For the second consecutive year Communication Arts held its annual typography and type design competition in search for the best typography of the year. The 2012 Typography Annual showcases the 150 winning projects selected by a distinguished panel of jurors such as Richard Kegler, Erik Spiekermann and Tiffany Wardle de Sousa.
More than 1,700 entries were submitted for this second Typography Annual, reflecting the quantity of work produced in a single year. The organisers were pleased with the international nature of the submissions, especially in the typeface category, and the inclusion of several non-Latin typefaces.
Regal Finesse Pro by Parachute, was selected to be among the winners in the typeface design category. This is not the first time that various families from the Regal series receive awards. Regal was also a winner in last year’s Creative Review Type Competition, as well as a winner in the Granshan Awards 2010. Regal Pro was originally created for the redesign of Grazia magazine and later was revamped and upgraded for commercial use. The original 3 basic families were expanded to include more variations, ligatures, swashes and additional support for Latin and Greek. The final version of Regal includes 5 families. Currently Regal Pro is available offline but will be officially released online shortly.
Typography has become an important sales tool and some kind of a trend in package design. The visual personality of type and its association to certain emotions, is important when it comes to selling the product and attracting the right audience. Having this in mind, we collected a number of packages which are just inspiring if not beautiful. Enjoy!
Marton by Kiss Miklos
Katie Mullins’ Pastoral cover by Ryan Feerer
Sandro Desii by Lociento Studio
Freak by Propaganda
Hydro plane by French Paper’s Air Craft
Breuckelen Gin by Breuckelen Distilling
Reishunger by Funny Paper
Heide Honey by Pidgeon Design
Milk Paint by Dawn Steinbock
DIESEL by TACN studio
Christmas Absinthe by Stranger & Stranger
Mina Harissa by Monday Collective
San Cosme by Savvy Studio
Bagel Street Water by Nikolaj Kledzik
Hand-Drawn Text by The Manual Co.
From time to time we publish a number of inspiring typographic images from our popular Flickr Group. Here is fifteen of them.
by Boris Pelcer
By Mariano Tuveri
By Aron Jancso
By Jeremy Pettis
By Charis Tsevis
By Slambigrams
By StuartWade
By Caetano Calomino
By Boris Pelcer
By Marcel Schultz
By Ali Almasri
By GL.ANDIS
By LikeMindedStudio
By &type
By Simek / Greg Papagrigoriou
As the world comes together, western companies are branching out into new markets to expand brand recognition and sell their products. In that respect, designers are asked to create matching campaigns in various languages which are aesthetically appealing, culturally appropriate and typographically correct. Arabic though, being one of the hardest languages to learn, has been a major obstacle for western designers.
Cultural Connectives is an essential introduction to written Arabic and an invaluable resource to typographers and designers. Author Rana Abou Rjeily presents Arabic from a new perspective by comparing and contrasting the essential elements of Arabic and Latin scripts. This book makes written Arabic accessible to those in particular who do not speak Arabic.
Cultural Connectives will help you understand the basic characteristics of the Arabic script and alphabet by comparing it to Latin. Presented in a plain and understandable manner, this book will help you avoid common mistakes and get a grasp of how the written language works.
Rjeily explains the language by applying Arabic rules of writing, grammar, and pronunciation to English. She starts the book by presenting the Arabic writing system and its various letterforms. Then she moves on to illustrate Arabic’s lack of separate vowel forms with a page of English text that has all the vowels removed and raised above the words. In following chapters she explains quite successfully the use of Arabic diacritical marks by applying them to latin words and presents ways to memorize the alphabet.
Finally Rheily illustrates the Arabic letterforms in detail by developing a matching Arabic version of her font Mirsaal. The Arabic and latin Mirsaal share the same stroke width, thick-to-thin variations and open counters in order to achieve balance and harmony.
In conclusion, Cultural Connectives is an interesting and innovative book which attempts to bring together the typographic styles of the Arabic and Latin alphabet.
About the author
Rana Abou Rjeily is a graphic designer living and working in Lebanon. She received her master’s degree in Visual Communication from Central Saint Martins, London, where she started designing Misraal as part of her thesis, drawing inspiration from her personal experience learning Arabic, her native language. Since 2007 she has taught typography and design at universities in Lebanon.
Arabic Graffiti is an extensive reference book on contemporary Arabic graffiti, urban calligraphy and type design, published by FHTF Publishing. It is curated and authored by Lebanese typographer Pascal Zoghbi and graffiti writer and publisher Stone aka Don Karl. For many years street graffiti in the Middle East conveyed mostly political and revolutionary messages. The voices of the people were not manifested on the streets, but it was rather the slogans of the political parties that covered the walls. By the mid 90s the scene was changed, as the underground artistic movement started to express itself on the streets, gaining the public’s attention and respect. Arabic Graffiti keeps an eye on the fascinating developments of this urban art in the Middle East. It brings together artists, graffiti writers, designers, and typographers from around the world who merge Arabic calligraphy with the art of graffiti writing, street art and urban culture.
The book includes a rich assortment of photos featuring the artwork and thoughts of Arabic graffiti and street art styles by: Hassan Massoudy, Malik Anas Al-Rajab, eL Seed, Hest1, Julien Breton, L’ATLAS, Aerosol Arabic, Native & ZenTwO, Zepha aka Vincent Abadie Hafez, Typism, Akut and many more. In addition, the book includes essays by distinguished authors and scene experts such as: Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès, Rana Jarbou, Tala F. Saleh, Houda Kassatly and William Parry.
