Know Design

I follow Ellen Lupton on Twitter (@ellenLupton) so saw a recent tweet of hers about Font Aid IV: Coming Together.

The US-based Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) are putting together a font made entirely of ampersands, designed by loads of different designers from around the world. (Hence it’s name, Coming Together.)

They’ll then sell the resulting font via MyFonts, with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders who are one of the many organisations helping out in Haiti at the moment.

SOTA are on the hunt for submissions at the moment, so I had a go …

My contribution is based fairly closely on the ‘et’ from which the ampersand shape derives and is (loosely) made up of a heart shape and a kiss. Ahhhh! I tried to make it simple but with a bit of thought behind it – though only time will tell if it’s good enough to be part of the font or not.

If you’ve got the mad Illustrator skillz, why not spare half an hour or so to create an ampersand?

Here’s what you need to do to take part:

> Submit a black and white “ampersand” icon.
> It should be a vector image file, not a bitmap.
> Keep it simple, not too crazy.
> Send it in EPS format to by 01/29/10.

(Remember to check back on MyFonts and buy the font once it’s ready!)

I’m working on a project related to typography and patterns at the moment and, following a period of “Errr, where am I going to go with this?!”, I decided to link the two subjects by concentrating on palindromes.

Incase you’re not sure what palindromes are, they’re words or sentences – sometimes number sequences – in which letters (or numbers) appear in the same order when read forwards and backwards. Generally they ignore any punctuation marks, spaces and/or capitalisation.

The palindrome example that immediately jumped into my head (as it’s fairly logical too, making it extra-clever) is: A man, a plan, a canal – Panama. Neat.

Further research into wordy patterns also led me to look at ambigrams. The Wikipedia entry on which reads “An ambigram is a typographical design or artform that may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation.” So, there you go.

I like the style of this example; and for some reason it really tickled me that it’s over a century old.

Early ambigram by Mitchell T. Lavin, published in The Strand, June 1908

This afternoon, in tribute, we’re listening to Lhasa de Sela. A talented lady. RIP.

Earlier this year we did some design work for the premiere of Land Gold Women; a feature film tackling the controversial and emotive subject of honour killings. The premiere was organised by Rewired PR and held at Cineworld in Birmingham – the perfect location as the film was shot here in Brum.

We’ve just learned that Land Gold Women has won the FCA (Foreign Correspondents Association) Purple Orchid Award for Best Film, and was a joint winner in the Best Script/Screenplay category at the 2009 Asian Festival of First Films which took place in Singapore at the beginning of December. Fantastic news!

It’s heartening that such challenging and, for want of a better word, plucky film-making is going on here in Birmingham; and even better that it’s won such positive international recognition.

(Hat-tip Rewired PR)

The Created in Birmingham blog has been ‘linking up Birmingham’s artistic and creative communities’ for three years now. Three years exactly, actually – today is the site’s third birthday – and long may it continue, I say.

It’s an ace resource for finding out what’s going on in and around Brum and that’s why Supercool have signed-up as a Supporter of CiB. (That, plus the promise of being sent a nice Christmas Card …)

Find out how to become a supporter on the ‘Support CiB’ page of their website.

Following on from the first event back in June, last night James, Sophie (our intern) and I went along to the second Birmingham Chitterlings supper club – again held at The Vaults in the Jewellery Quarter and organised by the lovely folks at Type.

Chitterlings is essentially a smallish (there were 16 of us) gathering of folks interested in design-related things, who get together to listen to a guest speaker, then have a chat over dinner. It’s all very civilised, don’t you know.

Our guest speaker last night was John Berry, a designer, author, President of ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) and program manager at Microsoft Typography. John recounted how he found his way into typography (serendipitously) and told us a bit about his role at Microsoft, banging the drum for good, legible typography on-screen. (Incase you’re wondering what the secret is – it’s all about space.)

Just like the previous Chitterlings (properly pronounced “chitlins”, John informed us!) it was a fun, interesting and enlightening evening; good food, good chats and good people.

Oh, and we were each given a calligraphic artwork of our name too, expertly penned by calligrapher Paul Antonio.

Besides all that, I was chuffed that Caroline from Type asked me to design the menu/nameplace/programme leaflets for the event. Although there’s not much scarier for a designer than designing for other designers, it was great to have a play around with Baskerville and some grub-related quotations. Typography and food – two of my favourite things. (And my design even got a compliment from Mr Berry, so I was very relieved. Phew!)