100 years ago, the wonderful and simple Johnston typeface was created for the London Underground. If you want this timeless design in your home (or workplace) as well as your commute, that’s possible courtesy of these Johnston Typeface mugs at the London Transport Museum Shop. Read more
Fans of retro typefaces can party in style with these A to Z Paper Plates from Oliver Bonas.
Learning by rote is deeply unfashionable these days, but Proud Creative's Typetables add a new dimension to memorising your multiplication tables.
Proud Creative's type nerds have laid out each table from one through to twelve in a different font to create an educational aid for kids that should be equally pleasing to design conscious parents – you can get your kids learning their arithmetic and school them in typography at the same time.
Typetables are litho printed on 115gsm McNoughton Colorit paper measuring 420 x 594mm. They are available in four delicious colours; pink, green, blue and orange and cost £15 each from Unlimited Editions here.
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.
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.
