Likes & Likes

What a great find! Vintage Bus hosts a ton of pictures and information specially tailored for Volkswagen Type II enthusiasts, including many with awesome vintage typography. The site is devoted exclusively to VW buses built from 1949 to 1967, otherwise known as split-window bus, splittie, split, microbus, micro, bulli, samba and transporters.

(Photos via VintageBus and Car Type)

We’re far too polite to say this, but Cee-Lo doesn’t mind. Above is the video for his vulgar, but catchy song “F**k You”, which uses simple text animation and an old school film treatment in an effective engaging way.

Thanks to our friend Brian Ho for the tip. Check out his site Dreams in Audio, which had a nice new redesign. Hopefully this might inspire us to launch our own redesign soon too!

Has anyone tried this? It looks pretty neat, despite the fact my handwriting is pretty illegible.

Pilothandwriting.com is an online application that turns your handwriting into a digital Font, allowing you to write by hand on the computer and send personalized handwritten e-mails. You can also publish handwritten messages on Facebook.

Creating your own typography is made simple: go to the website, download the template, print, and then write in each of the letters. The site let’s you tweak your handwriting from there, and then you can use it as you would like, even posting messages on facebook. The concept for this is based on a campaign started by Grey Advertising (Spain) to promote Pilot pens.

Pretty brilliant.

Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design is about to be taken over by the crew from House Industries:

For a week starting on Wednesday, April 28th, Andy Cruz, the founder of House Industries, will be here working with students in many of our design programs on a creative problem that he’ll present as a challenge. Cruz will also be working with Music Industry students on packaging and promotion for the upcoming three-track 7” release by acoustic singer/songwriter Dave Hause. The House Industries residency will conclude on May 5th when we take over the Armory for a fun afternoon that includes an impromptu exhibition of House Industries work, a talk by Andy Cruz on the House design philosophy, a concert by Dave Hause, and ping-pong and other table games to keep you amused. When you’re not listening to Dave Hause perform or facing off in a ping-pong match with one of your professors, you’ll be able to walk the Armory and see the creative work of the students who participated in the residency on display.

Very interesting stuff. I’ve seen the House crew do a live “performance” before at one of their AIGA events, and based on that experience, I can confidently say this will not an event to be missed.

More information here and here.

Once again, the guys at House Industries are rolling out an incredible collection of typefaces called Eames Century Modern - 16 serif fonts, two stencil cuts, four number sets and an assortment of  ornaments, 26 fonts total -  this time based on the work of legends of mid-century modern design Charles and Ray Eames.

Unlike Richard Neutra, whose Neutraface was developed by House based on Neutra’s specified signage, the Eameses did not originally design lettering. These fonts were derived from the way Charles and Ray used type in their illustrations, films, layouts, exhibitions and ephemera:

Before drawing a single letterform we embarked on a journey that took us far beyond the low-hanging fruit of published material and internet searches. Our process of building a foundation for Eames Century Modern started with breakfast meetings at the kitchen table of the Eames House and took us through in-depth tours of their studio and living space, visits to the archives of Herman Miller in Michigan and Vitra in Weil am Rhein, and quality time in a cramped carrel at the Library of Congress. We took every opportunity to learn even more through our nearly constant interaction with the Eames family and Eames Office employees of past and present.

The first few copies of Eames Century Modern will be delivered in a sleeve made of solid furniture-grade plywood, material which the Eamses championed. Hand printed in 30 different random versions, each block can stand or hang on it’s own. And, in addition to the great fonts and packaging, there’s also an alphabet block set which assembles to form a scale model of the Eames Case Study House.

John Langon, professor of typography and corporate identity at Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, will have several paintings hanging at the Type Directors Club in New York in February and through March. On Thursday, February 4th 6-8 pm, there will be a reception and Professor Langdon will be giving a brief talk about his work. More information at the TDC website.

Letterheady is an online collection of letterhead design. An initiative of freelance writer Shaun Usher, the site is simple, straightforward, and instantly addicting. A must for anyone interested in typography, vintage ephemera, or just curious as to what a letter from Luke Skywalker might look like.

The Society of Typographic Aficionados has announced a call for entries for Font Aid IV, a collaborative typographical project to raise raise money for relief efforts in Haiti:

Type designers, graphic designers and other artists from around the world are invited to contribute artwork to be included in a typeface created exclusively for the Font Aid IV effort. The theme of Font Aid IV is “Coming Together” which we will represented though a font consisting entirely of ampersands. Coming Together will be made available for sale through several type distributors, with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders. SOTA, a US-based non-profit, is acting as a non-partisan organizing body to help coordinate the effort and ensure all funds are distributed appropriately.

To participate, submit a black and white vector format ampersand as an EPS file to fontaid@typesociety.org. But hurry! Submissions accepted up to this Friday the 29th.

UPDATE: The font will be sold for $20US, and is now available through font distributors Veer and Ascender Fonts. It will be available on FontShop and MyFonts later in the week.

Frustrated with the design of most airline boarding passes, designer Tyler Thompson decided to try his hand revamping them, and set up a site called Boarding Pass/Fail to showcase his efforts.

I must say these initial comps are pretty good looking, but might not be very practical in real-world situations. That’s a lot of black ink that needs to be laid down (or as some astute commenters on the site pointed out, heated via thermal printing). And while HF&J’s Gotham is one of my more favorite typeface designs in recent years, the condensed widths might be a bit harder to read than other faces.

Tyler offers his initial sketch as an Illustrator download, allowing other interested parties to try their hand at a redesign themselves. It will be interesting to see how this idea evolves…

Using no ink, these 18”x24” posters are foil stamped and embossed to create an alphabet composed of letters from many of the more famous (and some infamous) logos of all time. Numbers are limited to 500 prints of each color and are available to buy here.