Dino dos Santos’ main concerns is that the font itself should be invisible, or at least – the type design should not shout louder than the content itself.

“What is invisible? If you use [the type], it is not invisible anymore.To read or to see the type, that’s the question. And Leitura was designed to be read, not seen”, Dino dos Santos said.

Fred Smeijers from Holland is well known for classic fonts like FF Quadraat and FF Arnhem. The latter is a.o. used in the Danish Book of Psalms, used in all churches in Denmark. Smeijers showed his very first hand drawn sketches for letterforms, and told us how – many years later – he only designed the sans version of Quadraat because a good friend teased him by saying that he “probably couldn’t do it”. That got him going…

The title of his presentation was “Why do we design and need new typefaces?”, but the answer to this question drowned somewhat in his walking us through interesting design examples. One suggestion could be: “Designers always look for new typefaces to make their work easier”.

When QUOTE – a modern lifestyle magazine – asked Smeijers to update his own design for their logo to match the content of a special luxury issue, he simply told them to “build” the logo in caviar, instead of having him redesign the very recently redesigned logo. That was his way of making his work easier!

Smeijers’ website www.ourtype.be is one of the advanced and elegant type websites this writer has seen in a very long time. In a user interface that mimics the look and feel of QuarkXpress or Indesign, it is possible to try out the company’s typefaces in a text field, capable even of holding different weights and/or fonts at the same time. An extremely useful “try-before-you-buy”-feature.

The Guardian – in many weights
Over the last few years, British newspaper The Guardian has won all possible design awards for the redesign carried out in 2005. One of the reasons for its success is – without a doubt – the very thorough typographic work, done by the American type designer Christian Schwartz in cooperation with Paul Barnes. Schwartz told us how.

What was originally meant as a simple format change, including a minor update of existing fonts, turned out very different. The project saw the birth of possibly the most extensive and most varied single typeface family ever commissioned by a newspaper, when old time work horses like Miller og Helvetica were replaced by Schwartz’ and Barnes’ 200 variations of Guardian Egyptian and Guardian Sans.

Sebastian Lester of Monotype Imaging in England also showed us examples from his early days of designing letters, some of which had the pure joy and optimism only student work can have. In adult life, Lester has worked at Monotype with far more precise designs – among these the Expert Sans and Serif, developed for the British bank Barclays. A TV commercial for the bank was especially dear to Sebastian Lester – as Jennifer Aniston played the leading part in the video – together with Lester’s typeface, of course!

Typographic overview
Two speakers finished a long day in the company of fontaholic nerds by giving the audience two versions of typographic overview.

Vítor Quelhas from the Porto Polytechnic Institute in Portugal revealed his project dyntypo.com – a research heavy website with a large collection of works in the category “Moving type” – or interactiv typography. One example could be letterforms projected to the wall, but “sticking” to the silhuetto of a person walking by, others exercises to make type come to life on screen. All possible by intricate technology. Oddly, all of Vítor Quelhas’ presen­tation was in the form of very static slides, not one letter moved anywhere on the screen.

From Italy, Alessio Leonardi told the 120 year old story of Linotype, taken from his recently published book “A Line of Type”. The story of the inventor of the Linotype setting machine, Ottmar Mergenthaler, who revolutionized book printing in the 1880ies, told in the language of a cartoonist can be very entertaining, especially if you knew just a tiny bit about the history beforehand. If not, this was indeed a history lesson that never experienced a dull moment.

Links:
Verena Gerlach: www.fraugerlach.de
Project Blinkenlights: www.blinkenlights.de
Dino dos Santos: www.dstype.com
Fred Smeijers: www.ourtype.be
Christian Schwartz: www.christianschwartz.com
Sebastian Lester: www.seblester.co.uk - www.monotypefonts.com
Vítor Quelhas: www.dyntypo.com
Alessio Leonardi: www.buymyfonts.com
Den Grafiske Højskole (The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark): www.dgh.dk

Note: Læs artiklen om TYPO:07 på dansk her:
http://tolleone.blogspot.com/2007/04/typo07-dgh.html

Things to see in Stockholm #3

A few more photos from Stockholm. Take it to the streets!

Things to see in Stockholm #2

Is this the great Shakespearian question for the Swedes this Saturday - "Rock or Sports"? Well, most of us are here at 8am Saturday, so let's find out. How to to do that, I have no idea at all....
Just another glimpse of the city signs. There's a bit of great lettering going on here and there...

Things to see in Stockholm #1

A long warm ride by taxa from the airport, a quick bath in the hotel, and Stockholm - here I come. Of course, for a Dane, it's great to see all the enourmous rocks blending in with the townscape, instead of the flat land we are used to in Danmark, but there are also other good things to look at. Here are some examples. More will come!

Typo:07 DGH

[This post is also available in English]

Den Grafiske Højskole var torsdag den 26. april vært for et internationalt møde med stjerner på den typografiske himmel under overskriften TYPO:07. Knap 100 interesserede fra danske designvirksomheder og nyhedsmedier samt designstuderende havde hevet en dag ud af kalenderen for at høre på de seks forelæsere.

Tyske Verena Gerlach lagde ud med en inspirerende rejse gennem Berlin før og efter murens fald, med fokus på typografien i bl.a. gadeskiltene. Den østtyske typografi, registrerede Gerlach, var karakteristisk ved en meget smal skrift, fordi der skulle være plads til de lange navne på kommunistiske partikommisærer, som gaderne ofte var opkaldt efter. Studiet af gadeskiltene udmøntede sig naturligvis i to skriftfamilier fra Verena Gerlach, som hun kalder hhv FF Citystreet Types East og FF Citystreet Types West.
En anden skrift, FF Karbid, var inspireret af bogstaveringen i de østberlinske butiksskilte, malet direkte på facaderne, og som efter murens fald forsvandt i stor mængde. Mange af dem nåede "Frau Gerlach" - som hun kalder sig på sit website - heldigvis at indfange med kameraet.
Verena Gerlach fortalte afsluttende om projektet Blinkenlights, hvor hele facaden på den bygning hun havde værksted i, blev brugt som en slags interaktiv kæmpeskærm, med en lampe bag hvert vindue. Enhver kunne i en periode via sms eller email sende en besked til et website, der satte teksten op i lysbogstaver i vinduernes matrix. Med den korrekte timing kunne man "tilfældigt" gå henover Aleksander Platz og imponere sin elskede med en personlig hilsen på facaden. Ret fascinerende.

Dino dos Santos fra Portugal gav en kort introduktion til sin nyeste skrift, kaldet Leitura, der på portugisisk faktisk er betegnelsen for det at læse. For Dino dos Santos som skriftdesigner er et af kernepunkterne, af skriften er usynlig, dvs. at skriften ikke tager opmærksomheden fra indholdet. Hvilket jo er lidt besynderligt: "What is invisible? If you use [the type], it is not invisible anymore", som han selv bemærkede. Eller med en næsten Shakespeare-formulering: "To read or to see the type, that's the question". Leitura, gentog Dino dos Santos, er det meningen man skal læse, ikke se.

Fred Smeijers fra Holland er kendt for moderne klassikere som FF Quadraat og FF Arnhem. Sidstnævnte anvendes bl.a. i den nyeste Danske Salmebog. Smeijers viste glimt fra de tidlige års arbejde med håndtegnede bogstaver som udgangspunkt for det omstændelige arbejde med en hel skriftfamilie, og berettede med et smil hvordan han først havde taget sig sammen til at designe sans-udgaven af Quadraat, da en god ven antydede, at han "nok ikke kunne finde ud af det". Så blev familien fuldtallig.
Overskriften på hans indlæg var egentlig "Why do we design and need new typefaces?", men svaret druknede lidt i en i øvrigt meget interessant gennemgang af hans forskellige designs. Ét af budene på et svar var dog: "Designers always look for new typefaces to make their work easier". Blandt Fred Smeijers store kunder er Philips - der i en periode nærmest bestilte et logo hver uge. En interessant "hemmelighed" Smeijers fik kendskab til ved samarbejdet var, at en tredjedel af virksomhedens barbermaskiner (Philishaves) rent faktisk bruges af kvinder. Til QUOTE - et moderne livsstilsmagasin - designede Smeijers et nyt logo, og kort efter introduktionen blev det bygget op i kaviar, til forsiden af et særnummer om luksusliv. (Se ill. herover).
Fred Smeijers' website www.ourtype.be er i øvrigt en af de mest avancerede skrift-websites undertegnede har oplevet - i en brugerflade der næsten får en til at tro man arbejder i Indesign eller QuarkXPress kan man prøve alle firmaets skrifter af i et tekstfelt, der ovenikøbet kan indeholde flere forskellige skrifter på samme tid. En ekstrem anvendelig "try-before-you-buy"-feature:


Amerikaneren Christian Schwartz fortalte om det langvarige samarbejde med Paul Barnes om udviklingen af en ny skrift til den engelske avis The Guardian. Hvad der oprindelig skulle have været blot en opdatering af få eksisterende skrifter, ledsaget af en forholdsvis enkel omlægning af avisen til tabloidformat, resulterede i den mest omfattende skriftfamilie nogensinde bestilt af en enkelt virksomhed, og den måske mest gennemgribende omlægning af en avis nogensinde. Efter adskillige forsøg med prøvetryk og forskellige designs, skiftede The Guardian i 2005 Miller og Helvetica ud med Schwartz og Barnes' over 200 snit af Guardian Egyptian og Guardian Sans. Ikke mindst i kraft af den konsekvente brug af typografi har avisen vundet alle de designpriser det er muligt at vinde, for sit nye udseende.

Sebastian Lester fra Monotype Imaging i England viste eksempler på sit arbejde med skrifter lige fra studietidens optimistiske, næsten overdekorerede skrifter, til arbejdet med designs af den mere stramme type til f.eks. den britiske bank Barclays, hvor Lester udviklede Expert Sans og Serif. En tv-reklamefilm for banken var Sebastian Lester specielt glad for - her var det nemlig lykkedes at få Jennifer Aniston til at spille hovedrollen. Sammen med Lesters typografi, naturligvis!

To talere rundede under overskriften "Overblik" en lang, nørdet dag i typografiens tegn af.
Vítor Quelhas fortalte om projektet dyntypo.com - hans researchtunge website med en omfattende samling eksempler på "Moving type" - eller interaktiv typografi, hvor f.eks. bogstaver projiceret op på væggen ved hjælp af de nyeste teknologier "klistrer" til en silhouetten af en person der passerer forbi. Besynderligt nok bestod hele Vítor Quelhas' forelæsning af stillestående slides, ikke et bogstav rørte sig i vinden.

Italieneren Alessio Leonardi leverede det sidste overblik - en meget humoristisk gennemgang af Linotype's 120 årige historie, fortalt med udgangspunkt i hans bog A Line of Type. Opfinderen af Linotype-maskinen, der revolutionerede bogtrykkunsten i 1880'erne, Ottmar Mergenthaler, omsat til tegneserie-fortælleteknik kan næsten ikke blive andet end vældig underholdende, især hvis man havde en lille smule kendskab til historien i forvejen. Hvis ikke, blev man en hel del klogere på en væsentlig del af typografiens historie, uden at have kedet sig.

Links:
Verena Gerlach: www.fraugerlach.de
Project Blinkenlights: www.blinkenlights.de
Dino dos Santos: www.dstype.com
Fred Smeijers: www.ourtype.be
Christian Schwartz: www.christianschwartz.com
Sebastian Lester: www.seblester.co.uk - www.monotypefonts.com
Vítor Quelhas: www.dyntypo.com
Alessio Leonardi: www.buymyfonts.com
Den Grafiske Højskole (The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark): www.dgh.dk

Fotos: © Lars Pryds
Note: En revideret og udvidet (flere illustrationer) version af dette indlæg udkommer i SNDS Magazine ultimo maj 2007.