Font Aid IV is a project to raise money to help the recovery efforts in Haiti after this month’s devastating earthquake. SOTA (Society of Typographic Aficionados), which is a US-based nonprofit, is acting as organizer. The way it works is much like the three previous Font Aid efforts: type designers contribute one character each to a special font, which is then sold to benefit the needy cause. This time, the special font will consist entirely of ampersands; ostensibly this is because of the theme “Coming Together,” though I’m sure it can’t hurt that ampersands are fun to draw and easy to find a use for. All proceeds from sales of the font will go to Doctors Without Borders.
easilyamused |
Archive for January, 2010
Font Aid for Haiti
Published
Title design
Published
The New York Type Directors Club has recognized the importance of typography in the design of titles for movies, TV, online, and live gatherings, and for the first time this year TDC has a competition for the best title designs: TDC Intro. We’ve gotten used to noticing the design of film titles and credits, but this recognizes how widely the use of typographic “introductions” has spread through our entire visual environment. TDC Intro is being chaired by Jakob Trollbäck.
The competition’s deadline has just been extended to Jan. 20 (though the TDC website’s “competitions” page focuses on the just-closed TDC56 and TDC2 comps; follow this link for the entry form for Intro).
Books alive!
Published
Truly remarkable piece of book-related animation from the New Zealand Book Council, “where books come to life.” The text takes on a life of its own through the literal medium of the book pages.
Thanks to Bruce Sterling for this. Following a link from his blog, I found this thoughtful description by an earlier poster, Arwen O’Reilly Griffith, on the site Craft: transforming traditional crafts: “This really is an extraordinary stop-motion animation from the New Zealand Book Council. It usually makes me sad to see books cut up, even for artistic purposes, but this is so masterfully done (and for such a good purpose!) that I can’t mind too much. Yay for books! (Via All About Papercutting.)” Well put.
Looks like the book in question was set ragged-right in Adobe Caslon, as far as I can tell. With title & author’s name in Gill Sans.
The irony of using voiceover and animation to embody such a silent, solitary experience as reading a book isn’t lost on me. But it’s a representation of the kind of visualization you go through in your own mind every time you read an engaging story. It’s just continuation of communication by other means.