All About Fonts‽ Simon Garfield's Just My Type

 

Book trailer for Simon Garfield's "Just My Type: A Book About Fonts," designed and directed by Naresh Ramchandani and Michael Bierut at Pentagram.

The Leonard Lopate Show at wnyc.org

Simon Garfield talks about the history of fonts, from font "pirating" dating back nearly as far as Gutenberg to the creation of Comic Sans and Ikea's font-change controversy. Just My Type: A Book About Fonts shows how something as simple as font choice can speak volumes about our cultural climate and personal tastes.

Garfield will be speaking at the Type Directors Club on September 20, 2011.

The following trailer for the book, featuring 999 fonts in 60 seconds, was designed and directed by Naresh Ramchandani and Michael Bierut at Pentagram.

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

First Lady Michelle Obama honors National Design Awards Winners

via whitehouse.gov

First Lady Michelle Obama honors the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards Winners and speaks to young adults about opportunities in design.

The 2011 National Design Awards recipients are:

Lifetime Achievement: Matthew Carter
Design Mind: Steven Heller
Corporate and Institutional Achievement: Knoll
Architecture Design: Architecture Research Office
Communication Design: Rick Valicenti
Fashion Design: J. Mendel
Interaction Design: Ben Fry
Interior Design: Shelton, Mindel & Associates
Landscape Architecture: Gustafson Guthrie Nichol
Product Design: Continuum

 

 

 

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

PBS Arts: Off Book - Episode 4: Steampunk

Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook Steampunk art evokes an alternate reality where steam is the primary source of power. Technology, though highly advanced, has taken on a very different look and feel, and fashion is heavily influenced by Victorian styles. In this episode, we explore the Steampunk aesthetic and art movement.

PBS Arts: Off Book is a web-based series that explores cutting edge art and the people that make it. The 13 episode series focuses on the process, motivation and meaning of a new generation of artists.

Episode 4: Steampunk
Steampunk art evokes an alternate reality where steam is the primary source of power. Technology, though highly advanced, has taken on a very different look and feel, and fashion is heavily influenced by Victorian styles. In this episode, we explore the Steampunk aesthetic and art movement. We speak with a Steampunk artist, a composer who created an entire piece of music inspired by Steampunk, and a performing arts collective whose work falls naturally into this intriguing world.

Featuring:

Joey Marsocci aka Dr Grymm
Third Rail Projects
David Bruce, Composer
Ensemble ACJW

Previous installments: 
Episode 1: Light Painting
Episode 2: Typography
Episode 3: Visual Culture Online 

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Paola Antonelli on Design as the Interface Between Progress and Humanity

Paola Antonelli — Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the MoMA, longtime proponent of humanized technology, self-described “curious octopus” — has arguably done more for the mainstream infiltration of design literacy than any other individual in contemporary culture. In her recent opening keynote at the unequivocally titled media and ideas conference The Conference in Malmö, Sweden, Antonelli pulls the curtain on her curatorial process and, with her signature on-stage charisma, takes a revealing look at how her shows go about the incredible balancing act of being both beacons of the bleeding edge of design and an approachable education platform for instilling in the general public a basic understanding of the fundamental importance of design — something she describes as “push[ing] design down from the realm of art and up from the realm of decoration and prettification into real life.”

 

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Stanford D. School - An Introduction

Design is all the rage in the startup world.  No longer just the purview of the UI and marketing teams, now companies are taking a design-based approach to just about everything.  Apps and codebases can be designed, but so can human resource departments and quality assurance procedures.  It’s a powerful philosophy, and now the smartypants factory known as Stanford University has a whole program dedicated to training the next generation of innovators.

Where was this stuff when I was in college?  Recent classes include “Improv and Design,” “Storytelling and Visual Comms” and “Creative Gym: A Design Thinking Skills Studio.”  D.School’s philosophy is to bring together people from different disciplines and collaborate on problem solving using human values as a centerpiece.  Their website’s predictably well designed, and best of all, you don’t need to be a grad student to learn some of the basic methodology they use. 

 

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.