Anyway, enough of my excuses. Though I won’t be posting here daily, I will try my very best to post something each week.

I want to tell you about Jelly. Yes, I love it, but not as much as I love workatjelly.com. It’s a truly inspired idea, that I’m hoping to take up on in the New Year.

What is Jelly?

The founders regularly open up their apartment and invite people to come and work with them–it’s as simple as that. A great way to meet new people, to be inspired, or to simply hang out with like-minded people.

Jelly started in NYC in February of 2006 when roommates Amit and Luke realized that they loved working from home, but they missed the creative brainstorming, sharing, and camaraderie of a traditional office. (Office politics, not so much.)

Why not start your own! You can read more about the whole thing over at workatjelly.com. There’s also a great write-up on Jelly over at Wired, Freelancers Forgo Office Space for Casual Coworking. If you do make a Jelly, be sure to tell me about it.

This Smashing Magazine Post is definitely one to Bookmark.

At the time of its publication, many Graphic Designers and commentators were quite scathing in their attacks. The Design writer and critic Steven Heller was one of those critics, confidently predicting–In his 1993 Cult of the Ugly–that Emigre would be nothing more than a “blip in the continuum.” Emigre continued to be published for another 12 years.

I had pretty much forgotten about it until today. My regular Café is owned by a local Graphic Designer, and its bookshelves are full-to-bursting with Design Books and Magazines, spanning a couple of decades at least. I sat back in my chair and was jabbed in the ribs by an oversized magazine–it was none other than Emigre; and what a pleasant surprise it was. It was an Issue from 1989–hard to believe, almost 20 years old!

Anyway, it didn’t feel in the least bit dated, and was still a great source of inspiration–some great typography and layout.

Interestingly, Emigre.com has plans to put republish all the magazine content on-line–once they’ve sold the remaining back issues.

The focus of Emigre is on the unique perspective of contemporary poets, writers, journalists, graphic designers, photographers, architects, and artists who live or have lived outside their native countries. Their influence on culture is diverse and significant: they import it and export it; they offer new interpretations, comparisons, ideas, and a certain universal wisdom acquired through juggling conflicting values and lifestyles.
–from the first issue of Emigre, 1984.

Emigre was Directed by Rudy VanderLans with many of the typefaces designed by his typographer-wife, Zuzana Licko.

In 2004 Steven Heller interviewed VanderLans for AIGA. It provides some nice insights into the character of the man. In response to Heller’s question,

“Do you in anyway feel that the blogs are making Emigre obsolete?”,

VanderLans says,

“I think blogs are making a lot of design magazines obsolete. And everything must come to an end, I guess.”

–less than a year before Emigre ceased publication in 2005. I’m not suggesting that Design blogs were responsible for Emigre’s demise, but it has become increasingly difficult to publish (for print) magazines that do not run with the mainstream. Emigre’s greatest strength was also its greatest weakness: it was never intended for “mass consumption”; VandeLans was not in the least interested in appealing to the widest possible audience. These days, blogs are in a stronger position (owing to reach and nominal cost of “publication”), to publish non-mainstream content; there appears to be no place left for like-spirited for-print magazines.

Though I eagerly anticipate reading back issues of Emigre on-line, something–often times a great deal–is lost in the translation from print to Web; for example, the old format magazine was huge, and just seemed perfect for the content; much of that and more cannot be replicated on my 1024*768 monitor.

The two page-spreads above use one of my favourite Emigre Foundry fonts, Template Gothic, designed by Barry Deck, and which Eye Magazine founder Rick Poynor called the typeface of the 90s.

In another interview with HOW Design:

HOW: I recall reading that your first issue had no typesetting budget, so the text was basically typewriter type resized on a photocopier. How, initially, did you afford to publish Emigre? What production tricks did you have up your sleeve for keeping the publication’s costs manageable in the earlier years?

VanderLans: We paid for it simply by emptying our bank accounts. The few ads we sold barely covered the cost of sending out the promo kits to get advertisers. The first issues were published before the Macintosh was out, so typesetting was done as you describe it, and I spent a lot of time at the local Xerox copy place either enlarging or reducing typewriter copy. For Emigre #3, in order to save money, Zuzana and I rolled up our sleeves and saddle-stitched 3,000 copies by hand. For issue #4, I did all the prepress work myself; shooting halftones on a stat camera, stripping, burning offset plates, etc. We have also relied heavily, and still do, on the kindness and goodness of the many people who have contributed their time and talents to Emigre for no or little pay. It was never easy or glamorous. It was a lot of really hard work, and it was worth it.

A brilliant insight into Emigre’s early days, and the dedication behind a Magazine that ran for two decades.

I plan to introduce some of the Fonts from the Emigre Foundry through the I Love Typography blog, so keep your RSS Readers ready and your eyes peeled.

Does anyone out there remember Emigre Magazine? Something tells me that Marc Rapp will remember.

I will contact the present copyright holders and inquire about reproducing more of the content in a regular Emigre feature. Are there other titles you reminisce about; now defunct journals or magazines, that you remember fondly or otherwise from the distant past?

So off I rushed and bought myself ilovetypography.com. I’ve been working on a WordPress theme for some time. I’ve always like the Grid Focus theme which I’ve modified for this very blog, and I had started developing my own to replace it. However, I decided to use my new theme for my new typography blog. It’s unimaginatively called RedsilWP (suggestions for a more inspiring, go get ‘em name on a postcard, please).

Actually the new blog is only 95% complete, but I wanted to “get it out there” to elicit your comments, criticisms and suggestions.

I’ll still be posting here on the subject of typography, but the more in-depth and/or more obscure pieces, and my own photos of type in everyday use will be posted on ilovetypography.com.

Would love to hear your suggestions on the design and content. And, if you have an image of “type you like” (I like the sound of that, so I’ll use it as a section within the new blog), then be sure to submit it!

Anyway, my Google Notes is full of inspiration. Here is just a taste of things that caught my eye/inspired me in July:

Typography:

Type the Sky by Lisa Rienermann is a composite of photographs whereby the silhouette of buildings leaves the shapes of letters on the sky. I love this idea, and it’s inspired me to think of other Photo-Type projects. Do you know of any similar projects?

This next piece is fascinating, particularly for those of you who use Adobe InDesign. Benedikt Groß and Julia Laub have been experimenting with generative typography and layout–that is using scripts to automate type and grid design. Some of the results are great. The InDesign scripts that can be downloaded from Benedikt’s site. If you use these scripts to generate your own designs, please let me know, and I’ll showcase them. I’ll post some of mine at a later date.

You can learn more about scripting in InDesign over at the Adobe web site.

I recently discovered the wonderful Ace Jet 170 blog. The idea behind the blog is simple: the author, something of a typoholic, posts examples of type he finds just about anywhere.

Now, if you do a lot of signage stuff perhaps this is run-of-the-mill but, quite frankly, the sight of 1000pt 3D Clarendon is more than enough to get my heart pumping.

A man after my own heart. Head on over to Ace Jet 170 for more typographic inspiration. I’m always taking photos of type, and Ace Jet 170 has inspired me to start my own blog along the same lines. It will be at www.ilovetypography.com, and I’ll just be posting photos of type that I take–from magazines, street signs, labels, to, well, just about any example of type that catches my eye. When I launch, I’ll let you know.

Video:

A “real” desktop:

Architecture:

Would you like Spinach with your house? The winning entry for the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Home competition is from Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum.

Not only does the building run a photosynthetic and phototropic skin made with spinach protein, but it also produces more energy than a single family’s needs, allowing the excess to be distributed to neighbors.

The aim of C2C is to actually build competition entries, and inspire more architects and designers to design and build with sustainability uppermost in their minds.

Web:

Lauren Marie (cue trumpet blasts, angels singing, etc) has finally started a blog. Creative Curio already has a great post entitled Get in Line, Now!, a piece in praise of the humble line. Be sure to subscribe to Creative Curio, or you might miss out!

Photography:

Here are a few of my favourite photos for July:

Art (well, almost):

I haven’t sketched for a while, but did this while “working” in my favourite cafe:

And to my embarrassment, the Cafe Manager took a photo of me mid-sketch. They even blogged about it (Japanese only).

Well, I aim to post weekly from now on, so be sure to come back. To ensure you don’t miss the next post, why not subscribe now!

We’ve reinvented Proxy magazine to create the all-new Adobe Magazine for Creative Professionals. Subscribe to this free, online quarterly, and discover fresh insight and tutorials from the wide world of visual communications. You’ll see work that’s breaking new ground, get an insider’s perspective on how it was created, and find new ideas and tools to enhance your own projects.

Being from Adobe they sometimes tie-in articles with Adobe products, but always in a way that’s useful. I use numerous Adobe products, so I’m happy to learn new ways of using them more effectively.

Not that the magazine is all about Adobe; there are well-written and informative articles, complimented by some good design and imagery. Oh, and this pdf magazine is free, and you can download the whole archive. Happy reading, and let me know your thoughts. Are there any online magazines that you read regularly?

Plantagenet Novus is a completely revised OpenType edition of Ross Mills’ 1996 Plantagenet typeface. The original face is being redesigned and expanded with an extensive typographic repertoire and multilingual character sets to enable the refined setting of scholarly materials in a wide range of languages.

If you’d like a sneak preview of what’s new, then download the Plantagenet Novus specimen pdf over at Adobe. This one’s on my shopping list.

Image © Copyright Tiro Typeworks & Ross Mills

Website that caught my eye:

This is a beautifully designed Flash web site; this kind of thing has been done a lot before, but this one is particularly worthy of mention:

Architecture:

LandMark Houses, an Architectural Housing Project set in the Cotswolds (UK).

A complete showpiece village of landmark new homes by some of the best architects in Britain, and the world, is about to be built in the Cotswolds.–The Sunday Times

Typography:

15 Years of Type for Independent Minds Travelling Exhibition. There are no Exhibitions on right now, but you can follow the Place-name links at the bottom of the page for some typographic inspiration. Next venue is Stockholm in the autumn, and then Belfast in the new year.

Typography and Web Advertising, a great post on Digital Web Magazine.

So why is so much advertising, including web advertising, so skippable? Partly, I think, because advertisers make the mistake of thinking of the audience as viewers rather than targets.

On a similar theme, see Marc Rapp’s piece on Banner Ad’s.

Illustration:

Some wonderful Drawings, Illustrations and Collages from Raquel Aparicio:

.

Web Development:

jQuery used to be a little thin on documentation. They’re making up for it, and have some great examples of jQuery in action. jQuery is now my favourite JavaScript Library. There are some great tutorials demonstrating just how easy jQuery is to implement.

Other:

Photoshop Tutorial. Step by step instructions on how to easily improve any photo (adjusting the white and black points and more); you’ll be surprised at how this will improve the colour and clarity of your photos.

What have I been doing?

Most of my time right now is devoted to building a Czech-language web site, working on a poster and catalogue layout for a Clothing Company; building a web site and blog for a Japanese Design Agency; working on a proposal for an Intranet CMS; and, in between times (for fun(?)), writing some JavaScript to enable users to select their own font family on the fly and have it persist with Cookies…is that really fun? And, when I have time, I’d like to do a kind of Google Notes Mashup whereby my Google notes are displayed on a page within the blog (a Google Notes Feed, if you like). However, that will have to wait; lots of work to finish first. I’ve recently joined FaceBook, so be sure to add me. You can import your blog feeds into FaceBook Notes–another way to promote your content, and ensure that no-one misses out.

Let me know what you think. Feel free to comment on your own June favourites too. Oh–I almost forgot to mention–thanks to Vivien at InspirationBit for the Creative Fix nomenclature.

Maybe there is a way we could all start a shared design elements gallery on Flickr or similar image gallery (cool headings, navigation, folios etc) ?…or do you prefer to have your own personal resource? What do you think?

And, as Randa Clay is not one to hang about, she kindly set-up the Flick Inspir Group, a place to share your own Graphic Design, and a forum for discussion.

I’m also considering taking-up on Tara’s suggestion, and creating a web site devoted to this; not to replace the Inspir Group, but as a compliment to it. If there’s enough interest, then I’ll create a site wherein users can upload work, comment, discuss, tag, etc. What do you think?

To join the Flickr Inspir Group visit the link, make a request to join, and Randa will confirm. This could really be a great Inspiration resource.

Images © copyright Chris Appelhans.

Prints of some of his work can be purchased from Gallery Nucleus.

Thanks to Lauren for the nomenclature, “I on Art”. This will be a regular feature: highlighting artists, illustrators and photographers that catch my eye.