Show Us Your Type is a design project created by Neue, a thrice-yearly online magazine that focuses on two things that the Neue founders say they “adore” – typography and cities. Each issue is about a different capital city, and designers are invited to submit their interpretation of the chosen city through posters that are primarily typographic. It is interesting to note what each artist sees as iconic of the culture. To look at a broader selection, go to showusyourtype.com.
Reading about this website publication, which describes itself as a “global community for people over the age of 50,” brought to mind a recent news story about the rise of “marijuana parties” thrown by aging baby boomers living in retirement villages. The 50+ crowd is a lot more youthful and hip than it used to be. Its ranks include some of the world’s most celebrated “hunks” – Brad Pitt, Colin Firth, Johnny Depp, to name a few. So, it is interesting that the only 50+ publication that comes to mind is AARP’s. Its story content feels aimed at soon-to-be geriatrics, and its advertising weighs heavily toward adult diapers, chair lifts for stairs, arthritis drugs and walk-in bathtubs. Both the design and content of the AARP magazine feel like they were meant to appeal to the generation who lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Age 50 was probably set as the dividing line for seniors around 1950 when life expectancy in the U.S. was 65.
Some typefaces aren’t meant for everyday use. They often aren’t readable as running text or even for headlines. Most will never be licensed for public use nor are they commercially available. But they set the mood, add their own graphic interest, and tell their own slice of the story. That is the case with several of the typefaces featured in the 365 Typographic Calendar for 2012.
Take Girder, for example. Asked to create the identity for the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge next year, Kit submitted an alphabet as part of his presentation. The alphabet took its inspiration from the riveted girders that formed the unpinning of the bridge. The immediate association with San Francisco’s most famous landmark offered a visual linking device in the visitors’ gift shop, and made a distinctive image for all kinds of tourist souvenirs, from key chains to coffee mugs.
This is a video about the making of a magazine that is about the making of films. Little White Lies (LWLies) is an independent British film magazine produced by The Church of London creative agency. In 2001, while at university studying graphic design, Danny Miller co-founded Little White Lies as a final degree project. His 17-year-old friend Matthew Bochenski wrote the content. Miller then moved to London to work on a skate and snowboard magazine called Adrenalin, but kept thinking about making Little White Lies for real. Finally in 2005, he produced the first issue and since then LWLies has become a bi-monthly magazine with a print run of about 2,500 copies, distributed in Borders stores in the UK. The design and editorial content of each issue is inspired by a single film – in this case “Black Swan” – and features an illustration of the lead actor on the cover. In 2008, LWLies won “Best Designed Consumer Magazine of the Year” at the Magazine Design & Journalism Awards. What’s great about this “making of” LWLies video is that it covers the focus, teamwork, deadline pressure and ultimate satisfaction of starting from rough sketches to holding the finished product in your hands. Ah joy! Although online has its advantages, there is nothing quite as wonderful as seeing your work reproduced with ink on paper.
For the past century, the Good Housekeeping magazine Seal of Approval has been a hallmark of reliability for household goods. Run through a battery of performance tests by the Good Housekeeping Research Institute, each endorsed product has been backed by the magazine’s two-year limited warranty. Good Housekeeping’s oval-shaped Seal, which has gone through nine design updates since it first appeared in 1909, has been coveted by product manufacturers and proudly displayed on packaging. Now the magazine has rolled a Good Housekeeping Green Seal of Approval, based on metrics that evaluate a product’s composition, manufacturing, packaging and other attributes from an environmental standpoint.