notes.husk.org

May 1971 advert for American Airlines (source, via)

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:01:00 +0000

May 1971 advert for American Airlines (source, via)

Here’s a fun ngram: an OCR glitch that tracks the rise of...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:54:21 +0000

Here’s a fun ngram: an OCR glitch that tracks the rise of Helvetica. books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c…
— Benjamin Schmidt (@benmschmidt) November 29, 2012

Edited slightly to go from 1940 to 2000, instead of the default 1800 to 2008.

"It was a big change, people were using Helvetica, moving away from traditional faces. CN seemed to..."

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:07:48 +0100

“It was a big change, people were using Helvetica, moving away from traditional faces. CN seemed to sum it all up. It was clean, but if you weren’t careful, boring. It took the life and soul out of things. In retrospect there was too much but at the time everyone wanted to use it, it was exciting.”

- Gerry Barney, creator of the British Rail double arrows, talking type and branding with Creative Review in their article on British Rail’s 1964 logo.

explore-blog: Helveticards – brilliant minimalist playing cards...

Thu, 31 May 2012 02:50:00 +0100

explore-blog:

Helveticards – brilliant minimalist playing cards for design nerds

See also the original product page, which (unlike fab.com) doesn’t require login nonsense. They also have a picture of an uncut sheet:

Design by Ryan Myers. See also: Bruce Blackburn’s minimal cards for MoMA, 1972.

Bruce Blackburn’s modernist playing cards for MoMA NY,...

Sat, 28 May 2011 08:03:00 +0100

Bruce Blackburn’s modernist playing cards for MoMA NY, 1972 (via Las cartas sobre la mesa).

"The point of Helvetica is that it is neutral. It is extremely legible. It is not subject to cultural..."

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:14:49 +0100

“The point of Helvetica is that it is neutral. It is extremely legible. It is not subject to cultural bias, regional variation, and the vicissitudes of fashion and corporate identity. It is designed, painstakingly designed, to create standardised signage. Standardisation might not be exactly sexy but it is extremely useful if you want to avoid the world being a confusing racket. “Uncompromising”, damn right it is. It is also international, part of the global language of airports, flight, travel - exactly the kind of spirit that this cloth-eared rebranding exercise apparently wants to tap into.”

- Will Wiles, in Air Rage, on Gatwick’s rebranding. He’s right: this is awful. The whole piece is worth a read.

A 1980 Polaroid SX70 advert at the Vintage Ad Browser.

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:00:00 +0000

A 1980 Polaroid SX70 advert at the Vintage Ad Browser.

Ace Jet 170: Found Type Friday #72

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:42:00 +0000

Ace Jet 170: Found Type Friday #72

I’m trying an experiment with fonts: disabling Arial to...

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:09:00 +0100

I’m trying an experiment with fonts: disabling Arial to allow Helvetica to supersede it, despite all the CSS rules on the web that assume Windows (and hence shitty Helvetica rendering).

Also, I still love me some Monaco 9. More on that later, maybe.