Berlin Wall

Font: Blocks

Category: Local Flavor

Justification: This three-dimensional typography work has a playful, bright, and literal interpretation of the Berlin Wall. The artist Jarrik Muller designed the project for the inspired publication Neue, which brings together typography and a selected city for each issue. According to Jarrik, the taller blocks represent the former West Germany, with its taller buildings, and the lower-level represents East Germany. The color palette is red, yellow, and black - the colors of the German flag. I thought this was timely, as Germany just celebrated "Tag der Deutschen Einheit" this past week (Day of German Unity).

For more about this artist, go to his Web site!
Supercool treat - How the Blocks font is constructed.

Or learn more about Neue.

Just don't label me.

Font: Typo-Negative

Category: Distressed, grungy, textured

Justification: It's great how something that makes me think of how my dad once labeled nearly everything in the house is now cutting-edge typography. The text "black on black" on this Rimmel ad was identified in MyFonts font-finder as Typo-Negative. It has a vampy, campy, cool effect that jumps off the page. It's immediately recognizable as a retro font, but the grungy imperfections make it look sophisticated and just right for a fashion ad. It's only available in uppercase, which is how it looks best. Justifiably funky.

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/t26/typo/negative/

Get Distressed

A meditative tutorial on distressed fonts. Would speed metal have been a better choice than classical? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK1xujlx_No

SOTP the madness!

Font: Unknown

(Pavement Marking)

Category: Typo

Justification: Well, it's just plain wrong... and plain funny. I can just imagine this guy going about his daily work, with four large letters under his arm, ready to spray-paint away. He seems happily oblivious at this point that he's misspelled a relatively short word. Typos in general are funny, but slightly more poignant when painted in large scale, meant for many eyes.

A New Type of Face

Font: Klavika

Category: Logo

Justification: Face it, you probably see this font every day. But do you actually know much about it? Facebook is in the news a lot lately with a new "facebook" movie coming out and magazine articles titled "Facebook is Not Your Friend." Although interesting, we're just gonna look at the font for today. After a bit of searching, I found that the facebook logo font is a version the font Klavika. While it looks like a pretty straightforward san serif, there's a bit more going on here. The counters are narrow and elongated, the x-heights are pretty high relative to the ascenders. In the italic version and the logo above there is a slight diagonal at the ends of several letterforms. (Take a look at the top of the b and k). Also there is no tail on the b like you might see in a classic font like futura. (See the image at right.) It's a logo we might take for granted but it's highly recognizable -- even at a small size.

You can see the typeface here: http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/processtype/klavika/