TRUCK: Symbol Mattress

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Saw this truck while out walking one day, it was making a mattress delivery to the local thrift store. For some odd reason, the thrift store has taken to selling new mattresses, probably the only new thing you can buy in there.

As for the typography on the truck, The Symbol Mattress logo is quite interesting, including a sleeping person in the letter o was very clever. The whole layout and design is really well done. The font they chose is really interesting: it seems at first glance to be sans serif, but upon closer examination you will see just the slightest hints of serifs in the lettering.

If only the design genius who created the graphics for this truck were able to work on the Symbol Mattress web site: it's a real disaster.

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SIGN: Stop

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The ubiquitous stop sign, seen everywhere, telling us all to stop, look around, and take a moment to reflect on how how little real driving we do, compared to sitting at various traffic control devices.

In this particular area, there seems to be a stop sign every hundred feet, no kidding. Someone went a bit crazy with the signage.

If nothing else, they remind me of this old song from Buffalo Springfield.

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

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SIGN: El Burrito Restaurant

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The simple, slanted sans serif font advertising the El Burrito restaurant. Why do most all signs have to be red?

Obviously, the bold, slanted letters are an indication of the bold, fast, and tasty Mexican food that awaits inside. The little sombrero is a nice touch. I like this little place, good food.

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LICENSE PLATE: Illinois

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Something we see everyday, but pay little attention to: the classic license plate. Here is a typical example of an Illinois class B truck plate, found on the van for a roofing company.

For such a simple, mundane object, it has three different fonts in use: a fancy script for the word "Illinois"; regular block-like lettering for the license number itself, and a nice little serif font for the slogan "Land of Lincoln." I personally do not care for the fancy script used for Illinois, but it does make very good use of the small, mostly horizontal space that is available, though I think a san serif font like the one Olympus uses for their cameras would have been a better choice. But in going with the fancy script, they should have at least used it for the slogan as well, instead of the mashup of fonts in this small space, along with the barely visible image of President Lincoln.

I would move the president's portrait to the extreme right or left of the plate number, and given it it's own special place, where numbers or letters would not interfere, or even leave it in the middle, but not allow letters or numbers to cover it.

But I do like how the driver decided to spruce things up by adding the stuffed toy tiger. That was a stroke of brilliance.

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CAMERA: Olympus E-P2

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Here's my newest digital camera: an Olympus E-P2 with an Olympus 17mm f/2.8 lens. I purchased this camera to be my "go anywhere" camera, that I'll take with me literally anywhere I go. The neat thing about is that it's as small as any little camera one would pick up at Wal-Mart or Target, but inside are the electronics and sophistication of a full size DSLR. The photos it takes are absolutely wonderful.

In regards to typography, there are two things to point out: the traditional Olympus logo on the camera and lens, and the wording on the lens itself.

First of all, the classic Olympus logo which has been in use since the early 1970's. It's a very simple, sans-serif font, short, fat, bold and all caps. In typical Olympus fashion, the logo appears on the lens cap, and on the camera just above the lens itself. Though it's a very simple logo, the boldface works extremely well to make it stand out, and it's much better from the skinny, narrow font that Olympus used previously.

Secondly, there is the wording used to describe the lens. Here Olympus follows a standard that's been in use by all camera lens makers for sometime: a very simple sans-serif font, with a narrow stroke, but the bright white letters standout on the black lens background. As is almost always the case, the descriptive info is in all caps, except for the "mm" designation after the 17, which is the traditional notation for millimeters, and always uses the smaller case letter m.

The overall all effect of the lettering on the black and dark gray camera body is very professional, and attracts a person to the object itself, making them curious as to what it can do, and it's capabilities.

Here's a sample of the Olympus logo for web use that I got from the Olympus Global website.

The bold lettering and the extreme horizontal orientation of the logo work extremely well for web use, as well as letterhead and cameras.

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SIGN: Kyoto Japanese Restaurant

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A small sign above the door tells folks walking down this sidewalk that this is the door that leads to the Kyoto Japanese Restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant left here for a new location about a quarter mile up the road, so if you looked in through the glass, you would find an empty space. But the sign lives on, even though the restaurant is long gone.

All throughout the strip mall, it seems the owner/manager put these up for the benefit of shoppers. Further down you can see a sign for an optical store, that's been gone from that space for years. Sadly, there is only one orignal tennet left, a dry cleaners.

Neat thing about this Kyoto sign is that it's obviously using a sans serif font, but notice how they did their best to fit the entire name on one small sign. Big, widely spaced letters are used for "Kyoto", but the lettering for "Japanese Restaurant" are very narrow and squished together.

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SIGN: Pull

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Here's one of those simple litte signs you see on doors all the time, giving you a very simple, direct, one word instruction as to what to do: PULL!

The font is as simple as can be, a sans-serif, all-caps font done in gold lettering on a black background, for a bit of class. But instead of the typical left-right horizontal orientation of the letters, the sign maker opted for a vertical interpretation, which gives this simple instruction a bit of uniqueness. Just think: how often do you ever see anything with the letters arranged vertically like this? I bet it's hard for you to think of another one.

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SIGN: L.A. Tan

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Even though there's a scaffold in the way, it's hard to miss the bright red "L.A. Tan" sign on this storefront. The sign was just recently installed, which is probably why the scaffolding is there.

The lettering uses a nice, bold sans serif font, but notice how the letter A's have palm trees embedded in them! A very unique touch, that would make an otherwise simple red sign a bit more dramatic.

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TRUCK: Bimbo

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I see these trucks all over, with the cute little white bear logo, and slices of white bread floating on the sky. Though it seems something happened, where part of the design is missing for some odd reason.

As for the typography, a bright red san-serif font makes is used for the logo, but those letter B's have some unique styling.

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The bronze plaque

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This plaque is posted by the tomb of Col. Robert McCormick at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, Illinois. It gives the background information on the construction of his tomb, in the shape of the ancient Greek's exedra, and how it was constructed.

The typeface used is a super clean, very easy to read sans-serif, mono-space type, done in all capitol letters. The plaque itself is bronze set on a granite base--certainly designed to last as long as the tomb itself. I love the simple, elegant design, to the point of it being nearly boring. And yet, the bronze and the granite give it quite a bit of class. The typeface looks like something that would have come out of a linotype machine, which would be very appropriate for Col. McCormick, seeing how he was the owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper.

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the tomb of Col. Robert R. McCormick

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For my very first ever photo posted to this blog, I'm choosing a photo I took on Good Friday at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, Illinois. The photo is of the tomb of Col. Robert R. McCormick, a veteran of the First World War, and a newspaper man. But not just any newspaper man, he was the owner, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, and also got the paper involved in radio and TV with the famous call sign: WGN - "World's Greatest Newspaper."

I could not think of anything more appropriate to start this blog than with photo of the tomb of a soldier and famous newspaper man. It's symbolic on a number of levels.

But first the typography of the tomb engraving itself--a very easy to read, and surprisingly modern sans-serif font that features thin, tall, all-capital letters. Notice how the first letter of every word is a little taller than those used in the rest of the word. There's a lot of text in this engraving, and it seems this particular type was chosen to get the maximum in a very limited space. The stone itself is a very high quality white granite imported from North Carolina.

The reason this first entry into the journal has a lot of symbolic importance extends to many different levels. Here's a few to get things started:

NEWSPAPERMAN - Though the inscription on this part of the tomb deals with Col. McCormick's service during the First World War, he was actually far more famous for his owning the Chicago Tribune, and the WGN radio and TV stations. He was a mass media genius, and obviously was very, very familiar with the world of typography.

STONE ENGRAVING - All the earliest forms of writing that survive to the common day survived because they were engraved in stone or clay, or at the very least, pigments were used on a stone surface, like cave paintings for instance. Stone was the ideal medium for putting out a message that you wanted to last for a very, very long time.

TOMB - In the digital age, it is quite obvious that many of the old forms of mass media are dying off, or being reduced in size and influence. This goes for newspapers, television, books, records, and various other things that can easily find life in 100% digital form. Even when I watch TV now-a-days, it's often shows I select from an "On Demand" service, rather than trying to re-arrange my schedule around their airing. Digital is all encompassing, and is changing the way news and data are delivered in a very major way. It would not be the least surprising to me if printed books and newspapers were to be completely gone from sale within ten to twenty years.

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RZ

digital typography used by this blog

I just can't keep well enough alone.

This blog was created using Google's outstanding Blogger tool, and to get up and running quickly, I chose their canned "etheral" template. But I can't have a blog without adding my own personal touches, especially in regards to the type used to make this blog. Hence, that's the first thing I modified, in what I hope is a long, slow steady stream of modifications over the life of this blog.

First to be changed was the blog's text in regards to the body of posts (what you are reading right now!). For blog posts, I chose my all time favorite web font, Verdana, and decided to go with a 13 pixel size. I like text to be in the 13 to 14 pixel range, if possible.

Second, I changed the type for the blog post title. It is now a really cool font called Droid Sans, and it's 24 pixels in size.

Third, I changed the type for the blog title itself, typography journal. I wanted the blog's title and the post titles to have matching type, so I chose Droid Sans for that as well, at a size of 60 pixels.

More changes will be coming in the days or weeks ahead, but type is always the first to be changed when I play around with templates. I hope you like how everything looks.

RZ

the typography journal

Hello everyone!

This is my first entry in my new blog: typography journal. Let me tell you a little bit about this projet, why I'm starting it, and what you can expect.

First of all, let's make sure we understand the term typography. I'm sure you've heard it before, but it's not a common word, and therefore I should define it as best I can. For a start, here's the formal definition from my computer's dictionary:

typography
noun
• the art or process of setting and arranging types and printing from them.
• the style and appearance of printed matter.

While the first part of that definition about setting and arranging type and printing is certainly very important, this journal will be mostly interested in the second part of the definition: the style and appearance of printed matter. In my own words: this will be a journal that will concentrate on how typography is used in the world around us, especially in regards to it's style and appearance.

This journal is a requirement for a digital typography class I'm taking. Just like artists keep sketchbooks for drawing whatever it is that strikes their fancy where-ever they may be, this digital journal will--in a way--serve that same purpose. But unlike a true artist armed with his sketchbook out exploring the world, this blog will be a collection of typography, and none of it will be my own original creation. Instead, I'll be collecting, exploring and critiquing other people's typography.

However, there will be one litte bit of originality and creativity applied to this blog by it's creator: the typography I find will be photographed by me, with my own camera. I hope to have up to 100% of the photography on this site be my own orignal photos, but I do reserve the right to use someone else's photography if I come across an image of a subject I'm not able to photograph on my own.

So am I going to be taking photos of books and magazines and posting them to this blog? No.

Rather, the approach here is going to be a little unique. Rather than exploring the typography of the printed page, I'm going to focus on on the typography of everyday life.

To be more exact: I'm going to be focusing on how type is used on things. And by things I mean everything that is not a printed page or a book cover. Rather, I'll be looking at how typography is used on signs, buildings, cars, trucks, airplanes, trains, appliances, tombstones, monuments, shopping carts, packaging, parking lots, and all else. And I'm not going to necessarily look for amazing, outstanding uses of typography, but rather the mundane, boring uses that we see everyday and don't thing two seconds about: stop signs, traffic signs in general, signs along the highway and on buildings, and that sort of thing. My intention is to make you stop and think about these things, how they are designed, their intended audience, why they are even there to begin with. It is a celebration of the mundane. But I do promise to throw in a few more interesting pieces as well.

My personal goal is to add as many as ten images a week--we'll see if we can maintain that pace for a couple of months.

The format of the posts will be very simple: a title, a photo, and a brief description or critique of the typography sample. Since I don't plan to add any advertising to this site, I hope to make a few cents by selling prints and digital downloads of the images I post. There will be links to the an e-commerce site where those transactions can be completed.

I do hope you find this site interesting. I'll keep the comments section open if you have any feedback.

Thank You.

Ron Z.