Design Inspiration | Stefan Sagmeister & Chip Kidd
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Stefan Sagmeister speak at the Salazar Awards. He was totally inspirational, but really – what was I expecting? The guy is throughly entertaining and he managed to make all of us polite Canadians squirm and laugh at the same time with his stories of jelly fish exhibits gone awry, leaving his intern to be interrogated by the FBI and simply shouting "shut the f#%k up!" to a noisy bunch on the other side of the room.
He went through his book "Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far" telling us of his process. The book is beautiful, inside and out:
The book design reminds me of Chip Kidd’s follow up book to The Cheese Monkeys, The Learners:
Both designers use type that is hand drawn or drawn from the materials around them. The type becomes the image.
Chip Kidd, Geoff Spear, Saul Ferris’s book jacket for "Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan"
Also in common is their great one liners:
Chip Kidd: "Good is Dead" "Do you see?"
Stefan Sagmeister: "Trying to look good limits my life."
Check out Chip Kidd’s website "Good is Dead" and Stefan Sagmeister website for "Things I’ve learned in life so far".
Crayon Physics
The other day I was surfing the web for a Christmas gift for my niece when I came across something called "Crayon Physics". Not everyone loves physics but who doesn’t love crayons? This is a great game with lots of potential and it is free 
you can pretend you are a kid again and play with your crayons! Some of the levels are a bit challenging – but it is a fun way to apply physics to this make believe world. Check it out:
How cool is that? The only complaints I have (if you want to call them complaints) are; I wish it had more levels because I wanted to keep playing, and it only works on a PC 
I think it will be a lot of fun playing this with my 5 year old niece – maybe she can teach me a few things
You can download Crayon Physics here.
Amazing Free Fonts
Tired of the using the same old fonts? Smashing Magazine has put together a great collection of free fonts. Yes, you read correctly – FREE! And they aren’t garbage fonts either. There are some nice alternatives if you are one of those designers stuck on using the same san serif font or if you are looking for a new classic.
For example, District Thin is a beautiful san serif font, especially if you are looking for that nice clean thin look. See it compared to Helvetica, Frutiger or Univers:
Or Canonica instead of “Times New Roman”, and if you are looking for a font with less x-height and narrower then Century Gothic, try Geosans Light.
Check out the Smashing Magazine website to see more of this collection.
Helvetica, the film
In May I wrote a post about the documentary film Helvetica by Gary Hustwit, and last night I finally was able to see it. I had great expectations, not because it was a film on Helvetica, but because it was a film on type. I wasn’t disappointed. Gary Hustwit did a great job of portraying the love/hate relationship people have with the font as well as giving some history of type in graphic design. The film was filled with some great one liners like this one:
“I’m a typomaniac…an incurable but modern disease” – Erik Spiekerman.
That brought some great laughs from the audience (I’m sure) filled with mostly graphic designers. Regardless of whether you are a graphic designer, everyone is becoming aware of the fonts around them. I get crafted emails in Comic Sans, Garamond or Courier, the font that they think represents them. Neville Brody talks about the use of type in advertising the same way, “…the way the message is dressed is going to define our reaction to that message…if the message is written in Helvetica – (you know) it is going to be clean, that you are going to fit in – you’re not going to standout…”
Douglas Coupland made a joke after the film that he associates Helvetica with over the counter drugs since his father was a physician and received samples from all the pharmaceutical companies – all labels written in Helvetica. In the film, designer Paula Scher associates it to the Vietnam War and jokingly says it started the Iraqi War. Love it or hate it Helvetica is all around us and as Rick Poynor says in the film “…that’s type…casting it’s secret spell”.
Official Website, Helvetic, A documentary film by Gary Hustwit
Creative On-line Marketing
There has been a lot of buzz on the internet lately about the blog “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs” written by Fake Steve Jobs or maybe the real Steve Jobs, who knows, but there are people trying to find out and they will go to great lengths to figure it out. The blog is well written, insightful to the goings on at Apple and always amusing. I just laugh every time I think about how he has listed “Mock turtlenecks” under his interests. The point is people are reading it and commenting on it. We are getting to know what’s new at Apple and most importantly we are being entertained, what great marketing!
West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers have also developed a clever way to market on-line with Cheddar Vision. 24 hours a day you can watch the cheddar age! Sound completely boring? Well Cheddar Vision has quite the following, with groups on FaceBook and MySpace this cheddar is getting a lot of coverage! It has even been rumored that the cheddar was invited to a wedding…
Another effective marketing method is using on-line social networks to distribute an ad like this one. It has made it’s way around YouTube, reddit and Digg.
Some content, especially humorous content, has incredible potential to take advantage of viral marketing using on-line social networks and blogs. Isotope Communications is responsible for the marketing on Cheddar Vision and hopefully we will never find out who is responsible for the writings for the Fake Steve Jobs’ blog but I think these are very innovated and effective methods to marketing on-line.
A Film on Type? Have I Died and Gone to Heaven?
I’ve always been a huge fan of type, it pretty much comes with the design industry, but I haven’t always been a fan of Helvetica. When I was in school it was almost looked down upon to use Helvetica because it seemed like the safe choice – we are suppose to push the envelope – think out of the box. Once I graduated and began working in the ‘real world’ I soon discovered that Helvetica is much more then a safe font, it a readable font and very elegant at large and small scales. The typeface is so versatile with it’s different weights you can use Helvetica on almost anything. Having said that Helvetica is still not one of my first choices for a san-serif font but I respect it and will definitely see a film about it.
Celebrating its 50th year it seem appropriate that this is the year the film is released. Director Gary Hustwit explains his reasons for making the film:
“Why make a film about a typeface, let alone a feature documentary film about Helvetica? Because it’s all around us. You’ve probably already seen Helvetica several times today. It might have told you which subway platform you needed, or tried to sell you investment services or vacation getaways in the ads in your morning paper. Maybe it gave you the latest headlines on television, or let you know whether to ‘push’ or ‘pull’ to open your office door.” Read more on the film.
Want good alternatives to Helvetica? Check out Stephen Coles article on Helvetica and Alternatives to Helvetica.