July 2011
1 post
Typenotes: Summer reading for incoming MATD... →
These resources would be good for the incoming t]m students as well… and pretty much anyone ever.
June 2011
2 posts
LettError Type and Typography: ToolSpace →
This is an article written by Jan Middendorp for a LettError monograph published in 2000. It is ostensibly about Just and Erik, but on the whole I think it represents what I have learned in this past year: make your own tools, don’t let your tools make your design.
Tools can do amazing things—they can create perfection every time. As one of the section titles says, “A hammer can do...
May 2011
2 posts
April 2011
2 posts
Type and Media Class of 1920
Not really, of course. Though awesome photos of some yet-unknown lettering class, probably in England. Thanks to the blog Old Chum. I’ll update if I find the source.
Edit: Old Chum says: “Signwritten Art by A.J. Lewery. This photo is from Laird Art School 1955”. So I was only 25 years off!
March 2011
2 posts
We're Back again!
Sorry for the Radio silence, everybody, we had a busy past couple of weeks followed by a relaxing week of vacation. I’ll start from the beginning:
We finally finished our Paul van der Laan revival projects. I was extremely proud of everyone in our class on the high quality of all our revivals. Many added a bold, an italic/oblique, or both to the assignment. I struggled a little bit in the...
February 2011
1 post
stewf asked: When did Type & Media get the abbreviation "T]M" and why?
January 2011
5 posts
Back to Work!
Linda pointed out to me about a week ago that I never explicitly said on this blog that I made it to America and back. Yes I did, but it took some trying. I took photos to illustrate:
The snow cleared up enough for the NS to run regularly about 2 days after our big snow, so surprisingly, they were not the problem.
After British Air cancelled my flight twice, I wasn’t going to chance...
The Downside of Internet—Nijhof & Lee Closing →
The physical store of Nijhof & Lee is closing its doors. Very sad. Going to try to visit this weekend before it gets too late.
December 2010
7 posts
Operation: Get Home in Spite of British Weather a...
I woke up Friday morning and I found this unexpectedly out my window. I would have loved this snow like all the other snows we’ve had this winter except for the fact that I was going to leave on Saturday to go back and see my family for a very short period of time before I came back here and began our next semester.
All through Friday it was looking worse and worse for travel in The...
Brand New Things!
We’ve made some changes to the room! Malte, Alp and Linda felt a bit of cabin fever one day and rotated their desks in various directions. Now Malte and Alp are facing each other and Linda is next to Yassin, as opposed to all being perpendicular to one another.
Easily the biggest change, though, is our new foosball table. The old one had been falling apart pretty much ever since it was...
November 2010
6 posts
October 2010
15 posts
Happy Halloween!
It’s been a rather cold, wet day so far. I don’t know how many youngsters go Trick or Treating here, but I hope it doesn’t manage to rain on them. I have distinct memories of my Uncle Gary and Aunt Cathy holding up umbrellas over my and my cousin’s heads when I was about 8 or 9. Trick or Treating in the rain is the worst.
It seems almost devoid of Halloween activity here, save for one incident. I...
Stone Carving
Yesterday we all got really dirty and really tired carving our first pitiful little scratches into stone. It’s a lot of work but I thought it was so fun! Françoise is a great, fun teacher. Next week is the classical R.
It’s my ambition to be able to do the kind of work I found on this fountain when I was biking a few weeks ago (hahaha! Yeah, right)
Fussball
I thought I should let the internet know that I just discovered the first word I ever wrote in pointed pen was “Fussball”. Actually, it was “Fus bal ” with little scratches and splotches where the missing letters should be because I didn’t know how to use the pen yet.
Why, yes! I am in the Type and Media program… why do you ask?
Amman: The City, The Typeface, The Film →
Jan just finished editing his big ffilm explaining the thoughts and processes that went into designing FF Amman, and the reactions of designers that worked with the typeface. It’s so awesome! I’m really proud of him. The accompanying blog post is very thorough and a great read, but if you want to skip right to the movie, it can be found here.
Comments Open
So I’m tentatively adding comments on this blog (though still not on my normal one) through DISQUS. Use them like your mother is reading what you write (my mother probably is…). Email me with any bugs and I’ll get right on them. It took a while for me to get the CSS just right, because the styles Disqus sends over are just plain stupid.
Going to Frankfurt!
Yes, my research for Paul van der Laan’s revival project is taking me to the Klingspor Museum & Library in Offenbach am Main, sort of a neighboring city to Frankfurt. Taking the train there and coming back to The Hague on the same day is sort of an impossibility, given the times that the museum is open and international train schedules, so I’ll be leaving here in the middle of...
Previous Years' Websites
I just (re)discovered these—here are the sites of the Type and Media class of 2010 and the class of 2009 (discovered and rediscovered, respectively). Just looking at them, I know that we have a loooong way to go until July.
KABK em Português →
Marina and I are the only “Americans” in the course (her from south, me from north), and she has started to blog about our experiences em Português, as it is her native tongue. Apparently, no one has ever kept a KABK blog in Portuguese, so she’s breaking ground with every post. Let’s hope she can keep posting, though; she’s a very busy lady. I know I’ll be...
Good Luck to MATD! →
The Masters of Arts in Typeface Design has begun their year at the University of Reading yesterday, and I would like to wish our friends across the channel good luck. Maybe we’ll get together at some point?
WatchIt’s warm, it’s warm, it’s waaaaaaaarm! Now I understand why the Dutch get all crazy when the thermometer ticks above 16ºC, and today I would say it was well in the 20’s (How do you like me now, with my Celsius-saying ways?). We’ve been having chilly, rainy weather all week (I know, rain in Holland? Oh do go on) so I certainly enjoyed this change, even though it will...
September 2010
8 posts
Mystery Solved
After all the speculation, it turns out that it was my friend Julia, whom I seem to blog about often. I should have known when she asked me for my address and my shirt size… I’m really obtuse about these things. Thanks, Julia!
I Have a Secret Admirer
I had a pretty funky afternoon. My bike seat has been squeaking and driving me crazy, I totally burned my fish dinner, and I have no idea how to use the online banking system at ABN Amro to transfer my rent to my landlady due tomorrow (in the USA we still use personal checks). But my whole afternoon brightened up when I opened up my mailbox and found it filled to the brim with this mysterious box...
AtypI Dublin (Part 2)
So, I finally got around to writing a follow-up.
So this is where we had the conference, at the Dublin Castle right smack in the middle of Dublin. There were even references to the castle’s history within the talks themselves. There were a few references to Christopher Nugent; the man largely credited with initiating the first Irish typeface and explaining Irish/Gaelic to Queen Elizabeth...
Alpabets →
We’re in the middle of our second day of classes, waiting for Frank Blokland to come teach us some more things about type. Just van Rossem (1/2 of LettError) just left us and filled our heads with python. I thought I would just quickly link the blog of my friend and classmate Alp, who is writing about his own KABK experiences.
AtypI Dublin (Part 1)
I finally had a chance to go to an AtypI and I took it and it was amazing! I met so many incredibly nice people, the talks were for the most part inspiring, and I think I got to know my entire twitter following list within the span of one afternoon. This post focuses on the type walk Marina and I did with Phil Baines and Catherine Dixon on my birthday (Sept. 9).
Marina, Kunihiko and I booked...