There’s a symposium coming at the beginning of June and one of the most important typography exhibition ever (some say) is still waiting for you. We found mid-century inspiration, 3D typography and kinetic… advices. We even have something for those who have money to spare. TypeToy: A Beautiful Archive Of Mid-Century Design & Typography You’ve probably come across Aaron Eiland before. He keeps a blog stuffed with design and typographic goodness from the mid-20th century. TypeToy is a delight to browse for anyone who appreciates that era. From attractive packaging to gorgeous book covers, the blog documents a diverse range of beautiful graphic finds, creating fascinating snapshots that show what design was like in "the good old days". This made us nostalgic, so we ended up browsing for more retro fonts. To bookmark for vintage inspiration! Six Beautiful Artifacts From the Dawn of Digital Typography Pencil to Pixel is one of the most comprehensive typography exhibitions ever staged, so it’s little wonder that we are still talking about it. This week we found a post where you can see pictures taken in the exhibition. You’ll notice that it preserves some of the most fascinating relics from the 1970s and 80s, allowing you to see the early technologies that predated digital type. The explanations and images in this post will open up your appetite even more. Typography World Map For those interested in spending some money, here’s a One World Map in Typography measuring roughly 22″ x 45″. Vinyl lettering, custom hand painted look, and other fancy touches. Just an idea. The Stunning 3D Typography of David McLeod David McLeod is an Australian artist and this article takes a look at some of his works. It is quite enjoyable as you get to see typography caught up in designs in a way that keeps imagination very much alive. You’ll also get to take a closer look (literally) at the images. Quite inspiring material. Enjoy! Make Good Art Kinetic Typography This Kinetic typography YouTube video "shows" an excerpt from Neil Gaiman‘s University of the Arts commencement speech. Yes, there are many out there, but this one carries a few messages that should do you good. It starts with "When things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. I’m serious." So are we. Keep reading, listening and learning. But most of all, enjoy! After the Jump: Technology’s Effect on Design and Typography After the Jump is a symposium that will bring together some of today’s most inspiring industry leaders to discuss how technology affects human behaviour and how those effects impact design and typography. The event will take a holistic look at typography’s role in the modern, tech-driven world. So, Cooper Union, NYC, June 7, 2013. Enough time to make a decision. Interested?

Although this history of typography in 5 minutes is charming, most professionals would vote for a ‘longer’ version, while beginners would be anxious to move to the next step and get a place in the favorite fonts top. That’s why today we’ll share some tips for those looking for typeface design courses or typography classes, workshops or even proper design schools. This is for both advanced and beginners, so stick with us. Short Courses For those in a hurry who prefer short workshops with famous designers, this one is perfect. World-renowned typographer, designer and letterpress practitioner Alan Kitching will teach a hands-on two day course exploring the fundamentals and details of typography using letterpress equipment. This should give participants an exceptional understanding of typesetting and the art of letterpress printing. Next workshops? 31 May - 1 June, 7 - 8 June and 28 - 29 June 2013. This particular summer course is a… computer free zone. Designed to help everyone, from the newcomer to the professional to find confidence in their own typographic voice, this course organized by Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design begins by exploring basic elements and the principles for their effective and creative use. Key areas covered include; choosing typefaces and how to get the best from all those on offer; identifying the assorted typographic voices which surround us everyday; strategies for working with different kinds of texts, from looking at content analysis to finding inspiration in the richness of language itself, and much more. There will also be a session using letterpress facilities. Ideas presented are explored visually through projects embracing both type as information and type as art. You can also check their slightly longer (8 weeks) but convenient online course: Introduction to Typography. Postgraduate Study This MA in Contemporary Typographic Media is about "visible words" and it explores the relationships between visual communication and language. This nationally and internationally unique programme is built upon London College of Communication’s respected heritage in the field of typographic design. The course prides itself on the fact that encourages participants to focus on their own interests, developing practical and critical skills to provide a robust foundation for a career as a creative visual communicator. The MA has its own blog where you can find out more details. It can be a good start for a designer with a special interest in typography. In UK, Reading University has a much talked about MA in Typeface Design. Although an MA requires time and most likely money, you can still try their Adobe FDK Workshop that is kept regularly at Reading Uni. The goal of the Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType is to offer tools created and developed by the team in charge of typography at Adobe. For details check the page of this year’s workshop held a few weeks ago in France. The purpose? To provide a professional high-level training. We’ll come back next week with more tips. If you want to share your favorite course, let us know!      

Remember those film posters where the main character claims more than 90% of the space? We’ve just collected 15 such posters to see how those dilemmas regarding the typography have been solved. Do you end up looking into their eyes? Are you charmed by the smiles, the colors and… the cracks? Do you read between the lines? Is the type friend or foe? Whatever your conclusion, you have to admit this is a pretty interesting use of headline fonts. Now let’s see those eyes and those types: Silver Linings Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Thor Mirror Mirror Dorian Gray Black Swan Lincoln Crazy Heart   The New Frontier My Week with Marilyn Zero Dark Thirty Spider Man The Rum Diary The Hobbit True Grit

Something’s in the oven, but we’ll open it at the end of our round-up. If you smell cake, you’re not mistaken. But before we dig in some typography sweets, we check design events coming our way this year. We stop to examine some rather serious looking tutorials and some less serious looking (but highly effective!) typography apps. There’s also a typography challenge for fearless competitors. And we totally agree with this new ‘big’ trend in typography. How about you? Make a Kinetic Typography Video with CSS Check out this tutorial, where they use kinetic typography to create a simple conceptual art piece, timed to a song provided by power pop band, Be Like Pablo. Rather than using After Effects, they take advantage of CSS3 animations and transitions to create the piece with standard web tools: HTML5 and CSS3 for the animation and audio and a smattering of JavaScript to add classes to various elements at appropriate times. Don’t be put off by the language, this is for developers with a secret passion for typography. Read on to find out how the magic is done. 8 Best Typography Apps Take a look at this collection of  free and premium typography apps available online. Why? Because in this modern age of graphics and high definition videos, typography is still a strong pillar for words. If the words are right, and they appear in the right format, no image or video can surpass them. Correct? OK, then pick the apps that serve your immediate needs. Wonder if they serve stencil fonts too… Submit Your Art to This Month’s Typography Challenge You still have time to submit your typography for this month’s Psdtuts+ Design Challenge. Join the community on Google+ and upload your art for the chance to get featured in their monthly reviews. This time they ask you to Create a Typographic Illustration. You can submit your artwork for this challenge using Photoshop accompanied with any additional program or technique of your choice. The deadline? Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 12:00 PM EST. Good luck! Trends: Going Bigger with Typography This guy likes big type and he does his best to convince us that big typography is trending in a major way. Well, we didn’t need much convincing. You should remember that the point of text in your design is to be read. From navigation, to blog entries to item descriptions for e-commerce, type is meant to be seen and understood. Going big is a great way to do that. Read on, it gets… bigger. Essential Design Events for 2013: Typography This is a small part of a bigger list covering essential design events. Those in Germany, Cyprus, Turkey, UK and USA are favored by the gods of typography. There’s also traveling, so don’t despair. You can always attach a lecture or an workshop to your holiday. Enjoy! ‘Typography Cake’ Lets You Send A Message In Batter Here’s something to remind you that the weekend is here: cake! This ‘Typography Cake’ lets you send your message within the sweet treat, by placing edible dough letters at the bottom of the pan (in one straight row) before pouring in all your batter. Bon appetit!

Even if your are into typography, attending other design events should come in handy, especially since types are usually an important part. To smoothly sail through the hundreds of events around the world, at the beginning of this year Dezeen launched an online guide to the key architecture and design events in 2013: World Design Guide. It’s easy to use, saves time, and you can search for events by date, name or location. There’s even a secret bonus to this map of events: learning some geography. As we’re approaching the end of May, today we take a closer look at some of the events taking place in June. It should give everybody enough time to pack and plan in advance. In June, it looks like Europe will be the main attraction for designers. The Balkans get busy with a couple of design weeks. Belgrade Design Week (Serbia) is a three-day-long conference with speakers from south-eastern Europe and beyond, plus workshops, master classes and design exhibitions. In Sofia (Bulgaria), their Design Week will include city-wide talks, exhibitions and installations providing a platform for Bulgarian designers to present their work and an insight into the design scene in the Balkans. In Basel (Switzerland) you can join Design Basel/Miami, a collectors’ fair that features selling exhibitions by galleries from around the world plus one-off installations, talks and events. This event conveniently coincides with the Art Basel fair. In Berlin (Germany), it will be time for DMY, when graduates and young brands from over 30 countries present work in the hangars of the former Tempelhof airport. There is also a topical program of talks and lively parties. Design Week Kortrijk (Belgium) takes place towards the end of June and is the largest exhibition of graduate work by design students in Flanders, plus Belgian companies and industrial designers showcase their latest products. London Festival of Architecture starts in June, but ends in July. It’s a playful two-week programme of events, installations and exhibitions that show what architects have to offer to London’s communities. How about heading south? Barcelona Design Week is part two of Barcelona Design Festival, promoting design to the public through talks, exhibitions and open studios with a focus on Catalan designers and companies. At the end of May, beginning of June, is time for Habitat Expo, Mexico’s largest design fair encompassing products for hospitality, offices and the residential market. It also features a conference programme about Mexican interior design. Forget about weeks, Austrians like to organize Design Months. It happens as we speak in Ganz. This annual festival has a more international emphasis this year. Attractions include fashion shows, concerts and installations. Romanian Design Week takes place these days in Bucharest. Ştirbei Palace hosts a central exhibition while student shows, workshops and parties take place around the city. But there’s much more. So, pack those adventure fonts, and start designing your summer.    

Our increased appetite for big screen and small screen entertainment has only been doubled by our appetite for typography in this field. In today’s round-up we stare into the small screen, that’s how we brought together a few classic sitcoms, a couple of new and very popular ones, plus enough TV series to keep us hooked for years (sometimes decades) in a row. Now let’s see how those headline fonts make promotion run smoothly: Sherlock Doctor Who Elementary Arrested Development Cheers Friends Episodes 3rd Rock from the Sun The New Normal Curb Your Enthusiasm The Office Seinfeld The Big Bang Theory  

Have you ever taken the… derailed typography train? Have you ever tasted typography? You know, literally. If no is the answer, wait until you finish reading this weekly round-up. We also have mind-blowing typography art projects, tutorials (lots!), golden rules, and even sculpture, although there are no sophisticated fonts in sight. Enjoy! 85 Amazing Typography Tutorials Check out these pretty amazing typography tutorials from around the web. We talked about some of them before, but this article manages to bring an impressive number of really good ones together. Now, learn how to design a headline typeface, create isometric 3D lettering, smelt your favorite font and much more. You’re bound to find something that can help you raise your type skills to the next level. You might want to bookmark it. Web Designers Should Focus More On Typography Some say that the only typographical questions that most web designers face is what font they have to use for their design. This article tries to tackle this issue. It looks like choosing the right typeface and manipulating correctly the font size, weight, line height and other rather less important attributes is not enough. To be a good web designer you need to have a good understanding of typography and how it works. Read on and find out more. To Eat With Your Eyes: 40+ Delicious Food Typography Designs This is the work of designers who, obviously, want to trigger cravings with food and types. Of course, most food typography is purely for artistic purposes, but every once in a while you may come across a title font that would be perfect for a project you’re tinkering on. This is one good sized portion of inspiration. A few are actual fonts that you can purchase - fonts that the designer created with real food and photographs. 25 Mind-Blowing Typography Art Projects Here you have a killer roundup of art projects that take typography into unexpected territory. At some point you’ll come across a music video for "Dream," by Husbands. Take a look at the diversity of typefaces and backgrounds used — they range from ornate script, to Western-style slab serifs, to cool European grotesks. AND this video was NOT made on a computer. Find out more about it with behind the scenes clips. Quite impressive. Enjoy! Golden Rules for Typography This article talks about some golden typographic rules for those who want to create a difference online. With hordes of websites available on the web space, it’s difficult to make your site stand out from the crowd. Typography is essential. Agree? Then read on. Book Sculpture Illustrates OCD With A Derailed Typography Train Check out the typography and detail that went into this extraordinary train design created by Thomas Wightman. It’s almost hard to believe that all this came out of a book. It makes you realize how versatile books are, and how nice it is to give them a second use. However, aside from breathing new life into this old book, the project also illustrates the effects of OCD on a person’s life. It uses the metaphor of a derailing train to show what it’s like. Quite impressive.

If you’re a beginner who wants to start working on types, but feels a little bit lost, you just opened the right post. Today we’ll talk about a couple of resources that should get you started. Yes, you’re right, the history of typography begins with Gutenberg, but has its roots in handwritten letterforms, which takes us back longer than we’d like to admit. But if you want to start as soon as possible and make the most of your fancy computer, you’ll have to forget, at least for now, about pen, ink and stone and move fast forward to nowadays and focus on new fonts. If you design types, people will call you type or font designer, just to make sure you’re slightly different than the other designers in town. To proudly wear this name, you must become a highly skilled and knowledgeable professional who knows about type history and typeface anatomy. Excellent question! Typeface anatomy describes the graphic elements that make up printed letters in a typeface. That’s the very short version. Next? Read a book. Preferably on designing type, like this one by Karen Cheng, professor in the Visual Communication Design program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She teaches type design and typography, but she’s also an active practitioner. Her design work has been published by the American institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Communication Arts, Print, Critique and ID Magazine. "Designing Type" is an essential book explaining the processes behind creating and designing type. It was born out of necessity. The lack of a specific and comprehensive guide to type design has long been a frustration for typographers, graphic designers and students. This book finally brought new depth and insight to the art and process of developing a typeface. Because it is illustrated with type specimens and diagrams demonstrating visual principles and letter construction, this book is ideal for beginners. It also discusses structure, optical compensation and legibility, with emphasis on the often overlooked systematic relationships between letters and shapes in a font. A wide range of classic and contemporary typefaces are analyzed, and examples of student work, progress sketches and final type designs are used to demonstrate core issues. In conclusion, this is a valuable reference for both experienced professionals and novice designers. Now try to attend an workshop. Nothing compares to practical experience. On typeworkshop.com you can ask questions, but don’t miss the workshops when they happen. To attend an workshop that is open to anyone, just subscribe to the mailing list and you’ll get a message in advance. If the talented people behind typeworkshop.com have the far-out idea of organizing a workshop themselves, you’ll also be the first to know. Until then, though, take a look at these sketches specially made to explain some basic issues in type design. Take a look at the assignment which is easy to do at home. It’s a project to make a modular typeface, create all letters out of two different shapes. Just do it. We’ll be back with more. In the meantime, if you’re an experienced type designer, what’s your best advice for beginners?

Street names! Such a big part of our daily lives, with their stories, our stories, history, charm and nostalgia. And, yes, typography too. That’s why today we randomly picked a few cities and their most common ‘street’… type. We tried to cover as much of the world as possible in a blog post. We stare at them every day, but do we ever think about the types or is it all just… geography? Now street name plates take center stage, ahead of graffiti fonts and the like. Let’s stroll!  Berlin New York New York 2 New York 3 Rome San Francisco Prague London London 2 London 3 Cork Hong Kong Sydney Oslo  

Summer is here, and, what do you know, the weekend is here too. What a lucky coincidence! Since you’ll have plenty of time to read in the sun, you may want to check out our weekly round-up too. In the menu today: a fresh slab serif font, a ‘lorem ipsum’ collection, typographic illustration by Timba Smits, the font and the city (you’ll see), and a squeeze of inspiration. Sweet Examples Of Beautiful Typography - 31 Prints It all starts with the author’s belief that web typography has its limitations and it isn’t yet understood and used to its full capacity. However, typography in prints has reached its maturity and there are no limitations to it. Agree? If so, then you’ll enjoy this article displaying 31 beautiful typography prints to be admired. Great source of inspiration also. Nexa Slab Typography Meet Nexa Slab! This is a geometric slab serif font with a design based on the best-seller Nexa. Find out more about what it contains, what makes it ideal for the web as well as for print, for motion graphics, logos, t-shirts, etc. It is serious without being rigid and inflexible, systematic without being monotonous. Though it may seem at first glance to be more suitable for short, direct messages, in the hands of a master designer it can create exquisite and harmonic designs. So they say. See for yourself. Read on! 9 Funny Lorem Ipsum Generators I’m sure you’re already familiar with the standard Lorem Ipsum text generator website. What this post is telling us is that ‘lorem ipsum’ text does not need to be dull, hence this surprisingly inspiring collection of funny lorem ipsum generators that might also add a little hilarity to your design prototypes. Try it in your next design. See who picks up it. Good luck! Typography Inspiration Here you have some fresh stunning findings From Up North. Words and letters for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!  Famous Cities Get Their Own Fonts Remember our Wednesday inspiration post? It was about Street names and the types various cities around the world use. This time, a real estate company shows its creative side with a brilliant ‘What Font is your city?’ infographic. They basically match 10 US cities with their font equivalents. Each city is accompanied by its own font and the name of the designer behind it. I wonder which one is into… graffiti fonts. Anyway, it’s a smart and fun project. Take a look! Gorgeous Typographic Illustrations for Wired Magazine You’re about to discover the work of Timba Smits thanks to French type designer extraordinaire Jean François Porchez and… this article in The Font Feed. The article Rory Sutherland knows how to save marketing published Tuesday on Wired features a dozen of his entirely typographic illustrations. Using an bright colour palette, Timba updates a vintage Americana carnival-like style to visualise quotes from the author of the article. By the end you’ll definitely head to Timba Smits’ website to discover his other typographic, design and illustration work. Enjoy! Typography Quote of the Day: Process of Type Design Last, but not least, we finish our weekly round-up with the typography quote of the day. It’s on the process of type design. BTW, what was your favorite typography story this week? Share with us!