Type With Pride

Gilbert Baker was the creator of the iconic Rainbow Flag (1978) and an LGBTQ activist and artist. On 31st March 2017 Baker passed away, leaving a legacy of one of the most iconic and globally recognisable flags.

To honour him, NewFest and NYC Pride collaborated with ad agency Ogilvy & Mather and typeface creator Fontself to create an open-source font called “Gilbert”.

The Gilbert font was originally designed for striking headlines and statements that could live on banners for rallies and protests and it is now currently being built out into a whole family of weights and styles. The font is available in two versions, a standard vector font and a colour font (in OpenType-SVG format) currently usable in Photoshop CC 2017 only. Both are early beta previews that you can download below for free, and you can follow @TypeWithPride on Instagram and on our development blog for news about new font weights, styles and creative contests.

You can see more examples of the font on posters here. Whilst I love the sentiment, and the context behind the idea, I can’t say I love the font itself. Personally, I think it works best as either singular letters or very short phrases/words (which is perfect for ‘LGBTQ’). However, with long quotes such as the one on my header image above, it just doesn’t work for me. What do you think of the font?

 

 

Spotlight: Bompass & Parr (Valentine’s Day special)

Bompas & Parr “leads in flavour-based experience design, culinary research, architectural installations and contemporary food design”, and you might have seen their previous work go viral…

Grope Mountain, was originally launched in 2015 at the Museum of Sex (New York) as part of FUNLAND, “an interactive exhibition about the pleasures and perils of an eroticised fairground”. The project consists of a climbing wall where the traditional “rocks” are replaced with ones shaped like genitals, which in turn influenced the creation of ‘Grope Sans’, a naughty typeface created for Valentine’s Day.

Flo Fairweather (graphic designer at Bompas & Parr) said:

It’s surprisingly easy to turn most type forms into penises, vaginas and breasts. There are up to three variations on each letter, so an even representation of male and female parts can be achieved with every word. Every minor adjustment I made was laughter-inducing

I was struggling to find something to blog about for Valentines Day – I couldn’t find anything that particularly stood out. Well, this certainly did! I had briefly heard about Bompas & Parr’s ‘Grope Mountain’ project through social networks, but the rest of their portfolio is certainly equally as unique, bizarre but undoubtedly pushing creative boundaries.

 

source: itsnicethat

Comic Sans: The Man Behind the World’s Most Contentious Font

Ha, bless him.
Great Big Stories interviewed designer Vincent Connare as part of a Frontiers series. It’s a must watch, as aside from the hilarity of Comic Sans, I really love the animation and art direction in this video!

NatWest Rebrand

Consultancy FutureBrand has designed the new branding for NatWest. The logo is based on the original created in 1968, which I didn’t find particularly exciting… but the illustrations that come with the rebrand are great!

The creative direction has evolved really well with this rebrand, and they certainly visually stand out amongst their competitors. NatWest’s aim was to lend themselves to a younger audience, and the use of bright, bold graphic illustrations, typography and gifs is definitely on-trend.

Tiny Hand Lettered Quotes | Dexa Muamar

There’s nothing more satisfying than some delicious hand drawn typography that is so insanely neat. Wow!

Check out the rest of his work on Instagram.

10k!!! Big Thanks to you for following me, thanks for the encouraging supports through likes, comments, dm, email etc You guys are AWESOME🙌🙌

A photo posted by Dexa Muamar (@dekedex) on May 11, 2016 at 5:01pm PDT

 

“I Love You more than coffee, but please dont make me prove it”😂😂 – anon #letteringmalang #kaligrafina #belmenid

A photo posted by Dexa Muamar (@dekedex) on Apr 18, 2016 at 8:32pm PDT

 

“I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it”😥 – Lewis Carroll #letteringmalang #kaligrafina #belmenid

A photo posted by Dexa Muamar (@dekedex) on Apr 7, 2016 at 5:05pm PDT