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.

Hallmark has some very nice trailers for its programmes, usually with great typography, and always with perfect grading. They’re very fond of them too, so you tend to see them several times throughout a programme - something that can easily drive you nuts if you’re not quick with the mute button. Still, they look nice.

This particular one, for Law and Order, uses the nice technique of placing text set in Didot into various scenes in New York. The point of view changes as the text builds up and enhances the 3D in-world effect, and as it does, dribbles of grime (blood?) trickle down from the words. It’s all very nice, but what, I say what is this I see?

The proper Didot apostrophe, and the improper one.

A prime*, used as an apostrophe? A heinous crime, if ever there was one! Someone call the cops! Thing is, you’d have to deliberately turn off “smart quotes” in After Effects to get that symbol to show, and not the correct one (at right). So why?

Perhaps, and here’s a thought, perhaps they did it like that to echo the dribbles in the animation? That would make it an artistic decision, and not an ignorant mistake. I do hope that’s what it is, as the rest of the sequence is rather pleasant:

Update: Yes, yes, I know. It’s not a prime - I’m using the term as a shorthand for the symbol. Thanks to all who wrote in.

Drawn linked to this fantastic PDF, ”Studies in Pen Art”, a scan of a 1914 pamphlet by William Dennis. It has loads of examples of penmanship and advice on techniques and equipment which is pretty much all relevant today - although not perhaps the emphasis on speed; even a commercial letterer today wouldn’t have to produce work as quickly - producing this kind of lettering by hand would be a project in itself these days and so more time would be devoted to it. Still, we all have deadlines and knowing how to work quickly is never a bad idea. The PDF is available for download from the Drawn page - worth a look.

I came across this typewriter ribbon collection on Uppercase a little while ago, and there are some beautiful examples of typography and graphic design in there. They remind me of old tobacco tins, and oddly, of sewing consumables like cotton thread and needle tins. Go and have a look if you’ve not already (the collection is getting famous). Of course I’ve redrawn some of them…

I came across this remarkable piece of work earlier today. It’s a design created with 250,000 euro cents in a public square with the intention that people would interact with it, presumably by taking (or rearranging?) the coins. Even though it’s €2500 lying there, it would take a fair bit of determination to take the lot and get it to (at least) a coin-changing machine, a level of hard work a casual thief is unlikely to want to do I think. The Amsterdam police viewed it rather differently, seeing all this money left on the pavement as being at risk of theft and swept the whole lot up for safekeeping. Rather keen of them, no? The site ExperimentaDesign explains some of the background to the project:

Droog Design and Scott Burnham have assembled a team of some of the most innovative designers and architects from around the world to create 13 newly designed interventions, tools, toys and objects that are temporarily placed along a route on the central IJ-riverfront in Amsterdam.

The design is remarkable and attractive, and there are a few pictures and videos of it before it was ‘saved’. The people building it are clearly working from a plan, but there isn’t a copy of it online that I can find unfortunately. I’ve combined these two photos by Jens to show the whole design - it’s a bit rough but you get the idea:

I found this massive collection of movie title screens a couple of weeks ago in a Google image search (for something else, naturally) and, well, the nature of life at the moment meant I didn’t have time to have a proper look. I had a look through it today and found this beautiful piece of script lettering. Of course, I had to trace it, and it’s really quite special; the lowercase reminds me of Savoir Faire a bit, but the capitals are just so… movie! Take a look:

I found many other examples of great lettering, but here are four special ones I might trace at some point:

I recently came across this review of the book Arabesque by Gestalten; while I’m probably going to buy it for myself as a present at some point, I couldn’t help but notice the visual similarity between this piece of brushwork and a Torii gate. Purely an irrelevant coincidence I’m sure, but a rather pleasing one nonetheless.