Sub/Conscious Meanderings

Okay, i hate to brag, but I was a cute kid. (Well, maybe I don’t hate to brag, or per­haps it’s just that I’m hold­ing a cuter lit­tle sis­ter.) When I opened the mail­box today, I saw a CD mailer box and thought to myself “Oh, Austin’s par­ents must have sent another CD of pic­tures.” Then I looked at the return address and noticed it said Dad Vance (in Mom’s hand­writ­ing). I couldn’t help but chuckle when I opened the images. Most of the pho­tos that included me were utterly embar­rass­ing, but enter­tain­ing and evoca­tive nonethe­less. Here’s one of the images that actu­ally makes me pho­to­genic (Odds of a suc­cess­ful pic­ture are slim to none, so this is a rare treasure.)

As another piece of my BFA I’m brand­ing a type foundry that I’m plan­ning on oper­at­ing under in the next cou­ple years. I’ve got the logo com­pleted and a land­ing page for the web­site. I prob­a­bly will have to farm out the pro­gram­ming on the site itself because I don’t have the time to do it myself.

Type­caste

This has been the first week­end I’ve been able to get some decent work done on my BFA project. I have the low­er­case drawn and pretty close to the final draw­ing. The pho­tos show only a few char­ac­ters that have the most char­ac­ter. My goal is to have the reg­u­lar weight com­plete (mean­ing pro­grammed for actual use) for the exhi­bi­tion, with pretty tight draw­ings for the reg­u­lar italic if I can’t have the whole thing com­pleted. This project could turn in to a pub­lish­able and prof­itable type­face and that makes me very excited.

I’ll keep things posted as to the progress. I’ve still a lot of work to com­plete for the exhi­bi­tion. The actual show will prob­a­bly include a cou­ple posters, a spec­i­men book, some large vinyl appli­ca­tions on the wall, three-dimensional metal let­ters, a process book with the orig­i­nal draw­ings and pho­tographs of the process. I’ll also be send­ing out invi­ta­tions along with my grad­u­a­tion announcement.

First sketches to get the feel­ing of the face:

Char­ac­ter Details:

Okay, so first of all I can’t believe I’m actu­ally post­ing this, but I found the site hilar­i­ous (as only a type nerd can). So, if you don’t really get it I under­stand, cause not every­body can love type as much as me.

Here’s another Paula Scher moment with Mon­o­cle Mag­a­zine about the rebrand­ing of Amer­ica. It was inter­est­ing to hear one of the pre­mier graphic design­ers in Amer­ica talk about inter­na­tional per­cep­tion prob­lems as a brand­ing issue and not always a polit­i­cal one. Take a peek if you’re interested.