John Nack on Adobe

February 02, 2008

Saturday Type: Lip tats to Woody Allen

New alphabets have emerged:

• With his Twenty-Six Types of Animals, Jeremy Pettis uses type for "channelling the essence of the beast." [Via]
• The Daily Mail has amassed a rather amazing butterfly wing alphabet--each letter found in nature. [Via]
• Ow, ow, ow: if you're not too squeamish, check out Thijs Verbeek's Clothespin & skin alphabet. [Via]  (In a similarly painful vein (no pun intended), how about a little Mozzer on your lips? [Via Bryan O'Neil Hughes])
• The Politically Incorrect Alphabet is more cute than offensive. [Via]

Elsewhere in the world of type...

• Fun with cultural detritus:
  • I dig Symen “Enkeling” Veenstra's lovingly crafted Spam Series. [Via]
  • The Surrealist riffs on the visual language of England's gossip rags with this tabloid text generator.  (I'm waiting to see a Swedish version.)
• Also hailing from Jolly Ol' is this rotting London grocery store sign.
• You'll want to don safety glasses before inspecting these flair typefaces from the 70's (scroll down til you hit the motherlode).  My wife will always refer to Bookman as "that yacht club font."  [Via]
• Staying on the them of puke induction, what's up with the font used for The History of Visual Communication?  Type is a little like wine with me, in that I never feel confident in my tastes.  In both cases I'm kind of reassured when I hit something and can say, "Okay, that's just foul."
• Type goes beautifully, organically creepy in this ad for The Spiderwick Chronicles.
• BibliOdyssey features a terrific collection of historic ornamental typography.
• Cristian Kit Paul chronicles Woody Allen's typographic repetitions.  Apparently the choice of Windsor goes back to asking designer Ed Benguiat for advice over breakfast. [Via]

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