This really is a place and a typography masterpiece I would love to visit and take picture of .

The photo you’re watching (more in the whole article) belongs to a 18th century chapel, the Ermida Nossa Senhora da Conceição, in the Belém area of Lisbon – Portugal – reopened as an art gallery that shows work by contemporary Portuguese artists.

I don’t know why, curiously, in others blogs you can read that this building belongs to a surgery association (!!!), in truth, the real owners of the gallery and R2 Design Studio, that realized the facade, was inspired to create this composition to reunite in it both the original spiritual use and the actual cultural destination by creating something artistic, in order to attract the attention of new visitors in an area full of important historical buildings.

They started by painting the building white and then used it as the canvas for the repetition of plenty statements referring to God. The name itself of the project is “Vai com Deus” (Go with God). The authors, Lizá Ramalho and Artur Rebelo explain some technical detail in SEDG site:

“The words were rendered at various depths and scales in Knockout type, chosen because it is a sans serif typeface that offers a wide range of sizes and expressions. The letters were built from Intasa MDF hydrofuge sheets, an environmentally friendly product recommended for moist environments. A thick paint made it possible to simulate the texture of the façade.”

The whole thing was built up in only two months and with a small budget, but it has been a real success.
They won an Honor Award from the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) and is one of the winners of the Type Directors Club’s TDC 55.

Well done!

Photography by Fernando Guerra

The Brazilian design studio PS2 created this beautiful self promotional typographic memory card game.

This concentration game consist of 20 pairs of card, each one with a different type family.

Set has some extra cards with a typographical glossary and the explanation of the sentence that names the gift: “the quick brown fox jumps to over the lazy dog”.
The package also contains a text about the evolution of type design, locating in history each font used in the cards.

Set is the annual gift to customers and friends of the graphic design universe and of the agency and comes in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies.

JUST BRILLIANT.

Some Spec:
Principal Type: Univers Condensed, by Adrian Frutiger
Paper: Condat Silk + Matte
Colors: Pantone
Finishing: Lustre Lamination + Die Cut

Click to view a larger image

As many of you probably know, Type Directors Club defines itself “an international organization for all people who are devoted to excellence in typography, both in print and on screen”.
This year edition of TDC2, its Typeface Awards had 165 participants from 26 countries resulting in 18 winning entries representing 8 countries.

The jury was chaired by Fiona Ross, lecturer at University of Reading, and Associate Designer to Tiro Typeworks , included Ken Barber (House Industries); Jonathan Hoefler (Hoefler & Frere-Jones); Richard Kegler (P22 Type Foundry), and Gabriel Martinez Meave (Kimera Type Foundry, Mexico ).

All winners have been awarded with the Certificate of Typographic Excellence in Type Design.

All winning entries will be published in Typography 30: The Annual of the Type Directors Club available at the end of 2009 (free to all members of TDC).
While you’re waiting, you can enjoy a copy of Typography 29 (with last year’s winners, and a lot, lot more), which I highly recommend.

Here it is again the list of my 10 favorite readings of the week.
Let’s start.

• Most brilliant is new Zippo advertising campaign. Even if message clearly exaggerate the amount of space taken by discarded lighters, it shows an interesting point of view that probably few of us had considered before. Read a full article on StillAd ;
• Most Useful is The 13 most essential plugin for WordPress by Net-tuts. Even if I don’t agree to all of them because I think some plugin in list are not strictly necessary (don’t forget that each plugin you activate eats resources and slows a bit your wordpress!), there are some I didn’t know. I would add to list Login Lockdown: detect and record IP addresses of every failed login attempt and if more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range;
  
• Most stunning is Step into my Cardboard Office from CR Blog. Their article tells about Nothing, a new Amsterdam creative agency that built its internal working spaces with cardboard. Article has plenty of amazing pictures of the studio;
• Most funny is Comments you won’t have seen by DavidAirey.com. I read this clever and wit blog very often and surely there are a lot of graphic design post to point out (I especially like the “Logo of the month” series), but this one was, really, exhilarating;
• Most Interesting is Achieve your goals with Incremental Persistence. I’ve found this article on DevLounge. Very powerful explanation about how persistence conquers all. You can’t miss the linked John Reese article on Income.com too;
• Most Beautiful is a showcase of SmashingMagazine of 40 typography-related websites and blogs. Astounding creativity and a lot of knowledge here;
• Most Inspiring is a DesignM.ag Showcase about landscape photography. Incredibly, the shot of the cypresses has been taken not far away from where I live. Those trees are really famous among photographers here;
• Most Valuable is The Ups and Downs of Business by Chris Tomlison. I’ve found by chance this 5th and last article of an interesting series, so, my advice is to read them all;
• My favorite artist is Jay Horinouchi creates dreamy and intriguing worlds filled with Japanese-inspired creatures. Amazing painting technique. He is having a solo exhibition at Möbius Gallery in Los Angeles until April 7, 2009.

This Sunday, I’ll list my 10 favourite websites of the week.
They may include articles, video and portfolios.
Let’s start.

• Most Comprehensive is Your Rights as a Photographer by Tutorial9.net: a complete and extensive guide about commercial and legal rights when you use your fotocamera, there also are two downloadable samples of models releases;

• Most Creative is A little something to remind me… by CR Blog that shows how photographer Michael Hughes renew the concept of tourist attractions in his new book Souvenirs, where he take a shot of a postcard of them, skillfully merged with the real view;

• Most Outrageous is Shavethepussy.com. Yes, as the name says, you have all the tools to shave a pussy and get a score to win the foam/moisturizer set. Honestly, I didn’t understand if this site was made to really promote the set or the amazing mastery of the flash design, but one thing for sure it gets noticed!!;

• Most Funny is Make my logo bigger video on YouTube. How often customers obstruct us from doing our work with request of the kind: “I want my logo bigger”, “All of that white space is wasted”, “I want more colors”?. Well, it has been created a new set of tools right for this purpose.

• Most Useful is How to Write An Effective Design Brief By JCD Blog. Starting from the definition of design brief itself it analyzes what goals of design could be, then it draws a roadmap through target market, design specifications, benchmark and deadline.

• Most Interesting is Typographic Nostalgia: Bell Centennial by Speak Up. This article talks of the creation of the typeface Bell Centennial, used for the AT&T telephone book, as an update of old Bell Gothic. A lot of good pics of the rare booklet that illustrate the process.

• Most Beautiful is The beauty of old maps by Design Daily. I just love vintage photos and illustrations. Period.

• Most Valuable is 10 Timeless Business Tips From 10 Millionaires by Quick Sprout. From venture capital to savings, from starting a business to investing in ourselves.

• My favourite portfolio: Philipp Zurmoehle at http://www.phillennium.com/ is a fine and creative graphic and web designer from Norway.

It must be some kind of “universal law”, I guess.
As you say his dreadful name you can see around you horrified, astounded, disgusted faces, wondering if you’re serious or if you’re only joking, when you’re talking about including it in your project (none of two: just testing the law ).

Every graphic and web designers in the world agree in hating poor dear Comic Sans.
Even those that use Microsoft Word to layout books, booklet and brochure.
Even those that use Photoshop to project a logo.
Even those that use Dreamveaver to write a post because they’re not able to hand-write a tag directly in WordPress.(*)

All of them, however, have one certainty: Comic Sans is ugly and despicable and everyone that use it and/ or denies it is as crappy as it is.

I wonder how does it feel about it that poor guy, Vincent Connare that created it in 1994.
Who knows… it could be he uses Oscar Wilde philosophy “I don’t care of your ill talking… as long as you keep on talking”.
But since he is a big professional and he probably makes big laughs of all this fuss…

Let’s say it.
Where does all of this hatred for Comic Sans comes from?
My opinion is that Comic Sans is a good font (I don’t fear to be considered crappy if I deny the universal truth!).
Good leading, good kerning. And it is nice and suitable for its destination: comics.
PERIOD.

My opinion is that truth lies somewhere else.
For years this font has been used and abused A LOT in web and editorial projects from “wannabe” designers (which it means that it was appreciated!) in an improper way, and I think that this is the real reason that lead to such saturation.

It has even been created a website, BanComicSans.Com that has started a petition to ban Comic Sans because, it states, “it threaten to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built”. There also is a section where you can download all kind of comics fonts to use in your project to make you stop using Comic Sans (what’s the sense of this?).
I don’t understand if the intention of this website is serious (oh my God!), controversial, or just a joke (I hope so).

Banning a font?
Ridiculous. Bad designer would use something else.
Why this makes some people upset?
After all bad allows to good to stand out, isn’t it?

(*)
YES! I’ve seen and read about people doing those things. Really.

It is possible some readers will find this argument rather basic, however I’ve heard very often typographer I know complaining about a lack of fonts and colors management in files they receive for printing.

A good rule of thumb, especially if you’re starting to collaborate with a new typographer, is always to ask first how he prefers files to be prepared.
My favourite file format is PDF, however you can have some problems with it if typographer has an older version of Adobe Acrobat than yours (it is possible file won’t open at all or, worse, a black blob will print where you put transparencies), so most of times best solution is to go with EPS, a hybrid “container” format that incorporates both images and curves.

Problem with EPS is that if your composition has some text, and the font you used to create your paragraph is not installed on the computer that will open file, your text won’t display nor print as you intended, but system default font will be used.

To solve this issue you have to embed the font in the EPS when you save file.
However, even if EPS files can contains either images and type they are placed in a page layout as images. Font and style attributes are saved within the EPS file when it is created – such as by an illustration program, and simply embedding font cannot always be a solution.

Other than font embedding there are a few other ways you could deal this.
You can:

1. Provide the fonts along with the job (assure first if any licensing agreement applies)
2. Convert all the fonts to curves in the EPS file (but the text will no more be editable)
3. Deliver two versions of the EPS file:
a) A master version with editable text;
b) A copy with text converted to curves.

Next detail you have to take care of is the color model you are using.
Is the job going to be printed using spot color or process color?
Let’s assume you have to print a two-color job – for example, blue and red. If some objects were marked using process blue (a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and the text in the page layout file was marked using a spot color depending on colors used, four or five plates may be output instead of two (three to four for the process colors and one for the spot color).

Furthermore, it is a good idea to ask for a laser proof to your typographer to check your output before sending your composition to final production.
The reason is that the service bureau’s equipment uses PostScript. By printing a proof using the equal page-description language, you will be able to obtain an accurate replica before the files are committed to high-end output. EPS and PDF files must be output to a PostScript device for them to print the right way because their instructions are written using PostScript.

As a final recommendation I would say to avoid to save using JPEG compression, neither for EPS nor for PDF, because it is a quality loss format (probably you won’t notice much difference on display but once on paper you’d really regret your choice) and you lose quality each time you re-save your document.

It took almost three years and three designers to develope it, but now is here and it has a whole website on its own.

Front page of website immediately announce: “The most influential sans serif of the digital revoulution now has a serif companion: Introducing FF Meta Serif“.

All through the 90′s designer Erik Spiekermann had tried to create a complementary face for his successful FF META. Many times happened that he was asked what could be the best serif match for it and he realized that he just had to create it.

He finally asked collaboration to designers Christian Schwartz and Kris Sowersby.

Development of the new font started both from the original META for the body (which, in its uniqueness, is heavier in the center stroke, while the two end strokes are lighter) and from Antiqua face to take inspiration for serifs.

In website there is the whole thread of eMails exchanged between three designers during the period of creation to present the story of the font, which shows the great love they have for their profession and the great care for details they had all the time.

We can buy both font in various combination of packages, and if we use FF META SERIF in our designs we can also submit our work to be featured (if selected) in the gallery and enter the competition to get a FONTBOOK.