I stumbled across the beautifully whimsical calligraphy of Betsy Dunlap while in the midst of an unrelated Google search and it stopped me in my tracks.
She seems to spend a great deal of time handling wedding invitations and the like, and has been featured on Design*Sponge but I’d love to see more; I would like to think this could be a potentially favourable pairing for the likes of Sudtipos/Alejandro Paul.
Good design is honest. Good design is thorough to the last detail. Good design is as little design as possible. [Dieter Rams]
There is a brief, but important list of people that I would credit for my love of design, art and architecture. Individuals who’s guidance and mentorship was and is invaluable: my Oma and Opa, painter and photographer, respectively; my father, the engineer and photographer; Pat Dowie, photographer and printmaker; and Jacqui McFarland, interior and graphic designer. The rest, whom I’ve only known in books, photographs, and occasional consumer purchases include John Pawson, Jonathan Ive, and Dieter Rams. These individuals, seen and unseen, have collectively developed my aesthetic worldview, and I carry them with me every day.
All the more exciting then that Rams and Ive, among many others, are included in the list of personalities featured in Gary Hustwit’s latest film, Objectified, which debuted at SXSW, a couple weeks ago. I eagerly anticipate an announcement of a screening here in Calgary.
(ilt.end, from Feel Script by Ale Paul/Sudtipos.)
There is always a bit of a voyeuristic thrill when looking at a thing of beauty such as this. I hold a great deal of respect and admiration for the work of Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos, and am looking forward to the launch of Adiós Script, which I hope to be able to write about in depth once I get my hands on it.
Everybody thinks that he knows an A when he sees it, but only the few extraordinary rational minds can distinguish between a good one and a bad one, or can demonstrate precisely what constitutes A-ness. When is an A not an A? Or when is an R not an R? It is clear that for any letter there is some sort of norm. To discover this norm is obviously the first thing to be done.
MyFonts posts an ‘interview’ with long-deceased Eric Gill on legibility, fine lettering, the moral qualities of type and the beauty of marks upon stone.
So we have the designer who designs what he never makes and the worker who minds the machine which makes what he never designs. And we have the salesman who neither designs things nor minds machines but is supposed to know what the public wants. But the public doesn’t know what it wants, and it has no means of finding out. [Gill, via MyFonts Creative Characters]
For now, I fit into the salesman category.
There isn’t much to Spring Valley, Saskatchewan. I would hope that the owner of this truck isn’t intending on ‘restoring’ it.
The Small Stakes
Two examples of a superb four-colour screenprint in progress by Jason Munn of The Small Stakes design studio. Many of his prints are for sale, in limited runs, in his online shop.