Welcome to the last Sunday Type of 2007. It has certainly been an interesting year. I recently received an email from a reader pointing out that the links to my archives, prior to August 2007 are missing. Well, of course, that's because iLT didn't come into existence until that month; it certainly feels as though we've been here a lot longer than that.
A little audiovisual stimulation to get us started. I really like these new 30-second spot commercials for British Airways.
How would you like your Garamond, Ma'am?
A really quite wonderful article, Garamond vs Garamond–physiologie d'un caractère typographique, by Peter Gabor, taking a closer look at the different flavours of Garamond. No doubt there are many Garamond fans among you; but which one? Adobe's Garamond, Simoncini, Stempel, ITC?
Barney has very kindly taken the time to translate the entire article into English: Garamond v Garamond–Physiology of a Typeface. Thank you, Barney). I can't describe how impressed I am with this article–it's beautifully written too. Reading this was the highlight of my week–not sure what that reveals about me and my life. Anyway, I wonder what Claude Garamond would make of these? And what about the other Garamonds that don't bear the name?
Many thanks to the eagle-eyed Manuel Martensen for sending me the link.
I also like this cover from the PDF magazine, Blanket. Some interesting text treatments inside too. I don't like that drop-shadow under the text on the cover, but overall…nice.
You can download the PDF from fontanel. The Aqua Issue set in Teardrop, with Canstop used for titling–both freebies from Dafont. Neither font is a masterpiece of type design, but they are fun, and they work well in this context.
There's also a short piece on Erik Spiekermann's blog that I like. Always interesting to know how type designers feel about the use and abuse of their typefaces. The article is called Dublin Type.
I have a number of type-related plans for 2008. First is a news site that's like Digg but just for type-related news; if it ain't type, then it's not news. Not sure what to call the site yet. The working title is type nuts (type-related news). I thought it would be nice to have all the type-related news in one place; and also a good way to further promote all things type. It would also be interesting to see which kind of news items are most popular. So, if you publish a type-related article, or you come across something that gets your typographic juices flowing, then you can submit it to typenuts.
The site will go live some time in January. Also, I haven't forgotten the typography wiki; I'm in the process of starting the design from scratch again–it will be very simple to look at, and hopefully very simple to find your way around. More on that later.
I'd really welcome any comments and suggestions you may have–especially on the typenuts news site. Just leave a comment below or send me a mail. I'll also be redesigning this site a little to make it more easily navigable.
Next up we have another 15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography. I think I'll make this a regular feature (publishing a list every quarter, then a review of the best of the best at the close of each year.). If you missed the first one, you can find it here.
And if you haven't already played with TypeFlash, then….
I would love to hear your feedback on iLT in 2007. Do you have a favourite article? Is there something you'd like to see more of in 2008? A huge thank you to all those who have contributed to iLT. And an extra big (100pt) thank you to Alec Julien for his three articles–So You Want to Create a Font, parts one and two and his Joules Font Case Study; to Julie Elman for her The apostrophe doesn't swing both ways; to Cody Curley for his review of The Logo, Font and Lettering Bible; to Dan Reynolds for his review of Counterpunch; and to Kris Sowersby and Neil Summerour for being such great interviewees. If I listed everyone, it would start to sound like Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar acceptance speech, so I'll just say thank you! I hope that you all have a very happy, productive, creative and typographically exquisite New Year! See you in 2008.