Browsing Design Observer, I came across a link to this short documentary on YouTube about Julius Popp and his work. He’s created a machine to take text from various online sources and display key words from it using water. The screenshots below give a hint of it, but are no match for the video. Go watch it, it really is incredible.

This Flickr set has some great images of the 1923 ATF Specimen Book. Later in the set are some wonderful images from other sources, including the one at right which is great - can’t beat blackletter and, er, pinkletter. I’m liking the monograms too, which you can see on the original set here.

The car everyone would love to own!

Well, based on this fabulous brochure, who could blame them? Found on the Old Car Manual Project, another of those collections-of-things sites that you bookmark because you know you’re going to find them useful someday. This site is a great resource for 20th Century typography, illustration and layout, not to mention car design.

I recently came across the excellent site, Liam’s Pictures from Old Books, and while browsing came across scans from Letters & Lettering: A Treatise With 200 Examples.

When I had first decided I wanted to design typefaces I looked around for books on the subject, and yet could never find any book that worked as a primer, a beginner’s how-to manual*. If I’d have come across Letters & Lettering back then I’d have found a very good book from which to learn about constructing letterforms. The examples you can see here (and lots more on the page on Liam’s site) are lovely and clear and show the construction of, say, Trajan-esque forms. There are other examples in the book, blackletter and modern type forms, but it’s the large outlines that interest me here. This site will definitely go in the bookmarks.

* I did eventually find Leslie Cabarga’s Logo, Font and Lettering Bible

Something I’ve been meaning to blog for a while. This site is a veritable treasure trove of calligraphic inspiration. Three examples of my favourites below. Visit the site for much more.

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.

Not really related to type or illustration, but it comes under the definitions of sculpture and architecture, which is close enough for me.

I found this a while back on pingmag, on an article on chocolate. Unfortunately, like many sites for exhibition spaces, they seem to want to hide all the information from you and expect you to turn up to the thing on a mere hint of a title and a brief synopsis, so no link to more images, background info or what the piece at right is about. Whatever, I like it. I love maps, especially 3D ones and antique ones, like this one of London.

Related to this, I came across a load of great panoramas of Coruscant, the city-wide world from the Star Wars series. I am particularly fond of this one.