Upsod returns to our screens with v13. For those who don’t know Upsod is the design diary of American Illustrator Dustin Amery Hostetler whose portfolio is here.
Spotting this has got me reminiscing about the good old times with Public Therapy, a typography diary of sorts my friend Nic put together when we were at University. Who is up for the PTO revvial then!?
Posted by Dom
For you to visit the ‘Alan Fletcher: Fifty years of graphic work (and play)’ exhibition at the design museum (final day is February 18th). I went on Saturday as part of my 2007 week on week off exhibition policy (poke brought me lots of gallery memberships for xmas, and therefore, to do their generosity justice said policy has been introduced).
I first became aware of Alan Fletcher through his book the ‘Art of looking Sideways’, but it is only since his death last year that I have begun to fully appreciate his infleunce and stature within design, so I went along in attempt to fill in the many gaps.
I’m glad I did, what a great story, from start to finish, his training, travelling, design philosophy and career development was fascinating. I loved the self promotional work created for his first company, Fletcher Forbes Gill, plus the moving card he produced to announce he was leaving New York and the typographic posters he did for a coffee shop and much much more - I left completely exhausted, partly due to my hangover, but mostly because of the lifetime of sheer skill I had just absorbed. If you can get there in time, go for it!
Posted by Dom
Earlier this week we had a visit from type design legend Bruno Maag. As you would expect Bruno gave us a very passionate presentation about the love of his life, typography…
We spoke about the appropriate use of Comic Sans (one of his colleges designed it), his foundry’s unique licence to customise linotype fonts for clients, his take on the present and future of screenbased type and lots of other stuff a multimedia design trained person only understands in places!
If you don’t know, Bruno founded the type foundry Dalton Maag with Angela Dalton 15 years ago. The foundry has been designing fonts and logo’s for a wide range of companies, The National Lottery, BMW, Telewest and Vodafone to name a few.
I came across their work a few years ago, and purchased a sample book they had for sale at the time - Bruno kindly gave us a pack of his latest sample publications, all very nicely designed by Mode.
I’m hoping with a bit of luck ‘Speak to me’ the foundry’s current touring exhibition will make it’s way east in the near future 
Posted by Dom
Just spotted the ‘Type selector’ in my new magma catalogue delievered this lunchtime.
The ‘user friendly font swatch’ presents a whopping 226 typefaces to inspire those who like to set type of a day time - possibly another award winning xmas present suggestion!
Posted by Dom
Following Mr Richardson’s comment on pleasing Penguin book covers, I thought I would bring to your attention the portfolio of David Pearson who has played a big part in the design of Penguin’s recent output.
Posted by Dom
Here are some links I’ve been meaning to post over the last week or so, everything from wearing meat on your head to the construction of the interweb.
Ok first up is some real meat heads, check out the efforts of the meat head community gallery at ‘Hats of meat’.
Secondly, whilst putting together a leaving card for a Swedish colleague last week I was directed to the Swearsaurus (NSFW Ads), which is fairly hardcore granted - but as you imagine can be very amusing when looking for that perfect goodbye message in Swedish!
Have you been playing the highly addictive flash game Line Rider recently? Well here is a video demonstrating what I suspect to be untrue skills.
Lastly did you know that 95% of webdesign is typography?
Posted by Dom
Dimitre Lima has been one of my inspirations since 2002, without his encouragement, I’m not sure how useful I’d be in my teaching role.
As a designer his work ranges from type design, to photography, video work, and experimental generative graphics. His artworks have been featured in numerous international festivals and he has many notable collaborations to his name.
Explore his work at the newly refurbished dmtr.org
or purchase his fonts at myfonts.com at 50% off till Nov 1st
Posted by Iman
Just stumbled across Lamarde’s Flickr account, a very impressive archive of Tobacco advertising prints from 1910 - 1989, great typography and illustration.
Posted by Dom
I keep seeing these posters crop up on the big www, so I had to post them in case you’ve managed to miss them. I think they’re great - produced by the Amsterdam Wieden Kennedy shop for Nike to commemorate the Italian success at World Cup this summer.
Posted by Dom
