Uprising – Muse

Uprising - Muse

In my previous post I cited reasons of work, school and life as the contributing factors to the delay of its creation. However I also think that the song’s overly-abundant airtime contributed to my growing weary of it, and thus not wanting to listen to it for inspiration. With that being said, Mr Matt Bellamy’s description of the inspiration behind the song proved inspiration enough, and I didn’t have to play it on loop to conjure up images.

Edit: Oops! I forgot to reference my sources! – The image used in this mini-poster, taken by margaretkilljoy, can be found at Flickr, and is used under Creative Commons License ByNCSA2.0.

The next installment will be another pop sensation, Lily Allen’s ‘Not Fair’.

(Also have a look at the previous mini-poster, Dog Days Are Over – Florence and the Machine!)

Two hours of reading, viewing, laughing and ooh-ahhing follow.

Ok, so still no ‘eureka’ moment; still no brilliant topic about which to write. Still nothing spectacular to share with you, but I do have a kickass collection of blogs, feeds and syndications. Shall I share those with you?

Okay.

I have an awesome (yes, it inspires awe) collection of eye and mind candy on which I feast quite regularly – and perhaps excessively, – and a big part of its awesomeness is its extensiveness, spanning fromadvertising to Melbourne local life with many stops in between. I don’t want to bore you by spilling them all at once, so instead I’ll pick out the top 9 sources – in no particular order – from an arbitrarily selected folder. This week the folder is…

Typography

Typophile News/Releases

Typophile.com is a great place to start your typographic explorations

I subscribe to two feeds from Typophile, but I feel justified in grouping them because they sometimes overlap in content. Documenting the latest in typographic news and font releases, Typophile is a great place to start.

Typographica

The RSS feed may not include images, but it's worth subscribing to

This is a great website with amazing typographic content. One small caveat is that its RSS feed doesn’t include imagery, however the content is well worth the clickthrough.

Fontfeed

Some beautiful specimens and funny typographic observations

In the same vein as Typophile, Fontfeed gathers and distributes typographic news with gratuitous abandon. Far be it from me to complain though. I love them for it!

The Daily Dropcap

One beautiful, handcrafted letter per work day. Heaven.

Strictly speaking, this is more lettering than typography. Jessica Hische creates beautiful, ornate letter forms and hands them out with all the affection of a mother buffalo nursing her calf back to health after an attack from a pride of lions and a crocodile.

For the Love of Type

Gorgeous specimens of typography and lettering

Presumably the journalings of a professional letterpress printer / typographer / designer, FtLoT delivers some really beeeyoodiful real-world examples of typography, lettering and letterpress printing.

Friends of Type

typographic and lettering studies with real panache

An excellent source of typographic and letter form affection, in the shape of type and lettering studies. For those times when you don’t want to be just friends with type *wink nudge*.

I Love Typography

Me too, my friends. Me too.

Similar to Typophile and Fontfeed, I Love Typography is an aggregation of typographic news and beauty. Sprinkled among the many typeface release reports, there are also type-rich videos, studies or street finds.

Hoefler & Frere-Jones

The industry demigods share their typographic wisdom

Writings, proclamations and witticisms  from the eponymous New York typography studio, this feed supplies me with a veritable slew of beautiful typeface specimens.

A Blog About Typography, Letterpress & Printing History

Letterpress and old-fashioned type make me quiver...

I am In Love with vintage typography – letterpress, woodcut letter forms, black-and-white film titles, et cetera ad infinitum, – so a blog that is overflowing with imagery of both the printing tools, as well as the type specimens they produce makes me giddy.

1. We would pass through the small town of Braidwood, NSW.
2. There would be copious amounts of drinking and revelry.
3. Hangovers were likely to follow.

While I knew that #2 and #3 would leave me with very little time – or coordination – with which to create content for my weekly blog post, I was determined to make the most of #1.

Braidwood, NSW, is a small town approximately 85 kilometres from Canberra; its park and bakery have featured in every New South Wales coastal excursion in which I have participated. The town has a quaint, almost American-Western film ambiance lent to it by its various hand-painted store signs, dual-storey porches, wide roads and colonial colour palette.

Lettering like this is evident in most small towns around Australia (and arguably around the world), a style which of late is making a resurgence in modern typography and graphic design. Below are a few that particularly caught my eye.

Two fine examples of old-fashioned hand lettering

The leftmost sign shows an awesome crossbar on the upper E and F, though the weight contrast on the A combined with the low crossbar make it appear out of place.

On the right a calligraphic brush face is contrasted with a confident woodtype face. The subtle hints of serifs caught my eye, but the tail on the R strikes me as unusual and maybe even lovely – I am as yet undecided.

Slab serifs on the "National Theatre"

In stark contrast to the 1920′s wood-type (I think) style of lettering employed by the Braidwood Deli, the other side of the road sports another beautiful typographic exploit. Herb Lubalin’s slab serif “ITC Lubalin Demi” is given an authoritative, wide measure and offset with an interesting middle-dot. I’ve recently fallen in love with slab serif typefaces, so this could not go unmentioned.

** Sidenote: How “national” could this theatre actually be? Has it seen any performances that weren’t cooked up in the Braidwood backstreets?

As I mentioned, these styles are becoming more prevalent outside of the small towns in which they are most common – or maybe it’s just that I’m noticing it more. Whatever the reason, I fully support its resurgence – as far as I’m concerned, there can never be too many well-executed references to the forefathers of type.

But as the turn of the decade approaches I’ve begun to think about resolutions – I will study harder, I will visit the gym more frequently, I will eat healthier, I will spend less on alcohol, I will listen to new bands, I will party more often, et cetera – and all this thinking makes me realise how silly it is to wait until the new year to make the changes. After all, what is the new year but an arbitrary point in our orbit around the sun? So I’m taking this opportunity to enact one of those resolutions – albeit that for all the time I’m saving, I may as well have waited – and committing to a blogging regime for my website, redesign or no. My posts will primarily focus around graphic design and visual communication, and will occur approximately once a week – sometimes more, sometimes (though hopefully rarely) less.

I think I’m setting a fairly ambitious objective, and it may be that the lack of an enthralled readership dooms it to failure, but what is life if not the pursuit of unachievable goals? As a famous dandy once said -

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

So this little website of mine may not have a large following – in fact, to paraphrase Larry Sanders and David Duchovny it has more of a ‘cult following’, or almost no following at all. But those of you who at least try to keep up to date with my updates would have noticed that my collection of musings has been completely absent over the past few weeks. This is partly due to technical difficulties with my hosting provider, partly due to impatience with said provider’s technical difficulties, and partly due to laziness on my part in fixing said technical difficulties. However there is no more need to despair over when you will be able to get your next fix of Juan-branded insanity. I have reinstated my blog and am ready to begin posting things once more.

Another thing that may have piqued the interests of my more observant readers, viewers and fans is the apparent lack of a site design. This is a side-effect of the aforementioned technical difficulties but more importantly, serves as a precursor to the long-overdue redesign of JuanOjeda.com. Over the next few weeks I’ll be hitting the drawing boards, arming myself with new colours, updated grid-layouts, fresh and fragrant fonts, and all other weaponry inherent to the great battles of web-design. It won’t be pretty behind the scenes, but it sure as heck will be when it’s done… I’ll be working hard to make sure that the design is so fresh and longlasting that Wrigley’s will be knocking down my door for the recipe.

Finally, a lot has happened in the many weeks that span between updates, and it is my duty to share these events with you. Although it is far too early in the morning for my mind to transform these elusive thoughts into lucid posts, rest assured that I will be working hard to keep you in the loop – the Juan loop.

Sgt. Juan,

Over & Out.