Speak Up is run with Six Apart’s 
John Downer once compared the work of professional sign painters and type designers, concluding that "exploring the two subjects simultaneously shows that at any given time, each discipline somehow influences the other." He went on to muse about "the visual dialogue between, say, the myriad graffiti 'taggers' [or untrained, nonapprenticed letterers doing sign work] and legions of self-taught, novice users of type design software…". (1) Tokyo-based designer (and frequent PingMag contributor) Ian Lynam has followed Downer's lead and produced Parallel Strokes, a book of interviews with graffiti writers and typeface designers. There is an ever-growing number of books on graffiti, and a scant few on type design, but this is probably the first volume to give both practices an equal footing. (2) While the content of the book leans heavily towards graffiti, Lynam's originality lies in approaching all of his subjects as creators of letterforms, plain and simple.
The top 15 out of a 27-quip week.
I've been holding on to the April issue of Print with the intention of mentioning a simple phrase that caught my attention. It was an article written by Colin Berry regarding Sputnik, an 8- to 10-student in-house design group for the California College of the Arts that creates around 50 projects per term and was launched in 1996 by instructors Bob Aufuldish, David Meckel, and design department dean Michael Vanderbyl. One of the biggest benefits of this, of course, is the early experience in developing printed and on-line materials, working against deadlines and budgets, and interacting with clients. And, as we all know, experience is everything. Hiring a recent graduate with no experience is always a conundrum for employers: Will it work out? How much time will be spent on training? How much money spent on fixing mistakes? And on, and on, and on. What many employers forget is that, once, someone had to give them the opportunity. And that's where the following phrase resonated.
It's funny how things change. Five years ago I wouldn't have given second thought to producing print material with digital printing. No, only offset printing. The thought of a brochure, annual report or catalog printed as if it had come out of Kinko's — excuse me, FedEx Office — was just unbearable and even the much-hyped and pushed feature of individual customization — Dear Jon, from Chicago, IL 60660… — didn't seem to be much draw. And seeing samples of digital printing where a block of color looked as if it had been filled in with streaky watercolors and colored type looked as coarse as the graphics in an Atari 2600 game didn't help either. Needless to say, digital printing technology has improved vastly and so has the quality of the finished product, which, like offset printing, has a range of quirks that have to be tested as you go to be improved. Over the years, printers and paper manufacturers have produced elaborate promotional materials that show you how to make the best of offset printing by showcasing examples of 1-, 2-, 4-, and 6-color printing, varnishes, skin tones, gradients, metallics, and subjecting papers to all sorts of other processes equivalent to being crash test dummies. More or less, the art of offset printing has been properly documented and even mastered. Now it's digital printing's turn.
The top 15 out of a 32-quip week.
I posted this on Quipsologies last night, but I thought it warranted opening it up to the knowledgeable crowd here on Speak Up and see how all of you fare. Empire magazine has put up a rather difficult quiz that challenges both your typographic prowess as well as your cinephiliac tendencies: Can you guess the movie from just one letter from its poster? The interactivity is kind of clunky: Enter an answer and hit enter to see if you got it right or wrong; if you can't figure something out, just click on the letter clipping to reveal the full poster; and then you have to count manually how many you were able to answer and how many you got right. Me? I didn't do as well as I thought… Answered 23, Right 17. Honor system please!
The top 15 out of a 31-quip week.
As some know, the saga of our giant book that started in August (and was first brought up here back in December) of last year, continues. We've come a long way, as in 41,000-plus words and 900 image files. And counting. Posting here about the book has been fruitful and we want to ask for your help again. Since we are mired here in the confines of Brooklyn typing, e-mailing and blogging away we need the help of those that roam free in the streets all over the world: We need one sample of those fun pins, stickers and/or tickets that admit one to museums.
This Friday, more than 10,000 international athletes will descend upon Beijing, China to compete in the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. The 17-day games will feature 302 events across 28 different sports, and will draw an unparalleled number of viewers from television, on-line, and mobile devices worldwide. The competition will feature the first digital broadcast of the Olympics, and will boast the largest number of host cities, highest number of doping tests and most merchandise-ready mascots (five) in Olympic history. In the spirit of that global competition, I set up a similar challenge among a few players in a space that many SpeakUp readers follow with a passion similar to that of the sports-obsessed: online logo design.
