I Love Clerkenwell
Today is the start of Clerkenwell Design Week, the UK’s leading independent design festival, in the heart of London. Over 60 showrooms will host presentations, workshops and product launches across a broad variety of design disciplines.
Clerkenwell is also the historically home of London’s type foundries, there was even a street called Type Street, near Caslon’s foundry. At it’s height all of the world’s major typefounders had a presence here, there were even two on my street alone. Fontsmith have a popular typeface named after it and today, Clerkenwell is home to many of London’s design agencies, furniture stores and more architects per square mile than anywhere else on the planet.
Above is one of my favourite designs, a typographic map of the area. “Broadside 5” is a letterpress print by Alan Kitching, master letterpress typographer and printmaker. This map now serves as an historical reminder of the changes in the area, since being printed in 1992 . Neither “Oysters, Crabs and Lobsters” nor “Bric-a-brac”are available any more on Exmouth Market.
8 Faces Issue #6 is now available to buy.
Our latest issue features stunning de-bossed cover art by Stefan Weyer (tilt it towards the light to see the artwork in full) and interviews with Simon Walker, Dan Rhatigan, Seb Lester, Nina Stössinger, Grant Hutchinson, Mike Kus, and Eric Olson and Nicole Dotin of Process Type. In addition to that stellar line-up, we have essays from Christopher Murphy, Leo Koppelkamm, and Typekit’s Tim Brown, and an introduction by Craig Mod.
Only 2000 copies are available! Order yours now at 8Faces.com
What is 8 Faces?
If you could use just eight typefaces, which would you choose? 8 Faces is a magazine that asks this question — and many more — to eight leading designers from the fields of print, web, illustration, and of course type design itself. Eighty-eight pages of in-depth interviews, critical essays, and inspiration from the very best in the business. We pride ourselves on producing a printed magazine that you’ll want to keep on your bookshelf. Our covers are adorned with our foil-blocked silver logo and each issue is an experiment with an attention-grabbing new printing technique.
8 Faces typography magazine is out tomorrow.
Here are some more peeks of issue #6, literally hot of the press.
We’ve got some fine specimens for you — of both the typographic and human varieties! We interviewed Dan Rhatigan, Type Director at Monotype, and artist Seb Lester. We spoke to Simon Walker about designing our latest artwork print, Nina Stössinger about FF Ernestine, Grant Hutchinson about his journey through the type industry, Mike Kus about print-informed web design, and one of my all-time favourite foundries: the wonderful Process Type.
8 Designers x 8 Typefaces in 88 pages.
8 Faces – Out Wednesday.
I’ve seen the final version and it’s looking very fine.
Sketchy Characters
I spent an enjoyable day yesterday re-learning how to screen print at London’s ‘Print Club’.
As a test print I decided to use some of my sketchbook letters and experiment with a few types of paper, including this lovely gold and silver.
The one-day course was very good, running through everything; preparing your artwork, making your positives, coating your screen, printing your work and finally removing your stencil. Well recommended!
8 Faces #6 is coming…
If you could only use eight typefaces for the rest of your life, which would you choose?
8 Faces Magazine poses this question (and many others) to eight leading designers from the fields of web design, print design, illustration, and of course type design itself.
If you’ve been waiting patiently for the next issue, you’ll be excited to know it goes to print next week and will be ready by the end of April.
Eighty-eight pages of in-depth interviews, critical essays, and inspiration from the very best in the business.
Printed on heavy stock with a foil-blocked cover, each issue is a true collector’s item and 8 Faces will be more at home on your bookshelf than in your magazine rack. Who said print is dead?
About: Jamie Clarke, Type Worship Editor
I’m a designer based in London. I’ve worked mostly on the Internet but I’m especially passionate about all forms of typography and lettering.
I co-founded the design agency, Thin Martian (annually rated a top 100 UK design company, Design Week), which was acquired in 2013 and I was previously Head of Design at Microsoft in the UK.
I’m currently developing my own lettering work under the ‘Type Worship’ label, consisting of typographic posters (coming soon) and custom lettering artworks, all printed by hand.
I have written for a number publications including the 8Faces Magazine which also sponsors the Type Worship blog.
You can find more about me here:
Selected Articles:
Type Worship is 2
This month sees Type Worship’s second birthday! Writing about type and lettering plus hunting for those design work gems has been tremendous fun. I had no idea that this blog would prove to be such an enjoyable catalyst for learning about and meeting so many incredibly talented people.
It’s been great to receive such a positive reaction from everyone, especially the community on Tumblr.
To coincide with this, CreativeBloq has published my article, 11 Killer tips for a successful Tumblr Blog, describing how Type Worship grew from a handful of followers and how to ensure your blog Tumblr stands out from the crowd.
Thank you to all those who have followed, liked, reblogged and supported. And thanks to these designers too for use of these twos:
My type of valentine’s cards
Living in London, Valentine’s reminds me of cold days, cosy evenings indoors and a little time spent looking for a card that’s just right. Always typographic in style, nothing too slushy, cute or clichéd.
This year however, I’m in sunny Bali, Indonesia, so I shan’t get my hopes up for anything too sophisticated.
Here’s a few that I liked online. While I’m not sure that my non-designer Valentine would appreciate receiving one of these geeky cards, I thought you might.
Top down:
- “Happy Valentines” part of ‘My Geeky Valentine’ by Joanna Behar, New York, USA
- “I want to Kern you and I” Uncredited. I can’t find who made this awesome card so if you know please comment.
- “You are my counterpoint” part of ‘My Geeky Valentine’ by Joanna Behar, New York, USA
- “baby, you’re my Univers” Typographic Valentines Cards. Ben Bears and Adam Ding. Leeds, UK
- “PS I Love you” part of ‘My Geeky Valentine’ by Joanna Behar, New York, USA
- “XoXoXo Love Card”, Gocco Japanese Screen Print, Melissa Stewart. Austin, TX, USA
- “I’m font of you” part of ‘My Geeky Valentine’ by Joanna Behar, New York, USA
Stunning light calligraphy
These amazing images are not actually Arabic but highly stylized French calligraphy by Julien Breton.
Julien, from Nantes in Western France, first started visualising rap lyrics, producing these long-exposure photographs in 2006. Over time he developed an ‘alphabet’ containing French aesthetics and Arabic calligraphy in a desire to bridge Arabian and Western visual languages. While always anchored in lettering this almost abstract style aims to move beyond words to evoke a feeling.
He attributes this passion to growing up in a multicultural environment. Although he does not write or speak Arabic his work has gained interest worldwide, including in Saudi Arabia and Dubai where he has won awards for his illustrations advertising Arabia Telecom Communication.
Another key influence is the gestural energy of Japanese and Chinese calligraphy which is similar to the physical movement required to construct these images in front of the camera. This was taken to its natural conclusion when his work was combined with the dance moves of a performing arts group, pictured above.
I love the compositions and the way the lettering is sympathetic to the landscapes. The process can take between 30 seconds to several minutes according to the luminosity of the chosen location. During the exposure Julien ‘builds’ his calligraphy in front of the camera and without any visual guides, using lamps of various shapes and colours. There is no use of Photoshop in their creation.
“The ink becomes light, the paper becomes photography, the calligraphy becomes choreography.”
Generative Types II: Sound Type
Following on from my recent “Grow your own typeface” post, I spoke to Joscha Ilge who also studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden.
Joscha collaborated with Anita Hohensee to produce these gorgeous sound influenced typographic experiments. Each focused on a different principle.
In the top image, the Joscha’s type is altered by tones, much like a graphic equalizer. In Anita’s below, a typeface has been transformed by a whole song.
The course was lead by prof. Jörg Waldschütz, who invited Cedric Kiefer from the agency Onformative to help students with the early programming aspects until they were comfortable progressing on their own.
I love the way the line work seems to thrust from the epicentre of each character like an explosion.
The Neon Man (part II)
Here are some more examples of Chris Bracey’s fantastic neon artworks.
When he first started making neon signs commercially, Chris approached one of the seedy strip clubs that were once packed into London’s Soho area and offered to create something special that would improve their awful, cheap signage. He chose the name too and ‘The Pink Pussy Cat Club’ was born. From there he was commissioned to create almost every club sign in the area.
High-res
