Fresh work coming from Mr. Brad Woodard in sunny Southern California. Brad’s an accomplished designer/illustrator and an info-graphics whiz to boot. I love his color palettes, form-making and how deliciously his illustration style bleeds into his information graphics. The two play very nicely together.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Wonderful decorative spin on Bodoni produced by classmates Nigel Bents, Paul Oakley and Jonny Holmes at the Chelsea College of Art & Design. I love the intersection of digital and analog in this project — ultimately arriving in the form of a printed piece.
Amazingly talented letterer, James Edmondson has a portfolio to get completely jealous over. With a keen eye for beautiful forms, he creates type that is reminiscent of the old masters. He keeps his collection of typography modern by adding some interesting and original decorative elements in places like swashes and terminals. With such an exciting portfolio, I’m really interested to see what he does when he graduates from college—I see a very successful typographic career ahead!
