Well, looks like Atomicdust embraced that exact opportunity with their rebrand of Rockwood Charcoal (nice website design too):

Via: Identity Designed

Video

I love the idea of billboards doubling up as seats, shelters and ramps. The classic (maybe even retro?) colour and typeface combinations are minimal and striking. Nice work by Ogilvy & Mather France, I’m sure Paul Rand would have approved.

Found via: Telegraph Travel.

See many more vintage posters on Megan’s blog Quad Royal.

Name: Darnyill
Home: Cape Town
Age: 20
Occupation: Student (BA in Art History)
Email: darnyill@live.co.za
Facebook: Facebook.com/Darnyill
Tumblr: Jesusaintdead.tumblr.com

Typedeck: Hey man, so how many years have you been designing?

Darnyill: Well it’s difficult to put a label on ‘designing’, since I’ve always had an obsession for general visuals and well-designed things, but ‘officially’ I started doing layout for my high school magazine when I was 15.

T: What was the first thing you ever drew?

D: I wish I had the exact answer to that, but my oldest memory of a drawing was a scuba diver when I was 4. It looked good until I had to draw the water which meant scribbling all over it in blue.

T: How did you get into designing?

D: Well I’ve always loved drawing as a child. It was my thing. I was the ‘best drawer’ in my class when I was 6. I fucking owned that shit so heavy, I burnt anyone’s ass in a draw off.

By the age of 6 I was bartering drawings for sweets and stationery. But like I said, for my school magazine. My first intent wasn’t to do design, I just liked the committee and when I suggested I could help out with visuals I was given the full layout-artist title and thrown in the deep-end. Which was fun? As I learnt more I got more obsessed.

T: What are your plans for this Year?

D: Right now I’m taking it easy and just going to work on University. Maybe these holidays I might get involved with some zines – I’m actually busy with an illustration for Jungle Jim Magazine (www.junglejim.org)

T: Who inspires you?

D: In terms of the work I do; Siggi Eggertsson, Jordan Metcalf, Daniel Ting Chong, Alex Trochut, ill-studio, Tom Sachs to name but a few.
Otherwise just the small things around me.

T: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

D: Behind a 30” designing for Nike.

T: What do you do when you’re not designing?

D: Spend too much time drooling over blogs. Cook here and there. Caffeine & Music, always. Wander around. Look at clothes. Whistle. Beat box. I try to do some free ride mountain-biking if I can manage.

T: Any Last words and thanks?

D: Hmm, nothing is all that bad. Ever. And thanks to people reblogging my posts on designersof.com and liking my page on FB. Please do so now: Facebook.com/Darnyill

Thanks!

Click on the Links bellow for Hi res.

It has an interesting story too: Jaqui Sharples of Lancashire, England, found this 24 line woodcut letter on eBay where it was being advertised as a “3”. An avid letterpress enthusiast she immediately recognised it as an ampersand, bought it for only £3 and made the beautiful print pictured above.

Sharp eyed Flickr member alan.98 then identified the typeface as “Poynder” from Delittle of York’s 1938 specimen book:

Jaqui runs a small studio called Print for Love of Wood where she makes many more amazing prints, take a look!

The strong contrast between thick and thin strokes was explored during the design process by putting brush to paper and writing by hand. The variety of the curves in the different letters has a unique informality, inspired by the joyfulness of the Brazilian people.

Here are a few images of the design process:

The letter “r”, inspired by Pedra da Gávea:

Fluid lines, simulating the agility of the athletes’ movements:

The letter “m”, inspired by the Copacabana sidewalk:

Read more at Rio2016.org.

How about this ambigram! (turn the design upside down and it remains the same)

Anyway, I’m a bit of a sucker for the bold and minimal, like those vintage Scandinavian logos I posted a while back, so the ones that really stood out to me are the monograms where letters are represented as a unified symbol:

Kimberly-Clark Corporation

1R Radiators

Marcona Corporation

Keystone International Inc.

Barkow Petroleum

Channel 7 (ABC)

The Growth Fund of America

United Engineers

Sierra Corporation

Applied Power

There’s a lot more great design work in Velcrosuit’s portfolio, so be sure to take a gander. No pun intended since these are ducks, not geese!

If you’re into hand lettering and particularly calligraphy, there’s a new Tumblr you might like. It’s called calligraphi.ca. Go and take a look, in most cases the materials used are documented below the picture which makes it quite useful.

2. Calligraffiti

In the same vein, another blog of interest is Calligraffiti.nl documenting the work of Amsterdam based Niels Shoe Meulman.

3. Upside down N

And lastly something quirky: Meulman (mentioned above) has been documenting the incorrect use of serif Ns in signage around the world. In his own words:

From an early age on, I’ve noticed signs where an N with serif is placed upside down. This awareness is the first thing that triggered me to become a graphic artist.

To spot upside down N’s you must travel. Upside down serif N’s are everywhere. And nowhere.

For more examples of this phenomenon, check out upsidedownn.com, you are even invited to submit your own finds.

There have always been ghosts in the machine. Random segments of code, that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul. – Quote from I, Robot (2004)

Glitches are described as “sudden, usually temporary malfunctions or irregularities of equipment” and have been embraced and turned into art, both musically and visually, for at least the last two decades or so. What is it that lends such an aesthetically pleasing quality to electronic error? Maybe it’s the notion that computers are meant to run on pure logic, so when they produce something random or unexpected, our inborn curiosity is awoken. Or maybe we momentarily recognise our own flawed human nature, and it freaks us out just a little. Who knows!

Jennifer Daniel, designer for Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported that their Docucolor 240 conked out whist printing proofs for the magazine. The resulting artworks were posted on Flickr. I remember spending hours as a student, trying to emulate this exact look for my projects!

There are currently 12 units listed, and you can even download them all in a single bundle:

• Meet Your Type
• The Typographer’s Glossary
• Erik Spiekermann’s Typo Tips
• Type Anatomy
• The Right Font for the Job
• Figuring It Out
• What Is OpenType?
• Styles, Weights, and Widths
• Helvetica
• Webfonts
• Licensing 101

Go to: FontShop Education.

See more at ednacional.com.

The photos are intriguing enough and certainly provide excellent fodder for reblogging and pinning enthusiasts, but what really makes this project worth a closer look is that each photo can be “flipped over” to inspect the back. What could possibly be of interest on the back of a photo you ask? Well, you would be surprised!

Layer upon layer of stamps, scribbled annotations and clippings offer a haphazard roadmap to the photo’s history. Things to look out for include subject codes, what the photographer was paid, details of when and how many times the photo was published and of course the accompanying captions.

Call me strange, but I find these way more exciting than the photos themselves:

Read more about this project on the NYT Lens blog.

Designer and illustrator Simone Massoni sent me a copy of his latest project – this very cool A-frame 2012 calendar entitled Chicks & Types.

I know, it’s already March, but let’s just say our postal service isn’t exactly renowned for its efficiency… Anyway!

Each month is represented by a well respected typeface, accompanied by a whimsical pin-up girl. This quirky match perfectly captures the dilemma we type-lovers face: how do you choose! They each have their own unique personality and their own sexy curves, it’s easy to end up falling in love with a different one every week… I’m talking about the typefaces of course.

A few of my go-to faces are featured, such as DIN, Avant Garde, Rockwell, Helvetica and Bickham.

See more of this calendar and the rest of Simone’s great work on Behance, as well as on his site SketchThisOut.

The video from Jonah Kessel is dated September 2011, but I only discovered it now. Take a look:

Just Because: Tricycle Calligraphy 水书法器 on Vimeo.

Kaiser, Zizou Sans and Zizou Slab were all commissioned  from Commercial Type by Fast Company’s creative director Florian Bachleda as part of a design overhaul. Co. Design, one of the magazine’s online counterparts launched their redesign four months later, using specially hinted versions of Kaiser and Zizou Slab to great effect.

Kaiser:

Conceptualised by Christian Schwartz and Florian Bachleda as a hybrid of a condensed sans they discovered in an old German specimen book and Paul Renner’s Plak, it was expanded into a full range of widths by Vincent Chan.

Zizou Sans:

Christian Schwartz gives us a glimpse into his Zizou Sans design process:

It originally began as my attempt to draw Antique Olive from memory, but ended up with its own distinct personality. I surprised myself with what I remembered correctly (i.e. the swing to the top of the bottom bowl in the lowercase a, and the distinctive top of the lowercase t), but was impressed by just how wrong I was able to get certain things. So much for my photographic memory for type!

Zizou Slab:

Schwartz on the design of the slab serif version:

I decided to start from the simplest place I could – snapping rectangular slabs onto the sans with a minimum of contrast – to see what that would yield before I tried to be any more clever with the design.

Almost too easy!

I always find it fascinating how a font looks exponentially more interesting and lively seen in use compared to a plain specimen, don’t you think?