They are comic sans supporters. They are legion. They do not forgive. They do not use Helvetica. Word by word, icon by icon, they’re changing typography. Goudy preserve us.

Link -via Brian J. Noggle

Previously:
Comic Sans Gets Dissed
The History of Comic Sans

Even typographers need to prepare for the inevitable rising of the undead. To encourage them, Avery Oldfield, Jack Inscoe and Amanda Dockery made a typeface that reminds them to get ready with every word that they read. Visit the link and type in your own text to see what your words look like in fetid corpses.

Link -via Jeremy Durocher

Then visit our Zombie Shop to find the right gift for the walking dead in your life.

In honor of the soon-to-be released Muppets movie, and my undying love of all things Jim Henson, i’d like to share this alphabet/poster series drawn by David Vordtriede with you, which features characters from the various Muppet tv shows and movies.

The fresh designs and pleasing color palette really made me happy, and happiness is what the Muppets are all about.  And remember, you can’t spell Muppets without various letters from the alphabet!

Link to entire alphabet  –via Drawn

A student at Tama Art University in Japan named Mayuko created a western font composed of leg hair (presumably not her own). It’s not the easiest to read, but may well go down in typographical records as the strangest -at least the strangest font to actually be used commercially! Shown here is a Adidas ad using the leg hair font. Link -via Smart Stop

Henry Hargreaves made a font out of bacon! No, it’s not just a bacon font, each letter was constructed from real bacon, as you can see:

It was a joint effort: Photography and direction by Henry Hargreaves, styling by Sarah Guido. See closeups of each letter at his website. Link

Graphic designer Dana Tanamachi has one heck of a steady hand. By day, Tanamachi works at Louise Fili Ltd, a renowned lettering and design studio. But by night, she’s out doing freelance chalkboard typography art with nary a stencil, pattern nor transparency–no small feat considering the density of text on most of the works shown in this post from Web Urbanist. Link

This funky new Ipad app allows you to set up blocks of type or artwork, mix your own colors, ink the blocks, then run your virtual paper through via virtual hand crank and create prints the old fashioned way. You can create all sorts of material for just about any kind of printing job, then share the files, import them into another program for authentic type effect, or get them printed for real and show off your new found skills on the printing press. Set, ink, roll, repeat!

Link

Love typography? In need of some furnishings for your house that are slightly more advanced than that IKEA armchair you shelled out for in college? Look no further than Tabisso’s typographic lounge furniture. It comes in letters A-Z and numbers 0-9, so you can say whatever you want (provided you have the living space, anyway. We don’t recommend, say, “existentialism” for a studio apartment). You can even get coordinating punctuation-shaped lamps to really accent your furniture statement.

Link via the Des Moines Egotist

I saw this and immediately figured it was a response to Firefox 4, which has caused me to use Force Quit more in the last couple of months than any time since I bought my latest computer. DeviantART member Ron Guyatt unveiled this only a week after the browser release. Coincidence? Link -via Laughing Squid

Lettercult, a blog by Brian Jaramillo, showcases the best of typographic art in its Custom Letters Best of 2010 posts (Part 1, Part 2, Top 10 – via The Ministry of Type). They’re pure eye candies: one of my favorite is this one above by David Croy.

This is pretty nifty: Axis Maps produces street maps of San Francisco, Downtown Chicago and Boston (New York is next) that accurately depict streets and highways, as well as parks and neighborhoods using only typography. Take a look: Link – via Holy Kaw

Typographers, that’s who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually. James Felici, author of the The Complete Manual of Typography, points out that the early history of type is one of inconsistent spacing. Hundreds of years ago some typesetters would end sentences with a double space, others would use a single space, and a few renegades would use three or four spaces. Inconsistency reigned in all facets of written communication; there were few conventions regarding spelling, punctuation, character design, and ways to add emphasis to type. But as typesetting became more widespread, its practitioners began to adopt best practices. Felici writes that typesetters in Europe began to settle on a single space around the early 20th century. America followed soon after.

Slate looks at the “type crime” of double spacing. Which convention do you follow when typing? Link -via Buzzfeed

Sometimes all you need are some creative words to illustrate your idea. Behold the Bicycle Typogram by Aaron Kuehn for the Los Angeles County
Bicycle Coalition: Link (you’ve got to see at full-screen to capture all the clever details)

“Shop Vac” is Jonathan Coulton’s song about life in a suburban paradise. This music video for it features the clever typographic animation of Jarrett Heather. Words and corporate logos flow across the screen as the narrator embraces a lifestyle of prosperity symbolized by the Shop-Vac in his basement workshop.

via Urlesque | Jarrett Heather | Jonathan Coulton

Previously: “Skullcrusher Mountain” by Jonathan Coulton

Yu-Hsiang “Shaun” Chung is an artist specializing in typography. He made a movable wooden Rubik’s Cube that can be used as a stamp:

Chinese has a long history with the printing. In 105 AD, Cai Lun invented the paper. In 200 AD, the Chinese invention of Woodblock printing produced the world’s first print culture. In 1040, Bi Sheng invented the first known movable type technology. Therefore, I want to use a Chinese text for my cube. The text I used for my cube is called “Three Character Classic.” It is a traditional Chinese text that teaches young children to be a good person in the society. The text is written in triplets of characters for easy memorization, which is perfect for the cube since the cube is 3 by 3 on every side. The text is written by Wang Yinglin during the Song Dynasty, so I used a font called “Song,” which is correspond to the Song Dynasty when a distinctive printed style of regular script was developed.

Link

The Milan-based advertising agency H-57 Creative Station made three posters that depict Star Wars characters typographically. The two other posters at the link illustrate Yoda and Darth Vader.

Link via Nerd Bastards

The artist who goes by the name freakingawesome created a typography poster entitled Zombies. It contains the names of 978 zombie movies, books, and video games. At the link, you can click the image to enlarge it (several times if needed) and read them to find your favorites. Link

Click Andrew’s name to enlarge his work.

via Twisted Sifter

The distance to the moon is 385,000,000,000 mm.

The size of an unkerned piece of normal cut Helvetica at 100pt is 136.23 mm.

Therefore it would take 2,826,206,643.42 helveticas to get to the moon.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo by Flickr user gromgull used under Creative Commons license

Previously: Helvetica Film

The excellent humor site Bite made an eye chart using the typography from many different science fiction movies and television shows. Pictured above is a small selection from a total of 36. How many can you guess correctly?

Link via blastr | Previously: I337 Eye Chart

Once again: if you want to be taken seriously, don’t use the Comic Sans font in your passive-aggressive notes. Link -via I Met a Possum

Love typography? Want to teach your kids how to avoid the typographical faux pas of using Comic Sans?

Norwegian design house Studio 3 has created just the book: behold, the Hyperactivitypography book, a clever kid’s activity book for typography lovers.

Link – via Endemicworld

Artist Kuba Czerniak created this typographical portrait of Jimi Hendrix that is composed of a quotation by Hendrix:

When I was a little boy, I believed that if you put a tooth under your pillow, a fairy would come in the night and take away the tooth and leave a dime. Now, I believed in myself more than anything.

Link | Previously on Neatorama: Jimi Hendrix in Machetes

Which typeface should you use for a particular presentation? Graphic designer Julian Hansen created a flow chart to help you make a decision. Pictured above is one small piece of it. You can view larger images at the link.

Link via Fast Company | Designer’s Website

You know how it’s a bad idea to get a girl’s name tattooed on you? Multiply that by about a hundred. This photo of a name tattoo in many, many different typefaces has been circulating the Internet. I hope that the relationship lasts.

via The Breda Fallacy

This image matches typefaces with dogs that match their physical characteristics. It was created by the design firm of Günter Eder, Roman Breier, and Marcel Neundörfer in Vienna. What typefaces and dogs would you pair up?

Link via Nerdcore | Company Website

For his talk at the London College of Communication, typographic artist Oded Ezer wore this self-made Typo-Mohawk (Typmohawk?). It reads "Typosexual" though I have no idea what it is all about … Thanks Oded!

Anyone concerned that the irony of their email or text message might not be appreciated by its recipient can use the symbol to close their sentence, thereby avoiding awkward misunderstandings.

The symbol – a dot inside a single spiral line – can be installed onto any PC running Windows 7, XP or Vista, as well as Macs and Blackberry mobile devices.

Link | Image: SarcMark

Cameron Chapman of Web Design Depot has written a heavily-illustrated article about the history of the ampersand. This old symbol has again become popular in the last several years with the emergence of abbreviated written communications, such as tweets and text messages.

The word “ampersand” was first added to dictionaries in 1837. The word was created as a slurred form of “and, per se and”, which was what the alphabet ended with when recited in English-speaking schools. (Historically, “and per se” preceded any letter which was also a word in the alphabet, such as “I” or “A”. And the ampersand symbol was originally the last character in the alphabet.)

Link via The Presurfer | Image: Cameron Chapman

Photo: Andrew Byrom

Designer Andrew Byrom has developed a font derived from Venetian blinds opened and closed at various angles and lengths. Byrom, a native of Liverpool, UK, studied design at the Cumbria Institute of Art and Design and now teaches at California State University in Los Angeles. He has won numerous awards for his typographical work in the past few years.

Link via DudeCraft | Artist’s Website

Image: Jelte van Abbema

Dutch designer Jelte van Abbema created a typeface out of e. coli bacteria. Cliff Kuang wrote in Fast Company about how he did it:

Van Abbema created the font by stamping bacteria into paper, and then placing the paper in a jury-rigged incubator, which provided the right humdity and warmth for the organisms. As they multiplied and died, the resulting fonts changed color and shape. As van Abbema says, bacteria “transforms the image to something new,” creating something that is literally alive, changing every minute without ever being tended.

Link

Folder Type is a typography created by Emilio Gomariz out of 22,655 color-coded Mac file folders. And here’s the kicker: no script was used – he did it all by hand, which proves that his folder-fu is much, much stronger than mine and that he’s got a lot of time on his hands.

Hit play or go to Link [Vimeo clip] – via happy mundane

Alida Rosie Sayer combined typography and papercraft to create her wonderful artwork. This one above, a series titled Slaughterhouse Five: Type and Form, is Alida’s way to visualize the cult novel by Kurt Vonnegut, by hanging hundreds of layers of hand cut letterpress prints.

Katerina Biliouri of Yatzer interviewed the artist:

You chose Vonnegut’s novel “Slaughterhouse Five” as the book for your three-dimensional typographic pieces. What lies behind the selection of the specific book?

I read the book a year and a half ago and it really struck a chord with me. I was particularly inspired by the concept of an alien race conceived by the confused mind of the main character who is trying to come to terms with difficult memories. The alien race addressed various issues he felt with his past experiences by not only presenting to him alternative methods of considering time, but also oneself in relation to it, with richly visual descriptions. To me the challenge of “visualising time” this way or trying to communicate visually what it could be like to see the past, present and future all at once was a very exciting prospect.

I decided that by using creative typography and quotes from the book itself, this would ground my work in a recognisable form and allow me to be more experimental without becoming entirely removed from the original subject.

Link

TXT Island is a stop-motion film by Chris Gavin, who hand-crafted each frame using hundreds of plastic peg-board letters.

The films follows the endeavors of a squad of letters, as they delve deep into the jungle of a mysterious island. What is their mission? And will they succeed?

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Christophe.

In a way, typography has come full circle – what started as a physical process of setting type in machines has been rediscovered as a physical art by a number of creative photographers and designers. Some of these unusual real-life alphabetic collections were found and photographed in nature while others were acted out, constructed or assembled from bodies and objects but all ten sets of type yield compelling images.

Link

Taking a look at Seb Lester’s work reminds me how much I enjoy typographical art. This one above, The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword, is available as a limited edition print at I Love Typography.

Link – via Drawn!

WebUrbanist blog has a really nifty round up of 15 artworks done through typography. This one above is by Bulgarian illustrator Stefan Chinof, who uses the negative space to spell out "Don’t Panic."

Link

Rhett Dashwood has compiled a fastastical collection of buildings, lakes, fields, roads, forests, and other fun things you can see from space with a fancy pants satellite that form a complete alphabet. 

The pic here shows letters from Victoria, Australia but of course one could apply this idea to anyone’s home town/state/ecosystem.  Fun!

Link – via gizmodo

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Another Jake.

Link [Flash]