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Typography

Photography

Photos of Graceful, Nude Typography [NSFW]

By Alison Nastasi on

You could describe Anastasia Mastrakouli‘s Naked Silhouette Alphabet artworks as a photo or printmaking series since she uses her nude body to imprint her limbs and flesh against a steamy wall of glass. Individually, images of letters like “D” appear to be a voyeuristic snapshots, but Mastrakouli’s alphabet — which we first saw on Beautiful/Decay — is gracefully choreographed. The series is most powerful when viewed as a whole. We’ve shared more of Mastrakouli’s nude alphabet in our gallery. … Read More

Design

This ‘Effing Typeface’ Is the Dirtiest Font You’ll Ever See [NSFW]

By Judy Berman on

Now that everyone under 40 is an amateur graphic designer who can use “kern” in a sentence, the Internet is bursting with what you might call “typography porn.” Brooklyn-based designer Alex Merto makes that figurative term literal with his Effing Typeface, an alphabet where A is for anus, B looks like a pair of breasts, and so on. The font isn’t for the delicate design geeks among us, but those who don’t mind mixing their chaste love for typography with dirtier proclivities can page through Merto’s NSFW ABCs, which we discovered via HuffPost, below. … Read More

Books

10 Obscure Punctuation Marks That Should Really Get More Play

By Emily Temple on

Recently, we were apprised of a proposed addition to the world of punctuation: the “ElRey Mark,” a symbol that looks a bit like an exclamation point with a dot at each end and is meant to be read as “somewhere between the deadpan period and the excitable exclamation point.” That is, it’s the perfect punctuation mark for every polite email you’ll ever send. In honor of the ElRey, we’ve put together a list of ten obscure punctuation marks that we’d love to see in print more… Read More

Art

Around the World in Beautiful Typography

By Emily Temple on

Turkish photographer and designer Gokhun Guneyhan, whose work we recently spotted over at Visual News, travels around the world taking photographs of cities and their architecture, and then interprets each city, country or street in overlaid typographic letters. We love the way the end results look like posters for beautiful places, and the way a certain locale can be so perfectly evoked with a delicate swoop of line or a serif — and hey, Guneyhan’s great photos don’t hurt. After the jump, check out a few of our favorites, and then head on over to Behance to see more of Guneyhan’s work. … Read More

Design

Mei Linn Chan's Gorgeous, Handmade Leaf Type

By Caroline Stanley on

And now for the latest addition to the typography we’re totally obsessed with file: Spotted by Visual News, this simple, handmade typeface created by Malaysian designer Mei Linn Chan really caught our eye. Using an exacto knife to carefully carve out each letter and number, Chan follows the veins of the leaves to trim decorative designs into the inside spaces. The resulting effect is pretty lovely, don’t you think? … Read More

Art

Adorable Typographic ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ Posters for Adventurers’ Walls

By Emily Temple on

Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes is one of the most beloved comic strips of all time, filled with humor, wisdom, and a whole lot of adventuring. So it seems perfect that artist Emily McLain would create these cheeky typographic posters featuring sage quotes from the mouths of our favorite odd couple. Plus, “reality continues to ruin my life” is pretty much a daily refrain over here, so we’d love to have it in poster form. Click through to check out our favorites from the series, which we spotted over at Inspiration Feed, and then head on over to McLain’s Tumblr to see more of her work. … Read More

Design

The Movie Alphabet: An Amazing Series of Typographic Film Posters

By Emily Temple on

As you may have noticed, we’re suckers for awesome interpretations of movie posters and typography in all its forms, so we’re positively tickled by Meagan’s Movie Alphabet, an A-to-Z of movies by artist Meagan Hyland, which we spotted over at Explore. We can’t think of a better way to learn our pop culture alphabet (though we admit a few of these would be slightly out of place on kindergarten class walls). Click through to see some of our favorites from the series, and then head on over to Hyland’s website to see the entire collection unfold, and once the alphabet is complete, to purchase prints for yourself. … Read More

Design

National Stereotypes as Typographical Flags

By Emily Temple on

Quick: what are the first three things that come to your head when you think of Norway? Fjords was in there, right? Right. In Kirill Zaytsev’s clever series Flagsters, which we spotted over at My Modern Met, the Moscow-based graphic designer plays with typography to represent the flags of the world’s countries with their written-out cultural stereotypes. Most of them are pretty spot on — especially Germany’s, which made us laugh — but the result is also just quite nice to look at. Click through to check out Flagsters, and then head here to see more of Zaytsev’s work. … Read More

Design

10 Auteurs and the Typefaces They Love

By Matthew Bower on

If you think typeface isn’t an important element comprising a film’s aesthetic and conveying its story, you’re deeply mistaken. Don’t believe it? Try watching this video of mismatched fonts used in famous movie title sequences and see if there’s a difference. Typeface design has played a crucial role in cinema from the very beginning, when silent films relied on intertitle fonts that were both stylistically memorable and easy to read. Today, there’s an entire industry dedicated to movie title design, and typography plays a crucial role. But rather than tailor their typefaces to explicitly depict a film’s content graphically or pictorially (as many of Hollywood’s big blockbuster producers like Spielberg or Disney are wont to do), some directors prefer to make a more understated use of type design that reflects their artistic vision. Here’s a list of some of the most iconic love affairs between bold directors and the fonts that we can’t imagine seeing their movies without. … Read More

Books

Gorgeous Vintage Japanese Magazine Covers

By Alison Nastasi on

There are 650 incredible illustrations in Book Cover Design in Japan 1910-40, which is currently selling for up to $400 online, but thankfully the rare book maestro behind website 50 Watts has uncovered a copy to share with us. The most-wanted title is in Japanese only, but if you’re not up to par on East Asian dialects, fear not. You’ll only need your eyes in this instance, and our gallery past the break proves why. The colorful, bold, early 20th-century artworks show a range of typography and illustration styles, from modernist-savvy reads to children’s periodicals. In many cases, they are indistinguishable from contemporary designs. Click through for a closer look, and visit 50 Watts for more gorgeous, vintage, Japanese magazine covers. … Read More