Just my type.

I have been thinking about typography, I've always had a bit of a fascination with it. When I was about 10 my Mum bought me this book from the school book club. I spent hours tracing and duplicating letters and marvelling over how the word frozen appeared to melt etc. - I adored this book...

(...and so did a lot of other people, judging by the statement on the front cover.)

I guess the appeal of a book like this is far less now computers are in abundance; nothing like seeing print on pages though! I admit, I was quite blown away with Nicky's kindle last week, but I like fonts on pages and I guess that's pretty fortunate, (being a reading teacher!)

But I like nice typography everywhere, in Artwork, on my food packaging, on buildings - it pleases me enormously when word(s) are presented in an unusual or interesting or even just an appropriate way.

So I thought I'd write about some recent purchases and creations. I'll start with the purchases...
Using the wartime propaganda font and layout from "Keep Calm and Carry On" and the "What Would ****** Do?" slogan, the people at "Not On The High Street" came up with this poster that I have bought and framed for my kitchen wall. I was slightly sore at Jamie when he intervened with Education and it's "failings" but the more his "Dream School" series went on the more I think he appreciated how difficult the task can be. You're forgiven Jamie, and you can still be an inspiration for my cooking... (I'm sure you were petrified for a minute there....!)

 

I love that idea to replace the crown with a chef's hat!

You can buy a copy (in a choice of 3 colours) here:-

http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/petersandjanes/product/what-would-jamie-do

You can also buy "What Would Delia Do?" that does, admittedly, roll off the tongue a bit better, but she lost me a bit when she started cooking with tins of mince last year. (You're only as good as your last book!)

And IKEA have a great new range of "odby", rounded edge frames that set it off well I thought.

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/50196349

Then I spotted this in M&S and I had to get one...

Marks and Spencers typography is so well done sometimes. like in this tetra pack of milk bottle sweets...

so cute!

The above is a picture borrowed from "Bowie Style's" post on typography, where she has included more examples from the sweet department at Marks. If you're interested...

http://printpattern.blogspot.com/2010/01/typography-marks-spencer.html

I have also completed another long overdue project. I stumbled on the work of Craig Damrauer a while back and I think it's fab! He's called it "New Math" and it's basically simple equations that define words.

This has been framed for my bathroom:-

He's just got it so right with these designs. The font is clean and simple, (something like Arial narrow??) and Maths IS blue for me, I don't know why it just is. In the same way that cheese and onion crisps should be GREEN and Salt and Vinegar BLUE. I don't know why Walkers do it..., Golden Wonder had it right!
Other New Math designs I really like are:-

He's got loads on his website, obviously, once the template was there, further work was easy ;) 

Some are really clever and appropriate for loads of occasions I reckon. You can buy his stuff on posters or t-shirts, obviously I didn't save the Jpeg and print it onto good quality paper as that would be stealing his ideas... 

http://www.morenewmath.com/

And that leads me onto another bit of typography that I love. On the wall of kitchen in Harriet and Rhi's rented house is a poster and when we popped round for a coffee when they moved in Rhi said it was the poster that tempted her to take the place. It looked like the slogan had been hand printed onto paper but after a bit of googling I found the origin...

 

The poster formed part of an exhibition of Art on the London Underground (Glousester Road Satation). I've looked all over the Internet to try and find it as a poster but it doesn't exist so the largest I can print it with any quality left in the design is postcard sized. I found some nice little frames in IKEA to set it off quite well though....

The Art initiative on the underground is called "Platform for Art" and there is a book about it (on the designated website) that I might just have to buy...
http://art.tfl.gov.uk/

At work this week I was looking at all the good use of typography on the children's books I teach with and I thought about mentioning some of them but I think I'll save it for another day... I've got too much to say about children's books and they deserve a separate posting when I've got more time...
So finally, a couple of weeks back was Bella's (Annabel's) birthday. And it's been a while since I made some personalised paper so I got busy and made a few sheets. Quite nice for a bit of interesting (and thrifty;) personalisation....

The wrapping paper I settled on was the one I made with "Times New Roman" printed in various greys. And that was the reason I chose to finish it with pastel gift tie.

Another option was "Ariel" font with some bright parcel tie, but I didn't like that option as much.

And I also dis guarded the black print option with bold parcel tie colours. I did do this one Christmas however, and the black writing against gold and red parcel tie looked amazing!
It is also worth noting that the black enlarges better than grey on a photocopier if you wanted to wrap bigger presents and that it is good to wrap your gifts in tissue paper first if you're using rubbishy see-through paper on a works photocopier. I'm sure like me, you would never be unprofessional and do personal photocopying in work, however.... ;) This would also be nice if you printed the paper with the same sized name, used all different fonts for their name and chose a "kiddy" font such as comic sans if the present was for a child!

Okay, well, this blog post, plus making banana and walnut loaf cakes have helped me procrastinate for quite some time today, but I'd better get on with the work I am doing for my M.A in dyslexia teaching. To make the resources for my students in the most "reader-friendly" way I also bought an expensive font...

it's clever though, take a look...

http://www.clubtype.co.uk/index.html

(it writes in separate or cursive style, draws a grey outline for tracing over, puts "guidelines" above and/or below the writing and puts flicks on the letters for the first stage of learning how to do cursive (joined-up) handwriting.)

I also had a look at this one, but felt it was "over scaffolding"... ""Over scaffolding" seriously, there are some really poncy words banded about in Education...

http://www.readregular.com/english/regular.html

Food for thought though, I'm learning an awful lot about how the brain learns to read on this course, (whilst frying my own a bit).

J :)