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Tag: typography

listen to.

Type­Tracks 003 — An eight song compilation inspired by Adrian Frutiger's Univers.

Adrian Frutiger’s Univers (pro­nounced “UNiv-air”) is one of my top five favorite type­faces. Like many rela­tion­ships, the begin­ning of my affair with Univers was mainly super­fi­cial. It was my un-imaginative way of try­ing to dis­tance myself from Hel­vetica. In my defense, let me say that I like Hel­vetica and we are still good friends, but I was young and fool­ish once. Back then I thought another Swiss sans-serif type­face would be the answer to my typo­graphic prob­lems. Now that I’m older, I see the flaws in my logic, but I really have no regrets. I have grown to love all of the great idio­syn­crasies that make Univers a sophis­ti­cated, well-rounded, and ver­sa­tile sans-serif. So this edi­tion of Type­Tracks is my mix­tape for Univers.

Type­Tracks 003: Univers

1. Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Ware­house  - Minus The Bear, Highly Refined Pirates

2. All The Wine - The National, Alligator 

3. Ani­mal - Miike Snow, self-titled album

4. La Costa Brava - Ted Leo and the Phar­ma­cists, Liv­ing With the Living

5. Archae­ol­o­gist - Win­ter­sleep, Wel­come to the Night Sky

6. After­noon Delight  -  Star­land Vocal Band, self-titled album

7. Wel­come to the Work­ing Week  - Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True

8. Leave the City  - Mag­no­lia Elec­tric Co., What Comes After the Blues

Posted: 04.03.2012|Posted by: Levi M.|Comments (1)|
are working on.

Inside the rebrand: 2011 Pen­rod Arts Fair — Creating a brand identity and marketing campaign for an Indianapolis tradition.


For forty-five years, Indi­anapo­lis has played host to one of the nation’s largest sin­gle day art fairs. Each Sep­tem­ber, the Pen­rod Arts Fair attracts thou­sands of patrons and hun­dreds of artists.

This year, Tac­tic had the oppor­tu­nity to brand the fair expe­ri­ence. With brand equity and famil­iar­ity already in place, we rec­og­nized an oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate a dis­tinct iden­tity for this annual tra­di­tion. Rebrand­ing the fair was an oppor­tu­nity to pay homage to the rich her­itage of the char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion, while cre­at­ing a fresh approach to a long-standing brand.

The fol­low­ing are a few of the key pieces – and the sto­ries behind them – from this year’s Pen­rod Arts Fair.

Read More +

Posted: 12.13.2011|Posted by: Cody T.|Comments (4)|
are reading.

Our Favorite Blogs — Keeping up to date and finding inspiration through design blogs.

One of our favorite ways to keep up with what’s going on in the design world is to reg­u­larly check design blogs. Not only do they keep us up-to-date, but they are also a won­der­ful source of inspi­ra­tion. Below are a few of our must-read blogs.

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Posted: 06.08.2011|Posted by: Katherine R.|Comments (0)|
are watching.

Erik Spiek­er­mann on Typography — An outstanding primer on type design, history and implementation.

The fol­low­ing inter­view from world-class typog­ra­pher and graphic designer Erik Spiek­er­mann is an acces­si­ble, must watch take on typog­ra­phy. Enjoy!

Posted: 03.20.2011|Posted by: Cody T.|Comments (0)|
find interesting.

The Brand of Really Bad Movies? — There might actually be a typeface for all of those awful Hollywood comedies: Red, Uppercase, Bold fonts.

Just like books and their cov­ers, you sim­ply can’t judge a movie by its poster.

Or can you?

Well, accord­ing to an image cir­cu­lat­ing the inter­net and fea­tured on /Film — there just might be a brand­ing for­mula for awful mod­ern come­dies. For­tu­nately for movie-goers, it appears to be quite easy to iden­tify these insanely bad movies from the rest of the pack.

Just look for these 3 font attrib­utes when mak­ing all future view­ing choices:

1. Bold

2. Red

3. Upper­case

Now, more than ever, Hol­ly­wood mar­keters think that they can “brand” and mar­ket a movie into a com­mer­cial suc­cess. Iron­i­cally, only the com­mer­cial fail­ures seem share a uni­ver­sal brand­ing element.

Posted: 03.04.2011|Posted by: Mike T.|Comments (0)|
listen to.

Type­Tracks 002 — An eight song compilation inspired by Erik Spiekermann's Meta.

Meta
Watch­ing UnderConsideration’s Brand New Con­fer­ence awhile back, I was reminded of the supreme excel­lence and over­all affa­bil­ity of type designer Erik Spiek­er­mann, the final speaker. Among his lengthy cat­a­log of fine type­faces, the Meta fam­ily is a par­tic­u­larly sat­is­fy­ing design. A ver­sa­tile sans serif with a heart of gold, Meta’s human­ist lines pro­vide just the right amount of panache. It’s a proud type­face that could make friends with just about anybody.

Type­Tracks 002: Meta

1. Pic­ture Book — The Kinks, The Kinks Are The Vil­lage Green Preser­va­tion Society

2. Hol­land, 1945 — Neu­tral Milk Hotel, In the Aero­plane Over the Sea

3. 1901 — Pheonix, Wolf­gang Amadeus Pheonix

4. Rocky Racoon — The Bea­t­les, White Album

5. 15 Steps — Radio­head, In Rain­bows

6. Impos­si­ble Ger­many — Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

7. Oth­er­side — Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion

8. Speed Tri­als — Elliott Smith, Either/Or

—

Type­Tracks is the exper­i­men­tal brain­child of Tactic’s Cre­ative Direc­tor, Cody Thomp­son. A series of playlists inspired by a given type­face, Type­Tracks is an attempt to bridge the gap between two of the author’s great joys — typog­ra­phy and music. Its sub­jec­tive nature leaves plenty of room for dis­cus­sion, so feel free to pro­vide your cri­tiques, addi­tions and any­thing else that’s on your mind. To email Cody directly, click here.
Posted: 01.07.2011|Posted by: Cody T.|Comments (0)|