Page 1: Great Expectations is a typographic experiment designed to explore the relationship between graphic design, typography and the reading of a page. The book features contributions from 70 leading designers and typographers, all of whom have reinterpreted the first page of Charles Dickens’ novel. The text was chosen in part because it directly references lettering as Pip searches for clues about his family from the letterforms inscribed on their tombstone. The brief encouraged the contributors to explore, challenge or celebrate the conventions of book typography. Each layout is accompanied by a short rationale explaining the designer’s decision-making process.

Contributors include: William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand, Robin Kinross, Experimental Jetset, Erik Spiekermann, Sam Winston, Phil Baines, A Practice for Everyday life, Tony Chambers, Morag Myerscough and more.
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Meet Herbie, the latest display font from Morten Iveland at the Infamous Foundry. As the name might indicate, Herbie is inspired by Herb Lubalin’s work and the decorative style and kerning of his era.

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I’ve been a fan of Washington D.C.’s Matt Chase for quite a while now. Matt has a lot of versatility as a designer/illustrator and I’m always impressed with his ability to work with a gamut of styles. He transitions so well between smart identity work, engaging, colorful illustration and on-point lettering.

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Photo: Nobrow Press

Ping Zhu is an illustrator from Los Angeles, now calling London her happy abode. Most recently, she released a beautiful Swan Lake concertina published by Nobrow Press, which features images of the performance and all the happenings behind the scenes as well.

The concertina is just one of the many wonderful projects Ping has worked on. Some of her other clients include the New York Times, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The New Yorker, and Jamie Magazine. Her playful and colorful style shines through in everything she creates, especially in her defined dry brushstrokes and mark making. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

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A Huge thanks to WMC Fest for sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed!

Now in its third year, the Weapons of Mass Creation Fest is a must-attend event for creatives in the Midwest. Its goal is to inspire and enable the creative mind and will feature 20 speakers, 20 designers, and nearly 30 bands over the weekend of June 8-10, 2012. Put on by the Cleveland-based creative agency Go Media and an army of volunteers, WMC Fest has a homegrown, indie vibe that sets it apart from other national-caliber creative conferences. It’s also a great value, with 3-Day All-Access passes starting at only $60! So come to WMC Fest to network, collaborate, get inspired, learn new tricks, and meet new friends! You can’t miss it! This year’s speakers include Johnny Cupcakes, Austin Kleon, Kate Bingaman Burt, and the Friends of Type. From now through May 21, enjoy 20% off on fest tickets by using promo code “grainedit” at checkout.

Interested in sponsoring the Grain Edit Feed? Visit our sponsorship page for more info.

I was sent this really cool book—or “pamphlet”, as they call it—called Gratuitous Type / No. 2. A self proclaimed “pamphlet of typographic smut”, this small anthology of current interesting typography, lettering and fonts really runs the gamut of interesting new styles. With an advanced design and extremely impressive printing, the publisher/designer and editor (Elana Schlenker) has done a wonderful job putting everything together.

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One of my favorite book cover designers, John Gall, has a new site up and running. John is a designer with an incredible stylistic range — I love how he is so able to design for such a variety of titles and narratives.

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Get Lost, Find Yourself by Philipp Dornbierer

Wander asked some of their favorite designers and illustrators to imagine a postcard from everywhere and nowhere at once. The results have been exciting to see and are updated frequently on their new blog. All the images are available to download as high-res iPad or iPhone wallpaper, so you can grab one for the road.

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To the M83 fans that were unable to attend their show last week in Seattle, the gig poster is now available. The limited edition three color print was created by our good friends Don and Ryan Clark of Invisible Creature and includes a special dark metallic copper ink. Pick up a copy at the Poster Cabaret.

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Week-long exclusive sponsorships of the Grain Edit RSS feed are now available.

The sponsorship price is $350 and includes the following:

• The ability to promote your product to Grain Edit’s estimated 38,000+ RSS Readers, 25,000+ Twitter Followers, 12,800+ Facebook fans and close to 200,000 monthly site visitors.
• Exclusive week-long sponsorship.
• A promotional post at the start of the week that links back to your website or product page. Since it’s a sponsored post and not an ad, it will be viewable by our on-site readers as well those who subscribe to our RSS, Twitter and Facebook feeds.
• The promo will be added to sponsor category and reside permanently in our archives.

Grain Edit has received press mentions in the Guardian UK, Apartment Therapy, Design Sponge, Dwell online, Flavorpill, Josh Spear and was named #16 in the London Times top 50 of the world’s best design blogs.

To schedule an exclusive sponsorship/see available dates, please visit our sponsors page.

To our readers:
We know some of you will be unhappy with this decision, but in order to keep up with site costs and fund future projects we hope you understand. We’ll try to keep the posts as unobtrusive as possible and limit them to once a week. It won’t be all bad, some exciting things will transpire out of this including contests and ticket giveaways to really great design conferences.