blog typography

In response to my post on the inter­est­ing typog­ra­phy of the J.L. Hud­son seed cat­a­log, Philip won­dered whether it would be pos­si­ble to design a blog so that it would look like an older pub­li­ca­tion that was type­set with­out the aid of computers.

There are lots of blog design ele­ments, but one of the most impor­tant is the main text that peo­ple read. Here are a cou­ple attempts at com­ing up with an online typo­graphic style that looks a lit­tle more old­school, more pre-computer.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, con­secte­tur adip­isic­ing elit, sed do eius­mod tem­por inci­didunt ut labore et dolore magna ali­qua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nos­trud exerci­ta­tion ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea com­modo con­se­quat. Duis aute irure dolor in rep­re­hen­derit in volup­tate velit esse cil­lum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excep­teur sint occae­cat cup­i­datat non proident, sunt in culpa qui offi­cia deserunt mol­lit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, con­secte­tur adip­isic­ing elit, sed do eius­mod tem­por inci­didunt ut labore et dolore magna ali­qua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nos­trud exerci­ta­tion ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea com­modo con­se­quat. Duis aute irure dolor in rep­re­hen­derit in volup­tate velit esse cil­lum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excep­teur sint occae­cat cup­i­datat non proident, sunt in culpa qui offi­cia deserunt mol­lit anim id est laborum.

So do they look on the right track?

This is a greatly con­densed ver­sion of a much more tech­ni­cal post. Click “con­tinue read­ing” below to see the full ver­sion.
con­tinue reading »

January 26 2009 | Categories: art • rambles | Tags: • • • | 6 Comments »

words without pictures

I’ve been look­ing at WORDSWITHOUTPICTURES, an inter­est­ing online jour­nal and dis­cus­sion space hosted by the Los Ange­les County Museum of Art. True to its name, the site is a big pile of words with­out a sin­gle pic­ture, an action that’s par­tic­u­larly will­ful since the topic of the site is pho­tog­ra­phy! Actu­ally, since the real rea­son for the site’s exis­tence is crit­i­cism and dis­cus­sions about pho­tog­ra­phy, the deci­sions to sup­press the imagery might actu­ally be appropriate.

Even with­out pic­tures, the site is no visual slouch. Designed in just black and white, using three fonts in com­pelling, graphic ways, the site calls to mind Bauhaus, De Stijl and Con­struc­tivist exper­i­ments fil­tered through con­tem­po­rary web stylesheets. What can you do with a few hor­i­zon­tal bor­ders mixed with hel­vetica, times and cour­rier using bold font weights and –1 to –3 let­ter spac­ing? Take a look!

And yes there is a gar­den con­nec­tion with all this. There was a recent inter­view with Char­lotte Cot­ton, the new Cura­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy at LACMA and the main per­son behind the site. In it, the inter­viewer described her apart­ment in a build­ing in the Wilshire Dis­trict near the museum, an apart­ment that was dec­o­rated taste­fully as you might expect. But the apart­ment also included a col­lec­tion of car­niv­o­rous plants!

April 16 2008 | Categories: art • photography | Tags: • • • • • • • | 1 Comment »