Jazz Books

Helping to clear my boyfriend's late-Grandad's house last weekend we came across a whole stack of vintage niceness. He loved jazz and also had French family so these things combine in a whole collection of fantastic book covers, vintage ephemera and gorgeous postcard books.

Unfortunately my camera battery gave up fairly quickly but next we journey up to Birmingham I will adding a whole stack of lovely vintage postcard-book covers like those below to the Flickr set.

Pier Neon

Lovely type turns up in the most unexpected places sometimes. These were all in the arcade at the bottom of Southwold Pier. The Pier has the infamous Under The Pier Show which is brilliant, but possibly means the lovely neon in the arcade gets even more overlooked than it would anyway. Looking at the photos now, feeling somewhat detached from their context, the decisively glowing phrases seem to take on an altogether more existential meaning.

Bookshopping

I found these fantastic book covers in a second hand bookshop in Lichfield - there were so many, but I think these were the choice picks. Lucky for me, Penguin Plays seem to be pretty unpopular in Lichfield.

Playful Type

Well, I was planning on writing a post telling you all how great these Uniqlo Playful Type tees are. But then I realised all the ones I bought 2 days ago at full price are now in the sale. So I don't think I want to tell you how great they are anymore. I want to sulk.

Whoever heard of Gestalten anyways.

The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings

oooo pretty. Spotted on ebay.

Didoni Biscuits

Lovely letters + biscuits = genius

From ToveLisa via decor8

I need these in my life.

Letter Coasters & Number Placemats from Little Factory.

Lubalin Now

Jessica Hische


TV Land, Gretel, Matt Owens.

This is what you might call my cup of tea.

I'm not sure whether this is at the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography or Cooper Union’s gallery, or both, but it doesn't really matter unless by some miracle someone hands me a free ticket to New York. That would be nice, though.

Yulia Brodskaya

The quite prolific Yulia Brodskaya has updated her website with even more yummy papery goodness. Check out her news for lots of recent commercial projects ranging from Starbucks, to t-shirts, more for The Guardian and lots more editorial.

Thanks for the tip, FormFiftyFive.

Words Are Pictures

I came across some fantastic work by Craig Ward today. It's so inspiring, and also really interesting to be able to see the work in progress on his blog. I find other people's work processes quite fascinating, perhaps because I'm not all that confident in my own; it helps de-mystify these fantastic finished pieces a little. Sometimes I don't feel like I exist in the same universe as some of the amazing artists I guff about on here.

Beau Ideal Editions Calendar

A gorgeous new calendar from Beau Ideal just popped up on my reader. Hand screen printed in limited edition, it's slightly pricey at $48 plus delivery but there's obviously a lot of work and love gone into it. A simple idea that's been designed really consistently and effectively, with loads of yummy hand-drawn type. Yep yep.

Saw Your Face

Saw your face, originally uploaded by alistairh.

Something, somewhere in Amsterdam.
It made me smile.

Update: This work is by Marijn van Kreij and Alistair has more info on the exhibition here.

French Found Type

In-keeping with my French mood at the moment, I found the fantastic Jules Vernacular blog full of French found type today. There's some lovely stuff on there.

IBM 1975 - The Future

These images of a 1975 IBM presentation have survived to become part of the enormous Square America collection. Besides the obvious intrigue of the future in the past (if you know what I mean), I think the design stands up pretty well 33 years later.

Faber Finds

The new service from publisher Faber & Faber looks really interesting - as digital printing becomes ever cheaper it's now viable for them to re-produce out of print books to order. Faber Finds is also unique (I think) in it's use of a "design machine" (as they call it) to generate a unique cover for each and every book ordered. What a great way to make a book really special, as well as a great solution to making print on demand accessible and well designed. The talents of Marian Bantjes for the border design (elements shown below), who has some more lovely examples if you follow that link, Karsten Schmidt for the technical bits and Michael C. Place for the custom typeface have been brought together fantastically well.

Marian Bantjes - Love Stories

Marian Bantjes has just published a set of fantastic personal work in the latest Monograph (available to Creative Review subscribers only). Luckily the Creative Review blog also has a bit of information about it, and you can see lovely big images of all the work on Marian's website. Each of the beautiful pieces is the story of someone she loves, and you really get a sense of the people behind these.

American Craft Magazine

Another interesting guest post on design*sponge about American Craft's move towards more hands-on typography. Some lovely images. I'm going to try and hunt a copy of this down.

Ray Fenwick - Magic Tricks

Magic Tricks, originally uploaded by Ray Fenwick.

More lovely stuff. I recommend a good look through his Flickr, it's all fantastic.

Chicago Type

In a refreshing change in tone, there's an interesting guest post over on design*sponge all about type. It led me on to chicagotype.com, an archive of found type in and around Chicago; some good, some bad, some just interesting. No tranquilizers.

Blood on Paper

Banners, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Great banners at the entrance to the Blood on Paper exhibition at the V&A.