Don't Be Shit

I will take the plunge and find you on the other shore.

mylifeunlived — Thu, 30 May 2013 09:11:12 +1000

I will take the plunge and find you on the other shore.

I can’t stop thinking about you every day.

mylifeunlived — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:15:49 +1000

I can’t stop thinking about you every day.

Bodoni, you may be more than 180 years older than me but you are...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:01:32 +1000

Bodoni, you may be more than 180 years older than me but you are a picture of elegance and sophistication. I’m charmed by your humble beginnings gracing the pages of 18th century Italian books and enamored with your rise to fashion icon, laid bare across the glossy pages declaring that single word that you will be remembered forever as being in your voice… Vogue.

Best viewed in the starkness of clean black and white you are perfectly suited for the fashion world. Tall and leggy, delicate and timeless. I love the roundness of your tear-drop terminals, the contrast of thick lines and thin lines and the surprising little features like the brush-drawn shape of the leg of your capital R and the centered placement of your capital Q.

I am sure that when Giambattista Bodoni carved your curves and lines from metal that he hoped for great things in your life. Could he have ever imagined that his daughter would go on to be such an icon of style and culture?

I wish I had been braver, I wish I had been bolder, I wish I had...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:56:29 +1000

I wish I had been braver, I wish I had been bolder, I wish I had been daring.

Typography by Sean Dowling
Photography by Sean Dowling

Okay, let’s just deal with this one right now. Overall I’m not a...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:01:21 +1000

Okay, let’s just deal with this one right now. Overall I’m not a fan. Previously I have discussed my displeasure with fonts that have a ‘handcrafted look’ (like script) but as they are generated by a machine this illusion quickly falls apart as the human brain is hardwired for recognizing patters. And what better pattern can there be than perfectly repeated glyphs?

One of the few usages of the typeface that I can tolerate is the title for the film Avatar. I detest the film as an immortal monument to James Cameron plagiarizing the work of one of my favorite illustrators and conceptual artists , Rodger Dean. One of the very few saving graces for this film is that the Graphic Designer who built the title lock-up diligently altered the letterforms of the three capital ‘A’s so they wouldn’t form a pattern in your head and ruin the hand-written look.

Aside from all that there are some nice elements. I like the high cross bar in the capital ‘E’ but only because it reminds me of art deco elements funnily enough, but the lower case ‘y’ looks like it was drawn by a child with a crayon. Look at the display word ‘Hieroglyphics’ and how the descenders for the ‘g’, ‘y’ and ‘p’ are just shouting at each other. Horrible, just horrible.

mylifeunlived: My design blog has moved! Come find me at http://dontbeshit.tumblr.com/

mylifeunlived — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:55:50 +1000

mylifeunlived:

My design blog has moved!

Come find me at http://dontbeshit.tumblr.com/

People keep telling me I will get over you… I...

mylifeunlived — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:27:06 +1000

People keep telling me I will get over you… I won’t.

Typography by Sean Dowling
Photography by Sean Dowling

Typically people think of serif fonts as feminine and sans serif...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:01:00 +1000

Typically people think of serif fonts as feminine and sans serif as masculine. Strangely for me this is reversed in the case of Lubalin Graph and Helvetica. To me Lubalin Graph is one of ‘the boys’, a knock around lad that always gets you in trouble with the staff at the pub. The sort of friend that without hesitation approaches attractive women at the bar and invites them over to where you are sitting. Only for you to discover that he has told them that you are an astronaut in training or some other such ridiculous thing and you stumble through perpetuating the lie while he smirks into his beer. A dear, dear friend that you want to punch in the face and hug at the same time.

Herb Lubalin’s self-titled font as an evolution of his earlier Avant Garde. An exquisite example of a geometric slab serif (something that is quite unusual). Notable feature the capital ‘Q’. it makes me think of a stick man Groucho Marx stepping through a porthole in a submarine. Cracks me up whenever I see it.

Gill Sans, Eric Gill’s notable, 1928 self-titled work. You’ve...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:01:36 +1000

Gill Sans, Eric Gill’s notable, 1928 self-titled work. You’ve seen this everywhere, the BBC logo, British Rail and in the pop-culture explosion of ‘Keep calm and…’ Posters. Though the original of this poster was a hand lettered font that was very similar, it was not actually Gill Sans.

This font is widely used, but an interesting issue has come up. There are some out there who would boycott this typeface due to the creator being a notorious pederast and ‘dog-lover’. Should we clamour and shout about the creator’s typographic work despite the fact that it is so utterly unconnected to his predilection for incest and pets? Like I said, an interesting debate.

Forgive me if I don’t concoct some flowery, purple prose about this typeface, I’m sure you can understand why I hesitate.

I wanted to fuck you right where you were standing Typography by...

mylifeunlived — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:17:22 +1000

I wanted to fuck you right where you were standing

Typography by Sean Dowling
Photography by Sean Dowling

So I have romanticised fonts and compared them to the...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:01:33 +1000

So I have romanticised fonts and compared them to the unfortunate looking boys/girls that you may (or may not) have felt up during your awkward, fumbling teenage years only to later discover their beauty. This is not one of those fonts. This is one of the fonts that you will always regret playing spin the bottle with, or at least you should regret it if you have any taste.

Unfortunately I have to spend a significant amount of my time looking at this typeface. We can cut past its constant usage in signage (as it was released as a core font for windows along with Comic Sans), we can ignore my own past discretions where I have boldly used it (I hang these on the wall as a reminder to myself: “Don’t be a shit designer”) and cut right down to the world of Roller Derby, and sport in general.

Some of you know I a referee for a Derby league. This is THE most common font for names and numbers on uniforms. It’s large x-height and narrow characters make it very attractive to the ‘derby-girl-with-the-long-name-that-goes-on-and-on-and-wouldn’t-otherwise-fit-on-two-let-alone-three-lines-across-their-shoulders’. But I have to break it to you. It looks like shit. It hurts my brain and my eyes. I’m not going to even bother pointing out the good in it. It does have a single ‘good’ feature, and the clue is in the name. But I can’t be bothered as this font reminds me of all the wrong choices I have ever made, all the lazy choices, the selfish choices and dumb choices.

Oh, and it’s capital ‘Q’ is just plain ugly.

I promise you, my love we will be together in another time, in...

mylifeunlived — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:15:09 +1000

I promise you, my love we will be together in another time, in another place.

Typography by Sean Dowling
Photography by Al V Caeiro

A Lesson in Context: Mistral is that awkward, ugly boy or girl...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 09:04:08 +1000

A Lesson in Context: Mistral is that awkward, ugly boy or girl you embarrassingly made out with at school. You pushed the shame of it down and promised yourself you will never do anything like that ever again. But when you bump into them years later to discover that all the same elements were there, but now, inexplicably they are one of the most attractive people you have ever seen… and you realise that YOU made out with them first.

This font is a slice of the 1980’s! That’s not actually true. This is Roger Excoffon’s 1953 creation, Mistral. This is fantastic example of the way type takes on the persona of an era. Just look at it! It screams of the eighties and early 90’s (which strictly speaking might as well be classed as the 80’s). You can just see this lovingly crafted type slapped on gaudy black with white sprinkles background accompanied by brightly coloured geometric shapes in red blue and yellow in some afterschool teen comedy tripe from the ‘radical’ network.

You might be shaking your head thinking ‘I never made out with Mistral in high-school’. But the vast majority of you are intimate with this font. Far more intimate than you realise. It was used for the eye-vomit inducing ‘Hey Hey It’s Saturday’ logo AND for the note-perfect credits in the recent Ryan Gosling film ‘Drive’. Same font. Both with an 1980’s treatment. But utterly different. That’s context.

I am screening phone calls from Gotham and Helvetica as I am...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:01:19 +1000

I am screening phone calls from Gotham and Helvetica as I am having a love affair with Toronto Subway. The sharpened points of the uppercase A’s, the near perfect circles of the C, the O, and the gloriously minimalist capital Q. Toronto Subway, I love your 1950’s air, the twinges of art deco, your low waist capital R and your small, compact lower case characters.

Toronto Subway, you have quiet elegance and effortless grace. You have charm and poise and you intrigue me.

I will wait for you till my last breath. Typography by Sean...

mylifeunlived — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:06:40 +1000

I will wait for you till my last breath.

Typography by Sean Dowling
Photography by Sean Dowling

Released in 1908. has a lovely tail on its upper case Q. notable...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:01:20 +1000

Released in 1908. has a lovely tail on its upper case Q. notable uses include the branding for the Polaroid corporation and the opening crawl in Star Wars.

Okay, let’s deal with this right now so it isn’t hanging over...

mylifeunlived — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:01:04 +1000

Okay, let’s deal with this right now so it isn’t hanging over us. Comic Sans: You hate it, loath it, deride it, etc. Here is the big shock. You are wrong to hate this font. This font is the perfect example of how typefaces have personality. How each and every one ‘says’ something and imbues text with a tone, flavor and ‘character’. What you hate is the way people use this font. It has been misused on emergency vehicles, tombstones and warning signs.

It isn’t the fonts fault, nor is it the fault of the designer, Vincent Connare, a man who has been spat on in the street because others don’t know how to correctly choose a typeface. He designed a font that was intended to be highly legible whilst making large sections of text appear less daunting. And it does that, magnificently. That was his design vision and he achieved that perfectly.

As soon as I hear someone talk about how crap this font is I instantly know that they’re an ‘armchair designer’ or just an average-Joe-on-the-street with no design knowledge. Hating this font is such a populist, undergraduate opinion to have. Every industry has a whipping boy and this is ours, but it’s just plain wrong and inaccurate. Just like how Helvetica is ‘perfect’ (it’s not, but that’s a story for another time). Spend enough time with typography and you will realise that sometimes Comic Sans is an appropriate choice. Sure, many of those occasions may be limited formatting large sections of text for children with learning difficulties so that the words don’t freak them out, but it’s a legitimate typeface.

So all you ‘armchair designers’ out there. Before you start slagging off someone’s work, why don’t you go make a font (other than just vectoring your handwriting) and see if it’s better than Comic Sans I dare you to try and make something that does its job as well as this typeface.

I walk these halls and touch all the walls where i know...

mylifeunlived — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:31:55 +1000

I walk these halls and touch all the walls where i know you’ve stood.

Photography by Sean Dowling
Typography be Sean Dowling

I will carry this love forever. You will carry this hurt...

mylifeunlived — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:12:56 +1000

I will carry this love forever.
You will carry this hurt forever.

Typography by Sean Dowling
Photography by Al Caeiro

There is an ocean between us that cannot be crossed.Typography...

mylifeunlived — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:11:00 +1000

There is an ocean between us that cannot be crossed.

Typography by Sean Dowling
Photography by Sean Dowling