I have to say, 30gms rocks! I found the wonderful This Day in Type through this post.

Many hours of typographical browsing pleasure here.

I came across Fontself today (via 30gms), and it looks like a promising project. From what I can tell, it’s like OpenType, but for bitmap fonts, but looking at it I’m wondering how much of each letter is rendered procedurally. It certainly implies that there is some procedural stuff going on there, but they won’t come out and say either way and most of the comments are in French (I’m still learning). Take a look at the examples page to see the state of the project.

This is beautiful. I found it on artless, which is a site that’s not updated very often, but when they do it’s always worth the wait. Thing is, I wish they’d explain their stuff a little more. What is this, what’s it about? I feel stymied by my lack of knowledge of Japanese.

I just came across this article on Japanese rubber stamps on Ping Mag. Go read.

I came across this site on vintage RC cars today, well, more specifically I came across the decals on the site. There’s quite an impressive collection here, kept presumably until the guy can get them all converted to EPS files. If they were higher resolution scans, I guess it wouldn’t be too difficult a process to use LiveTrace in Illustrator. Mind you, looking closely, a fair few of them have slight registration problems in the printing, so auto tracing would necessitate a fair amount of rework.

Still, just look at all those logos! All those swooshes and go-faster stripes! I love racing decals anyway, ever since I got to go with my Dad to vintage races at Oulton and Donnington Parks. They’re great. Vroom!

I got to James Jean’s site via Computerlove (a site I very much recommend) and was immediately impressed by the quality of the illustration. Some of them remind me of the frontispiece for a set of encyclopaedias I have, dating from the 1930s: great tableaux of activities, incredible detail and fantastic technique and artistry. I’ll scan the frontispiece in soon… meanwhile, pay a visit to his site, and maybe commission him or something: James Jean.

I’ve recently taken to adding the urls of images to spotlight comments so that I don’t get the situation that I have right now, where I don’t know where I found an image. All I remember is that this one was on a portfolio site, and another of the images was a web design for ON KAPLAN and had an image of Marilyn Monroe in the background. How annoying that I can’t find it.

However, I love the design of this. It’s a fantastic composition, presumably for something to do with the Rialto song. Grr. I want to link to the site.

I was reading about Postopolis! on City of Sound, and came across a short writeup of Timescapes, a multimedia exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (scroll down a bit). I love the design of this map (click for larger version) - looking closely I think that’s Eccentric ¹ isn’t it? Until now, I’ve never seen that font used on anything that makes it look good. Here, it looks rather dignified. [Update] I actually think that it’s Democratica. I thought it was the freeware Eccentric because (sigh) that’s what a company I work with was using.

Also, while hunting for more examples of the work online, I realise that it’s usually museums who completely fail to show off their exhibits to any great effect. Looking at the official page on the museum’s site, would you be enticed to go see it? Where’s the gallery? I mean, it’s a multimedia piece, so putting a few screenshots of the thing online wouldn’t hurt them one little bit - you still have to go to the museum to get the full effect of it, and seeing some examples online might actually get you to go.

I came across the hi site today via Computerlove. There’s some great work on there, but one in particular caught my eye, this very simple and effective signage treatment. The back is painted with a UV-reactive paint that causes the shadow behind the sign (which are mounted at a distance from the wall) to have a greenish glow. My limited German leads me to understand the writing on the wall below are the names and interests (Chuck Norris?) of the new student intake for a particular year, though I couldn’t be quite certain.