LOL: It’s Official
Oh Comic Sans, is there anything you can’t fail at? (via 22 Words)

DIY: Potato Type
After last week’s bacon type, it was only fitting to explore other food/font pairings. I submit these, I guess you’d call them potato-press letters, created by edcornish and friends to make potato print Mother’s Day cards. Check out the whole set on Flickr.

New Font: Kazootie
Fresh from Chank Fonts comes Kazootie, a light-hearted and fun display font with a big, strong voice and crisp confident stride by Anne Ulku. Kazootie was inspired by cut-paper shapes and named after the hand puppet character Rootie Kazootie in a 1950s children’s television show. It’s all caps, but you can type your letters in uppercase or lowercase to access two different variants of the style. Available now! BONUS: Use coupon code “OCTOBER!” to get 20% OFF all Chank Fonts at MyFonts.com now thru Oct 31.

Further Reading: Explorations in Typography – Mastering the Art of Fine Typesetting
Patrick Barber reviews Carolina de Bartolo’s new book. “‘Explorations in Typography’ is arranged as a series of twenty-four chapters — the ‘explorations’. Using a short excerpt from Erik Spiekermann’s classic text, ‘Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works’, as a mantra, the book guides the reader through a kind of typographical meditation. In 24 explorations spanning 188 pages, the Spiekermann text is repeatedly typeset, using a variety of techniques to indicate paragraphs and hierarchy. A new pair of typefaces is used for each example. A colophon and additional side notes about the typesetting and the history of the typefaces are included with each setting.”

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

Inspiration: Type Posters
Tom Davie (aka studiotwentysix2) created this striking series of posters blending striking photography and an obvious passion for typography. (via Typography Daily)

Game: Kern Type
“Your mission is simple: achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters. Typographers call this activity kerning. Your solution will be compared to typographer’s solution, and you will be given a score depending on how close you nailed it.” Play it now. Also comes in a multitouch version for iPads.

In Depth: The typography-out approach in the world of browser-based web design
Part 3 in a series by Elliot Jay Stocks about his redesign of Smashing Magazine. “For far too long, many of us (and I include myself in this group) have been guilty of focusing on decoration: the colours and the shapes and the textures. We’ve been neglecting the details. And I’m not talking about those pixel-perfect buttons with ever-so-subtle gradients and inline strokes; we can all do that. I’m talking about stripping away all the cruft and getting back to good, solid design principles, like well-formed grids and decent measures and incremental leading and appropriately paired typefaces.”

Further Reading: Adobe acquires Typekit
In case you’ve been living under rock, Adobe acquired TypeKit earlier this month.

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

ExperiMEATal Type: Bacon Alphabet
Brooklyn-based photographer Henry Hargreaves with the assistance of prop stylist Sarah Guido have created something magical — a bacon aplphabet based on the Gothic font Old English!

“The font has a strange history, from being Hitler’s favorite font, to the most used tattoo font and the font I see every day at the top of my New York Times,” he tells Co. Design. “[The font is] detailed and intricate and bacon sloppy so I think this juxtaposition works and is a fun perversion of the natural order.” (via FastCoDesign)

Video: ABC3D Pop-up Book
“Prepare to be amazed. From the lenticular cover that changes with the angle of your hands all the way to the Z, ABC3D is as much a work of art as it is a pop-up book. Each of the 26 three-dimensional letters move and change before your eyes. C turns into D with a snap. M stands at attention. X becomes Y with a flick of the wrist. And then there’s U…Boldly conceived and brilliantly executed with a striking black, red, and white palette, this is a book that readers and art lovers of all ages will treasure for years to come. ” Pre-order yours today

Further Reading: Typography of Apple Inc.
With Steve Jobs’ passing yesterday, it seemed appropriate to take a look back at Apple’s corporate typography usage through the years (via Wikipedia). I’ve always loved how bite in the apple is formed by the shape of the lowercase a (in modified Motter Tektura) in the the pre-Macintosh logo. Once you know it was there it’s hard not to see it’s footprint in the newer logos.

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

Inspiration: Typotecture
Croatian agency Brigada has transformed a block of old buildings in their capital city of Zagreb with massive letters and numbers. It’s a process (that sounds made-up) called typotecture , “the use of extremely large scale typography on architectural structures.” Regardless,the effect is striking. Lots more photos of the making of this on designboom. (via Typography Daily)

Video: Just My Type Trailer
Fun book trailer (and catchy little tune) for Simon Garfield’s “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts” designed and directed by Naresh Ramchandani and Michael Bierut at Pentagram.

Experimental Type: FRACTURE
Looking for an experimental 3D Typeface? Who isn’t, right? Try FRACTURE. Each character consists of 200 fragments, each following a random pattern. Download it for free. (via Typography Served)

Further Reading: What is Typography All About?
Back to basics. Nice overview by Monotype Imaging’s Allan Haley.

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

Inspiration: Hand Printed Type
Nice collection of hand-crafted type by Stephanie Kubo on Typography Served.

Video:Urbanized Typeface
Have a bike and some strong legs? Why not create a typeface like Shibuya08-09?

Type tweet O’ The Week: Must Be True
Sad, but true that is. Thanks to @adultswim for making us smile this week.

Further Reading: ScreenFonts – Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Colombiana
Yves Peters at FontFeed explores movie poster typography.

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

Video: New Study Explains Why Comic Sans Font So Hilarious
The Onion News Network examines the science behind this terrible font. Nice Papyrus slam at the end as well. (Thanks Tomasz Majewski)

Inspiration: A logo for each of the 10,000 lakes in Minnesota
Nicole Meyer is not a fan of the lousy logos for many Minnesota Lakes. So she’s taken matters into her own hands and is designing new ones, for all 10,000 of them! One a day. At this rate it will take her a little over 27 years. You have to admire her ambition. Follow her impressive progress at branding10000lakes.com.(I love horizontal scrolling sites). (via 22 Words)

Font For Sale: Slick
Striking new font (and check out the ampersand!) from Superfried. Only £1. Photo by superfried-design.

Further Reading: Mind Your En And Em Dashes, Typographic Etiquette
Great post on something that drives me crazy by David Kadavy. “An understanding of typographic etiquette separates the master designers from the novices. A well-trained designer can tell within moments of viewing a design whether its creator knows how to work with typography. Typographic details aren’t just inside jokes among designers. They have been built up from thousands of years of written language, and applying them holds in place long-established principles that enable typography to communicate with efficiency and beauty.”

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

Flyer: Comic Sans Warning
So sad, but true. I’m gonna put these all over my neighborhood. (Thanks to Cheryl Hyatt Smith!)

Photos: Type at the Minnesota State Fair
I love this collection of found type at the Great Minnesota Get Together by the Twin Cities’ own (Golden Valley rep-re-sent!) Process Type Foundry.

Further Reading: 8 Simple and Useful Tips for Kerning Type
Joshua Johnson lays it all out for you (see what I did there?) in this Design Shack post packed with helpful visuals. “Kerning is fun! All right, unless you’re a serious type nerd like me, that’s definitely not going to be a true statement. However, it is an absolutely essential part of your typographical education and implementation.”

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

Experimental Type: Type Fluid
From the labs of Skyrill.com. You have to check out the wild results of their Type Fluid Experiment. You can find more videos of the milk-like letters above on Vimeo and some fascinating stills using an orange paint-like substance on their site.

Type Tweet O’ The Week: Just a Font
Who can blame web legend Jeffrey Zeldman for being excited over the news? Apparently Mårten Björk can. Congrats for making us laugh this week!

Further Reading: Marrying Types – All in the Family
Interesting piece by James Felici at creativepro.com “…looks at which typefaces blend well with which others and why. But in the mix-and-match debate, it’s easy to overlook the innumerable collections of faces that were designed from the get-go to work together: typeface families.”

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

App: Fontify
Now available in the app store for iPhone and iPad, Fontify lets you create illustrations with type. You can share your creations in the gallery and browse the work of others. (via @imjustcreative)

Inspiration: Scissor Art
Japanese designer Aoyama Hina created this delicate and intricate lettering using only mini scissors.

Further Reading: Hyphenation arrives in Firefox and Safari
“Pretty much the only forms of Western literature that don’t use hyphenation are children’s books and websites. Until now. Yesterday’s release of Firefox 6 and last month’s release of Safari 5.1 on OS X Lion mean that two browsers now support CSS 3 hyphenation.” (via @smashingmag)

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!

Infographic: Why Should You Care About Typography?
Created by Noodlor (which sounds like pasta-loving superhero), this gem has been making the rounds this week. View the whole darn thing. More shots below. (via Co.Design)

Type Trailer: Poem Script
Designed by Ale Paul. License Poem Script from Sudtipos Foundry.

Free Font: Legion Slab
A condensed slab serif designed by Phil Pham. Download. (via abduzeedo.com)

Further Reading: Better web font loading with JavaScript
Typekit post about why they require JavaScript to serve fonts.

Have you come across something amazing and typography-related online? Let me know!