University of the Arts grad Jim Tierney designed four beautiful looking Jules Verne book covers for his senior thesis project. Check out some video of the books and his personal site here.
Via Design Observer.
Dezeen have got together with Steven Holl Architects to give away five copies of their latest monograph, Urbanisms – Working with Doubt. (more…)
Next week the British Library hosts an Alice in Wonderland-themed event, prior to the release of Tim Burton’s colourful take on the classic 19th century tale…
Home to the original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the British Library is set to stage Curiouser and Curiouser: The Genius of Alice In Wonderland next Wednesday (February 24) to celebrate the enduring appeal of Lewis Carroll’s 1862 story and the latest film version of Alice’s adventures, directed by Tim Burton, which opens in March. Tickets are still available for the event.
Cast members from the new film – Michael Sheen (White Rabbit) Matt Lucas (Tweedledum and Tweedledee) and Christopher Lee (The Jabberwock) – will be participating in the event and reading extracts from the book. There will also be an appreciation of the Alice stories by writer Will Self, a discussion with Burton’s producer Richard Zanuck and co-producer Joe Roth, and a screening of the earliest film version of the story from 1903, recently restored by the BFI and shown with a live piano accompaniment.
Prior to the event there will be a chance to visit a new display containing highlights of the British Library’s Alice material, showcasing the original manuscript – pages from which are shown here – pages from Carroll’s diaries, the Wonderland Postage Stamp-Case designed by Carroll and also illustrations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Salvador Dali.
The original Alice manuscript was hand written and illustrated by Lewis Carroll (the pseudonym chosen by mathematics don, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1862.
Helen Broderick, curator of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library says, “The appeal of Alice, the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter are as strong today as ever and the British Library is delighted to be able to highlight the rich variety of Alice material that we hold dating from the story’s initial creation in the 1860s through to different translations, parodies and editions created in the 20th century by artists and writers as diverse as Salvador Dali, Mervyn Peake and Vladimir Nabokov.”
For more information on the British Libraries Alice collection go to bl.uk/alice and for details of next Wednesday’s event and to buy tickets, see the What’s On section. Disney’s Alice In Wonderland opens nationwide in 3D and 2D on March 5. To view the trailer, go here.
To coincide with today’s celebrations of the Chinese New Year, Dezeen have teamed up with brand consultancy HuntHaggarty to give our readers the chance to win one of seven copies of China’s Creative Voice – A Brave New Youth Culture. (more…)
We’ve got together with [NAME] Publications of Miami to give away five copies of monograph El Ultimo Grito – Abandon Architectures. (more…)
Type designer Seb Lester was commissioned by JD Salinger’s publisher Hamish Hamilton (part of the Penguin group) last year to work on a set of new book covers for the reclusive author’s titles, Catcher In The Rye; For Esme With Love And Squalor; Franny And Zooey; and Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour – An Introduction. Here we reveal Lester’s initial ideas for two different stylistic approaches, and the four finished book covers – which were all approved by the author before he passed away last month…
It turns out that JD Salinger had some very basic (and strict) rules about how he wanted his book covers to look. He was adamant that the only copy that should appear on his books was his name and the title of the book. No quotes or plot summary, no author biography. And definitely no marketing blurb. Just the title and his name.
“Working with John Hamilton at Hamish Hamilton I developed two possible directions for the covers,” explains Lester of his approach to the commission. “One was relatively conservative and classical in nature [see the version on the left in the sketch above and rough workings below]. The other [on the right, above and below] was more specifically American in feel, a mid-twentieth century style script. “
“I feel incredibly privileged to have worked on this project,” Lester tells us. “It really felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity so the pressure was on – not least because I knew JD Salinger would be approving the book jackets himself.”
Here are the four finished book cover designs which feature Lester’s specially drawn typeface, known within Hamish Hamilton as ‘The Salinger’:
“The direction chosen, which I prefer for both aesthetic and functional reasons, has a timeless and classical beauty about it – I hope,” says Lester. “The inline treatment and style of flourishing have echoes of classic typefaces and lettering from the mid-twentieth century period when the books were written.”
The new set of the four books were originally due to be published in June this year, but, because of the author’s death on January 27, the publication date has been brought forward to March 4.
See more of Seb Lester’s work at seblester.co.uk/
Pictoplasma, a Berlin-based organization devoted to the art of character design, recently published a lengthy 328 page book all about character design and art. Its not your average compilation either. As written on Pictoplasma’s site: ‘By engaging the viewer on a direct emotional level they bypass language and cultural barriers – but do abstract designs really have the potential to fulfil a utopian fantasy of global visual communication?’. The book strives to do a lot more than just showcase some nice eye candy (though it does succeed quite well at that too). It’s filled with a number of interesting essays by folks like Paul McCarthy and Lev Manovich, just to name a few. Order a copy or find out more about Pictopia here.
Fraktur Mon Amour is the work of Judith Schalansky, written while she was a student of the Communication Design program in Potsdam. She developed a serious passion for blackletter and was disappointed to find all the reference books about this fascinating genre are very dated and often quite staid, and in many cases not easily available. Judith started to search for blackletter typefaces that are available in digital form. She soon discovered hundreds upon hundreds, lots of them being true creations of the digital age which haven’t been featured in a type book before. Hence, Judith compiled her own collection. The outcome was published by Hermann Schmidt Mainz in 2006. Now, a second, revised and enlarged edition is available.
The book’s design is exceptional: a massive black block from the outside, about 8 × 5 × 2 inch, more than 700 pages thick, with titles, edges and endpapers all colored in a loud pink! This “porn bible style”, as it was referred to, certainly is not to everyone’s taste. In an interview for Fontblog, Judith admits she herself was a bit shocked about her fetish book. “I was surprised how intense it turned out. Someone told me: ‘What you’re doing, that’s type sex’. He had a point.” Her chutzpah earned her a number of awards, including the TDC Award for Typographic Excellence.
The layout and the typography is more conventional: the accompanying texts are set very well in FF Profile. There’s an introduction with a brief history of the genre, some thoughts on its difficult image and its role today, plus a few descriptive words at the beginning of each chapter: Rotunda & Bastarda, Textura, Schwabacher, Fraktur, Decoratives & Initials, Modern, Contemporary, Display. All those texts are bilingual. The English translation was provided mainly by Jay Rutherford, a Canadian expat who is professor for typography at the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar.
With as many as 333 featured typefaces — 64 of them newly added — it was a good idea to attach a triple index: by typeface name, designer, and foundry. The range is wide. Fraktur Mon Amour has the classics like Wittenberger, Goudy Text, Rudolf Koch’s Wilhelm-Klingspor-Gotisch; along with more contemporary faces like Lucida Blackletter, Letterror’s FF Brokenscript or San Marco by Karlgeorg Hoefer; as well as fresh additions including Blaktur, Fakir, and Darka. Several fonts debut exclusively in Fraktur Mon Amour, or, like Tim Ahrens’ Herb, haven’t officially been released yet.
The “Modern” chapter contains a number of entries that I wouldn’t classify as strictly blackletter: Eckmann, Fanfare, Banco. However, I think the inclusion of those “greyletter” designs is reasonable: the boundaries are not that sharp, especially when it comes to written forms. Large parts of “Contemporary” and “Display” aren’t worth a long look; dozens of grungy free fonts and PoMo exercises in deconstruction that I am honestly not that interested in. Then again, some intriguing insights into unexplored terrain: blackletter pixel fonts and textura FontStructions — modular renderings of medieval forms, not dusty reactionary but rather cutting-edge hipness. Two ribbon page markers help navigating the tome.
Each typeface is presented on a double page. The recto shows the character set; upper- and lowercase alphabet, umlauts, alternates and ligatures (if present), a few special characters including punctuation, and figures. In some cases, there’s an accompanying style; a bolder weight, a swash variant, or even an oblique. That secondary style is not shown in full, only a handful exemplary glyphs are included. Below, there are three lines of continuous text set in a smaller size, with the wording carefully adjusted from page to page, in order to integrate each typeface’s special features, like ligatures or matching Lombardic caps. The point size always is stated: the character set is shown at a size of 30 to 40pt, while the text settings vary from 9 to 14 pt. All in all, the specimens are pretty useful.
The verso is the playground. It is filled with a kaleidoscopic pattern made from repeating letters of the respective font. While that may look nice, those pink-and-black arabesques don’t make much for me. After having looked at the first twenty or thirty of those ornamental textures, the typographer in me wished that space had been used for something less contemplative and more useful: background information that goes beyond the minimum data — designer, foundry and year of release — like a list of significant usages, or specifications regarding the language support. On the other hand, I can understand that this rather pictorial half of the book, together with the unconventional color, helped to address a wider — and different — audience. Introducing novices to the beauty of blackletter and tempting them to take a closer look is not the worst goal to strive for, I guess.
The appendix, in turn, is very informative. Friedrich Forssman, author of Detailtypografie, explains all the ſpecial rules that need to be considered when typesetting blackletter text. Also, a few books are listed that invite further reading.
The book comes with a CD, packed with 150 fonts — often “free for personal use, not to be used commercially”. A great deal stems from Petra Heidorn’s, Manfred Klein’s, and Dieter Steffmann’s large collections — digitizations both of well-known classics and obscure display gems, of mixed quality. That doesn’t mean they’re all trash. Most of them can’t compete with the commercial offerings of professional foundries, and I won’t recommend using these fonts for an elaborate blackletter project. Still, it’s nice to see this digital addendum. Having access to these fonts helped me to quickly explain the differences of Schwabacher and Fraktur to my students. And the CD holds some really nice surprises in store, too: Georg Seifert’s attempt at a modernized-yet-unromanized Fraktur, RosenRot, and its monolinear companion Rostrot — to name but one example.
Blackletter is alive, and it ain’t a zombie. Fraktur Mon Amour is both a document and a promoter of this resurrection.
We just received a copy of this small but beautifully formed book (published by Nieves right at the end of last year) which collects some of Geoff McFetridge’s drawings created whilst working with Spike Jonze on the titles, type treatments and marketing graphics for Jonze’s film, Where The Wild Things Are…
The book is a little under A4 in size and has just 16 pages of work – but it’s beautiful. As well as illustration work, a page in the book has a little bit of blurb about the collected work by McFetridge – who has worked with Jonze on various projects before. Here’s an extract from the text:
“I noticed a difference when I began working on Where the Wild Things Are. For the first time I felt that Spike and I were working on a project where I could actually contribute in a significant way. Much less of what I was making was being thrown away, which was a first. I was given the opportunity to interpret not only Spike Jonze’s interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are, but also Maurice Sendak’s original book.
Like any kid growing up in the 70’s I was greatly influenced by Mr. Sendak’s books. His books are not just on my bookshelf they are in my blood. What I did with the titles, type treatments and marketing graphics also owes greatly to the heavy creative lifting done by Sonny Gerasimowicz who designed the creatures in the film and the Art Direction of K.K. Barrett.”
Here are a few spreads:
The 16 page book measures, 19.5 x 25.5 cm, and is printed on Color Offset and a copy will set you back $14 from nieves.ch
A while ago, for its 60th anniversary, Penguin Classics published its beautifully designed ‘Great Ideas’ series. Divided into five installments (philosophy, politics, science, etc.), the fifth is to be released this year. Each book is between 75-150 pages, with its own uniquely designed cover. They’re actually quite addictive to buy because of their fantastic price, not to mention the fact that the books themselves are great reads. I’m hoping to collect them all by the end of the year. Check out some of the series’ titles here.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
