Typophile Film Fest 4 in Vancouver

Typophile Film Fest 4 is presented by Punchcut in association with the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada

The Typophile Film Fest 4 will be hosted  in Vancouver this Saturday April 25, 2009.
This is a unique opportunity for me to help organizing such great event, and from what I have heard, it is always a fun event.
If you are in Vancouver and you care about typography, then you should come and join us!

Typophile Film Fest 4 will showcase a rare and unequaled selection of short typographic films. Hailing from Portugal, The Netherlands, Austria, Canada and the US, the films create a visual mashup of motion design, typographic animation and short stories. It includes broadcast motion design, documentaries and typographic eye candy from Trollbäck + Company, Strange Attractors, Heebok Lee, Nick Shinn, Juan Leguizamon as well as exclusive out takes from the acclaimed documentary film Helvetica. Thanks to the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, British Columbia, for helping make this presentation possible.

Saturday April 25, 2009
Doors open: 7PM
Films: 8PM—11PM
Note: All Justified West attendees receive free entrance to the Typophile Film Fest.

COST
GDC Members: $15
Non GDC Members: $20

BUY TICKETS NOW

LOCATION
PLAZA 500 Hotel, Vancouver
Located at the corner of Cambie Street & 12th Avenue
Map

// ABOUT PUNCHCUT
Punchcut is a San Francisco-based user interface design company that specializes in improving mobile user experiences. To us, mobile is not a device, it is a lifestyle. We work with device manufacturers, operators and leading entertainment brands to design for people in motion. // Punchcut

// ABOUT TYPOPHILE
Typophile is an international collaborative community of visual designers, typographers and type designers. Typophile is driven by sharing and the idea that we are always learning. Now in its seventh year, it is one of the oldest design communities online. Typophile is a Punchcut brand. // Typophile

// ABOUT THE SOCIETY OF GRAPHIC DESIGNERS OF CANADA
The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) is a member-based organization of design professionals, educators, administrators,students and associates in communications, marketing, media and design related fields.
Since 1956, the GDC has been an advocate, voice and resource for Canada’s graphic design profession. We are a national certified body of graphic designers promoting high standards of visual design and ethical business practices for the benefit of Canadian industry, commerce, public service and education. Through the media, publications, seminars, events, conferences and exhibits, the GDC builds awareness of graphic design and its essential role in business and society.
The GDC has more than 1,000 members in 9 chapters across Canada. In addition to our professional members, we are also lucky to have several hundred student members. Find out how you can be part of Canada’s foremost graphic design association. // GDC

Typography at MoMA

This is a collection of photographs I took on my latest visit to The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The originals are part of the Prints and Illustrated Books Collection and the on view exhibitions. The exhibitions at the MoMA only reinforced the importance of typography on both commercial and artistic worlds. From the art pieces to the museum’s signage, typography is omnipresent at any modern art museum.

The strongest evidence are the exhibitions:
Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective. This exhibition included hundreds of posters he designed for his exhibitions (Not allowed to take photographs).

Paper: Pressed, Stained, Slashed, Folded. This exhibition focuses on works on paper, including prints, illustrated books, and selected drawings, that explore and manipulate the materiality of paper itself.
Click to see Paper: Pressed, Stained, Slashed, Folded.

The Printed Picture. MoMA will publish The Printed Picture, a book by Richard Benson that traces the changing technology of picture making from the Renaissance to the present, focusing on the vital role of images in multiple copies.

Tangled Alphabets: León Ferrari and Mira Schendel. León Ferrari (Argentine, b. 1920) and Mira Schendel (Brazilian, b. Switzerland, 1919–1988) are considered among the most significant artists working in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. Their works address language as a major visual subject matter: the visual body of language, the embodiment of voices as words and gestures, and language as a metaphor of the worldly aspect of human existence through the eloquence of naming and writing.
Unfortunately for me, this exhibition was being mounted while I was in New York…
Click to see Tangled Alphabets

Intro text for the exhibition “Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West”

Cardbird VI, Robert Rauschenberg, 1971

Hand Lettering, John Everett Benson, 1973

Lidantiu faram, Naum Granovskii, 1923

Pro eto. Ei i mne, Aleksandr Rodchenko, 1923

Dlia golosa, El Lissitzky, 1923

Val’s. Pamiati Skriabina, Lyubov Popova, 1924

The Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical and Poetical Dictionary; Louis Moreri, 1703

Hand lettering, page from a missal, 1350

To see more examples, please visit my flickr

LIVE & LEARN: What’s your type?

These are two excerpts from the Westender about the Advanced Typography Certificate program:
“There are just no programs that are dealing with where design’s going to be in five years,” says Gruendler, who played a large part in planning the coursework for the programs (the first classes launched in September of last year). “We’re teaching classes that no other program in Canada is teaching. We wanted to make sure that we could be what the students needed it to be, and that’s the advantage of continuing education: We can react quite quickly to the market and to society and what’s happening in the profession.”

Juan Madrigal, 37, is taking classes as part of the Advanced Typography program. He currently works in communications for the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, and as a catalogue designer for Mountain Equipment Co-op. “I finished design [school] more than 10 years ago, and this was a really good way to go back to school. I had been looking for a program like this [for years],” he says. “Being a designer, if you stop your knowledge process, if you stop learning new things, your career’s over.”
To read the rest of this article, please visit the Westender

Article written by Jackie Wong from the Westender

Savage café

Infraction No. 1

This is a very interesting case, we can find a little bit of everything: atrocious kerning, genetically modified serifs, obese stems, shaky baseline, overgrown x-heights and a comatose acute accent* amongst others.
At the same time, there is one thing to be admired about the person who did this, and that is the audacious intent to recreate a font. The craftiness of the sign, painted by hand on top of a board that belongs to a piece of furniture, is the consequence of an obstinate individual who doesn’t trust other people’s trades or professions.

After a long research, scrolling up and down my Font Explorer, I’m bold enough to conclude that this craftsperson was trying to emulate a Times New Roman PS. Not even Name that font was able to identify it or give me any option.

Would you have coffee at this café?
It will be like drinking a black beverage made out of roasted peanuts, soy beans and some Nescafé, it might be black but it wont look like coffee, and it will definitely not taste like coffee.

Photo taken in Toronto (not so obvious) by Juan Madrigal
*The French word café is to accentuate Toronto’s bilingualism

Logo design for Fat Magazine

Designing the logo or masthead was the first part of a school exercise about redesigning a magazine, in this case a fashion Magazine called Fat.

The logo is a modification of Clarendon Bold.
A lot of small modifications were made in order to make it look like a logo, not just a word typesetted in Clarendon.
Below is a sample of those modifications, the grey word is the Clarendon as it is. The final logo is in black.

Typography Exercise

 

More homework…

Grouping principles, closure and modal completion
“A margin that divides and delimit the image in different zones is perceived even when it doesn’t exist”.

Type 
Memphis, Interstate, Ms. Eaves.

AIM 
Work on a Closure and Modal completion image:
Select a letter(s) to form a geometric figure
Select a word and experiment with modal completion of some of the letters
Select an object and experiment forming a geometric figure
You can experiment with the different ways of completion

Work for the Visual Language Class for the Advanced Typography Certificate Program at Langara College

 

Typography Exercise

Advanced Typography Certificate

I’m on my second course on this program, this is the program overview:
The graduate of the Advanced Typography program should be able to achieve upper-level typographic and design employment. Because the program covers the range of the profession, from theoretical and historical issues to letterform design, graduates will be exposed to numerous specializations within the field. Upon completion, graduates will be skilled in letterform design, information design, book design, magazine design, history of typography, typographic theory, and typographic research and writing.

Curriculum Structure
Each class in the Advanced Typography program meets once a week for 4 hours over a 12-week term, equaling 48 contact hours per class. The program is comprised of 8 subjects, totaling 384 instructional hours. Students must complete and pass all courses for completion and certification. 

Faculty
Our instructors are internationally recognised professionals with extensive abilities, industry awards, and academic recognition.

More info about the Advanced Typography Certificate

I  took the “Typography 3: Extended Text” in fall 2008 and I’m presently taking “Visible Language”

 

These are some of the exercises 

Book List
Type: Geo Slab serif 703
AIM: Create a bibliography (book) or a simplified book review (magazine) style of page, pages or spreads (i.e. not a poster) 
Format: Choose a format that will be easy to present, or choose an existing format that you like or develop a new format? 
Exercise for Typography 3, part of the “Advanced Typography Certificate” at Langara College.
 

 

Word Play

Type: Futura
AIM: Express the meaning or idea of a word by use of size spacing or placement of letters on a page, Repitition and tints are OK if appropriate
Format: Page size square 20 x 20 cm. 
Exercise for Typography 3, part of the “Advanced Typography Certificate” at Langara College.

 

 

 

 

 

Masthead
Type: Rimex
Exercise for Typography 3, part of the “Advanced Typography Certificate” at Langara College. 

Type: Hilde Sharpie

 

 

More exercises to come…

MAXKERNING MANIFESTO

 

Mr. Kerning’s Manifesto has all my support and admiration: 

“When I look around, I see disorder in the world—needless chaos and messes. I sense panic and stress. In fact, I feel it myself. It rattles my soul and gives me a headache and a sourness of the stomach. This is because everywhere I am assaulted by sloppy text that is displeasing to the eye. There is no respect for proper letter spacing and font choice. Letters are squished together, piled up, overlapped and jumbled. They are inappropriately and self-indulgently tracked out. People mix typefaces with incompatible type styles. Or they think, “Why use a simple, clean typeface to convey an idea when you can use three or five or twelve.” This is wrong. This is sad. This is an affront to a cultured society, and it must be stopped. Immediately, before everything is tossed away to an angry wind. Order must be allowed to thrive, to flourish, to bring us into a tidy harmony”.

Go and read the whole thing now

FREE FONT MANIFESTO

A small but growing number of designers and institutions are creating typefaces for the public domain. These designers are participating in the broader open source and copyleft movements, which seek to stimulate worldwide creativity via a collective information commons.

Ellen Lupton’s web page provides information and airs ideas about the concept of free fonts. Its annotated appearance reflects her conversations with type designers about the danger and necessity of free fonts.

 

Click here to go to the url

Type Police is here

Type Police is here.

For all those major type crimes.
And for minor infractions too.

Help Type Police fight crimes against typography…