If you’re the kind of person who can’t help but swoon when you come across a smartly-conceived building — or who bristles when confronted with a shoddy structure that resembles nothing more than a great, big box of ugly — then you’re going to love this 3D typography series by UK-based graphic designer Christopher Labrooy, which pays homage to the work of famed architects like Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Toyo Ito, and Oscar Niemeyer. Click through to see what he’s come up with so far, and leave your nominations for who he should tackle next in the comments. We’re thinking Renzo Piano. Or Steven Holl. Or SANAA. Or Jeanne Gang. Really, he can’t go wrong!
The very best band that broke up last year, Double Dagger, had a great song called “Punk Rock vs. Swiss Modernism” — a tension that, as graphic designers and hardcore musicians, they understood well. It isn’t clear whether their fellow designer, Mike Joyce of Stereotype Design, had the song in mind when he embarked upon his Swissted posters, but they certainly serve as an apt companion piece. The series uses Swiss modernist typography to reimagine real flyers from ’70s-’90s punk shows, with results we wouldn’t mind displaying on our wall. (Seriously, Mike, how do we buy these?) See a selection of our favorites after the jump, and then visit Swissted to check out the entire, enormous project.
It’s a good thing that environmental artist Nicole Dextras hails from Canada, because we don’t imagine that her stunning installations — which range from 8-foot high ice letters on the Yukon River to 18-inch high letters in downtown Toronto — would survive for very long in warmer climes. “The visual poetry in this series aims to subvert the authority of the English language and the commerce of signage by representing words as vulnerable and shifting,” she explains. “Ice Typography absorbs light, melts and eventually leaves no trace; these words have more in common with dreams and oral stories than linear language. Words cast in ice interrupt our literal narratives, allowing a more integrated reading of the land we inhabit, as opposed to the past and current commodification of land as limitless resource.” Click through to check out a selection of images from the series, and head over to Dextras’ website for more of her creative work, which includes clothing that’s made out of weeds and dresses frozen in blocks of ice.
Helvetica vs. Comic Sans: a typography battle for the ages. Sure, Helvetica looks pretty — cool and minimalist and not trying too hard. The little black dress of fonts. But the long-maligned Comic Sans has recently emerged as its scrappy, punk-rock nemesis, the kid who toughens up and starts wearing spikes because he’s sick of getting teased. (Exhibit A: “I’m Comic Sans, Asshole.”) Enter the Comic Sans Project, a clever new Tumblr that states its mission as follows: “We are the Comic Sans Defenders. We fear no fonts and we will make the whole world Comic Sans. Because Helvetica is sooo 2011.” To that end, the blog is posting redesigned images of universally recognizable corporate logos, their trademark fonts replaced with Comic Sans. See a few of our favorite remakes after the jump, and follow the Comic Sans Project on Tumblr for more. Read More »
Anyone who reads Flavorwire regularly will know that we’re big fans of anything related to creative typography, so we’d hankering to get our hands on a copy of Frankenfont, a new edition of Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus that uses a variety of fonts found in PDFs across the internet. In keeping with the gestalt nature of Frankenstein’s monster, the book renders each word in the book in a variety of typefaces, with strange and obscure fonts appearing more frequently as the novel progresses. The first few chapters use mostly Times New Roman, Arial and Helvetica; but as the story unfolds and the monster grows more uncontrollable, the typography devolves into weird and grotesque shapes. It’s a fascinating idea; you can see some excerpts from the book after the jump, which show how the fonts become more and more twisted toward the story’s end. There’s more details about the process used to realise the idea, along with ordering info, at the project website.
The rush of travel comes from the excitement of the unknown, the new experiences fluttering by every moment of the day. Live the Language is an ongoing series of promotional travel videos from the EF International Language Centers which captures that exciting and frightful feeling of being in a new city and not speaking the language, and those strange cultural differences that make each place unique.
Sydney-based design duo Maricor/Maricar call their Turns of Speech & Figures of Phrase series “a mixtape of artworks,” and the description fits perfectly. The artists have embroidered phrases from their favorite songs, from Blondie and Prince to Pavement and Broken Social Scene, in gorgeous, intricate typography. But most of the works in the series diverge slightly from the official lyrics, scrambling or substituting words. Check out Turns of Speech after the jump, then visit Maricor/Maricar’s website to see more of their diverse work.
Regular readers of Flavorpill will no doubt have noticed that we are suckers for anything typography-related, so it’s really only been a matter of time until we found a way to combine our typographic geekdom with our love for music. And, indeed, the two fields aren’t as disconnected as one might think at first glance — there’ve been a number of interesting design- and typography-based trends in music over the decades since bands started putting out albums that needed accompanying artwork and lettering. After the jump, we give you a potted history of ten of music’s most interesting typographic movements and moments. Did we miss anything?
As big fans of both typography and minimalist film posters, a new series by 28-year-old Swedish illustrator and graphic designer Patrik Svensson seems like it was made specifically for us. “I have always been a fan of designers that integrate with the viewer to create a sort of game together,” he explains. “I always strive to leave some space for the viewer to fill.” Click through for his creative take on films that range from childhood favorites like The Karate Kid and Home Alone to classics like The Shawshank Redemption and The Usual Suspects.
It’s time for type to get up off the page and into the world. The 3D Type Book is a comprehensive showcase of three-dimensional typefaces and letterforms, featuring over 160 designers and 300 projects (and over 1,300 photographs) from the simple to the cellular, using unconventional materials like cheese, pebbles, and human skin . The book, which covers typography from the 1940′s to today, was compiled by Agathe Jacquillat and Tomi Vollauschek at the London multidisciplinary design studio FL@33, and looks to be a gorgeous meditation on the ways we can interact with type – and the way type can interact with us. Click through to see some of the amazing work from the book and watch a video about the project.
