A few weeks ago

When we were developing our ideas for this poster assignment, that I just posted about below, one of the girls in my class, Justina, came in with her dinosaur type. Justina is one of the girls whose work I am always excited to see. It's always very creative, very fun, and very much her. I loved her dinosaur lettering so much, I asked her if I could take a picture of it, so that I might always see it.

So It's been a while

I've been terrible with my posting lately. But school has just been taking over my life. Thankfully, spring break is here and I can catch up on all the pictures I've been meaning to post. I have so many, and I'm so excited to finally be putting them up. But first, here is the final poster design that I did for my "Unresolved Pictures" story. The black side is the front, with all of my little hand written details, and the image is the back- jupiter's purple clouds.

Unresolved Pictures

For my Typography class we were given a fun new assignment for this week. Our TA Shawn would send us an image and we had to write a 300+ word story, essay, poem, etc. on the imagery. Well... not necessarily on the imagery, but somehow related or... something.  This is the image and story I came up with:

Unresolved Pictures
A Short Story
by Hollis Maloney

We didn't know what to expect when we went to Jupiter. Like any other human who hadn't been outside the atmosphere, the idea of traveling into space was very expansive. All of my friends had tons of pictures from their travels throughout our galaxy- pictures of them jumping into the moons craters, pictures of them having sand fights on Mars, but I on the other hand had not been able to space-trot as most had. When I told people I had never been outside Earth they looked at me as if I had said I had never seen an alien (which of course I have), and then proceeded to tell me how much I'd been missing.

We boarded the spaceplane with about 32 or so other people. This was a smaller plane because we weren't traveling too far past our planet, and it would be a relatively quick ride there- just under 2 days. Even though there was snow on the ground, seeing as it was mid February, everyone was dressed for the warm sunny weather we would meet once we arrived. Some obvious tourists were wearing the cliche tourist outfit- their latex short suits with socks and sandals. You would think after hundreds of years after the end of individual fashion people would learn that socks and sandals looked ridiculous and made no real sense. But people will be people I guess.

We found our seats were at the very back of the plane, which I didn't mind. I had the seat next to the window which was all I cared about. I wanted to see everything on our way up there- the change in atmospheric colors, all of the stars we would be passing, and, once we got closer to Jupiter, all of the purple clouds that would be floating over the planet's surface. Purple clouds, in my opinion, were going to be the coolest thing about Jupiter.

I began to think about what it was going to look like once we got there. At this time of year the mid-low eastern domain of Jupiter in it's 5th section, where we were going, had the most beautiful weather. Sun all day and night, but always no more then 27 degrees celsius, and always a perfect light breeze. I couldn't wait to get out of the cold and into that picturesque warmth. I imagined myself sunbathing on the sand with nothing but the shapes of those purple clouds above me to think about.

The spaceplane attendant made the announcement that we would be, "taking off in 10... 9... 8..." A rush of excitement flew through me. "This is it!" I thought. "I'll finally be able to see what everyone else I know has seen! The Universe and I will finally meet!" I turned towards the window, anticipating the quick jolt of the lift off. "4... 3... 2..." I plugged in my head phones, turned on Daft Punk, and we were off!

Get a real job

This was so much fun! Pentagram has a little game for us Type nerds out there called "What Type are You?" and apparently I'm Umbra!

Nerdism

Today on my way to work I decided to stop into a bookstore I frequently visit to see if there was any new magazines. After perusing the racks and not seeing anything I liked, I disappointedly moved to the small (but INCREDIBLE) design section to feed my obsessive visual hunger. At first I decided to treat myself to Jessica Helfand's book on volvelles (an old favorite I've still yet to purchase), but then at second glance saw the most beautiful thing I have seen since finding a German book of typefaces printed in the 1950's in a small used book shop just outside of Ann Arbor last Christmas. It was Taschen's "Type. A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1." Needless to say I picked it up, and never let go. Taschen always produces the most assiduous, meticulous, and elegant books, and this one in particular has beautiful specimens of type from the 1600s to the 1900s. Not only does it come with three translations (german, english, and french) but it also has over 1000 images! AND the book comes with a little card in the back that has a code to access all the images online to download. It was by far the best 60 dollars I've ever spent, and it definitely made my day.