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.

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.

why egyptology ownz:

because one of the letters of the egyptian hieroglyphabet is gardiner d53 described as, “phallus with liquid issuing from it.” this glyph shows up in words like “come apart”, “flow”, “twitch”, “wriggle”, “impure fluid”, and “spray”. can you imagine if this was the 27th letter of the roman alphabet?!? oh the fun that we would have…

also: the sumerians had some equally righteous ideograms. (eg. jaritz #919)

(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?

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.

i set this in garamond. but which garamond? also, previously.

gettin’ jiggy with ligatures

add this to the list of things that i never noticed about logos before: the sports illustrated logotype has a super-bitching ra ligature. is this a subtle nod to ra, the egyptian god of linebackers and the stanley cup? perhaps. but one thing is for certain, r & a are the initial letters of both m’name and m’blog and so, making this parallel dimension logo was more or less a requisite.

and guess who now has five posts using his sports tag?

incidentally, the sports illustrated font seems to be a modified version of impact. go figure.

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.

front matters
i love me a good old timey title page. perhaps this is because old timey title pages bring together three of the nineteen pillars that the ragbag is based upon: typography & design, esoteric knowledge, literature, and huffing glue. the foxy specimen above is from the english translation* of the manual of classical erotology (1884).

• revel in: the latin AND scholarly euphemisms for what basically means “a book about the greeks and romans boning eachother.”
• notice that: the book’s author, (scholar and philosopher) frederick charles forberg abbreviates BOTH his fore and middle names into four-letter chunks.
• and finally, savor: the fact that this book is only 1 of 100 private copies printed solely for the amusement of a pleasuremongering viscount (with a masters degree) and his rakish bros.

illumination

what were you doing in the 9th century when the chinese were rebelling against their emperor and his skanky concubine, charlemagne was subduing the lombards (again!), those rascally persians were penning one thousand and one nights, and the empress of the byzantines (irene sarantapechaina) was exiled to the island of lesbos where she spent the remainder of her days spinning yarn?

maybe you were cowering in the corner somewhere as viking hooligans pillaged your village. perhaps your final thought as a raider’s blade neared your quivering forehead is how awesome it would be to have illuminated badass manuscripts with florid majuscules (like the 9th century letters here presented). perhaps your final thought was the discovery of another non-gerund -ing noun in viking.

we shall never know for certain. but what we do know is that the project gutenberg copy of the book of ornamental alphabets, ancient and mediæval (1914). is well worth the browse.

here are some particularly stunning specimens.