What does the McDonald’s logo look like in Arabic? Or Yves Saint Laurent? Burger King? Rolex? Baskin Robbins? Well, now you can find out because Brand New linked to these two articles by Jason of Graphicology showing Arabic language versions of international brands: one for logos and another for packaging.

The ones that are really faithful interpretations are fascinating, they really highlight what it is about the logo and packaging that identifies the brand - the Mountain Dew, Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins ones are particularly successful in this regard. The Subway one is so close to the original that at a glance you could miss the fact that it’s in Arabic. Others bear no apparent relation to the original logo, even though you’d think they could be easily redone in Arabic. The Calvin Klein one in particular is baffling - surely it would be a straightforward exercise to letter a short name in Arabic to look like Futura Book? Indeed, there is a version of the face called Bukra, which so far only exists in an extra bold weight, but still, it shows it can be done, and very well too. The Yves Saint Laurent one is a little closer to the parent, but again, not so much.

Comparing the originals to the Arabic versions, it’s the luxury clothing brands where the logos diverge the most, and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) that are the most faithful. This might be because the luxury brand customers are nearer the top of the social scale, are more international and therefore more likely to recognise the Latin logo than those who buy washing powder and groceries. With that assumption, it would therefore be more important to accurately translate the brand image for the FMCG market than for luxuries. Perhaps. Having said that, it’s the Tide packaging that got my attention, and given that Brand New also used a picture of it I’m not alone in thinking that it’s one of the best, design-wise. It’s great in English, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Arabic lettering quite so exuberant; artistic, inspiring, beautiful, yes, but this is pure teeth-jarring kitsch. Fab. I have of course redrawn my own version of it. Click the image for a wallpaper-sized version.

You know when you see something mundane and everyday in a completely new light? When you see something afresh that you’ve never paid attention to? Well last week I got this envelope and for some reason the franking mark caught my eye. I’m not sure whether it’s because it’s so crisp and sharp or whether it’s the neat alignment to the edges of the envelope, but it just made me look again.

One thing that’s a bit special is how the printed “Great Britain” on one side of the square balances the “Postage Paid” on the other. I’ve found (often to my professional disappointment) that it’s rare for two phrases to be similar enough in length that you can do that, so it’s a nice little detail. The roundel with ‘Newton Abbot’ in it is rather pleasant too, and I’m trying to think back but I’m sure the normal Post Office frank is considerably plainer than that. Anyway, it’s just a pleasant little thing that caught my eye the other day - a nice bit of purely functional design, and part of the iconography of the state.

One of these days I’ll write about this tracing things compulsion I seem to have. A few people have asked me to elaborate on it, and I will. Thing is, I fear it’ll end up being a mammoth article and I want to give it proper attention, so until then, I procrastinate, by tracing more things. One thing that I’m sure I’ll write about is the temptation to ‘improve’ the original design and lettering. I normally avoid it just so that I can understand the original more clearly, but as I describe below, sometimes I have the impulse to re-imagine the design.

Coudal (I think) linked to this great collection of travel-related designs, which is full of beautiful and inspiring examples of lettering and illustration. I’m still working on a couple more, but I’ve just completed these two. The first is a brochure in Czech advertising Vienna. The text, very loosely interpreted, comes across as, “Vienna, for any season” (you could also say “Visit Vienna, in any season”, perhaps).

“Travel brochure to Vienna (Vídnĕ in Czech), circa 1934.  Signed Steyrermühl, Wien.  Published by the Foreign Tourism Bureau, City of Vienna”. Description and original courtesy of David Levine, from here, my tracing on the right.

The re-imagined design, for a possible poster. Click the image for a larger version.

I love the atmosphere of the image; the street shaded and dark, with St Stephen’s Cathedral bathed in warm evening sunlight. It’s just the kind of scene that would enthrall any tourist, and because it’s an illustration it can be happily idealised and stylised to perfection. I love also the way that the heavy traffic is shown too, perhaps as an indication that this is a up-to-date bustling city with all the conveniences the modern tourist of yesterday would require? Tourist brochures today avoid showing traffic at all if they can help it, instead you see ancient buildings connected by gardens, or, say, an open pedestrianised plaza. Funnily enough, this is exactly what is in front of the cathedral today.

After I traced the brochure, I realised that I would like to modify it a bit to create a poster, or at least something less like a brochure, while keeping the same sense of the era and original intention of the design. I trimmed the red border and rearranged the type, being careful not to ‘over-perfect’ it - there is something special and arresting about the slight wonkiness of the type on these old prints, something I’m trying to keep. The new design is just to the right here. Click it for a larger version.

The second one I’ve traced is this odd, but appealing, brochure for the Deutsche Luftpost. It shows three planes in front of the German heraldic eagle against a strangely flat but stormy-looking sky. The planes interest me by having no apparent means of propulsion - normally in illustrations there is a sketchy circle to show where the propellors are, but here, nothing. The eagle is also interesting by having such a prominent tongue. I looked up other examples of the emblem, and unsurprisingly I ended up with a set of images very similar to the ones I saw while researching the coat of arms of Vienna (at the top of this article). None had such a dramatically large tongue though…

“Brochure for ‘Deutsche Luftpost Das Schnellste Verkehrsmittel auf Weite Entfernungen’, circa 1930”. Description and original courtesy of David Levine, from here, my tracing on the right.

I found the Latinotype site the other day via NOTCOT, and I’m rather taken with some of their faces. I’m particularly fond of Fidel Black, which I think I’m going to suggest for a rebranding project coming up soon;  Biotech, which with its chunky and square lowercase is like a print-suitable cousin of Verdana Bold; and Regia Sans, because, well, I just like it. Go and take a look at the rest of their faces, and perhaps click Comprar on a few of them.

After I wrote about The Dot and the Line animation, Nigel Brachi contacted me to tell me about the book which came out a few years before the film. He kindly sent me some scans of the pages, which show just how faithfully the animators followed the drawing style. The typography of the text is often rather nice too:

This article on writing by James Patrick Kelly should be required reading for anyone involved in any creative activity. I read it years ago, and though I forgot the exact phrase, I’ve followed its basic principles ever since; whenever I’m stuck on a design I remove the thing I like the most and continue to develop the design without it. Almost every time it’s that thing, that darling, that is holding me back, distracting me from the design. I find that what I’m doing is trying to adapt the rest of the design to fit with this thing, rather than than developing the design as a whole. Even if it wasn’t that thing, the act of removing something from the design, that act of subtraction is what frees up my thinking again. The article addresses this nicely, and you can see how it applies to more than writing:

Some writers like to fix problems by addition rather than subtraction. First they layer in just a little more complexity to develop a rounder Aunt Penelope. And then they expand the garage scene, so it will foreshadow the car chase. Last they have Biff’s lawyer explain the rules of evidence to his secretary after the trial so that slow readers will get the end. If these writers worry about wordiness at all, they might tighten a few lines here and there. Drop a “he said,” on page two. Major surgery is for beginners, right?

Nowadays it’s become (almost) a natural process and I find myself peering suspiciously at something that’s just too shiny, too perfect, too lovely, too early in the process. This isn’t to say I remove everything that’s nice from my designs, far from it, but what I tend to do is to move through versions very quickly. Version 1 of a design might have some text treatment I’m fond of, version 2 might have some aspect of a layout I like, version 3 something else, until I think I’ve got the ideas recorded and I can develop the design without them distracting me. Since I’m moving to a new version whenever I get stuck, these early versions are rarely complete designs; they’re more like rough sketches. While I’m working I’ll return to these sketches and use the ideas from them if they’re suitable, which is a far more pleasing way to work, and ends up being much more successful. Usually, of course, after I’ve got the final design (or a clientworthy version) I’ll look back at the ‘darlings’ I’ve saved and decide that they’re not all that special anymore, that they’ve been surpassed by what I’ve done while free from distractions. The ones that I still like I keep around for future inspiration. Sometimes, I even remember to look at them.

Joseph at the Book Design Review posted his favourite book cover designs of 2008. There’s some good ones in there, and makes me think I don’t read nearly enough long-form writing. I particularly like the one for “Abraham Lincoln: Great American Historians on Our Sixteenth President”, but that might just be because it’s from the five dollar note and I like banknotes… As for the others, I want to see the original of that aerial view of Manhattan, and the other two are just nice images. Go and look at the others.

This is a fantastic piece of illustration and lettering. Well worth watching. It’s all good, but some of the illustrations that I find noteworthy are the pavement-level view of walking feet (0:27), the yellow and black spread (1:04) and the multiple mouths (1:54).

People are strange from Denis Fongue on Vimeo.

There are some great infographics here. There’s a video on gestalten.tv about their book project, Data Flow, and some documentation available here, in German. All good stuff.

This caught my eye a while back, on NOTCOT, and it turns out there’s a whole range of packaging with it which is all pretty nice. I prefer these ones though, they’re like some cross between newspaper wrap and utilitarian shopkeeping units - it reminds me of how supermarkets sometimes design their own-brand ‘basics’ ranges, which (almost) always end up looking far better than the non-basics stuff. I’m not sure about the treatment of the two Os though, the counters look more like funky bullets somehow. Have a look at the rest of the Asylum site too, there’s plenty of interesting stuff on there.