Friday’s Typographic Treats (025)
* Click on each image to be taken to the original source (or as close as I could get to the original).
GIRLS – The Logo
This past weekend I got a chance to catch up on the second season of HBO’s Girls. As I finished watching the latest episode, I remembered that a few months back I read a really interesting article on imprint about the creation of the custom typeface for the GIRLS logo, and wanted to share!
The custom typeface for GIRLS is the work of the Los Angeles based production company Grand Jeté. Lena Dunham, the writer, director, and star of the series wanted the GIRLS logo to strike a balance between something bold and something beautiful. She especially expressed her love for art deco typography, and the deco inspired letterforms that form the final title proved to be the perfect fit for the series. If you’ve seen the show, you will notice that each episode opens with a static shot of the show’s title filling the screen. No animation, no video—just text on a solid background. However, the colors change from week to week, creating a palette that builds in sophistication with the series.
This animation shows some of the treatments that were experimented with along the way, before the final logo was selected. Hard to believe how many there were!
Love Letters By Mama’s Sauce
As many of you may know, the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, has been forced to relocate, and needs help raising $250,000 to get 30,000 sq. feet of printing history packed up and ready for a new home. The Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum is the only museum dedicated to the preservation, study, production and printing of wood type. With 1.5 million pieces of wood type and more than 1,000 styles and sizes of patterns, Hamilton’s collection is one of the premier wood type collections in the world.
To help raise money and awareness for the museum, Mama’s Sauce (The Gourmet Print & Design Shop) is releasing a set of 7 letterpress printed alphabet coasters inspired by the legacy and craft of Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum. Love Letters includes the letters A, E, I, O, U, Y, and &, designed by a star-studded cast, which includes: Fuzzco (A), Justin Mezzell (E), Aaron Draplin (I), Dana Tanamachi (O), Jon Contino (U), Ross Moody (Y) and Jessica Hische (&).
As I started typing this blog post, the limited quantity of 200 coaster sets was still available for purchase; however, as I now click on the link for Mama’s Sauce Shop, they are all sold out. Hopefully, if the demand is there they might print more, so check out the shop page for any updates! Nonetheless, you can still contribute to Hamilton Wood Type by clicking here and donating anything that you can.
Check out the video below, chronicling the making of this wonderful project!
Week #52
Maybe Some Women Aren’t Meant To Be Tamed. Maybe They Just Need To Run Free Until They Find Someone Just As Wild To Run With Them.
Jessica Hische Lettering Rendered In Cut Paper
I am a HUGE fan of Jessica Hische and her fabulous hand-lettering work. Recently, Hishe designed the packaging for Beck’s “Song Reader”. A few weeks ago, my boss sent me a link to a YouTube video, where Hische’s cover design was transformed into a breathtakingly fantastic tactile artefact by Ham, who runs the Japanese Beck fan site Hambeck. Check out the video below, and read more about the inspiration behind the piece here!
Week #51
When I Hear Someone Sigh “Life Is Hard”, I Am Always Tempted To Ask “Compared To What?”
Week #50
A Kiss Is A Lovely Trick Designed By Nature To Stop Speech When Words Become Superfluous.
