You can already check out Google Maps by Josh Spear, but what about Josh Spear by Google Maps? For this, we’ve got British researcher Rachel Young to thank. Inspired by the Google Maps Typography of Rhett Dashwood, she created this “font” of New York. And she did this while recovering from an injury, having never been to New York. Check out the Alphabet State gallery over at the New York Post website to create your own typographic crop circles. [via Media Bistro
Two typographers (Pierre&Damien of plmd.me) and a pro driver (Stef van Campenhoudt) collaborated to design a font with a car– literally. The car movements were tracked using a custom software, designed by interactive artist Zachary Lieberman. Check out the video.
If you’re truly a typography geek, then why stop at just outfitting your office and your bedroom with lust-worthy fonts? We just spotted this rad translucent soap created by Debbie Chialtas at The Soap Lab on the design site FredFlare. The square soap features raised letters and punctuation and we’re geeked about the fact we can get clean and look fresh while doing so. Just one thing to note – the “Crushed Ice” scent means it smells like peppermint, though logic says it should be fragrance-free. Well, that’s it, we’re off to sniff the ice in our freezer. And, for writers, The Soap Lab also offers a “Writer’s Block” soap that features a gluttony of words to get your brain churning.
Practicing Feng Shui (shameless plug for my fathers book) is but one way of expressing oneself and opening up your life through the arrangement of furniture. If you’re not in possession of someone to help you move that weighty bookshelf across the room to a more satisfactory spot that enhances your chi, you could probably be content with another way altogether of using furniture to express yourself. Thankfully, Austin-based designer Cody Haltom’s Furniture typeface allows for the perfect marriage of both verbal and design expression of your inner being. Whether you’d like to craft a passive-aggressive message to your roommate for not being around to help you move said bookshelf or just want to bring a nice home-y feel to your words, this impressive typographical display could certainly do the trick.
Update: The agency that created this work was The Butler Bro’s, and apparently Cody was a designer on the project.
As you know, we’re all about recycling. But, Character, a Finnish design company is all about recycling in an altogether different sort of way. When a store decides to toss their neon signage, Character comes along, snags them, takes them apart, then rebuilds them into their own design creations that are complete with LED lights. The new letters and numbers – which feature a variety of colors and typefaces – can be used inside or outdoors and seem especially perfect for anyone obsessed with typography who finds the letter mugs at Anthropologie to be too mundane. We can only hope they start to work with neon images next.
At the moment, you can only purchase these in person in Helsinki, but a range of letters are available on their website for around 300 Euros. So much fun to imagine the uses for these!
Costa Rican illustrator Jonathan Rodriguez has been futzing around with typography, hellbent on giving characters character through his site Pixel Cannibal. In the case of his Salomon Octopus snowboard, he makes optopus words. This year, in one of his editorial illustrations, he had the word “pollute” trail a female figure so that it appeared as if it were her dirty feet that had made the letters in the snow behind her. And in his Eat Me piece, Rodriguez created a sweet, Alice-in-Wonderland-inspired typeface surrounded with flowers that he juxtaposed with the image of a human skull. Totally inspiring stuff.
It may be a month late, but new ideas are never out of style. Studio Number One just issued their 2009 New Ideal Calendar with 12 months worth of fresh typography and illustration from Shepard Fairey, Zach Gibson, Kristian Henson, Philip Lumbang, Jesselisa Moretti, Cleon Peterson, Casey Ryder and Florencio Zavala. With so trouble in our time, they chose to see each day as a little bit of space for working toward innovating and solving problems. Studio Number One’s 2009 calendar is printed in black and white, spiral bound and measures 9″ x 14″ (opened). Perfect gift for font nerds who need organizational tools. Available now at Subliminal Projects.
Pete Karras’s new venture, The Cutty Spot, turns ABC’s of different shapes and sizes into works of alphabetic art. The New York-based graphic designer makes collage-like creations highlighting one letter at a time, ensuring that no duplicate characters exist within the piece by personally hand cutting and setting each one within the work’s 22 x 30 frame. The end result is a truly unique arrangement of letters and fonts. You can currently request your favorite vowel or consonant creation from Mr. Karras — though if you want the latter you’ll have to show some patience, as each item requires about six weeks production time. Though, that seems like a short wait for a one of a kind work.
Evan Roth created the typography driven video for the new Jay-Z track, produced by Kanye “Brooklyn (We Go Hard).” The song is set to be a piece of the Notorious soundtrack due out later, but it;s being released now to be a part of the RED & Global funds to fight AIDS in Africa campaign. The track is amazing, but the video — killer. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think Evan may have out done the Hova himself. To make things even more interesting, you can grab the FLA code here and remix the video up yourself. Genius work for a good cause.
From its punch of color to stylistic photos, Spanish fashion and lifestyle magazine Neo2 magazine is a hot little number. While you can only get a tease of what’s underneath the hood of the current issue with the provided tiny flip-through feature on the homepage (click the left “EN” for English), Neo2’s flavor comes through on its blog, which, like Ffffound!, uses imagery as a portal to pique readers’ interests. Click on an image that grabs you and it takes you to a blog post with links that come in handy if you can’t read Spanish. But perhaps the best find on the site is the Typography section for design nerds, which provides a monster archive of fresh-looking fonts for the big cost of free that will keep you satisfied way into the night. This is the cheapest date you’ll ever have, so no doubt you’ll be coming back for more.
Smells like teen … inspiration! Our young friend Ethan Bodnar has come out with a new series of posters calling for social change in the most typographically literal way possible. The 11 x 17Â “This Is Backwards” series has a couple of motivational statements in, of course, backwards facing font. Wrong-headed ideas, like sitting on your ass all the time or going grocery shopping without a reusable bag, are spelled out against variations of solid blue. Clever. Just don’t hang them in front of mirror — or you’ll be getting the wrong message.
This political season you are going to see a lot of buttons supporting various candidates. If you've ever been to a political rally you know how important these buttons are — they immediately identify who is friend and who is foe. Thanks to the guys at unconfessableideas.com we now can do the same with typefaces. They've done up some pin buttons for Serif and Sans-Serif. Now designer conferences are going to turn as heated as political rallies. Well, maybe not. Check out the pin buttons here and whole website full of clever objects (you might need to know a little Italian at times).
This past January, John Rambo (as portrayed by Sylvester Stallone), descended upon the borders of Myanmar to dole out “aid” in the form of explosions and plenty of collateral damage. Presently, that kind of “assistance” isn’t going to be of much benefit. Fortunately, the folks at Create/Reject have a more inventive, less violent idea for a way to assist the nation’s one million plus people still suffering from the effects of the May 2nd cyclone. Rather than relying on the use of force, they’re relying on the sale of fonts. Their simple response for the request for relief was to put together a book titled Fifty Designers Current Favorite Typefaces, featuring ideas from talents such as Stefan Sagmeister and Experimental Jetset. The best part of the whole deal is that all proceeds from the sale go directly to UNICEF. At the dirt cheap cost of nearly $6, it’s worth much more.
If you’re truly a typography geek, then why stop at just outfitting your office and your bedroom with lust-worthy fonts? We just spotted this rad translucent soap created by Debbie Chialtas at 
This past January, John Rambo (as portrayed by Sylvester Stallone), descended upon the borders of Myanmar to dole out “aid” in the form of explosions and plenty of collateral damage. Presently, that kind of “assistance” isn’t going to be of much benefit. Fortunately, the folks at 
