Category Archives: Type

Typography and Instagram

The folks over at We Love Typography are mobilizing the world’s font faithful in a very cool new project mapping cool fonts around the world. To participate all you have to do is have the iOS Instagram app installed, have geotagging turned ‘on’, snap a pic and upload it with the tag #wlt or #welovetype. Then the crawlers will grab it an place it on the correct place on this Google Map.

Typography World Google Map

No doubt it’s going to get crowded fast. But it’s a great idea.

There are also two new FREE iOS apps for font and type geeks:

Fontli iconFontli, has an Instagram-feel, and is trying to build a social network around fonts. The idea being that you could submit a snap shot of some type and your virtual rolodex of font-ish friends could help you identify it. Also, there is…

 

FontMaker IconFontmaker, which lets you create your own font variations to use in text messaging and emails sent from your mobile device. Not super-useful, but I could see where some would get a kick out of throwing in some random ligatures and letter forms.

 

Typographic Calendars for 2012

Here are three of my favorite typographic calendars available this year. It’s amazing what type designers are doing in the way of font choices and materials. I admit that 99% of my “calendaring” is done via computer, but these three pieces almost elevate the calendar to the level of art.

Heather Lins’ A Year in Caps

This one is $32 and is printed on 12 different wooden cards. Each screen-printed with colorful inks and starkly different fonts.

365 Typography Calendar

This one has been around for over a decade (it’s been known as Pentagram’s calendar) and the designers are branching out with this one. The 2012 edition is comprised of original fonts that are not for sale anywhere. The fonts were designed by contemporary designers who used landmarks, technology and pop culture as inspiration. This is sold in two sizes for $35 and $55.

Harald Geisler’s Typographic Wall Calendar

This one is by far my favorite. Geisler successfully ran a Kickstarter campaign to push his calendar into production. His calendar is massive as he used 2012 computer keys to list out every day of the year. No doubt this one would be one heck of a conversation piece. It’s pretty fun. There are various prices. A single calendar runs for $35 (including shipping). Prices go up if you want signed copies or the actual keyboard keys. It’s worth watching the video just to get an idea of the artist and how the calendar is laid out.

 

 

Typographic Wallpaper

Fantastic does not begin to describe how cool these wallpapers are. These would make great screen savers, t-shirts, tattoos. Well, maybe tattoo is a bit much…. We’re looking to gussy up some walls around the house and I ran across these awesome wallpapers. Some are screen-printed, some letterpress-looking, but all are 100% cool. And Italian. I haven’t found anything local that even comes close. Take a look:

Here’s the site where you can check out all the wall coverings. Just click on the ‘Life’ drop down. There is also a drop down to select the language. Setting it to English is helpful. It’s doubtful that we’ll get any of these exact typographic wallpaper designs, but I certainly have some cool ideas now.