I just read this pingmag article on manga translator Simona Pini. I’m enjoying the idea of sound effects and actions being represented as graffiti-style japanese text.

I saw this on Serif’s ’What are you currently working on?‘ series. I often set type like that, but given the brands I work with, I rarely have a chance to work with such an ornamental serif type. It’s lovely.

With the note from the author of ‘Fuck Comic Sans’, the free typeface Comic Serif is introduced. To me it looks like a bouncy version of Rockwell, and is a hell of a lot nicer than Comic Sans.

You know that feeling you get when you’ve had an idea to do something, and you’ve not got around to doing it for ages, then you come across something that shows that not only did someone else have the same idea, they’ve gone and implemented it? And very well, too. Well, I’m getting that now. Stephen Barnwell has made these incredible banknotes for the fictional Antarctic colony of Nadira, and for various other fictional microstates. There’s also the non-existent denominations of the Dream Dollars, which you can download, and various other products which you can buy. I think the whole thing is fantastic.

Still, it doesn’t stop me doing what I intended to do as my intention is different. I just like banknotes, I could look at the designs of them for hours, and hours, and hours. A bit like maps really — give me a good atlas and I could look at it all day. Maybe I just have an obsession with finely drawn lines? Either way, I have a collection of images grabbed from around the net. I’ve linked to the original page where it still exists.

First, the aforementioned Stephen Barnwell’s latest. The 13-dollar note from the State of War:

Then a selection of Robert Deodaat Emile Oxenaar’s designs for the banknotes of The Netherlands, which to me represent the only real argument against the Euro. Why couldn’t the European Commission have got him to design the money? Found on this article on Creative Review’s blog:

And then (and it took me a while to re-find these) the beautifully simple banknote designs by Herbert Bayer of the Bauhaus. These were done for the 1923 emergency issue of banknotes for the State of Thuringia in the Weimar Republic. The only place I could find a decent image was through the eBay store “Room 606”, where you can actually buy original notes.

I also came across some images of banknotes that feature scientists, engineers and mathematicians. I won’t post the full images, but here’s a couple of exquisite details from the old one pound note. It’s about time Newton was restored to one of the denominations of the British pound:

From the same site, various details:

I love banknote designs so much.

So yes, as mentioned elsewhere, Typographica released their favourite fonts of 2006. The face that immediately caught my eye and made me go “Ooo!” was Darka, a new interpretation of Blackletter type by Gabriel Martínez Meave. Some of the capitals could be used as cadels in themselves, they’re so beautiful, and a lot of the letterforms have a real calligraphic flamboyance. I have a love of blackletter types and of calligraphy in general, so Darka seems right up my street. The thing is, even though the site says the font can be bought from FontShop, it’s not on the site at all. As soon as it is, you can be sure I’ll be buying it. Until then, I’m stuck with the sampler PDF and a bit of copy’n’paste to play with the letterforms.

From the site:

The second page of the PDF sampler:

And, I couldn’t resist. Not sure about the “Ty” kerning though, but I think to make that work nicely I’d have to redraw part of the T:

Berling Antiqua, Arno Pro and Georgia numerals

Another thing I came across. These watches labelled as “The SEIKO Electronic Ink watch for women”. Why specifically for women though? Apart from what the display can show, these don’t look particularly feminine. I think the e-ink watch idea is a good one though, and somewhat related to my post about mobile typography and manufacturers’ seeming obsession with 7-segment-style characters for showing the time, I think there’s a real opportunity to use non-lining numerals to display the time. At right, some examples.

I’m always intrigued by fonts that aim to have a fixed radius of curvature in the glyphs. They’re always display fonts, and sometimes they’re quite attractive. I came across this one today on Yo Lo. The site is stupid and doesn’t have individual urls for pages, so you’ll have to browse to find it.