The Other Great Wall of China

The hand of Niels Shoe Meulman of Calligraffiti has left his "ununcompromising" China ink mark on a brick wall in Beijing, China recently. The repeat pattern of the four calligraphic strokes of the "un" letterforms create a visual texture that is undeniably striking. Shoe states that these thick brush strokes symbolize the power of reversal and they draw attention to themselves equally as much as the space between the strokes. The ink is to the absence of the ink just as a positive is to a negative, black is to white, or yin to yang in this case. Shoe is every much a believer in these dualities as he is in the beauty of the letterforms themselves.
      We live in a world of opposites and Shoe admits, "we can't truly be comfortable unless we were uncomfortable before. To be alive is only to be undead." Furthering this notion, he adds, "when science proudly presents its universal laws, some of us know that they are ununiversal. If you don't understand this, ununderstand."
      Say what you like (or unlike), but I think his work is unbeatable.
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Post postscript: It just dawned on me, today is 11.11.11 and this work of Shoe's with all of the vertical calligraphic strokes is the perfect calligraphic metaphor for this date. It's a great day for wearing stripes!

Frankenstein meets Frankenfont

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, reinvented from fragments of PDF fonts by the team at Fathom Information Design in Boston.
A team of visual storytellers from Fathom lead by data-viz wiz Ben Fry, recently recreated the entire text of Frankenstein using characters and glyphs from over 64,000 PDF documents obtained through internet searches. Precisely 55,382 different glyph shapes were extracted from 347,565 fonts in the PDFs, which were then coded and sequenced to fill all of the 342,889 individual letters found in the Frankenstein text. What emerges from this DNA-like sequencing is a new Frankenfont creation formed from font fragments by Fathoms' Fry and friends.
      The story opens with the display of the most common characters such as Arial, Helvetica and Times New Roman. As the story of the Frankenstein monster evolves, so does the text which is coded to completely devolve into grotesque shapes near the end. Familiar glyphs and fonts merge into obscure scripts; non-Roman fonts begin to appear; and even typefaces morph into pictograms. This Frankenfont transformation becomes the perfect metaphor for Shelley's classic tale of the deformed monster Frankenstein. 

While most books are typically designed to interpret the authors' words with little fanfare and with an obedience to convention as Stanley Morrison once put it, Fry's new Frankenfont edition plays with our sense of order, and the traditional design principles such as consistency, navigation and readability go entirely out the window. As a teacher of book design and typography for many years, I strongly advocate these principles of convention to my students. Afterall, books have been successfully published in this manner for over 500 years. Despite this endorsement, I'm also a big fan of innovation and experimentation in books. In Fry's edition of Frankenstein, a hallmark of book design and innovation has been reached with this conceptual approach to text layout.
      As a timely sidenote to this story, the topic of a frankenfont came up in my classroom just 2 weeks ago when Kevin Larson from the Advanced Reading Technologies Department at Microsoft, was speaking to my students about readability studies of various typefonts and individual characters. Larson is a text enthusiast and has published many studies on the science of word recognition and legibility of characters. The suggestion of a frankenfont was mentioned in jest as one which could build upon the best characters of many fonts in order to achieve greater legibility. The next day, my student Susan Schumacher added a post on our class Facebook page with a link to Fathom's new Frankenfont edition of Frankenstein.
      Copies of the Frankenfont project can be purchased in paperback or hardback editions on Blurb with all profits given to Donors Choose to buy books for students. Incidently, Ben Fry was recently awarded a National Design Award in Interaction Design in June from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. 

All of the nearly 5500 unique words to be found in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Click image to expand). The key to any great novel is to put them all in the right place ; )
:: Thanks to James Gaddy of Co.Design for packaging this story so nicely.

Blackletter in Fall Colors

The newly published Fall issue of T Magazine, a supplement of the Sunday New York Times, commissioned the work of Los Angeles landscape designer Judy Kameon and photographer Erik Otsea for their monthly T design. I couldn't help but notice how handsome this iconic blackletter T looks in the beautiful Fall colors, and it reminded me of its' elder gothic cousin, the rustic old growth T you see just below. I've included a snapshot of other extended family members of this woodsy gothic alphabet as well. I'm no genealogist, but I'm quite certain this family tree has roots that go way, way back. ;^)

:: Rustic Old Growth Gothic Alphabet via the Letterology Archives.

Text Appeal

Readers, writers, typographers, and printers take note. The 6th annual Text Ball—the lettered stepchild of Portland, Oregon's annual literary Wordstock Festival—will take place on October 1st at p:ear Gallery. The theme this year is In Poetic Fashion and it is a benefit for the non-profit Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland which promotes literacy through DIY publishing. There will be live music by indie-folk heroine Laura Gibson and poetry readings, word games, giant crossword puzzles, dirty limerick challenges, a silent auction and more, including a parade of well-lettered fashions and prizes for the text-dressed. Come dressed as your favorite poem, book, letter, story, or word, enjoy the letterati and support a great cause. Advance tickets for $12 can be purchased here or $15 at the door.
      The photo above is last year's grand prize winner for Best Text, Erica Hijazi. She constructed a fashionable bow from a 1939 Williamette College newpaper she unearthed while picking up a VCR purchased on Craigslist. Soooo Portlandia! Her date wore a tie constructed from the same newspaper.

Mark Anen came dressed as a Government G-Man.

Aimee Pedretti's vision of Hell was Dante's Inferno.

Runner-up for Most Literary is writer and author Myrlin Hermes, featuring the entire text of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129: "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action..."
::All photos from the last year's text-dressed are taken by Georgia Perry.

Moss Poetry

After the previous fern post below, I can't think of a better segue than moss lettering. This enviromental graffiti is the handwork of Anna Garforth who plants poetry around the urban landscape of London. The final artwork below is to spell out Grow beyond what you know with each word planted in a different location.

:: Photos above Via Crosshatchling and BumBumBum. The Photo below via Webponce.

Russian Storybook Redux

Last month I reported upon two beautifully illustrated Russian childrens' books and had lamented that I was unable to read either of them. A kind reader forewarded an excellent English translation onto me today of the first book, and a brief of the second book. The first book is actually a children's art book published in 1971, and is titled Drawing By Lines, by Russian poet S. Porgorelovskyi. The translated text is provided in or near each spread below, and as always, images are clickable. Thank you Volkov Evgeny! I didn't think it was possible to love this book more, until now.
      The second book which you can find in my original post is titled Choose Any Horse, and it is about two children who ride the the world over to see if there is a horse better than their own. They meet a clay horse, a gingerbread horse, wooden and paper horses, and a very good horse in a capital city. In the end, they decide that their horses are the best, because they are their's alone.

A Fountain of Blackletter Text

A very unusual title page from a German text, dated 1676. It is said to be an early example of concrete typography, and it can be yours for only $450 on eBay. 

Russian Storybooks

Such a tremendous Russian children's book beautifully illustrated with type, and I can't even read it. Lame! I really wish I could read the entire story. I see it was published in 1971 and it looks as if the type was laid down using press type. Very sweet!
      The story book below is another gem, but again I have no clue on
the story of it. My guess it is a folktale. Can anyone else provide any other details?
:: Via the LiveJournal of da_zdra_per_m