Know Design

No, I’m not swearing; simply being informative and educational ...

You see, the fairly common practice of using various grammatical characters and/or punctuation marks to indicate words that have a rather, ahem, ‘blue’ meaning, actually has a name. Yes, @*#&! is an example of a grawlix and although it’s not yet been OED certified as an honest-to-goodness, bona fide, allowable-in-Scrabble word, surely it’s only a matter of time?

In the meantime though, the Wikitionary definition of grawlix is: “A string of typographical symbols used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swearword.” So there you are!

My thanks to the %#£@@ing* geniuses that are Hoefler & Frere-Jones for educating me on this most interesting of typographical matters.

*flipping

The German letter Eszett (ß - pronounced like an ‘s’) has been officially accepted as an alphabet figure by the International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO).

According to an article on the Guardian’s website, Germany’s typographers are anticipating that, following this new recognition, the Eszett is likely to make a bit of a comeback. It may already have started - a whole issue of the German signographer’s publication Signa, was recently devoted to the letter.

It made me think - I’d quite like another English letter to play around with. So, is there anything we need a letter for that’d help make our lives better ...?

(By the way, the title of this post is supposed to read ‘Typography News’ in German. If it’s wrong, blame Babel Fish!)

Our friend Kris emailed us today about an intriguing USA-based charity he’s discovered, and asks “Why use a dog when you can use a small, practical horse?” Indeed: www.guidehorse.org

image: Craft vs. Technology by Darren John

It would be impossible/hugely time consuming to put into words all that I saw and heard at the BIAD show.

Instead, here are some key words and phrases to give a flavour:
helium balloons, fairy cakes, Apples, picture frames, paint, gossip, projections, networking, spillages, paper, jostling, double bass, keyboard/organ thing, people, people ... and yet more people.

Yes it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a bit too rammed to get a proper look at all the work on display but the show’s on for a few days yet so there’s always time to go back for more - although I guess the cakes will have been gobbled up or gone stale by now ... www.onedge.co.uk

Tomorrow evening it’s the private view of this year’s crop of Visual Communication graduates from BIAD. As former students of that very establishment, we love to go along each year and have a nose at what the new lot – who are this year calling themselves Edge – have put together.

I did a smidge of digging and found their website (www.onedge.co.uk) which features quite a lot of the work by the looks of things; but of course it’s always better to go and see these things in the flesh so I’ve not dug too deeply. Last year the students put on an extremely accomplished show (with a string quartet and everything) so I’m expecting great things of tomorrow evening ... no pressure there then!

Having said that, we don’t just attend these high-falutin’ events – oh no, at the moment we’re busy working on the website for BIAD’s Fashion Retail Management graduate show which is happening next week. More on that as it happens!

Some bright florals to cheer up a soggy, grey June day:

(Shot a couple of weeks ago in Moseley Park.)