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Taxonomy of Type
“Of all the arts and crafts, none lives in the dirty tepid bathwater of the past than does typography” . It seems to be a part of human nature that whenever anything is produced, people immediately...
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It’s in the Stars
Every now and then one discovers a publication that is truly and captivatingly bamboozling. Something that, even upon close inspection, is virtually impenetrable to the reader. It’s an extraordinary...
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Peeling the Onion
In an era of rising real estate prices and ravenous development, virtually not a week goes by without sighting a brief but beautiful uncovering of an old piece of sign lurking behind torn down...
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After the Shouting
Perhaps the most succinct way to visualise contemporary french graphic design is to conjure up the image of a teenager simply turning up the volume of a walkman as a response to a parent’s lecture....
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10 Vignettes
Vignette 1 | Mention the name Osbourne Ruddock and you’ll probably be greeted with a puzzled expression. Mention instead his pseudonym King Tubby and they’re more than likely to recognize the pioneer...
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Look Here!
Look Here: Considering the Australian Environment (1968) Australian graphic design is going through a particularly interesting period at the moment — you may think that I’m about to talk about the...
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After the Gig
Nothing excites a graphic designer more than a visual language of systems and informational order. You only has to see the endless folios sporting Feltron-esque graphs of ‘what I did on my holidays’...
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Ghostfaces
Typefaces come and go, they live and die. When bespoke corporate typefaces are created, their designers have no way of knowing the lifespan of their creations. Some of these typefaces are commissioned...
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Imaginary Alphabets
Ever walked past a hand-drawn sign and thought that it would make a great typeface? Elizabeth Carey Smith did just this over a number of signage sites in Melbourne, producing these as entire alphabets...
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Polite Signage
Whether it is standing, smoking, drinking or delinquency, public signage forever dictates a series of authoritative ‘nos’ to regulate public behaviour. Letterbox and Frankston City Council have sought...
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Utypia
‘Why do we need another typeface?’ It’s a question that anybody who works with type hears a lot. And it’s a perfectly valid question. Why do we need another addition to that ever-lengthening font...
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Cluster
As a child growing up in a 1960s housing estate on the outskirts of Melbourne I would watch in excitement as new streets and courts were created seemingly overnight, and with them the skeletal wooden...
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Face and Place
Fifteen years ago, I produced a series of ‘typographic proclamation’ stickers which we mailed out worldwide for free. One of these brashly stated ‘Never trust fonts named after cities’. It proved to...
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Punctuation Marks
When we were approached by Smith Journal to create a set of new punctuation marks, we couldn’t say no. They asked a fine selection of writers – Peter Carey, Nick Hornby, Jon Ronson and Judd Apatow –...
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The Rainbow Collection
Perhaps the common question asked of designers is ‘Where do you get your inspiration?’ – the answer is of course as open as the question. The observation and collection of things into sets can be a...
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Tall Storeys
It’s a story familiar to most graphic designers: a paper rep calls by the studio, and after a little chit-chat they invariably bring out the latest printed sample that displays their stock and trade...
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Featherweight
If you thought that the bird world and the land of type would never meet, think again. Roman Kingsley, from the Adelaide suburb of Burnside in South Australia recently contacted Letterbox to speak...
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Ending it with a H
Many typographers view Peg Entwhistle’s extraordinary mode of suicide as a bizarre form of typographic martyrdom despite the fact that Peg was not known to harbour any particular views on type – so...
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Oddities of Tomorrow
Before the ‘traffic light’ there was the ‘traffic clock’. This dial-based system required drivers to watch the rotating dial to see how much time they have to either drive through (if on the green...
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Geoffrey Fawcett: The Beauty and The Banal
It is no secret that ‘mark-making’ crafts such as letterpress printing, risograph printing, ticket writing and signwriting have all experienced a massive renaissance in recent years. Perhaps the most...
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The Joy of Sets
Part 1. Dub Plates 1988. A long shadowed Sunday afternoon in St Kilda, Melbourne. Inside the disheveled offices of community radio station 3PBS, a fresh-faced graphic artist is assembling the next...
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