First thing first, thank you to our families, customers and supporters!
Six years ago, YouWorkForThem started out as two guys (Michael Cina & Michael Young) running the business from a spare bedroom in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN with less than 50 products. Many people doubted us and what we were going to do with this store. But we kept on working and we now handle over 200 fonts, 1300 book titles, 14,000 stock art items, and many more various products. Read more…
Time for another round of staff picks. Download the full PDF here.
All of the links are as follows:
Two Lines Align
Geometry of feelings
Milton Glaser
Pino Tovaglia: The Rule That Corrects Emotion
Over and Over: A Catalog of Hand-Drawn Patterns
AGI: Graphic Design Since 1950
Jan Van Toorn: Critical Practice
Karel Martens: Counterprint
It is Beautiful…Then Gone
Idea Magazine #328
Idea Magazine #316
Typographie: Emil Ruder
Giancarlo Iliprandi: Disengagement
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!
Once again, another hot use of Black Slabbath has come upon us. Check it out in the really nice pdf zine, Parq. Have you done something with a YouWorkForThem product? Don’t be shy, tell us!
We just got in MoMA’s new book, Modern Swedish Design.
At first glance, it doesn’t stand out from other books on Modern Design, but this book definitely deserves another chance. The rarely translated writings of the founding texts that initiated modern design in Sweden, make it a necessary addition to any designer’s collection. This book shouldn’t be overlooked!
Was browsing around Ghostly’s site today, noticed the word FREE and hit it like a bat out of hell. Then that sent me to adult swim website, which is rocking Black Slabbath. Nice ones all around!
We are proud to present ZINETWO, the second PDF release from our design team. Once again helping to show many unique examples of how to work with our fonts and stock art collections. Each image is tagged with the products used so that you, our beloved customer, can be directed easily to the appropriate product(s).
Download PDF
To promote our new OpenType font, Neighborhood, I hand-painted these little cards to send out to 9 lucky customers that purchase the font. I thought about baking a few casseroles but then I remembered we use UPS to ship and that might get a little too messy. So, these cards will have to do. If one of these should show up in an envelope, you will know that the designers at YWFT greatly appreciate your support and purchases of our quality typefaces and stock art.
Watch Video – We understand many of you out there already have endless ideas and methods for using our stock imagery/vectors. But at the same time, we know there are some people out there that ask, what can you exactly do with these products you sell? Well, the options are endless and reach from print to web to video to anything really (tattoo anyone?). In this video we will show you how you can take a handset font, compose your own type layout in Adobe Illustrator, then paste into Adobe Photoshop and give it a whole new texture and depth using an Escapism image collection.
The products used in this video are Inkantation (type) and Escapism 21 (image fill).
Did you know we have a recommendation section on our site? No? Well, now you do. And we’ve made it even easier by creating this informative and collectible PDF poster available for download. If you like, you can print it out, hang it up, and show that you know your essentials.
(Links in PDF are active, so they will bring you to each book in the store.)
As the icon above states, this is still very much beta phase for us and this blog. A few months back, we updated to the new and much awaited WordPress 2.5. Well to make a long story short, this package was a nightmare on OSX and the new WP admin made the process of blogging much slower, and time is something we are very limited on.
So, we have rolled back to 2.3.3, and hoping this will keep us moving ahead much smoother with our posts. But with this ‘rollback’ there might be some new bugs pop up. Let us know if you catch anything.
Thanks for your patience.
