In the end, my favorite number of all is the 2 in Akzidenz Grotesk Light. It looks like a swan that has a big neck. It doesn’t come back. American 2s always curve back. That one just has this big neck that ends short. Maybe the swan is a childish association, but to me it has this majestic “don’t touch me; leave me alone” quality, but still elegant. Swans aren’t cuddly. They’re bitches. But that’s what I like about the 2. It’s different. And it’s very difficult to do because you have this big white space, then it gets very black down there. You get some light into the top. It’s really a bitch, a total bitch to get that curve right so that it doesn’t fall over, so that it doesn’t sit on its ass. Designing a 2 or any number is always really difficult.
But maybe that’s why I like them so much.
-Erik Spiekermann, type designer
I found this quote strangely hilarious. Oh, the joys of venturing into number design.
Source: designmind.frogdesign.com
It isn’t that hard boy to like you or love you
I would follow you down down down,
Cause you’re unbelievable
If you’re going crazy just grab me and take me
I would follow you down down down, anywhere anywhere
Things I’m liking now: patterns, noise filters, gradient maps, quotation marks, and Lana del Rey.
The saddest part
of a broken heart
Isn’t the ending
so much as the start.
Here is some more free-form design. I think it’s helping me get moving. I have been so wrapped up in “is this the right typeface,” “does this even look good,” and “does this convey the meaning,” that I’ve become over-critical with my work. I’ll be damned if I lose my passion for design in my search for the perfect and error-free portfolio. Perfection is overrated. If this particular design is about anything, it’s about throwing rules out the window.
I don’t even need to know what it is. I just think it looks good. I’m a sucker for bright colors with massive amounts of black and white. I think the text on the right is too tight (it would look better spaced out and with less words), but the general look along with the way the things on the right are packaged is perfection.
Source: typographyserved.com
My Typography class is going to result in the flooding of this place. I’m trying to gather 60 different images for a research assignment (boo), and I just end up finding things like this that make me happy (but don’t help my research at all).
Source: ministryoftype.co.uk
