12:31 am
Simon
Most of my interests are linked into each other; one of the most obvious is the correlation between typography, packaging, advertising, corporate design and branding. I've focused on the first of these aspects here- typography. This is rightly seen as anal by a lot of people, but I link it very much to my interest in corporate identity- the typeface is the 'handwriting' of the company, if you like.
- Typeright
- Font Diner Great 50's Americana fonts - you might recognise a few...
- What the Font? Upload a font and they'll identify it for you
- Free Chank Fonts
- Linotype - Features
- Microsoft typography Links and suggestions
- Linotype - Fonts in Use Examples of specific fonts in the real world - on ads and the like
- Typographic Signage Project
- NoRelevence: Handpainted Signs
Gill
All of this has a slightly disturbing side-note. When finding out more about my favourite typeface, Johnston (The Tube's font) I discovered that Johnston's prodigy was a man named Eric Gill - that's why Gill Sans is so similar to Johnston. Anyway, Gill Sans is a favourite font of many designers - see Font.com's views on why Gill Sans is great - and as such there is a great deal of profiling on the man on the web. For the last years of his life, he was a local- he lived near High Wycombe and died in Uxbridge.
That's not all though; he actually set up 3 religious self-contained communities, opting out of mainstream life, denouncing industrialisation and so on. His final community was called Pigotts on what we now call Pigotts Hill. I had no idea he was so strange; it's made me worry about other 'incidental heros' thoughout life. Is this the effect a lifetime of worrying about the x-height of the letter 'a' has on a man?
