Stüf Stuff

Ephemeral residue of Stephen Coles. Editor, typographer. Oakland, Berlin. Background image: BonBon Kakku Title Typeface: Times New Roman More Stüf:

[stewf]

Walter Landor’s iconic logo for the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency debuted in 1975. May it live forever!

Here it is alongside that year’s official Muni uniforms. Images: ©SFMTA

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MLK on “white moderates”. When we don’t join the resistance we are complicit. (Read the full letter.) Here’s a version of the quote image for tall and wide screens. Share it! 2020 update: Added a new version of the graphic set in typefaces by Black type designers: Halyard by Joshua Darden (and the team at Darden Studio) and Martin by Tré Seals.

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Marbled end papers from a book of 18th-century type specimens and other printing miscellany. Image via the National Library of France.

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Cars with drawers: AMC Gremlin Voyager prototype with “Grem-Bin”, 1972 Ford 021C concept car by Marc Newson, 1999

[stewf]

Visit Original Link

There was so much anti-immigration rhetoric in the air this summer (as there is still) when Ian McKellen sat down with Marc Maron for an interview, but if only the entire nation could sit still for 4 minutes and reckon with his closing performance of this speech by Sir Thomas More. I trimmed it from the podcast for you, but you should go hear the whole interview which is quite good.

[typeanatomy]

Maybe I need to make a category on this blog for Regrets. Here’s one: I always wished we had more room in the book for two of the most important ways to examine a typeface: its text setting and its family (weights, widths, italics and other variants).

If we had the space to illustrate weights, something to show would be the compensations that type designers make to their design as they add weight. Even the most geometric typefaces are adjusted to preserve counters, maintain overall balance among glyphs, and allow fonts to function at a greater range of sizes. Here we can see some examples of these adjustments, such as larger bowls (P), lower crossbars (A), wider shapes, and more contrast (difference betaween thin and thick strokes). Even Platform, with its intentionally extreme proportions, is adjusted.

One way to determine a quality, professional font family from an amateur or rushed product is to check all the weights and be sure the appropriate adjustments were made.

Typefaces shown: Platform, Futura ND, Battling (based on Elegant-Grotesk)

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This postcard series was published by VW in 2000, using 1950s artwork, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of their Transporter line of trucks. (Images via Alden Jewell)

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After discovering Frank Grießhammer’s Slightly Tracked Script Fonts I felt obliged to produce this public service announcement.

[dailypangram]

The end.

After writing exactly 2k a-z sentences, I’ve quit the Daily Pangram job.

(56 letters)

I’ve published a new original pangram every weekday since April 2, 2008. Time to call it quits. Thanks for reading!

[stewf]

112 Hours, a specimen book for a font collection from Device Somehow I missed this release from last year. The concept, a set numeral-only fonts derived from various lettering sources, has been done before (see Hoefler & Co.’s Numbers), but Rian Hughes takes it to extensive lengths with 112 Hours. The book is both a showing of the typefaces and — something that is often lacking in typeface promotion these days — a nice documentation of the sources. See the photos of old clockfaces, signs, and trains in the book’s introduction. The fonts are available directly from Device or from MyFonts.

[theeconomist]

Alexander von Humboldt left Caracas for Cuba on this day in 1800. The trip made his reputation: he spent five years in South America climbing volcanoes and chasing rivers and returned with 2,000 new plant species

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My proposal for the apple.com homepage today. If there’s any time to reprise the rainbow Apple, it’s now.

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Minikin, ca.1983–86: “Don’t let its impressive good looks fool you.” The Minikin was a 2-seater fiberglass-bodied three-wheeler by D&A Vehicles Inc. of St. Cloud, Minnesota. It was powered by a 16 HP air-cooled Tecumseh engine. Reportedly only 16–17 Minikins were produced. (Photos and info via Alden Jewell and 3-wheelers.com.)

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Floriated Border, a metal font from Central Type Foundry, ca. 1891. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Nintendo, 1991. Map image via Zelda Shrine.

[heringblog]

Alif – for the essence of Oriental dining. Here is a first full glimpse on the new Hering Berlin collection “Alif”. On the basis of powerful Oriental symbols, head of design Stefanie Hering and Illustrator Laura Serra have created a set of dishes with so many good wishes that this collection is sure to become the first choice. With Alif by Hering Berlin, the essence of Oriental dining has now found its way into the 21st century. Pictures by Jens Bösenberg.

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Laura collaborated with Stefanie Hering of the highly acclaimed ceramics brand Hering Berlin to produce this line of decorative dishes. (Not only decorative, but usable and machine washable!) The collection is on display at their flagship store in Berlin right now. I’m super proud of her.

[stewf]

OS X’s somewhat hidden “Special Characters” palette is handy for finding emoji and other stuff not shown on the keyboard. Just hit cntrl-⌘-space to bring up the palette wherever your cursor sits. Then scroll up to see the search field.

The search would be even handier if it accepted synonyms instead of only the official Unicode descriptions (e.g. “eggplant” for aubergine and “corn” for maize). I also wish there was such a search in the iOS keyboard as well.

Update: fortunately there is Graham Hicks’ Emoji Finder which uses synonyms to get you lots of related emoji for terms that get no results in the OS X palette.

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ZCMI parking garage, Salt Lake City, 1958 Photograph by Joern Gerdts for Saturday Evening Post Scanned and retouched by Paul Malon

Behind the Bars Like slaves straining at the bars of their cages, the cars stare out. Surely such a sight would have puzzled the wagon makers who made America’s first automobiles, because they could scarcely have foreseen today’s king-sized problem: Where do you park fifty-five million of them? These glistening, streamlined slaves are thus imprisoned because Salt Lake City has its metropolitan share of this twentieth-century headache. Wide-open suburban shopping centers were drawing off more trade each year. So downtown merchants suffered. Then Zions’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution — the Mormon Church is the principal owner of Salt Lake’s largest department store — struck back: It built this extraordinary $850,000 five-layer cake in its back yard, to receive an automotive filling. Now shoppers can park, 550 at a atime, a few steps from Women’s Clothing or House Furnishings. And, until their mistresses free them to the open road, the cars rest safe in jail.