Behold, vegan four-berry (dare I say, JAMpersand?) pi:

This would probably be the right opportunity to reveal the ampersand cookie cutter I made recently:

The cookie cutter is only one of several Very Exciting Things I’ve been making in the Lemelson shop lately for my project; others include pillows, windchimes, a lamp, a sponge, & so forth, all in the form of the ampersand.  More photos to trickle out soon as I finish things up!

I wanted it to be celebratory, and representative and unique to this year’s graduating class.  I hand wrote as many Division III titles as I could collect in the background.  The guy jumping is a first-year friend of mine, Devon, who’s a ridiculous tricker/acrobat.  All of the text is hand lettered – a lot of work, but  I’m so happy with how it came out!

Also recently I designed a t-shirt for Admissions, that they’re going to send to accepted students.  I’m really psyched about how the 2010 roots turned out.

I seem to be slowly rebranding Hampshire with my personal hand lettering style… I think I’m also going to submit a signer sweatshirt design in this style as well.  With these projects and several others I’ve done recently, I’ve become far more confident in hand lettering, and doing things by hand in general.  My process for these was to do a few quick pencil sketches of the design, then do a layout on the computer for more precise placement of text, do refined drawings of the design, then scan them back into the computer, clean up the drawings, and composite everything together.  I like this FAR better than designing 100% on the computer, as I used to! (Even though it’s more work…)

Speaking of doing things by hand, I’ve got some very exciting projects in the works for the rest of my Division III, and I’m going to be spending a lot of time in Lemelson, plasma cutting, blacksmithing, and welding…

A wedding present for my friend Paul who recently got married:

I made a jar for Carla, the DART (Design, Art, Technology) Program coordinator at Hampshire, as a thank you for being awesome.  I then got obsessed with putting letters on glass things and made similar christmas gifts for my family.

For my dad, a mug:

For my mom, candle holders of her favorite places:

For my brother, a change jar to encourage him to save up for music equipment:

For my mod, a mug with our… theme: “vegan cupcake-baking anarchist circus freaks make better lovers.”

For my friend Enrique/Brian’s birthday, I painted a little canvas with the logo I designed for his organization, the Toolbox for Education & Social Action:

(and in the background, a dinosaur cake I helped make).

I have some terribly exciting new ampersand-related projects coming up in the spring for my Division III project… more updates on that soon!

Professional fonts can cost hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands.  That may sound like a lot for just a font, but high end magazines, newspapers, and graphic design firms can afford it.  Designing a font is quite a fine art and science, and fonts take months, sometimes years to design; typographers should be compensated for their work.  Did you know it’s possible to make a living designing fonts?  I know a recent Hampshire alum who does just that – what a cool job!

However, we students, amateurs, and hobbyists can’t afford such things, so what do we do if we feel dubious about where our fonts are coming from?

You’ll notice on sites like Dafont (my favorite free font database), many fonts say “free for personal use.”  This generally means any non-commercial project, but the lines are fuzzy.  It’s worth mentioning that some “free” fonts are likely ripoffs, since the software is more accessible these days and it’s easy to change a few strokes on a font and then call it your own.  It is unlikely font foundries are going to hunt you down if you pirate or ripoff their fonts – unless you are a large corporation like NBC, or your project is seen in a wider public sphere.  Font lawsuits have happened a number of times, and the font foundries always win.

Recently I have come across more and more public domain and open source fonts, which is where things get exciting.  One particular group that appears to be at the forefront of this is the League of Movable Type.  An excerpt from their manifesto:

This revolution is not a movement against type foundries and type designers; it’s quite the opposite. The kind of revolution we want is a change in the way people think about doing business. We want type foundries and typographers to start thinking, “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with giving things away sometimes.”  It’s not always about the money, sometimes it’s also about making a contribution to the society, in this case, the design community. Giving one typeface away for free will most likely only boost sales, and it’s a good deed. We want more people to look at it like that: like they have a responsibility to do something good for their peers. We’re not asking type designers and type foundries to sacrifice profit, we’re asking them to contribute to a greater cause, to create a community where we not only have a high design standard for print and web alike, but also a community where we’re able to share our creations, knowledge, and expertise with our peers and the world.

There are many collections now, thanks to Smashing Magazine and others, of high quality professional fonts that have been released under a Creative Commons or some other kind of open source license.  You can even search on Dafont for just fonts that are public domain.  HOWEVER, even these seemingly well-intentioned open source folks are HOTLY DEBATED! in the typography world.

Now that there are so many fonts available (of all license varieties), maybe the real question should be, Do we need more fonts? – This final linked article is very geeky (and of course the conclusion is that we DO need more fonts), but a worthwhile read, I promise! An excerpt:

The most common question I get about being a type designer is this: “Aren’t there enough typefaces already?” The best response I have ever heard to this question is, “You know, I heard the same thing about people!” It is quite funny but probably comes across a bit rude, especially to people you have just met. For a long time, the best response I could come up with was a more diplomatic, although less articulate, “Oh, well you know, ha ha.” And then I would try to change the subject. “Aren’t there enough typefaces already?” isn’t a bad question though. There are a lot of typefaces. Even to a type designer, it can seem like everything has already been done…

Which are your favorites?

One morning at the beach, having already explored the tidal pools, waded in the waves, and eaten a burrito picnic, I decided I should make sandcastles.  Then a flash of inspiration struck – no, WAIT, I should make AMPERSANDcastles!  This greatly amuses me.  Sand is a very exciting medium, I must make a point to experiment with it more often.

How lucky I am, to have so many ampersands in my life!

This was my breakfast today (courtesy of Tara):

And for dinner James made pizzas with the toppings shaped in ampersands. And there were ampersand cupcakes and cookies.

And this was dessert (courtesy of Victoria and Lydia):

If only I had made another ampersandwich today, I would have had a full day’s worth of ampersand meals – WHOA.

My life is so awesome and amazing and exhilarating and I love everything, especially my friends, and my family, and my Division III.

• When do fonts matter?
• Does it matter if the cafe sign down the street is in Papyrus?
• Does it matter if the Gaza protest poster or the abortion clinic handout are in Comic Sans?
• Who decides what is good design?
• What is good design?
• What is bad design?
• How is it possible to make a living designing for nonprofits and social causes?
• How have fonts been utilized in political and social movement throughout history?
• What is the price of free fonts?

• RSS feeds are a welcome tool to help navigate the proliferation of awesome things to read on the internet, but at what cost to the integral blog design? Are there any feed readers that preserve the integrity of a site’s design?
• Ralph Hexter’s State of the College presentation reminds me of IKEA, with it’s blue/yellow/white color scheme and use of Futura Bold – how would it have come across differently in Times New Roman? Or Helvetica? Or Curlz MT?
• Throughout human history, opinions have never been so easy to project as they are now, but how many people are really acting on them? Is commentary enough? How many people are really listening?
• Is graphic design art? Where is the line between graphic design and art? Who decides?
• How to teach to design to people who only have 5 fonts and Microsoft Word?
• How can I figure out what emotional and psychological effects posters have on people?
• Why is it important that things are well designed?

• When does an amateur become an expert? Where is the line drawn?
• What are the key tenets in the education of a graphic designer?
• When does a message become propaganda?
• When does increased awareness instigate behavioral change?
• What do I want people to think/react to when they see my designs?
• What does it mean for grassroots organizations now that being socially conscious is “hip”?
• What makes a font sustainable (historically, across mediums, across contexts, etc)?
• What is the emotional and psychological difference between UPPERCASE and lowercase letters?
• What would the world look like if all the big brands and corporations had to throw together their advertising last minute in Microsoft Word and all the graphic designers worked for small businesses and local nonprofits?
• What does it mean to be a designer in a community of non-designers?
• What is the role of a graphic designer in political and social movements?
• What is the process of turning citizens into designers?
• What does seeing fine print at the bottom of a poster do to your perception of it? (Adds legitimacy?)
• What is it with nonprofits and condensed gothic all-caps sans serifs lately? Seriously.

These are some of the questions I’m exploring. There are many more questions brewing. Do you have any answers for me? Or just more questions?

(As usual, you can click on the thumbnails to view the images larger.)

Peanut butter, jelly, coconut, M&Ms.

Inspired by this.

**UPDATE JULY 2010: Posters of ALPHABIKE are now for sale on Etsy!**

It started with these two books I found called Graphic Design: the New Basics, a guide to design principles illustrated primarily with student work, and Teaching Graphic Design, a collection of syllabi from undergraduate and graduate design courses all over the country.

I noticed a project being done in a lot of intro to typography classes was creating an alphabet out of random objects, ranging from banana peels, to army men, shoes, food, bodies, some physical, some photographic.  I thought, well, what do I love as much as I love typography and photography?  BIKES!  Hence the birth of the ALPHABIKE.

I spent a couple days taking photos of bikes (and am now intimately familiar with most every bike on Hampshire’s campus).  G, R, K, and F were the most difficult to find.  I had to think a lot about distinguishing letters from shapes, what the essential lines of each letter are, and many of the photos are all about perspective.

People have already been asking me about getting a poster of it, so I think I’m going to sell prints as a fundraiser for my circus troupe’s bicycle tour next summer.  So let me know if you are interested, and I’ll have them available some time in the next few weeks!