A paper train journey

I recently heard about this amazing bit of stop motion/paper art. It’s an ad for the New Zealand Book Council, animated by London based, Anderson M Studio. I can only imagine how long it took to pull it off.  The pages of the book (entitled Going West) literally come to life as intricate cuttings into the paper surface, reveal three dimensional shapes and structures, all relating to a railway journey.  You can see the full video below.

iVictrola

This is one of those “damn, I wish I’d thought of that” ideas. In fact, I kinda did think of this once (really!), but not in such a super cool, old world meets new world kind of way. I found this amazing thing on the Design Within Reach website, and it got my heart racing. The lovely Magnavox logo that sits on the vintage metal horn is my excuse for this (industrial design) post on my type blog, but it’s really the object and the idea itself that I love. It uses no electricity, simply amplification through the base, up and out through the horn. Love it.

Here’s a caption from DWR website: Designer Matt Richmond’s iVictrola merges turn-of-the-century technology with new-millennium gadgetry. The steampunk aesthetic of this new fangled contraption belies the simplicity of the design – place your iPhone in the indented “dock” in the walnut base and turn on some tunes. The sound is carried from a hole in the base, amplified by the metal Magnavox horn to fill the room.

Type that dances

Well, I haven’t done a post in a while, so here’s something new from me! I just completed this animated teaser for the Montreal Bach Festival. I kinda liked the idea – the various bits of information are all built into a 3D dancing figure and as she spins and the camera moves around in space, we’re able to read what we need to read, bit by bit. Created in Cinema 4D. You can see the full video below.

Kanye West – Paranoid

A nice homage to vintage, thriller title sequences (or actually vintage, thriller trailers) is to be found in the video for Kanye West’s new track Paranoid featuring Rihanna. The video directed by Nabil Elderkin owes a lot to a LOT of references, but I guess that’s what homages are all about.

Lets count them, shall we! Start with Nosferatu, add a little Fallen Angel (thanks Art of the Title Sequence ), toss in some Sin City, and all those great ’30s-’50s sci-fi and horror thrillers. The story line is a little weak, but the typography, production design and referential, l0-fi styling is lovely. There’s been a trend in hip-hop videos in the past few year that likes to “visualize” the lyrics with on-screen typography. That stuff is usually pretty arbitrary, decorative and dull, so it’s refreshing to see it here, with an unexpected historical slant (as well as some relationship the theme of the tune… uh, I think).  Not sure if Kanye “art directed” – apparently he often does.

Glow’s slinky logo

A few weekends back, sitting in a cafe in Knightsbridge, I spotted this lovely logo across the street in the window of  Glow, a local spa. Quite elaborately crafted, its “slinky” like shapes are really well realized. I wasn’t quite sure what a slinky had to do with a spa, but upon visiting their website, I realized it’s not slinky at all, but rather bulb filaments (that glow). Of course.

Old is New: New is Old

It may be quite clear from a cursory review of my posts, that I am rather drawn to historical design and typography. While I am undeniably a creature of modern times, I just love old stuff. Old cars, old books, old art movements, and old type.

Well, I am certainly not alone, and while a curiosity has always been there among us designers, there is an interesting phenomenon at work at the moment – analog is becoming digital like never before – old is becoming new; vintage is vogue; forgotten is being remembered, and all in an unabashed celebration of “wear and tear” – the more visible clues of  ‘non-modern-ness’ the better! Case in point is the wonderful collection of vintage block type from Oliver Weiss’ Walden Type Co. Not only have they curated a really fresh array of “real vintage” letter forms (fresh even relative to the wonderful collections that Dover has produced in their books for years and years – more recently with digital scans included), but their collections are very affordably priced.  The Wild West Press collection (which the above specimens come from ) consists of 47 fonts and hundreds of little clip art pics, all for $49.95 USD.

Weiss explains the origins of Wild West Press collection here (from the introduction in the accompanying manual): To create this set of fonts, we have sifted through original material from the Library of Congress and a great number of other historical sources. Where ever possible,we identified the fonts used in each specimen and thus arrived at a short list of typefaces that printers appear to have favored most. We are pleased to make these fonts available for the first time in the context of printing in the Old West. As they are taken from original specimens they carry the chinks and dings of hard use, which should only add to their charm.

Well, I love them (of course), and though I only bought the collection about a week ago, I’ve already used them for the titles of a documentary I’m developing called Alfred & Jakobine (news to come!). Anyway, great work Walden Type Co. Keep it up, and thanks for your efforts and for remembering the forgotten. A small sampling from the 47 beautiful, scratched, uneven, worn fonts can be seen below.

Google Map Alphabet from Rhett Dashwood

One of those I-wish-I’d-thought-of-this-ideas! Lot of work!  Over about 7 months (when he had free time between design projects) designer Rhett Dashwood searched miles and miles of aerial imagery from Google Maps (primarily over his home region of Victoria, Australia, in order to piece together a complete, aerial alphabet. Buildings, rock formations, hedge rows, roadways, anything…  nice one!

Experiment No 1: Digital hurricane destroys type

As I dive deeper into 3D typographic modeling and animation (for my title design work), I am continuously experimenting (and what fun it is). Here’s a rather interesting new test I just created in Cinema 4D that shows the destructive effect wind has on all the faces (front, back and sides) of some 3D type – the surfaces of the letterforms quickly separate and become indecipherable, abstract ribbons, floating in the air, wrapping around each other. This is exploratory work for some titles I’m doing for a friend – the very talented cinematographer/director Rollo Hollins. Below is the fully rendered animation. Kinda reminds me of when the Millennium Falcon was floating away into space from the Star Destroyer, unnoticed, with all the metallic junk!  Stay tuned for more experiments.

Hand Made Fonts

Gotta hand it to these guys. They have really filled a much needed niche. Physical, hand-made fonts (though many of theirs are actually beautifully executed 3D graphics – hand made in a different way) that make it a hell of a lot easier for all of us to create title designs out of clouds, smoke, ice, and even toast (!) than we could ever manage easily on our own. Estonian based Hand Made Font only established themselves in 2008, but they’ve obviously been busily at work building this comprehensive collection. They also do a lot of commissioned design/lettering work for magazines and advertising (it looks like the cloud and smoke fonts were both developed for the Slovenian travel board).  The fonts are all jpgs rather than actual fonts for typesetting, so require a little more technical know-how to work with, but nothing more than the designer’s requisite knowledge of Photoshop. Amazing work.

Airport runway graphics

I’ve always loved the entirely utilitarian, but accidentally beautiful, random graphic compositions that exist on airport runways and the asphalt roadways leading here and there. Lines and letters, numbers and lights, grays and whites, reds and yellows, shadows and skid marks. Isolated (and particularly in black and white) they become quite interesting, abstract typographic/graphic compositions. One day, I’d love to have free access to wander around an airport (not likely!) and take some carefully composed photos, or better yet, from a helicopter where the vantage point would allow even more interesting views of all the lines, numbers and lights.

I finally had my camera with me during a series of recent flights, and here are a few of my airport runway photographs.