I ordered this book quite a while ago. In fact, I can’t remember when I got it. It has sat on my bookshelf ”nearly forgotten. Until today.

As I prepared to head off to the laundromat, I realized I needed some reading material to pass the time. There it was, sitting on my bookshelf, sad and ignored. I picked it up and slipped it in my purse. I have bad memories of typography books I read in college school. I love typography, but could not take the dry, dense text I was forced to read for class. This is not one of those books. I read the first paragraph and couldn’t put it down. I actually read the entire book while at the laundromat. In fact, I left my fully dried cloths in the dryer an extra 15 minutes just so I could finish this book.

Lupton offers you all the little tidbits and facts:

“Mrs Eaves: working woman
Zuzana Licko, fearless pioneer of the digital dawn, produced historical revivals during the 1990s alongside her experimental display faces. Her 1996 typeface Mrs Eaves, inspired by the eighteenth-century types of John Baskerville (and named after his mistress and housekeeper Sarah Eaves), became one of the most popular typefaces of its time.”

Along with some wit:

“Every typeface wants to know, “Do I look fat in this paragraph?” It’s all a matter of context. A font could look perfectly sleek on screen, yet appear bulky and out of shape in print. Some typefaces are drawn with heavier lines than others, or they have taller x-heights. Helvetica isn’t fat. She has big bones.”

Mixed in with sexual innuendos:

“Letters do love one another. However, due to their anatomical differences, some letters have a hard time achieving intimacy. Consider the letter V, for example, whose seductive valley makes her limbs stretch out above her base. In contrast, L solidly holds his ground yet harbors a certain emptiness above the waist. Automated kerning tables solve these problems in most situations, but some letters may require additional guidance at larger sizes. Capital letters, being square and conservative, prefer to keep a little distance from their neighbors.”

And some good advice:

“Think more, design less”

This is a must read for designers. Lupton gives you just enough history, tips, and facts to leave you craving more. You will not become a master of typography after reading this book, but it will leave you thirsty for more. I’m already submitting an amazon order for many of the books Lupton cites.

A couple weeks ago at graphic design group the guys from Motive Media did a presentation. Hop over there and take a look, they do really good work. Although they are from florida, but don’t hold that against them
Anyways, they handed out a list of links that have been really helpful to me so I thought I would share them with you:
design meltdown
design float
colour lovers
kuler
brusheezy
site point
9rules
smashing magazine
456bereastreet
squidfingers
css mania

I never really talk about my real job on this blog. I’m not sure why, it’s an awesome job. I’m the promotions coordinator for Taco Bell Arena at Boise State University. I do event photography, web design, graphic design, manage print advertising & web advertising. Anyways, I just thought I would let everyone know that Dane Cook is coming to Boise November 30th at Taco Bell Arena. If your interested in getting tickets to this event you should check out his myspace or wait until October 11th (when tickets go on sale).

I was so pleased to finally get out to the Idaho International Film Festival last weekend. The night was filled with controversy and cutting edge concepts. I watch two films- Dante’s Inferno & Your Mommy Kills Animals . Both films, although widely different, were very well done.

Your Mommy Kills Animals, a documentary about a very touchy subject (animal rights vs animal welfare and all the opinions in-between). This film reminds it’s audience of what a documentary should be. The filmmaker left his opinions out. He simply relayed interviews and facts ” leaving it up to the audience to make up their own minds.

Your Mommy Kills Animals Trailer

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Dante’s Inferno was one of those films that makes a home in your brain and never leaves. Master puppeteers bring the 700 year old story to live with hand drawn paper dolls. Don’t let this fool you, the film is graphic and politically incorrect. Check out the trailer:

Oh and one more thing- I’m claiming my blog on technorati Technorati Profile

White and Black
The values that make up the keys of my new musical instrument. Can you guess what it is?
I’m doing alot better with this instrument then I did with the guitar… If you know of a good piano teacher let me know

The other day at work I did one of those personality quizes. This one is supposed to tell me how I would fit in a Kingdom:

your distinct personality, The Discoverer, might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. Your overriding goal is to go where no one else has ever gone before. Regardless of the number of available natural problems to be solved, it is not unusual for you to continually challenge yourself with new situations or obstacles that you have created. You are an insatiable explorer of people, places, things and ideas. You thrive on constant change and anything new or different. On the positive side, you can be creatively rational as well as open minded and just. On the negative side, you might be an impractical and indecisive procrastinator. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today’s corporate kingdoms.

Paula Scher Templates?!

This is a great article about Saul Bass. One of my favorites- he paved the way for design in the film industry.

The article “A Brave New World: Understanding Deconstruction” (article first appeared in Print Magazine in 1990) may be dated”but the information is still very relevant. Chuck Byrne and Martha Witte describe a new phenomenon in the design world. Designers typically refuse to believe that they could be influenced by an outside source and tend to think of themselves as originators. The concept that society could have an effect on design trends is a new phenomenon . Although some designers would like to think their inner creativity is the source of all their designs, it is simply untrue. Many aspects of society and culture such as literature, painting, philosophy, politics, and technology, have influenced the world of design.
One good example of how designers have used the influences of society to their benefit is the Bauhaus. Bauhaus was a design school that emerged in Germany in 1919. The success of the Bauhaus can be accredited to their innovative ideas and ability to be open to change. They used the inventions of the time to their benefit.
Modern technology has had a great impact on typography and design. The personal computer has allowed the designer freedom at a low cost. Old design techniques and tools, such as the grid, have gone nearly extinct since the emergence of the personal computer. Other revolutions on typography were brought on by movements such as futurism. Futurism began in Italy in 1909. It was a modernist movement that celebrated the technological era. Largely inspired by Cubism, the core of the Futurist thought and art were machines and motion.
More recently, deconstruction has been an influence either directly or indirectly on typography. The article defines deconstruction as, …the breaking down of something (an idea, a precept, a word, a value) in order to ˜decode its parts in such a way that these act as ˜informers on the thing, or on any assumptions or convictions we have regarding it. An example that was used in the article to further explain this idea is the word whole . The word whole is thought of as one complete thing. However, we understand everything in terms of its parts, and in terms of how its parts work together, making wholeness incomplete.
Typography and design have utilized deconstruction to create designs that are centered around content and language rather than convention. Deconstruction was introduced to graphic design by the reissuing in 1982 of Pioneers of Modern Typography which was first published in 1969, and the publication of The Liberated Page in 1987. In these books both written by Herbert Spencer, it became clear that the interpretation of the meaning of words was being used to provide emphasis by the Dadaist and Futurist typography. Traditional typography techniques were continually collapsing and new innovative styles were emerging like in the work of Paula Scher. It is unclear as to where the design world will go next, but it is important to continue the path these designers have set to utilize and understand our sources.