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Hello Type Friends,
Usually, I try to curate the month's musings with a theme or loose thread. I have cast the net a bit wider this month, as I wanted to start 2018 by focusing on people who inspire me, opportunities to expand our collective knowledge, books (& print) that brought a smile to my face or filled my heart. I hope you enjoy the links and resources as much as I did when discovering them!

Wishing you all the best for a creative February and I will be in touch with more delights from the world of type soon!
Marking a century of a remarkable life

Gudrun Zapf von Hesse, bookbinder, and lettering artist, released her first typeface this month coinciding with her 100th birthday. Ferdinand Ulrich tells the story of the faces origin and the 70 year transformation of Hesse Antiqua from a lettering alphabet into a typeface. This article makes my heart sing!

Birmingham-based shorts-wearing type-loving graphic designer at large, currently found art-directing The Recorder for Monotype, lecturing at BCU & helping organise the 2018 Birmingham Design Festival (amongst other things)...  My talented friend Luke Tonge is celebrating his new freelance focus with a glorious new site
Astrid Stavro

Born in Italy, raised in Spain and working worldwide through Atlas (the studio she co-founded with Pablo Martín) Astrid Stavro is one of today's graphic design power women — a position she generously uses to raise awareness about ethics and other important issues in design.
Laura Meseguer, fearless and fabulous new website.

Features a new logo (& monogram) showcasing Laura's beautiful lettering, updated (excellent) exemplar work, "improved responsive design, more colour, more visual, more lively!" Check it out here.
Sibylle Hagmann explored her passion for type design and typography while completing her MFA at CalArts. After releasing her popular Cholla typeface suite through legendary digital foundry Emigre, the awarded type designer and teacher set up her own foundry Kontour.
It’s a book that started with personal curiosity

Butts, bums and booty: Melani de Luca's new book explores the omnipresence of bums in the media - I love that the spine and design treatment cleverly echo the anatomy!
Character Traits

Russel Maret has begun work on a new book 'character traits' which explores digitally native letterforms free from the limitations of typographic technology using analogue print methods.  (A topic close to my heart I am really excited to watch it develop!)
Carried Forward - a little collection of quotes from Beatrice Warde.

Counter Press have kicked off the new year by making an astoundingly beautiful little book to mark their Beatrice Warde memorial lecture.

Form + Substance

Huw Morgan of Graphic Thought Facility shares the story behind the design of Creating with Shapes.
Mind-bending artist books

Letterform Archive profiles Redfoxpress, founded in Luxembourg in 2000, now located in Ireland and co-run Francis Van Maele and Antic-Ham since 2005. RedfoxPress produce screen prints, zines,  artist books and lots more visual treasure. "The materials used to create the book and how the reader interacts with it are equally as important as the images or text the reader sees."

50 years, of valuable editorial commentary marked by 50 artists.

New York magazine is 50 this year, and to celebrate, the publication has announced the release of a series of 50 covers commissioned by 50 artists for a year-long art exhibition.
Eye before you Buy Eye95

Since its inception, Eye magazine has called itself ‘the international review of graphic design’. After two issues that have focused on illustration and typography – the latest edition reaffirms the magazine’s commitment to design and designers.
Oakland poster artist Jason Munn recently donated over 50 of his prints to Letterform Archive.
His use of text as image firmly establishes his work as an important chapter in the story of Bay Area poster design. Kate Goad sat down with him to get his take on music, design, and the in-between.
Letterpress Forum

Coen Fransen's new international community of letterpress printers and enthusiasts is a growing resource for printers to share ideas, work, resources from the world of print
Gluing things back together
Frank Chimero built a beautiful series of collages (1-a-day in December), and I was thrilled to see he will be continuing the series and editioning some as prints.This piece from the 14th really made my heart sing.
Scripted is a compilation of a diverse range of custom lettering projects produced by graphic designers and typographers from around the world. Wonderful to see my Northern Southern collaboration with Craig Black featured in this new book. (Thanks to Maria Montes for the heads up our work was profiled!)
Dave Rowland and I struck up a conversation about the charming editorial face he was shaping, that reads well as text but bursts with personality up large. Engria has been under development for three years and has been worked and reworked tirelessly during that time to develop a type family of four weights with corresponding italics released this month. Throughout its development, Dave paid close attention to the way the white jostled against the black. Engria is a triumphant and exciting balance of both positive and negative. Read more about Engria and its carefully crafted tension here.
The Sudtipos collective just launched a new site.

After admiring the interface (& font catalogue). I treat myself to sincopa - check out the killer curves & contrasting harsh chiseled angles. Síncopa is named after syncopation, the unexpected, uneven, or offbeat rhythms in music. Síncopa explores these forces of stability and dynamism, of the beat and the offbeat. Inspired by three queens of jazz – Billie, Nina, and Ella. (This months Musing headers are set in Sincopa.)

The Copperplate penmanship style has a distinctive flow and character. Many years of steady and patient practice allow calligraphers to achieve the flow, direction, sequencing, and speed required from the copperplate ductus, to achieve its distinctive, elegant, fluid aesthetic.Nautica Sottile is a monumental new script from Resistenza, which builds on the creator’s accomplished penmanship skills.

Face37, the type foundry founded by Rick Banks, revised Hans Möhring’s Florida typeface.

“We’ve also injected a bit of modernity into the design by creating numerous ‘Herb Lubalin’ style alternates, as well as stylistic diacritics.” It’s Nice That caught up with the designer to learn more about the project and its origins.
Mort Modern, a new typeface inspired by the lettering work of Mortimer Leach.

A high contrast didone typeface in 56 styles (including optical sizes, widths and weights) designed by Riley Cran, inspired by Leach's mid-century advertising lettering.
Oscar Guerrero's Vala

The inspiration for Vala came from vernacular lettering in a local (Bogata) shop window. With dramatic flourishes and rich stylistic alternates, Vala has an underlying elegance. I am excited about this powerful yet distinct new voice!
Corsair is a rugged font with a handcrafted touch.

Ksenya Samarskaya created Corsair with functional beauty in mind. Corsair is humble, but definitely not simple. With 2300+ glyphs and wide-ranging language support, Corsair can be used in every place machine-made designs ought to feel human.
Typism Skills Summit: Eliza Svikulis

In an age where we are surrounded by so much visual eye-candy on Instagram and Pinterest, it is easy to be influenced by other styles and lose sight of our own unique voice. Eliza created a workshop where we examine our background and cultural influences to develop our signature style, instead of looking to other artists for inspiration.
Amazing new course

The Complete Typographer delivers a comprehensive package of typographic history, theory, typeface design, technology, design practice, and commerce. This flexible online course is delivered by heavyweights in our industry. The content is both broad and deep so suitable for the typocurious novice and more experienced typographic designer.
ATF's Wayne Thompson Advanced Design Skills.

This course has a strong typographic component including classes in hand-lettering, expressive type, type in layouts, vectoring and legibility, check it out here. It runs two days a week from February to July 2018, at the Pumphouse School of Design in Newcastle.
Looking for a new read?

Book recommendations by Women Who Design (ParrotRead sends you weekly book chatter from people you follow and respect on Twitter.)
An alphabet of buildings (one for my archi/type geek friends!)

“All language is an alphabet of symbols,” said Argentine genius Jorge Luís Borges in his book The Aleph. Taking this definition literally: what happens if we reduce the language of architecture to the letters of the alphabet? Martina Flor represents Iconic buildings as letters of the alphabet.
Hamilton Woodtype's Valentine Sale
Share some love with prints, books and type discounted for a limited time only.
Want to mail a little somethin’ somethin’ to your beloved?

Grab a $5 valentine from The Letterettes! There are six messages to choose from, & these talented ladies will hand letter your names and send them on to your lover/BFF/partner in crime/colleague/favourite barista. Head to theletterettes.bigcartel.com to order
Those of you who know Mike and I personally will know we have had a challenging run of things with December being particularly tough. We are both making a conscious effort to slow and simplify, as we build a new happy and healthy life for ourselves. I recently bought myself a stand-up paddleboard and am swimming, paddling, snorkelling and playing in the surf as much as possible which has been good for my head and my heart... I have also enrolled in a ceramics course and will be creating in clay until I get my presses up and running in the new print pavilion which is exciting too.
This is me at (6 am this morning), out from the Coromandel and looking back towards Auckland's Hunua Ranges. I am enjoying being out on the water - today I had a large octopus swimming alongside my board. A remarkable way to start the day! 

X Np
Copyright © 2018 Nicole Arnett Phillips, All rights reserved.


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