A few links extending the conversation of dimesnsional typography for the folks in Image Making II:

• Dimensional Typography: The Unbearable Flatness of Being. An article by Leslie Atzmon on the subject.
• A Flickr pool from an exhibition curated by myself and Jimmy Luu.
• The Playground. A collection of experimental typefaces presented by Rick Valicenti. Worth a look at is Rick Valicenti’s Incest and Letters to Ed (featured in the exhibition mentioned above). Also worth a look is Blue by Michele Bowers.
• Some type by Karina Peterson. More here.
• Action Types by Marcus Shaefer
• Image above by Alida Sayer

That is all for now. More to come later.

Pictorial Webster’s: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

How to Be A Motion Designer and GET PAID from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

Blog post for this video :http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2009/02/09/presentation-how-to-be-creative-and-get-paid/

His personal portfolio :http://www.creamyorange.com/template.php?page=home

five second projects on vimeo :http://vimeo.com/channels/search:five%20second%20project

Digital Kitchen :http://www.d-kitchen.com/

-Alan

On the internets:

Typographic Posters (typographicposters.com). Has a great directory of images of work, from avant-garde experimental type to good old clean grid based typography.

The Behance Network (behance.net). Run a search on Behance without specifying anything other than the category of typography and you will find some great things.

I Love Typography (ilovetypography.com). Nice blog that has lots of type related posts.

TypeNeu (typeneu.com). Another blog site full of good current typography.

Swiss Legacy (swisslegacy.com). A blog dedicated to looking at the history of Swiss design and current work that invokes the days of the international style.

In books:
Sure there are the good old standbys of Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type (which has a great companion website full of stuff) and Erik Spiekermann’s Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works. Both of these books are good primers for understanding how to do some basic good typography. I’d add to that list The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst (especially if you are interested in book typography), Type and Typography by Phil Baines, and the Carter, Day, Meggs’ book Typographic Design: Form and Communication.

These books are good introductions but for me I get more excited by looking at the more experimental stuff. So here are a few books or so, mostly pictures of interesting typographic work, that will definitely inspire you:

Typography Now: The Next Wave. Late 80s and early 90s typography broke all the rules and this is a good collection of the work.

Typography Now Two: Implosion. The follow up to the previous book, takes you through the rest of the 90s to the early 00s.

Type Addicted. A great new book from Victionary, full of inspiring stuff.

Hand Job: A Catalog of Type. Seen above, is full of hand done typography.

Playful Type. Another one full of illustrative and experimental type.

Type One. Is another great survey from Gestalten books.

I am currently working with Jim Stevens, a colleague who teaches at architecture at Lawrence Tech, to develop a series of 3-dimensional typefaces. The letterforms use a simple set of rules as the basis of creation. Here are the main ones:

1. The character system is arbitrary. Letters can be anything, in this case, simple geometries are combined and subtracted. This system could be entirely abstract (like dots and dashes of morse code and brail). In this case there is some resemblance to traditional latin characters for ease of learning the new system.
2. No character can look the same. Whether through form or use of color, or both, characters must maintain a unique identity. Latin alphabets where similar letters mirror each other (ie. d, p, q, b) can’t exist in 3-d space.
3. Each letter should have rotational symmetry along at least 1-axis. This allows for the character to be easily recognized from multiple vantage points.
4. Color can be used to resemble architectural elements. In this case brick and mortar.

Essentially the type is connected by ball joints which allow for the type to be set in multiple directions. We are currently in the process of rapid prototyping the pieces, following the jump is a look as some of the process and its results.

The letters were modeled using Rhino (which currently has a beta version for the Mac). The letters are set to print using special software for 3D printing (a ZCorp printer to be specific).

The printer basically uses inkjet technology. First it lays a composite powder down then prints a binding agent (and color if necessary) to build the shapes. When all is said and done you have to excavate the finished object.

The finished pieces are finished using a special binder, similar to super-glue which bonds them together making it super strong. Here are some of them.

The finished pieces will be on exhibit in Chicago in January. After the exhibit I will be sure to post images.

I post my drawings on the site Deviant Art. Figured I’d let everyone know that there is a competition right now to design a new logo for them. Prize is $2,500. The thing is, the logo you see above is their new logo. This competition is a challenge to make a better logo than above. I think this logo is better than their old one, but I’m letting you guys know about this, in case you want to take a stab at it.

They have to be submitted by October 14 at 11:59pm. I’m pretty sure you need to have an account in order to enter, since the entries need to be submitted under a specific category of “deviation submissions.” There are free accounts though.

For reference, here is their old logo, with their mascot.

Although I can’t take credit for the drawing above, this flash site is pretty amazing. It lets you draw using font characters in an extremely simple UI that records your drawing process (awesome!) and plays back the drawing process when you look at other people’s work (more awesome!). It’s interesting to me that almost everyone draws people/face. I did:

http://fontpark.morisawa.co.jp/permalink?id=4ption5tppc1a36