typography

Posts tagged
with typography

Design

Practice Your Stroke with Alphaputt, a Playful Typographic Mini Golf Course

Typography meets tee time in Alphaputt, an iOS game with a lot of character. The digital mini golf course is the project of Sennep Games and can be played in two iterations: spell out a word and putt around the individual holes or swing through the entire alphabet from A to Z. From a zippy rollercoaster and sushi restaurant to a turntable and UFO landing site, each letter features a uniquely designed green complete with distractions and attempts to thwart your progress.

Since its release, the game has garnered multiple awards and recognition from industry giants, including the Apple App Store, The FWA, and the Webby Awards. Alphaputt is available for iPhone and iPad, although we found gameplay easier on the larger screen.

 

Art Design

Vibrant Letters Drift and Twist in Bold Typographic Murals by Pref

For British artist Pref, the art of decipherment is as integral to his murals as the expressively layered designs. Known for looping and layering blocky text to give the illusion of floating forms, contrasting letters wriggle, tilt, overlap, and cast bold shadows. His training in graphic design spurred an abiding fascination with typography, and while much that field is oriented toward clear communication, Pref is interested in literally twisting messages. He meticulously arranges each letter to form puzzle-like compositions, encouraging the viewer to work out a word or phrase. “The wording for my pieces are usually autobiographical,” he explains, “like clues and relics from my past or a commentary on current times.”

You can see more of Pref’s work on his website and follow updates on Instagram.

 

Design

Portable and Precise, Horizon’s ‘Swiss Army Knife of Sketch Tools’ Combines an Array of Functions into One Ruler

To render a perfect circle or measure precise angles, designers and artists rely on a slew of tools to compose accurate sketches and diagrams, but with so many different devices, one drawback is portability. Dubbed the “Swiss Army knife of sketch tools” in a new Kickstarter campaign, the team at Horizon has created a new double-sided ruler that combines functions like an imperial and metric compass, protractor, T-square, circle stencils, and four straightedges in inches, centimeters, pixels, and picas—all packed into a laser-cut, stainless steel tool the size of a credit card. They have also incorporated the Helvetica typeface, which rose to popularity in the mid-20th century for its clarity, to make the measurements even easier to read.

You can find more of Horizon’s designs on Instagram.

 

Art Design

A Bold, Architectural Installation Recreates an Ancient Roman Gatehouse with Messages of Belonging

Temporarily occupying the site of the ancient Housesteads Roman Gatehouse at Hadrian’s Wall, a vibrant installation by British artist Morag Myerscough recreates the structure that once stood on the bucolic landscape in northern England. “The Future Belongs To What Was As Much As What Is” is a bright, architectural reinterpretation of the 2nd-century building, reaching the same 8.5 meters high and 12.5 meters wide as the original construction.  A staircase tucked inside the scaffolding allows visitors to climb to an upper outpost and look over the landscape, offering a view that’s been unavailable for the last 1,600 years.

To create the patchwork, typographic facade, Myerscough collaborated with community members and poet Ellen Moran. Each panel is bright and geometric, and while some reference artifacts found on the site, many contain messages relating to borders, connecting the historic landmark that once defined the edge of the Roman empire to contemporary immigration issues. “We hope that placing such a bold contemporary art installation in this ancient landscape will not only capture people’s imagination but maybe also challenge their ideas of what the wall was for. Not just a means to keep people out, but a frontier that people could— and did—cross,” says Kate Mavor, the chief executive of English Heritage.

The installation opens on July 30 to coincide with the wall’s 1,900th anniversary and will be up through October 30. (via Dezeen)

 

Design

A Typographic Tribute Honors the Residents and Neighbors of a Now-Demolished House in Sainte-Marie

For five days in November 2020, a house in Sainte-Marie, Québec, identified all of its residents and neighbors on Saint Louis Avenue. Antoine Audet, Maude Faucher, James Audet… the list included hundreds of names inked on strips of white paper and pasted to the clapboards.

The ephemeral design was the project of Louis Gagnon, creative director of the Montréal-based studio Paprika who lived in the house as a child and wanted to honor its tenants and friends before it was demolished. Back in 2019, major flooding swamped the city, and the government required that the most damaged residences be razed. 283 Saint Louis was one of nearly 60 to be torn down that summer.

At the time, 93-year-old Béatrice Vachon had been living in the house for nearly seven decades. “She hoped to spend her twilight years at the same address,” the studio said. “Sainte-Marie is the kind of tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone, from one generation to the next. Here, neighbors saw children being born and growing up; and neighbors helping each other was simply a common practice. Very few people have ever walked away.”

 

As the city prepared for such life-altering change, Gagnon reached out to his sisters to help remember former residents, frequent visitors, and others with ties to the neighborhood. Before printing the names, he tweaked an existing font to reflect the decorative architectural details, and many of the letters feature curved flourishes with upper points evocative of those on the front porch columns.

One photo of 283 Saint-Louis just before it was leveled shows Vachon standing outside her home plastered with the typographic tribute. “As darkness arrives, the house stands before its imminent destruction, bearing witness to a life of stories and memories,” Gagnon said. “A last hommage. An act of resilience.”

For more images and video from the demolition site, visit Paprika’s Behance.

 

Design

Thin Lines, Dots, and Geometric Shapes Merge into a Minimal Typographic Collection

Designer Adam G. is known for utilizing his signature black and red to define the minimal illustrations coming out of the Santa Monica-based studio TRÜF Creative (previously). He describes his style as messymod, or messy modernism, an aesthetic that manifests as an eclectic array of shapes rendered in a tight color palette. Curved components and thin lines leading to perfectly round dots form his interpretation of the 36 Days of Type project, an ongoing endeavor that asks creatives to imagine their own renditions of the alphabet and numeral system.

Emphasizing balance and flow, the collection incorporates some of the designer’s favorite elements from different styles, whether swashes and serifs or western and classic. “I then try to link it all together by using solid shapes, curvy and straight lines, and positive and negative space. I suppose you could say I really love to see how I can make opposing forces work in concert and still make some kind of sense—or at least communicate the letter that it’s supposed to be,” he shares.

Prints of Adam G.’s illustrative designs are available in the messymod shop, where he also plans to release a few pieces from this collection in the coming months. You can follow his work on Instagram.