It’s Helvetica’s birthday this week. What better present to get it than to buy an actual genuine licensed copy of the font?

That’s how, apparently. I love the image, but I suspect there’s a portion of style over content going on there. I can’t help but think that there are some very important (but less visually appealing) steps missing.

This is one of those images I have that I can’t find the source of.

Seen on a trailer on Hallmark for ‘Intelligence’. Love that ‘g’. Using the amazing ‘What The Font’ tool on MyFonts I’ve identified this as Libel Suit.

Another one I had to do some clever re-Googling for. A while back I was sent a link to Si Scott’s portfolio site. Once you get past the mystery-meat navigation, you’re in for a treat.

You know that floral, bling style that’s been so popular lately that it’s rapidly becoming a cliché? Well, this guy is the master of it - so much so I wouldn’t lump him in with the rest of them. I think his work is too finely executed to be called a cliché. Check these out.

Found on KSTP Twin Cities News. I love that 5! So much so, I had to sketch it.

I lost the link to this site. I ended up spending nearly half an hour trawling Google Images until I found an image that was familiar! Then I was back on the portfolio site of Mouneer Al-Shaárani. He’s got some wonderful examples of quite remarkable calligraphy on there - I just wish I knew what they meant. Take the three examples below. It amazes me they can say anything at all and I wonder whether they’re as hard to read as those psychedelic posters from the sixties.

I have a strong attraction to calligraphy in general, but I am particularly fascinated by the possibilities afforded by arabic and persian scripts. I’ve seen many examples of arabic scripts in books, on buildings and posters, but I first came across anthropomorphic and zoomorphic calligraphy on this post on BibliOdyssey. Amazing stuff:

The start of a new, much-needed category: Pictures Found Online. When it comes to browsing, I’m a bit of a magpie. Anything that I want to look at in more detail or inspires me, I grab a copy of it in case it disappears offline or I lose track of it. Unfortunately, over the years the latter concern has proved itself as I’ve lost track of where I found almost all of these things. To add to the confusion, some of them were sent to me by friends and relatives, “You might like this...” so I’ve even less chance of finding where they’re from. I’m going to put up examples of them as I go through my big stack of images, and hope that someone will point me to the original source (and allow me to give correct credit).

So yes, at right. A little label that has inspired a few titles and design treatments of mine over the years.

I read this article on BLDGBLOG a while back, and immediately wanted, yes wanted all of them. I’d sort of kept it in mind with thoughts of a few projects I wanted to do, but hadn’t really hunted down the books. Then, last night, a French colleague from work presented me with L’Archiviste! She’d bought it on a trip back to France, and obviously knows me quite well. Today I also bought this from Amazon.fr. Funny how I hadn’t even thought of that when I first came across it.

From Penny Arcade. I love the big serial number, and I also love the idea of a ping pong robot. Quoting the site:

So our ping pong games have not been going so well. We’ve taken steps recently to ensure that our future games go better. I don’t want to say too much right now but here’s a picture. This arrived yesterday morning.

One of my favourite sites to visit is ‘Oh Joy!’ not least for the name alone. Reading this site is a joy indeed, and conveniently enough I have a type-related post on there to link to!

Cool Hotel: The Library