Decorative Bodoni

When I first saw this I knew I had to get one of these… The Decorative Bodoni alphabet was produced by Nigel BentsPaul Oakley and Jonny Holmes at Chelsea College of Art & Design. The original Bodini Poster typeface was  laser cut out of 3mm plywood by Cut Laser Cut and mounted on type-high blocks in the college workshop. It was then printed at Graham Bignell’s New North Press in Hoxton. Limited edition posters are available at Jonny Holmes‘ website.

Godfather of Helvetica, Mike Parker Dies at 84

When we hear Helvetica, the normal person might associate it with the standard Grotesque font that is packaged with every Windows or Mac OS (among hundreds of applications). When a typographer hears Helvetica, they think of one of, if not the most technically sound type system designed in the past century.

Originally designed in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland, dubbed “Neue Haas Grotesk” was a colab between geniuses Max Miedinger with Eduard HoffmannParker and his team took Haas‘s original drawings and began reworking them to work on Linotype‘s machines. The modified design eventually became known as Helvetica.

Under his leadership, more than 1,000 typefaces, including Helvetica, were added to the company’s library, which became an industry standard and helped guide the type landscape from hot metal, to photocomposition, and finally to digital printing.

“It is not a letter that’s bent to shape; it’s a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space, it’s — oh, it’s brilliant when it’s done well.”
—Mike Parker

Sources: CNN, FastCo

Diablo III Fan Art Contest

Whenever they have a design contest on deviantart.com, you know you are going to see some sick stuff. And with the Diablo III Fan Art Contest, I’m postitive that we’re going to see creatively creepy stuff, especially for a 2 night trip to Blizzard HQ in Irvine, CA to meet the artists and developers of Diablo III! and $5,000 cash, not to mention a bunch of other stuff. So if you think you have what it takes to compete with the big dog illustrators, enter here.

Urine Powered Generator

I thought this was an amazing invention when I first saw this, imagine how many people this can benefit around he world, yes a bit strange, but very useful… Four African girls have created a generator that produces electricity for six hours using a single liter of urine as fuel. They need a Kickstarter page for this, I’d donate…

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Foldy960 Responsive Grids

I ran across these Foldy960 Grids the other week while compiling data for the Microsoft Website Redesign post and found these quite useful in helping me understand the workings of Responsive Design from a couple of innovators… It’s a little kit and some extra classes to get you going on making your 960.gs design responsive.

Circular Patterns From Text Phrases

I ran across this last week and it immediately got a post to our Facebook account, after playing around with it for a week, I really think it deserves a post on the ol’ blog. With Phrase, it’s a breeze to make killer, meaningful circular patterns by just copy and pasting a phrase (also good for keeping track of letters, etc.).  One thing, I wish the output file was a vector source, this way it would be easier to edit and adapt. Nonetheless, biggups to Really Simple for making this one happen and being People’s Choice for 10k Apart.

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