Bargain Hunter

Whilst in Glasgow I visited an old book shop bursting at the seams with piles and piles of books from the past 10 years, the 90s, 80s and 70s etc. The shop itself was a mess, what carpet you could see was filthy and any small child or short adult faced the danger of being crushed under mountains of dusty old books. The books themselves though were great, a huge variety were on display and it was kind of a challenge retrieving the book you desired especially when every one I liked the look of was near the bottom of a 7 foot tall tower!

Anyway, I managed to snag a couple of bargains. One from 'The £1 room' and the other from the larger, less price-specific room:

This one was £2.95 and as you can see came with a CD-ROM featuring 53 digital typefaces from independent foundries all across the world. I couldn't believe my luck when I found it. I will be able to scan some pages and use them for development of some of my ideas regarding my Extended Specialist Techniques unit. I want to go the extra steps necessary to create a comprehensive sketchbook on Typography and to express my particular passion for it. I will achieve this through further development of research and my own ideas with influence from practitioners and designers. This book will help me as it has a vast collection of digital fonts lesser known in the mainstream world of typefaces as well as more popular ones. Also, it will allow me to work digitally with my work and try out the typefaces provided on the CD-ROM.

For £1 I became the owner of this mint-condition encyclopaedia on the art of calligraphy. Like Indie Fonts this book should prove a worthwhile investment. Throughout are examples and step-by-step instructions allowing the reader to pick up practical and creative methods of achieving beautiful and unique outcomes. It's collection of techniques has already ignited ideas in my head of how I am going to attempt them.

Picking these up has really made me think about checking more books out from the library, as I don't do it often enough!

World Peace is None of Your Business

Morrissey's new album on vinyl arrived in the post today and I'm loving it! 

Just wanted to share the lyric sheets that accompanied the record. Really like the layout and choice of typeface...

Helvetica

Watching this film in full is fascinating, and utterly brilliant. I am being taught so many things about the complex and detailed world of typefaces. The passion and energy that fuels graphic designers and type designers minds is inspiring.

There are so many typefaces i see every day, all the time, and they just pass me by. I think now, there is no getting away from it. The fact that the space between each letter, the white and the black all contribute to how you feel when you read a word or sentence is mindblowing! 

It feels ridiculous that i haven't noticed until now, but it also makes perfect sense. Of course companies and their designers are choosing certain words to be printed in certain typefaces, of course they are! It feels as if i've been so ignorant all this time. There is no doubt in my mind that i realised at some stage in my life that advertising was this thing that gripped our attention from the word go, and made us spend our money and react in certain ways, that much was clear. I guess i just never had the inclination and reason to delve more into the mechanics behind it all.

If any of that makes sense, and i hope it does, i'll un-pause the movie and get back to broadening my mind.