Blog Pick :: Typetoken
By: Phil Reville, M.Arch Candidate
With portfolio review quickly approaching, this week’s blog pick is a great resource for all things typography, iconography, and visual language. Typetoken is an online magazine that showcases, discusses, and reviews the abovementioned, looking to keep the design community abreast of what is new and exciting in all things typography. The site has an overwhelming catalog, from reviews on recent publications to posts about typeface related events. Furthermore, the site is broken into eight categories based on feature relevance: icon, publication, theory, typeface, visual language, event, identity, and art. While many features overlap in content between these categories, it is an easier way to navigate when looking for something more specific.
“By focusing on a host of contemporary practitioners from around the world, Type Plus creates a picture of a new dynamism in typographic expression. The era of type as a passive, semi-invisible holder of meaning is long gone.”
While typetoken features many publications such as Type Plus, there are also posts about typography in its most basic form. One such post follows the launch of a brand new font by company Fontsmith. The font, FS Millbank, was created for use in transportation settings, highly stylized for fast-paced, long distance, and potentially blurred viewing. In addition, the font was designed alongside matching icons. The feature provides insight into just how much work goes into making a single font. The attention to detail given to each letter is astonishing. The fact that this font was then tested in various transportation scenarios is even more amazing. I can only imagine the sketchbooks filled only with typefaces that Fontsmith has lying around.
Also be sure to check out the Boston Society of Architects’ current exhibition, Stereotype - a collection of works that reveal a “departure from conventional typographical approaches focused on two-dimensional letters by incorporating the elements of time, movement, and the third dimension.”
Now through May 25, admission is free: http://www.architects.org/bsaspace/exhibitions/stereotype-new-directions-typography
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