It may sound strange but around this time every year or even earlier we sit back contemplating the year before and making plans for the year after (the end of the year is not a good time for us to think business; we just want to go out and party). Well, the year 2009 was very interesting for Parachute®.

A brand new contemporary typeface, the Encore Sans Pro superfamily was released in February. Two months after its release, it was placed in the 30 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design list published by Smashing magazine along with Bodoni Script Pro. In April we were invited to participate in a lecture by the Greek Graphic Designers Association and made a presentation about “The creative process of typeface design” from the initial idea to the final product. Later in the year, Parachute® participated in the leading Graphic Arts Trade Fair Graphica, a major event that takes place every 2 years. An impressive simple stage/stand was set and its Disturbing the Uncool concept was far from the usual hard-sell notion of such events.

In September, right after the summer vacations, we heard some wonderful news coming from Moscow. Parachute received 3 awards from the International Type Design Competition “Modern Cyrillic 2009″. Centro Pro, Champion Script Pro and Goudy Initials Pro received Honor Diplomas for Excellence in Type Design.

“Parachute: Precision Landing” was the title of a special article that was written about Parachute in the February issue of the leading German magazine Novum. The October issue of Computer Arts Magazine speaks to 30 type practitioners around the globe. Among them, Panos Vassiliou was asked to share his little secrets about type. Also in November, for the second year around, Parachute appeared in the international publication Typodarium 2010. Parachute’s most competitive superfamilies, the PF Din Series was featured among other Dins, in the September issue of the Dutch magazine Publish on a special article -signed by Henk Gianotten- about the DIN phenomenon. Finally, the international magazine Creative Review named the Typefaces of the Year in its December issue -as presented by several leading font retailers- and Champion Script Pro was among them. This sophisticated superfamily was the best selling typeface at FontHaus and also made the Top 10 fonts of 2009 list at MyFonts.

Call for entries for the new book edited by Florian Gaertner, Lars Harmsen and Ulrich Weiß of Magma Brand Design, published by Index Book in Barcelona later this year.
TypoShirt One is the first publication which focuses exclusively on the typography phenomenon of the t-shirt culture. You are invited to submit your projects showing quotes, sentences, words, letters and numbers or any other typographic piece of work.

Call for entries

Artist Stephen Powers is leading a forty-painter team on an ambitious project called “Love Letter”. The project includes 50 rooftops in West Philadelphia PA, between 63rd and 45th street on Market Street. Stephen Powers is a well known graffiti artist who goes by the tag name ESPO. As he says, people do not like graffiti, they prefer advertising signs. So he made a move into sign painting. “The materials were essentially the same, (enamel on metal), the colors were similar,( bold and garish are best) but the effect was totally different.” His main inspiration was the traditional signs of Philadelphia. Love letters express a love letter from a guy to a girl.
The plan involves a documentary film with scripted elements, a sign school and shop that will provide training for area youth,  free signage for businesses on the market street corridor and 2 books documenting the project. One of the books will be a small paperback which will be distributed to area businesses free of charge. The other book will be a larger hardcover that will document not only the artwork, but the neighborhood and the inspirations of the Love Letter Project. There is a website created for this project where you can follow it as it unfolds.

A love letter for you

Ogaki was designed by a young Hungarian type addict called Áron Jancsó. He is 23 freelancing and learning typography at MOME, Budapest. He likes to work from scratch from designing every single letter of a poster to taking pictures for textures. His work is mostly experimental, blending modernism, graffiti, 3D, calligraphy, and obsolete techniques with the power of vector graphics.

Ogaki is a fresh experimental display family available from Gestalten. It is super heavy and delicate, extravagant and legible at the same time. It was inspired by modernism, calligraphy, and traditional serif typefaces. Simplicity, elegance and geometric approach comes from modernism. Serifs and terminals were inspired by calligraphy, to break up the strict coldness of modernism. Ogaki is great for various display purposes such as logotypes, magazine headlines, posters and covers. Fits well to the world of fashion, design, music and much more.

The design started as a type experiment without any intension to end up as a typeface. The initial idea was to design something really heavy. It’s a play of positives and negatives, big and small, thin and fat, all of this with very high contrast. As a result of this game the lowercase ‘g’ was born and it shouted for a whole new character set.

Finally it turned out to be a family of 4 fonts: Poster for large point sizes, Poster Outline, Text for small sizes, and Text Outline. The text version features 6 times thicker white hairlines and serifs and the outline version are using the same stroke width as the hairlines in the fill versions. Ogaki comes in Standard, CE, and PRO sets, all having Opentype features as ligatures and old style numerals.

Ogaki at Gestalen
Áron Jancsó’s flickr, behance

A few months ago we visited the The Berlin Type Museum which preserves and exhibits a number of typographic signs rescued from old times. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Neon Museum offers a glimpse at the most treasured and famous signs of Las Vegas that was. Located on Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas, Nevada, the 3-acre lot known also as the Neon Graveyard or Boneyard, houses more than 150 historic, non-restored signs from the Caesars Palace, Binions Horsehoe, Golden Nugget, Silver Slipper and most recently the Stardust. The Museum is not currently open for general admission and visits of the collection are possible via tours by advance appointment only. The non-profit cultural organization that runs the museum is in the process of building a permanent facility which will be used as its visitor’s center. They are restoring the historic La Concha Motel lobby which has a unique curvilinear design created by the famous African-American architect Paul Revere Williams.

neonmuseum.org