A few weeks back we launched our hottest new font development, Agostina. In the past two weeks it has easily become one of the leading fonts in our collection for 2008 and has a bright future ahead of it. Along with its launch, we spent some time here in our Bangkok studio to have some fun with its open type swash features and styles. We began to experiment with the swash forms and it’s abilities in 3d and animation. This video, This is Agostina, is our final result of the past 2 weeks. Enjoy!
A couple weeks ago, I completed a new handset font called Hugo. To celebrate the release, I have put together a short web zine (PDF) to demonstrate the flexibility of Hugo as a display face. The zine takes text from the dada writer/performance artist/other worldly being, Hugo Ball. I think the two are a great match.
Agostina is a unique typeface in many ways. The obvious being that is is a Sans-Serif typeface that contains both beginning caps and ending lowercase swash letters. This instantly gives endless typographic possibilities to the user. Agostina takes advantage of the OpenType font format that opens further exploration with a full latin and limited alternate characters as well. With almost 300 characters, Agostina is a workhorse and a must own typeface.
I always give Google tons of crap, because I cannot comprehend how a company who at one time had stocks steadily in the $500 range, can have such ugly products. I mean, they have adult slides, guitar hero rooms, and endless insanity in their posh offices that make the .com offices of late 90′s look modest. But yet, they cannot hire a descent design team? I mean, seriously, gmail, calendar, all these web apps are FUGLY. It is easily noticeable how they were coded, then they “polished the turd” with some quick CSS and called it a wrap. If I am wrong on this process, then that makes the overall design even that much more lame.
So, I was happy to see Google actually commissioned a custom face for Android. The face is called Droid and was created over 2 tears by a company called Ascender Corporation. The face looks pretty nice, especially once you know the project briefing Ascender was given – ‘They wanted to see a range of styles, from the typical, bubbly Google image to something very techno-looking,’
Now, a company who has a rainbow inner bevel logo, to get a font like this as a middle ground on their idea, I think is a damn sweet deal. Now, too bad they didn’t spend that much time on the actual Android interface. That interface makes Windows 95 look like solid gold. Common Google, hire some damn designers. Wait, let me rephrase that, hire some GOOD designers.
The design world will be delighted by the release of this heavyset, whipped flare font designed by the talented Mr. Karl Frankowski. Augustus is a display font with a distinct style and personality. Like designer eyeglasses and salt and pepper hair, Augustus makes your texts look smarter, more interesting, and worldly. Believe. A fortune in fudge font, the pride of Dusseldorf. Hungry?
This last year’s show was an open entry exhibit. Normally when you do something like this, you get a couple of good pieces and a lot of not so good ones. This was not at all the case for this show. Shu and I saw that we had enough room (barely) to get all the posters up if we used the walls and fabricated cardboard walls. The posters that did not make it up were ones that did not arrive, or the ones that were too large or heavy that they kept falling down, thus removing themselves from the show. It felt good being able to have everyone’s work up.
The poster show was very well received, a lot of people complimented it and asked questions. A local gallery, Western New York Book Arts Collaborative, asked if they could display it in their gallery and the show may also travel again to ATypeI, the largest type conference in the world. This year it is being held in Russia. That was a great feeling as it has a home and can travel if needed.
Thank you and congratulations to everyone who submitted work. It really was a positive reflection of the current state of typographic design. The pictures shown are primarily close-ups, as the room was dark and I would have needed a professional lighting set up to get decent shots of the posters. These are the best photos that I have of the show, you probably can see random shots if you look around Flickr for some. In no way are these displayed as “the best posters in the show.” They are just the pictures that turned out and fit the vertical format.
Thanks again and next years show will be even better! Thank you to everyone that helped with the show and entered work, it would have been literally nothing without you.
Just got back from TypeCon 2008 and thought I would give a little run down. It was held in Buffalo, NY and was great to see what the home of the Chicken Wing was like.
I got there on Wednesday, July 16th and said my hellos and checked on the poster show. Shu was in charge of the set up so we talked about everything, looked over what came in and was very impressed with the submissions. We decided to put all the submissions in the show, so if you entered, your poster was up (unless it got lost in post or something). I will write another blog entry on the poster show so give me a couple of days to get that up. I have tons of pictures to share of the poster show.
Later that night there was a Stefan Sagmeister event at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum so I hopped on a bus to check it out. Stefan’s speech was great, it was about his book, Things I have Learned in My Life. I really enjoyed his presentation. I really like how he thinks a couple steps beyond design and brings ideas to the masses.
All of the days were packed solid with workshops and presentations. Friday I spoke on a panel about Indie Font Marketing that was moderated by Jan Middendorp. The panel went good, we got to talk about the Black Slabbath punk rock type release party, show the Fred and Sharon Movie and talk about how we really are different from any other type foundry out there. So if you make fonts, hit us up.
Friday night Erik Spiekermann spoke at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. He was his out-spoken “funny” self, but can get a little much after a while. I had to take an extended break in the middle of his presentation and check out the Gallery. I really liked the Gallery a lot, it had a very informal feel to it, very welcoming.
My favorite night was on Sunday night with a trip to the Roycrofter compound. I got to see the community, hear some history and talk to some of the artists there. They had a great dinner for us there and was a great time with great people.
I think my favorite part of TypeCon and why I keep going back is how personal and intimate the conference is. You get to talk to everyone you want to, and everyone is extremely nice. I never will forget when I went to the first TypeCon in Boston, Matthew Carter shows up and we were all geeking out over the fact that he was there. He strolls in when we were eating breakfast on the second day and sits down at my table and just starts talking away. We were all totally nerding out that THE Matthew Carter came to us and was just chatting it up. At the end, he picks up the tab and walks away. I personally think that Matthew set the tone for the conference by being such a humble and caring man. If you have never been to TypeCon, you may want to consider it if you are into type, it really is a unique experience. The next one is in Atlanta, so get ready!
Just when I was about to forget, the London/Minnesota Non-Format update their site and remind me who my daddy is. Some of my favorite new work is the type treatments in these NY Times Style Magazine spreads.
He’s french and he does art direction, graphic design, and much more and I like his work very much, especially the typography and lettering but I think he’s pretty excellent with creating good concepts too, you should definately go check him out, because I think he’s gonna make you a better designer or feel kinda shitty about your own work at least, go check out Merci Bernard.
