DeFrance Printing Talks HyperQuake and Letterpress

January 28th, 2011 by Chris Strong

So Ronnie and the crew over at DeFrance Printing in National City, California were kind enough to help us out with our 10 year anniversary/holiday mini-poster last month. We came to them with limited time and a pretty elaborate piece, so I should start out by prefacing this post with a big “Thank you” to Ronnie and his crew and a disclaimer that DeFrance Printing is awesome. I can’t say that enough.

All of us on the team here that were involved with this project were set on doing a letterpress print and we of course, had visions of how awesome it would be. Our jaws completely hit the floor when we saw the finished product.

The other day Ronnie was kind enough to share with us some photos his team had taken of it (seen in this post), as well as a post about it that they put on their blog. We wanted to make sure all our readers got the chance to check out what they shared as well, so we’ve posted them here.

The blog entry they did on it can be found here for those interested. You can also go check DeFrance Printing out on Facebook and Twitter so definitely do so.

Posted in Design | 177 Comments »

Lettercult: Q

November 22nd, 2010 by Julie Hill

Listen, I don’t care who you are, the Lettercult Alphabattle is the most engaging, beautiful, charming design game you’re going to see in a while. The Qs totally just knocked me off my feet, and I have not even gotten to R or S yet. Wonderful variety of styles and takes on what letters can be, from quick brown foxes to Illustrator screencaps to garden hoses. Type dorks and non-typophiles alike will enjoy watching the Battle, so check it out.

Posted in Design | 4 Comments »

HyperQuake Creates Our Own Environment In The UK

October 6th, 2010 by Chris Strong

So, we’ve been traveling internationally lately (well, at least our ‘Create Your Own Environment’ poster has).

No way you say? Yes, way. It’s like we’re playing our own game of the hit 1990′s PBS game show Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego.

From September 13th through the 24th at the Bower Ashton Campus of The University of the West of England in Bristol, HyperQuake’s own ‘Create Your Own Environment’ poster was on display in a laser cutting exhibition called ‘Drawing with Fire.’

We Created Our Own Environment! In the UK!

Featured alongside a variety of other excellent artwork curated by Tom Sowden, the exhibition aimed to showcase the variety of interesting and truly innovative ways in which artists and designers of all sorts are using laser cutting to work with paper.

Drawing With Fire Exhibition

Tom was kind enough to share some images (courtesy of Natalie McGrorty) that were taken of the exhibition, which have been featured throughout this post. You can also check out more of Natalie’s work at her Flickr gallery too, though I’m not sure if she’ll be posting any images from the exhibition there or not.

Drawing With Fire Exhibition

For a complete look at and write up of the exhibition go on over the where the University has archived everything online on their bookarts website here.

Drawing With Fire Exhibition

We’re of course very proud and honored to have been asked to have our work showcased in this exhibition so far away from home. It’s pretty humbling and very awesome. We here that the exhibition might be traveling to the Enschede, Netherlands as well to visit the ArtEZ Institute of Arts sometime in January. So for all our friends and followers over in the Netherlands, make sure to go check out the exhibition when it makes it way to town.

Thanks again to Tom and Natalie for sharing some of the photos with us!

Posted in Design, News | 161 Comments »

Pencil Me In

August 18th, 2010 by Julie Hill

So long as we are talking Trapper Keeper and Nerf we might as well take a minute to remember Yikes pencils. REMEMBER YIKES PENCILS?! Aw yeah.

But enough of tacky 80s nostalgia, let’s take a classy look at pencil brands with Bob Truby’s Brand Name Pencil website. They sure don’t make pencils like they used to, eh?

Posted in Design | 149 Comments »

Look Ma, We’re On The Internet!

July 30th, 2010 by Chris Strong

So, for all our Twitter followers, this is slightly older news by a week or so, but we wanted to share it on the blog as well.

The ‘Create Your Own Environment’ poster that we posted about a number of months back has been traveling around the world lately as we wanted to share it with as many people, blogs, organizations, etc., that we value and respect, as possible.

Some of the people we’ve sent it to have loved it so much that we’ve gotten some shout outs about it online in a few places. To say we were pretty ecstatic about that and the fact that so many people like the piece, would be an understatement.

Not only do we want to say thanks to all the blogs who talked about the print (again, Thanks Everybody!), we want to encourage everyone that reads our blog to make sure they go check out these sites.

We know you’ll find something inspiring and something that you like about each of them. So don’t wait any longer, go see what they had to say about our poster and posterquake.com and stick around for a bit to check a few of their sites out. Tell them the crew over at HQ says hey.

HQ on For Print Onlywww.underconsideration.com/fpo

HQ on Dirty Mousewww.dirtymouse.co.uk

HQ on The Doomedthedoomed.co.uk

HQ on French Paper Sample Roomwww.frenchsampleroom.com

Posted in Design, News | 178 Comments »

BRB HAVE TO GO TO ART STORE LIKE RIGHT NOW

July 1st, 2010 by Julie Hill

Legacy of Letters from Luca Barcellona on Vimeo.

So so beautiful. Check out Luca Barcellona’s Flickr for more.

Posted in Design | 167 Comments »

Cheese or Font?

May 10th, 2010 by Katie Winkler

Out to Launch, a blog I subscribe to, posts a Random iPhone App of the week. This week: Cheese or Font? The game presents the player with a word, say “Tetilla,” and the player is to guess if the word is type of cheese or a type of font. It’s a cheese, by the way.

You can download the app for free at the APP Store, and, lucky for me and all of the other iPhone-less people in the world, you can also play the game online. None the less, it’s a great game for foodies and font-ies (?) alike.

Enjoy :)

Posted in Technology, Uncategorized | 151 Comments »

LetterCult’s AlphaBattle

April 5th, 2010 by Julie Hill

Illustrators and typographists battle it out in LetterCult’s AlphaBattle (now showing entries for “C”). Anyone can and should submit, I plan to! “D” is for…..hmmm.

Chris Streger

Rory Phillips

Charlie Zinno

Julie Thomas

Jen Montgomery

Posted in Design | 132 Comments »

Proper Punctuation and Type Layouts for the Web

March 10th, 2010 by Julie Hill

OH THANK GOD FINALLY

Yeah, I’ll admit it. I LOVE PROPER PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve read Eats, Shoots and Leaves no fewer than three times, and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style currently resides on my desk. What of it? And now I no longer have to compromise grammatically when making stuff for the Internets, with this handy guide! Typography Quick Tips, from CSS Wizardry.

Ellipses Mac shortcut: Option + ;
Ellipses PC alt code: Alt + 0133

Posted in Design | 139 Comments »

Say Yes! to Ampersands!

February 24th, 2010 by Julie Hill

365 Ampersands

If you’re even the wee-est bit of a typophile, you can’t help but have your heart set a-flutter by a really wonderful ampersand. The above comes from 300&65 Ampersands, and they have plenty of lovelies for your perusal.

Bray & Son

For amps out in the wild, see The Ampersand blog, and for a ridiculously awesome ampersand font pack, head over to HaƤfe & Haph. You’re welcome, font geeks.

Mmmm ampersandy.

Posted in Design | 136 Comments »