Category “Typography”

Reissue of the 1975 NASA Graphics Standards Manual

September 1, 2015

NASA Graphics Manual Reissue

NASA Graphics Manual Reissue

NASA Graphics Manual Reissue

NASA Graphics Manual Reissue

Jesse Reed & Hamish Smyth, the fel­las behind the won­der­ful 1970 NYCTA Graph­ics Stan­dards Man­ual reis­sue, have announced a new Kick­starter for the reis­sue of the 1975 NASA Graph­ics Stan­dards Man­ual.

The orig­i­nal man­ual was cre­ated in 1975 as part of a NASA redesign done by Richard Danne and Bruce Black­burn, and it’s an impor­tant piece of Amer­i­can graphic design his­tory. I’ve been on the look­out for years for a copy of the man­ual, but I still haven’t be able to find one. It’s super rare. That’s what makes this project so great. The man­ual will now be avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic, so every­one will get to enjoy it.

The reis­sued man­ual will be based on the Danne’s per­sonal copy, and should ship in March 2016. Jesse and Hamish did an incred­i­ble job on the NYCTA man­ual, so I’m sure this reis­sue will be just as good. I’m def­i­nitely back­ing the project.

Here are the specs:

  • Images from the orig­i­nal pre­sen­ta­tion to NASA by Danne & Blackburn
  • 500+ word fore­word by Danne, who has pro­vided never-before-seen mate­ri­als from the DanneDesign archive
  • 2000+ word essay on the cul­ture of NASA at the time of the man­ual by Christo­pher Bonanos
  • Approx­i­mately 5lbs (2.3kg) on earth, 0.9lbs (0.4kg) on the moon
  • 9.5 × 11.5″ (241 × 292mm)
  • 200 pages includ­ing 10 gate folds
  • 93 plates printed from high-resolution scans of Danne’s per­sonal copy of the manual
  • CYMK + 5 Pan­tone® spot colors
  • Hard­cover with soft touch lam­i­na­tion and two-color silkscreen
  • Printed in Italy
  • 100 gsm Yupo Orig­i­nal and Perig­ord Matte 135 gsm
  • Sto­chas­tic printing
  • Red head and tail bands
  • Indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged in sta­tic shield­ing pouch

Bernard Series 1227

May 11, 2015

Bernard Series 1227

Bernard Series 1227

Bernard Series 1227

Bernard Series 1227

Bernard Series 1227

I wrote about Bernard’s beau­ti­ful cycling kit a few years ago, and now they’ve released a new design with the Series 1227.

The series includes short sleeve jer­sey, bib shorts, wind vest and arm warm­ers, and are all made in Italy.

Founder and designer, Bran­don Sin­cock, explains the design:

The new kit is an evo­lu­tion of the orig­i­nal design – work­ing with sim­i­lar ele­ments, and a shared design sen­si­bil­ity, but fur­ther explor­ing lay­er­ing & the over­lap­ping of ele­ments as they wrap around the body, and tran­si­tion from front to back. As well, color and typog­ra­phy are always key ele­ments in our designs, and the way the designs play within the con­text of a rider’s unique posi­tion on the bike.

I’m a cyclist, and it’s hard to find cloth­ing that is really well designed, and func­tional. Looks like Bernard is on the right track.

The great pho­tog­ra­phy is by Jor­dan Clark Hag­gard.

Site Tweaks

May 11, 2015

Hey folks, I made some changes to the site, the biggest being the type­face. The site is now set in Lexia, a clean slab serif by Ron Car­pen­ter for Dal­ton Maag. I’m a sucker for a nice slab serif, and Lexia is easy to read.

I also applied some color, using a dark blue as the pri­mary, and I did some minor visual clean-up.

Enjoy.

Neue Haas Unica

April 8, 2015

Neue Haas Unica

Neue Haas Unica

In the late 70s, Haas Type Foundry com­mis­sioned Team ’77 to cre­ate a new sans-serif that com­bined the great qual­i­ties of Hel­vetica, Univers and Akzi­denz Grotesk. They came up with Unica, which was released in 1980.

Work­ing from prints of Hel­vetica, Univers and Akzi­denz Grotesk, the trio iden­ti­fied, com­pared and eval­u­ated the finest of details, cre­at­ing a new-generation sans-serif that elim­i­nated the imper­fec­tions of its pre­de­ces­sors. “Unica was designed to be dif­fer­ent,” said André Gürtler; “sharper than Hel­vetica, warmer than Univers, cleaner than Akzidenz.”

Because of legal dis­putes, Unica has never been avail­able as a dig­i­tal type­face. Now it is.

Mono­type has just released Neue Haas Unica, a full dig­i­tal set designed by Toshi Oma­gari. It is also avail­able as a webfont.

Great to see clas­sic type­faces get­ting a fresh new life in the dig­i­tal age.

Carl Brett

September 22, 2014

Carl Brett

Carl Brett was an Irish graphic designer and teacher who worked in Canada since 1954 and helped pio­neer mod­ernism in Canada. He was a found­ing mem­ber of the Soci­ety of Graphic Design­ers of Canada and served as pres­i­dent on two occasions.

Couldn’t find much info on him, and only found this gallery of his work at a small res­o­lu­tion, and some sort video inter­views with him.

Dot Zero – Issue 1

August 5, 2014

Dot Zero Issue 1

Dot Zero Issue 1

Dot Zero Issue 1

Dot Zero was a quar­terly by Uni­mark in part­ner­ship with Finch Paper that focused on the the­ory and prac­tice of visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Only five issues were pub­lished between 1966 and 1968, and Mas­simo Vignelli was the designer and cre­ative direc­tor of the mag­a­zine. Vignelli wanted to make the design excit­ing, but sim­ple, so he set all type in only two weights of Hel­vetica and every­thing printed in black and white.

Michael Bierut inter­viewed Vignelli about the mag­a­zine. Some nice insights on how the pub­li­ca­tion came about, and its production.

The folks at Ratio­nale Design have made avail­able a hi-res PDF of issue 1 of Dot Zero, and you can see some pho­tos of issue 2 here.

Font Men

March 27, 2014

Font Men is a short doc­u­men­tary, directed & pro­duced by Dress Code, about Jonathan Hoe­fler and Tobias Frere-Jones, and their world of type. Obvi­ously shot before their pub­lic break-up. Really nice motion graph­ics, too.

Post Grotesk

November 8, 2013

Post Grotesk

Post Grotesk

Post Grotesk is a sans-serif type­face designed by Josh Fin­klea as a con­tem­po­rary ver­sion of the tra­di­tional grotesk sans-serif. Post Grotesk is avail­able in four weights in roman and italic, with built-in small caps.

Fira Sans

October 7, 2013

Fira Sans

Fira Sans is a type­face designed by Erik Spiek­er­mann for the Fire­fox OS. Fira Sans is avail­able in four weights with cor­re­spond­ing ital­ics: light, reg­u­lar, medium, and bold, and is free to download.

You can down­load the spec­i­men here.

Wim Crouwel — Het Nederlands Kamerorkest

August 30, 2013

Wim Crouwel

A poster or cat­a­log cover designed by Wim Crouwel some­time dur­ing the 60s. Perfection.

Via AGI Open London

Type Only

August 26, 2013

Type Only

Type Only

Type Only

Type Only

Type Only

Unit Edi­tions con­tin­ues to impress me. They con­tinue to pump-out these high-quality books with great work. The newest book Type Only looks like it’s awe­some. Designed by Spin, and edited by Tony Brook, Clau­dia Klat and Adrian Shaugh­nessy. The book cel­e­brates type unsup­ported by illus­tra­tion or pho­tog­ra­phy. Type Only fea­tures the work of over 100 graphic design­ers from Aus­tralia, Bel­gium, Czech Repub­lic, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Italy, Nether­lands, Nor­way, Poland, Por­tu­gal, Ser­bia, South Korea, Spain, Swe­den, Switzer­land, UK, USA.

Want.

Archive

August 6, 2013

Archive

Archive

Archive is a beau­ti­ful type­face designed by The Entente, that is now avail­able through Colophon. What’s unique about it is a small indent on the top and bot­tom of each serif.

The font is avail­able in nine cuts — Roman, Roman Italic, Semi­bold, Semi­bold Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Extra Bold, Extra Bold Italic and Mono. The Stan­dard ver­sion con­tains Latin-A sup­port. The Pro ver­sion includes a full set of small caps (includ­ing accented small caps), dis­cre­tional lig­a­tures, addi­tional typo­graphic alter­nates and num­ber styles as well as Cen­tral Euro­pean, Cyril­lic and Greek lan­guage sup­port. Sup­plied in Open­Type format.

← Older Entries