phaeton.otf

this summer, my cyberbuddy, kevin cornell (of the superest) released phaeton, a knee-slappingly, eye-telescopingly, ear-steamingly gorgeous old-timey typeface.

i am a sucker for 1—period fonts (especially when the period is victorian or edwardian); 2—hand drawn fonts; and 3—fonts with scads of alternates, ornaments, swash capitals, and catchwords. it should therefore be little surprise that i chose phaeton to be the new official typeface of the ragbag worldwide brand. it has dethroned origami to get to this esteemed position.

update: i have just received word that origami is “doing just fine” and is living in exile in zurich.

further update: from 3rd party accounts, i have learned that origami has taken mrs eaves—the filthy harlot—as his mistress.

the flag for constructed languages

since we are on the topic of the tower of babel, i should point out that because of its association with language, the tower features prominently on the (æsthetically pleasing) flag of constructed languages. apparently, a right of passage of a fabricated language is having genesis 11:1-9 (the tower of babel section) translated into it.

while the ziggurat/devo hat icon is totally badass and the colour fills a conspicuous void of purple among flags of the world, i find it kind of ridiculous that a concept this abstract merits its own flag. where is the flag for binomial nomenclature? what colour is the flag of trigonometric functions? who gets to fly the trochaic pentameter flag?

i made this for a project in woodshop class and got a d+. major bummer!!!! i ran home and hid under a pile of blankets until it was time for dinner.

receiving robo-facials

the fact that modern day photo programs like picasa and iphoto have the ability to recognise my face gives me the heebie-jeebies. i have tried to disguise myself by: growing a beautiful mustache, wearing XL hipster glasses, and shaving off my exquisite unibrow to no avail—picasa can still somehow distinguish between me and my many handsome associates. how far would i have to go to keep these systems from recognising me? furthermore, what is the threshold of abstraction for a face to still be understood as a face? enter scott mccloud and his graphical abstraction scale from understanding comics.

before i start presenting this groundbreaking chart at siggraph, i should note that the function of facial recognition in photo programs is to help catalogue your photo database, it is NOT for helping you organize your manga collection. thus neither iphoto’s literal view of the world or picasa’s high tolerance for icon is better than the other.

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many many thanks to my taekwondo sparring partner for running this image through iphoto and reporting back the results in the scientific manner that this issue deserves.

(but i did not shoot the drop cap E)

tudza (a cyberbuddy and notorious crank) made this marvelous graphical pun and says:

I copied the idea of course, but while the original… was done in Photoshop, this was done with a Hi-Point 9mm at the local pistol range.

who needs the adobe creative suite when one has access to FIREARMS!?!?

also: does seeing a large s in this way remind anyone else of ulysses?

if your logo:

• has an ’80s colour scheme
• utilises a typeface from the ’70s
• includes weird geometric lines representing a style of house that was en vogue in the ’60s

it might not be as 21^st century as you are hoping. (just sayin’)

chaz babbage’s windows error report

ever since i posted the marvelous letter from charles babbage, father of your laptop, to alfred tennyson, i could not shake babbage’s neuroses from my thoughts. the one that struck me the most was that he actually tallied and categorised the causes of 464 broken windows of a nearby factory in a ten month period. what mad mind would do this? whatever the state of his mind, his data was ripe for the pickin’ and plottin’—thus this chart (you can distend it with a well-placed mouseclick).

for the inquisitive: this is the first treemap that i have had occasion to make and i didn’t quite know how to start—my slapdash solution involved these two programs.

comic sans & courier

i whipped up this gag derivative to help the layperson distinguish between comic sans and courier. both typefaces start with c-o and that can be very confusing sometimes. one of the key differences is that comic sans looks like it was fingerpainted by my five year old nephew and courier is how neo sees the world in the matrix. next up: a fourteen part series on the very subtle differences among the garamonds. i keed, i keed.

i created this cuz the tawdry ménage à trois among nomenclature, typography, and genetics needs to be made more explicit.

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additional type terms can be found here, here, and especially here. the chromosomal nomenclature that i used is based upon the recommendations of the paris conference of 1971.

arial & helvetica

on friday, i hosted a screening of helvetica for some buddies of mine that didn’t know that there were other typefaces besides times new roman. it turns out, there ARE other typefaces and one of them is helvetica (and another of them is papyrus.)

the documentary does not explore the relationship between helvetica and microsoft’s derivative, arial. so to help ignite the post-viewing dialogue, i made this supplement illustrating the key differences in letterforms. however, in place of any spirited debate, my buddies decided instead to take turns delivering roundhouses to my jaw, saying “a documentary about a font is as interesting as it sounds.” i could not agree more.

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update (9/22/2009): welcome internet-at-large! i am ostrich-feather-tickled that you are finding this chart to be such as gas. should you want to see my other type-related posts, you can give this a gentle click. should you want to see a collection of my favourite posts, you can get dirty with this link. should you want to close this tab and see what else is on the internet (hint: pictures of cats), you can hit cmd + w and be on your way.

sex libris

the above bookplate is evelyn waugh’s. the latin translates to “diligence enriches” which is proverbs 10:4. because of his nostalgia and love of all things aristocratic, waugh used his family’s coat of arms without being properly entitled to do so. many years after waugh’s death, a pesky nephew petitioned whoeverthefuck-one-petitions-in-these-matters and the use of the arms was finally granted.

i have spent a considerable amount of time throughout m’life designing an ex libris for myself yet because of the permanence of it all, i get overwhelmed and wind up scrapping the concept (much like the time when i created a bitching tattoo for my meaty biceps). of course, if i can con the remscheid ganans to fork over the rights to the ganan crest, my ex libris project would be a lot less daunting.

here is an ex libris gallery for your perusal.

who woulda thought that when claude “footman’s mawnd” garamond died in an exotic pet store 1561 that his eponymous typeface would be revived three-hundred years subsequent by every major type haus in existence and would be used for everything from typesetting the american edition of harry potter books to representing apple in all branding and marketing materials in the 1984 launch of the macintosh?

some of these pesky foundries however, took certain “liberties” when reviving claude’s original letterforms. some even based their fonts not on garamond but on his hapless successor, jean jannon. it is therefore little shock that this highly popular font has a multitude of variations each with subtle nuances. using your aquiline font eyes, can you spot:

garmond 3, garamond classico, stempel garamond, garamond premier pro, adobe garamond, itc garamond, simoncini garamond, and sabon (a garamond not named garamond)?

answers here.

previous quizes: know your odyssey translation and know your dvořák.

done

(re: this), though a static rgb value does not do gold leaf justice.

further seeing.

counting sleep

sure, i’ve posted sheep terms before, but can you think of anything more specific than a numbering system for counting sheep? pre-industrial english shepherds can and have. there are many regional variations of this rhyme worthy of their own chaffinch-style map though i chose to represent the lincolnshire system because lincoln is my third favourite president and there is no such thing as a garfieldshire system for counting sheep*.

so the next time that you are falling asleep (or not falling asleep), instead of counting sheep by the boring old one…two..three method, why not impress your bedmate with your knowledge of the traditional yan…tan…tether rhyme?

*yet.

red state blue, blue state; yellow state, green state

i don’t want to get all political right now, so i will announce this quickly and be on my way: no longer are the official state birds of the united states either red (northern cardinal) or blue (eastern bluebird). there are other colours (and other directions) to add to the mixing bowl. consider the 6 purple states that have adopted the western meadowlark as their official bird. there are also the 5*  (southern) green states that selected the (northern) mockingbird. and thus our former two bird system is now an avian oligarchy.

but seriously states: there are over 1.3 trillion different species of birds native to north america, would it kill you to pick something a little more original and not just copy off of your neighbor? also: when you show off a picture of your state bird and it’s a red cardinal, you are being unimaginative and—frankly—sexist (in birds, sex is determined not by the presence or absence of external genitalia but by the colour of the feathers).

another bird map.

*breaking news (as of 1948): the state bird of south carolina is no longer the northern mockingbird—it is the carolina wren.