Typography geeks will surely delight in the new range of Typographics mugs from the Big Tomato Company.
Tag: fonts
So You Need a Typeface? Print
If you share my endless fascination with fonts, then you’ll probably love the “So You Need a Typeface?” Print as much as I do.
The title question is printed in the centre of the page; from there you pick why you want a font and follow the Yes/No questions until you reach a font suggestion. Should you actually have a design project in need of a typeface, it could be quite useful, but for those of us with just an amateur interest in such things, it makes an interesting bit of decoration.
It costs $22 from the Felt and Wire Shop.
Typetable Poster
Prints featuring ABCs are pretty common, but less so prints of that other touchstone of childhood learning – times tables.
The Typetable Poster not only lists the times tables 1 to 12, guaranteed to bring back memories of school, but it combines them different typography. Each number has a different font and the dates and creator of the font are listed with it.
It is available exclusively from Pedlars, priced just under £25 unframed.
Just My Type by Simon Garfield
If you share our obsession with typography, then the book “Just My Type” by Simon Garfield is a ‘must-read’.
Taken as a whole, the book provides an informative history of printing process, including mentions for retro favourites Letraset transfers and Dymo label makers. There is a chapter about music that includes the Beatles’ logo and Amy Winehouse’s use of a art deco style fonts, whilst a section on politics looks at how a font contributed to Obama’s election campaign, but also goes further back and close to home with information about the typeface favoured during the creation of the NHS. Between the main chapters, there are shorter sections, Font Breaks, which examine the history and use of individual fonts. I would have welcomed more on 60s counterculture design and the Punk aesthetic, about which more could have been said, but all in all, a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in the history of design.
Just My Type is available to buy on Amazon, currently priced just £7.99 for a suitably stylish hardback.
Type Trumps Game
Top Trumps is a good old-fashioned game that is simple enough to be played by all the family (essential in most households at Christmas) and Type Trumps is a version of it for the design conscious.
The game consists of a set of cards printed with typefaces which have been attributed numerical values for different criteria which allow them to be pitted against each, as with the traditional version of the game. These rankings have been given based on the preferences with the designer, Rick Banks, and are sure to appeal to anyone with an interest in graphic design.
There are two sets of the type trumps available (red or blue), both costing just under £10 from Counter Objects.
Custom Lettering of the 60s and 70s edited by Rian Hughes
Back in the days before computers, designers had to draw everything by hand, which produced some truly unique lettering, the likes of which are celebrated in this book “Custom Lettering of the 60s and 70s”.
Across 576 pages, editor Rian Hughes has collected together over 4,500 examples of headline type from the two decades. Most of the book is dedicated to the designs from the 1960s, with a whole section devoted to psychedelic styles. Whilst most the Sixties’ examples are in black & white (my only small criticism of the book), the smaller section on the Seventies is a riot of colour.
The book is available to buy from Amazon, priced just under £24.
