Arabic Calligraphy

Arabic Calligraphy by Joshua Smith

"At the end of March I had the opportunity to speak at Visual Arabia in Dubia in front of both Western & Middle Eastern Designers. This event was rare chance to be able to visit the Middle East as well as take the opportunity to be inspired by the design culture and of course the Arabic Calligraphy that was around the city.

Since I love typography and seeing what forms can create viable and usable text, I started a exploration in using some core structures from Arabic Calligraphy and mixed with them with a Western progressive style. These pieces are what occured during my study these past few days. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them."

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Handpainted Type Piece

Nice handpainted typographical piece by Job Wouters at the Walker Art Center....

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Calligraphy on Girls

Pokras Lampas gettin' his mac on with Calligraphy on Girls...

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Sign Painters: A Documentary

AWESOME!

Check out this trailer for Sign Painters, a documentary by Faythe Levine & Sam Macon.
There was a time, as recently as the 1980s, when storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs were all hand-lettered with brush and paint. But, like many skilled trades, the sign industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper. The resulting proliferation of computer-designed, die-cut vinyl lettering and inkjet printers has ushered a creeping sameness into our landscape. Fortunately, there is a growing trend to seek out traditional sign painters and a renaissance in the trade.

In 2010 Directors Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, with Cinematographer Travis Auclair, began documenting these dedicated practitioners, their time-honored methods, and their appreciation for quality and craftsmanship. Sign Painters, the first anecdotal history of the craft, features the stories of more than two dozen sign painters working in cities throughout the United States. The documentary and book profiles sign painters young and old, from the new vanguard working solo to collaborative shops such as San Francisco’s New Bohemia Signs and New York’s Colossal Media’s Sky High Murals.

I can't wait to see it!

Japanese Typography Imagined In 3D

Japanese product designer Hideo Kanbara imagined what it would be like if Japanese hiragana characters had to be written in 3D. In his two examples, Kanbara rethinks the ways the characters would look like when viewed from different angles to show how much more complicated the language could be.

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Roid New Letter Studies Work

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Hydro74 Cheap Fonts

Amazing custom fonts by Hydro74....

BLACK FRIDAY BEER MONEY SALE*
Limited Time Offer Time to offer up a little sale on all my Mother Effin' fonts.

So here is the deal. Every font in my roster is only $3 bucks. No limit, no rules, no nothing. This is a sweet damn offer if you ask me. Why, because I love my fans, friends & design family. 

What to do.
Step 1. Make a damn list. I'm not a web guy so creating a sexy shopping cart isn't my thing.
Step 2. Send me that list to Joshua@hydro74.com with your Paypal address.
Step 3. I'll send you a invoice, you pay and I email over your fonts. Step 4. Type some shit up and make cash money

The Geometry of Type

Students and professionals in any creative field can benefit from a good typographic eye. The Anatomy of Type (published as The Geometry of Type in the UK) is all about looking more closely at letters. Through visual diagrams and practical descriptions, you’ll learn how to distinguish between related typefaces and see how the attributes of letterforms (such as contrast, detail, and proportion) affect the mood, readability, and use of each typeface. Nutritional value aside, the spreads full of big type are nice eye candy, too.

 The 100 typefaces featured in the book are hand-picked by the author for their functionality and stylistic relevance in today’s design landscape. Along with several familiar faces (Garamond, Bodoni, Gill Sans, Helvetica), you’ll also discover contemporary fonts that are less common — and often more useful — than the overused classics.

The Clock Clock White

Humans Since 1982 are a collective who came up with a good idea for clocks to be able to work together to display one singular time. Great idea....

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Marcos Zotes Your Text Here

Marcos Zotes has just shared with us his latest project, "YOUR TEXT HERE"...

"The city is constantly telling us what to do, what to think, and how to act. Using explicit visual language, a multiplicity of billboards, signs, images and symbols invade our public spaces in order to tell us something. YOUR TEXT HERE is a project that challenges this condition: Citizens are given the opportunity to change their role as receivers of information in order become the authors. The way it works is simple: you submit an anonymous text message in a website through your mobile phone, and in turn it is automatically projected at large scale onto the façade of a building..." [VIA]

Shoe Mural London

Hookedblog has some great images of Dutch artist and type-obsessed Niels 'Shoe' Meulman putting up a mad script based mural outside the Village Underground, london for the Moniker Art Fair....

Check out more after the jump...

Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design

Phaidon is publishing a boxed collection of what is says is ‘the very best in visual communication from the last 500 years’. The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design is a collection of 500 cards, charting the evolution of graphic design through technological advancements and changes in techniques. It is available for £140...

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Augustine Kofi Venice Mural

Augustine Kofi's completed mural in Venice. Photos by Tod Mazer

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Barry McGee Show BAM/PFA

Arrested Motion have great coverage of Barry McGee's show at BAM/PFA that opened yesterday. Wish I could see all his retrospective work in one massive show...

"San Francisco-based Barry McGee returns for his first Bay Area solo museum exhibition in 18 years at BAM/PFA (UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). This will mark his first midcareer survey, in which all of his previous major installations have been reinterpreted and put under one roof (from his van installation at REDCAT to his Street Market at Deitch to a 1999 stolen mural that was placed on Howard Street in San Francisco, just to name a few). This exhibition as been three years in the making, with the elaborate set-up first starting 2-1/2 months ago."

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Vintage Marker Blog

This one is for all you pen-porn heads out there. SearchinForElMarko is a great blog that was created this month that focuses on the writers search for his ultimate pen brand- El Marko. His stories are detailed and give a really good insight into the inner workings of pen/ink companies...

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Anamorphic Typography

A great example of anamorphic typography by Chicago designer Thomas Quinn.

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Renos Handstyles

Inspired by Zipper One's Pinterest board...