I found a link to this preview of The Illustrated Ape magazine the other day. Such fantastic lettering! I don’t know whether I’ve been completely unobservant or my local bookshops are just crap, but I’ve never seen a paper copy of the magazine before. I’ll keep an eye out for it now though — I just love the lettering. I’ve cropped together some bits from the titles in the preview:

So yes, I rather like stamps. I’ve traced a couple of sets now, and then the other day I came across this incredible set of stamps, via Grain Edit. They’re incredible. Stamps are fascinating in the same way as banknotes, but while banknotes have to remain current for years and survive the harshest treatment, stamps are short-lived things, designed to be kept flat, used once, then thrown away. There are new designs, limited-edition runs, all the time.

Having said all that, I’m still going to trace some of these (because quite frankly I won’t be able to resist), so here are a few of my favourites.

This site is astounding. I’ve been browsing through it for, oh, an hour now, and there are more and more amazing images. Some of them (my favourites) look like they inspired, or were inspired by, Edward Hopper, and others seem right from Ladybird books I had at junior school. They’re quite inspiring and evocative — looking at the first one here, I’m taken right back to visiting my grandparents when I was a child:

I was browsing through Bibliodyssey last night and found this poster in an article about Lorenzo Homar. I love the beautiful and lively lettering, especially the dramatic swash on the 9. I’ve (as usual) traced it with trusty beziers (I love bezier curves) and sketched out a very rough alphabet, which I might take a bit further at some point — redrawing the numbers from scratch, I think, as I’m not very happy with them.

To create a font based on this would be quite a project as the original lettering was clearly done by hand, though I’m sure with a deft application of Opentype rules you could create something that has much of the rhythm and charm of the original. However, I think I’ll create a stock of basic letterforms and apply variants and tweaks as I need them — I doubt I’ll be setting much body type in this. The lettering doesn’t look like it would suit a standard set of uppercase glyphs, but having ornamental lowercase forms in their place would work rather well — the swashed 9 shows what direction to take.

I rediscovered a set of saved images and links I had, labelled ”150 Years of Dutch Advertising Art”. I’ve had the link sitting around for quite some time in the vast dusty archives of my home directory, and I can’t understand why I’ve not put it up here before. The site is an incredible collection of fascinating and inspiring images, from the baroque and painterly to the most sparse and graphic. Great stuff.

As usual, I’ve had to trace some of them with trusty beziers — I’ve just finished doing this one. I love the PK monogram and the composition of the two styles. Fun to trace too.

Update: I have been reliably informed that as the exhibition was about medals and military insignia, the PK monogram is designed to resemble military insignia. Thank you David and Yves! Hmm. Military insignia, huh? Something to research…

John Gruber (Daring Fireball) linked to this interesting article on Android, which is worth a read, but stop a moment and admire the illustration by Christian Montenegro. It’s quite something — the flat slab of technology and this glorious fountain of swirling colour coming out of the sharp-edged screen — if only real phones were nearly as exciting, with 3D display technology like that and everything. I’d go for an interface that launched out of the phone like that.

Yes, more stamps! This time courtesy of Richard at Ace Jet 170 who posted this article about a set of Israeli stamps he bought. They depict three environmental concerns, air pollution, water pollution and noise pollution, and were apparently designed by Eliezer Weishoff (thanks to Yotam for the info). The stamp itself shows the problem situation with an additional detachable design depicting (iconographically) the ideal; butterflies visit flowers, fish swim among seaweeds and ears hear birdsong. Yes, that is an ear — the least successful image of the three I think — though I do like the birds in the tear-off.

I was asked for prints of the Polish stamp designs and I’d certainly like to, but I need to research the copyright. I traced the designs for my own understanding, and I’d love it for more people to see these designs at large scale and up close, but I’m not going to violate anyone’s copyright — I am a designer after all! Of course, if anyone’s a copyright lawyer in the UK/EU and fancies offering some tips, I’d greatly appreciate it.