Here’s a favorite of mine. Eric Olson is a fantastic type designer. My favorite font of his is Elderkin, no longer available. Hope he’ll bring it back!

Wishing you all the best.

I am going to get this blog up and running again with the latest in graphic design, typography, photography info and more.

More good info from FontShop. A story in the FontFeed, February 5, 2007:

HELVETICA and ALTERNATIVES TO HELVETICA.

You’ll find a number of fonts to use in it’s place.
(Give me Interstate any day:-)

There is also a link on this page to a FILM about Helvetica.

Is this possible? Okay, what can I do? Some of you love it:-(

(Why can’t we see a film about Mrs. Eaves?)

Okay, about the Film:

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.

The film was shot in high-definition on location in the United States, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium. It is currently in post-production and is slated to begin screening at film festivals worldwide starting in early 2007.

Interviewees in Helvetica include some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world, including Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Wim Crouwel, Hermann Zapf, Neville Brody, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, David Carson, Paula Scher, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Experimental Jetset, Michael C. Place, Norm, Alfred Hoffmann, Mike Parker, Bruno Steinert, Otmar Hoefer, Leslie Savan, Rick Poynor, Lars Müller, and many more.

About the Typeface

Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. In the late 1950s, the European design world saw a revival of older sans-serif typefaces such as the German face Akzidenz Grotesk. Haas’ director Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to their line. The result was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica, derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, when Haas’ German parent companies Stempel and Linotype began marketing the font internationally in 1961.

Introduced amidst a wave of popularity of Swiss design, and fueled by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica quickly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and myriad other uses worldwide. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984 only further cemented its ubiquity.

Helvetica is a production of Swiss Dots, in association with Veer.

Check out FontShop, one of my favorite type companies, for their excellent collection of handwriting fonts.
Look for The Font Feed, February 2007. It’s got the whole story.

*Careful, Legible Print:
Calliope
FF Providence Sans
ITC Zemke
Weber Font
Venture
Panoptica
Unicase, monospaced font with alternates.
Longhand

*Quick, Natural Scrawling:
FF Justlefthand
FF Erikrighthand
FF Market
Feltpen
Felt Tip Roman
Dizzy
Notec
Iva
Sketch
Flood
ITC Bradley Hand

*Cursive and Swashed Scripts
MVB Emmascript
Handsome Pro
Fineprint
Amadeo

And more!

Okay, my students have been complaining about the design of the Emigre site for years. They said it looked like the small text on the bottom of a supermarket brand of greenpeas. They insisted it was unreadable and bland.

I happened to like it. Nice little red type on a white background, orderly, clean, always the same. What could be bad? I admired the pure function of it, the lack of a “Design” commitment.

But who listens to me?

So, Rudy did a redesign with lots of pictures and just eight links in the top left red box. What do you think? Do you miss the old one, love the new? Let me know. I am still in shock.

While you’re there, order a catalog, get on the enews mailing list, look at the studio projects, buy some cool wrapping paper and maybe a ceramic vase or two for the holidays. I’ll just keep looking at Mrs. Eaves and be happy.

Veer is an excellent resource for type from 21 foundries. If you sign up for their free catalogs you get monthly type specimens, frequently with a theme. The current issue (November) offers fonts for holidays (of course), scripts, lots of others both serious and fun. Every time the catalog arrives I find new fonts as well as old faces that I like but have forgotten all about. So have a look. (They have photographs too). www.veer.com/type

Thanks to marvelous book designer Anna Bauer, I am posting the following story from Douglas Coupland’s Blog at the New York Times website. Those of you who studied graphic design with me at Parsons and NYU know that I am not a Helvetica fan. However, Ed Benguiat, the brilliant designer who introduced me to the world of typography, loves Helvetica and that counts a lot. Now there’s a Helvetica film! Check out the link at the bottom of the page to learn all about it. Anna says it’s an opportunity for students or anyone with extra time to participate. (Extra time)? I personally liked it best when the word “Helvetica” appeared on a t-shirt set in ITC Garamond.

August 27, 2006

I LUV HELVETICA

I think the most common set-decorating error in films these days can be reduced to one word: Helvetica. I’ll be watching a World War I drama, and there at a train station in the background is a sign saying “Ypres” in
200-point Helvetica Bold. Movie over – at least for me. Once I see Helvetica in any pre-1957 movie, all I can think is that the art director was so clueless he either used Helvetica in a historical drama, or hired someone stupid enough to do so, and never double-checked the work.

In art school I studied typography for several years. This was pre-Macintosh, and we had to draw fonts by hand using gouache, including numbers and diacritical marks. In 1982 there were maybe 50,000 people in North America who knew what kerning is. Today, my 10-year-old nephew knows what it is.

Typography has been massively democratized and has now done more wonderful things in 10 years than in the hundreds preceding it. I remember my type instructor, Greg, moaning, “Typography is over. Nothing new will ever
happen with type ever again. Why do we even bother waking up in the morning?” I note that the moment you hear somebody say something’s over, it usually means that something massive is about to happen. Francis Fukuyama, meet Osama bin Laden and discuss the end of history.

In the world of type, Helvetica was the supposed endpoint of design. It was designed to be 100-percent emotionally neutral (yes, how Swiss, the same country that brought us sleeping pills – Helvetica is the Latin name for
Switzerland), and when it was marketed in 1961, it caused a revolution, because everything the font touched it modernized. Helvetica essentially takes any word or phrase and pressure-washes it into sterility. I love it. So does Panasonic, BASF, Bayer, American Airlines, PanAm, Lufthansa, BellSouth, Hapag-Lloyd and any number of other firms that use it for their logos and as their house font.

When I began writing fiction, I was naturally curious about the relationship of words on a page and how the words look on a page. By 1995 I began experimenting freely with the “lookfeel” of words in my novel, “Microserfs.”
In it I had pages of words that did and didn’t correlate to the main narrative. I did these in Helvetica. The book dealt with people who work at Microsoft (who developed their own Helvetica clone, the cheesy wannabe Arial) and I was wondering, well, if machines daydream, what would their daydreams look like? And so I did pages to demonstrate.

PS: Helvetica is even getting its own movie!

http://www.helveticafilm.com/

(Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface [which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007] as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Helvetica will begin screening at film festivals worldwide starting in early 2007.

Katrin Eismann, everyone’s favorite “Photoshop Diva” and absolutely the most knowledgable person in the world about every aspect of digital imaging, will be chairing the new Masters of Professional Studies in Digital Photography degree program at School of Visual Arts beginning in the fall of 2007.

These unique advanced classes address the technical needs of experienced photographers who want to advance their skills or make a career change into the field of digital photography.

I’ve been studying Photoshop with Katrin for years and can report that she is a great mentor; brilliant and funny and incredibly talented. Her books are best-sellers, her presentations are invariably sold out and she is always right in the middle of whatever is happening at the moment in the world of photography. I can guarantee that the faculty in this program will consist of exceptional professionals.

For anyone seeking the ultimate professional digital photography education, this is an amazing opportunity to study with the best of the best.

To learn more about Katrin, check out her website at http://photoshopdiva.com. To get information about the new program contact SVA directly.

Couric sheds 20 pounds in doctored publicity photo

Reuters, Wednesday, August 30, 2006; 8:22 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083002853.html

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The CBS network said on Wednesday that an overzealous employee in its publicity department was responsible for air-brushing about 20 pounds off Katie Couric’s figure in a recent promotional photo.

A photograph taken at a network event in May, showing Couric standing on stage smiling in a pin-stripped suit, was digitally altered to give the incoming CBS News anchor a trimmer waistline, darker clothing and even a thinner face.

In this file photo originally released by CBS in May 2006, Katie Couric, who is joining CBS News, greets the audience in Carnegie Hall after CBS announced the network’s 2006-07 schedule to the advertising community. Couric appears significantly thinner in an altered version of this photo that appears in the September issue of Watch!, a promotional magazine that is distributed at CBS stations and on American Airlines flights. (AP Photo/CBS, Jeffrey R. Staab)

An untouched version of the picture originally was circulated as an official press photo early in the network’s campaign to promote Couric’s upcoming September 5 debut as the new host of the CBS Evening News.

The digitally altered photo appeared in the latest quarterly edition of the CBS in-house magazine Watch!, which is distributed to network employees, affiliate stations, outside media and passengers on American Airlines flights.

Total circulation for the magazine is about 400,000 copies, according to the network.

“Watch! magazine retouched (the photo) without the knowledge of Ms. Couric or CBS News management,” CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said. Another spokesman, Gil Schwartz, said the doctored image was the work of a CBS photo department employee who got “a little zealous.”

Network executives sought to downplay the incident, which came amid an unprecedented promotional blitz aimed at convincing viewers that the perky former host of NBC’s “Today” show is a serious journalist and not just a celebrity.

CBS News President Sean McManus told the New York Daily News he was “obviously surprised and disappointed” when he heard about the incident but joked, “I’ve asked that 3 inches in height be added to my official CBS photo.”

The newspaper quoted Couric, 49, as saying she liked the original photo better because “There is more of me to love.”

Identity in 2006.

Object Lesson
WRAPSODY IN BLUE, PINK, ETC.

By Alice Rawsthorn
Published: August 27, 2006
NY Times Style Section

For my goddaughter Delilah’s ninth birthday, I gave her an Elsa Peretti for Tiffany starfish pendant. Not an original choice, I admit. But it’s pretty, and so is Delilah. It’s girlie, reducing the risk of confiscation by her brothers. It’s timely, as her parents have just bought a weekend house by the sea. And it was delivered in a blue Tiffany box, which, as Delilah and her family have recently moved to Brooklyn from London, made it perfect for a Park Slope princess.

Would I have bought that pendant without the packaging? I’m not sure, but the robin’s-egg-blue box and its white satin ribbon clinched my choice. Those boxes date to 1837, when Charles Lewis Tiffany decreed that all of the packaging and advertising of his newly opened fancy-goods store should be in exactly the same shade of blue. Tiffany’s has since registered the boxes and Tiffany blue as trademarks. Like Hermès’s gorgeous orange boxes, a Tiffany blue box is a rare example of packaging that is as covetable as its contents.

As good examples go, it’s hard to quibble with one that has flourished for 169 years, making it all the more surprising that more luxury labels haven’t taken Tiffany’s cue by introducing equally enticing packaging.
Most have opted for one of two default design styles for their boxes, bags and logos (or visual identities, as graphic designers call them). One style belongs to what we’ll dub the Voguettes. These are the brands with forgettably pleasant packaging, whose logos look more or less like Bodoni, the elegant serif typeface that Alexander Liberman adapted for the title of Vogue in 1947. The Voguettes include Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Dior, Vera Wang, Mikimoto and Piaget.

The second camp consists of the Chanelles, who have taken their lead from (you guessed it) the crisp sans-serif logo and monochrome bags and boxes chosen by Coco Chanel for her couture house. This was a woman who was so brand-savvy that a chandelier in her Rue Cambon apartment dangled with rock-crystal symbols of 5 for No. 5 perfume and her company’s double-C insignia. Among the Chanelles are Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the visual identities of the brands in either camp, but there’s nothing special about them either. Tellingly, Tiffany is a typographic Voguette, but distinguishes itself by using its beautiful blue so cleverly. Whereas Hermès is unmistakably Hermès in logo, color and texture. Only a few other labels come close to their standard.

Where would YSL be without the spindly initials, which were dashed off for the young Yves Saint Laurent by the illustrator Cassandre? Comme des Garçons deserves an honorable mention, for subverting its Chanelle logo with a five-pronged star as the cedilla; as does Azzedine Alaïa, for the great archive boxes with buckled leather straps that he uses as shoeboxes.

A few brands come closer still. Take Martin Margiela. It was gutsy for a young Belgian designer to identify his clothes with nothing other than a blank white square of cotton attached with four clumsy stitches. And it was equally gutsy of him to package them in blank white cotton bags. But it works. Do you know anyone who unpicks those white stitches from their Margiela knits?

Then there’s Net-a-Porter, the online fashion boutique whose packaging owes more to deluxe department stores than bubble-wrapped e-commerce. It’s a happy moment whenever Net-a-Porter delivers. No. 1: you’ve finally snagged that elusive Marc Jacobs tunic. No. 2: you get to play Dominique Sanda in Bertolucci’s “1900” by flinging open one of the enormous tissue-paper-stuffed, ribbon-tied boxes.

And now there’s Lanvin. Until a few weeks ago, it was just another Voguette. And then Alber Elbaz unveiled his new packaging, and it’s beautiful. Everything’s blue — not Tiffany blue, but Elbaz’s zestier take on Jeanne Lanvin’s favorite shade of forget-me-not blue, which she spotted in a Fra Angelico fresco. The logo is a reworking of an early 1900’s drawing of Jeanne Lanvin and her daughter Marguerite dressed for a ball. The boxes are shaped like antique library files and tied with black satin ribbon. It’s not as though I’ve ever found it easy to resist the Lanvin store on Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, but now it’s impossible.

Don’t get me wrong. No box, not even Lanvin’s, matters more than its contents. But great packaging makes shopping more fun. And judging by eBay’s thriving trade in empty Hermès boxes, it can even be an investment.