This lit­tle clip from Spinal Tap could have been made for 2011. Let’s hope that the year will pro­vide that extra “push over the cliff”.

spinaltap_11_web

The New Sci­en­tist has some cool videos on its site.

Sim­ple opti­cal illu­sions can make it seem like the progress bars on your file down­loads are mov­ing faster than they actu­ally are (see video above).

Rip­ple effects and pulses of light are among the tricks com­puter pro­gram­mers can use to keep you wait­ing those extra sec­onds.

Sound­Fla­vors to the res­cue! from Eden­spiek­er­mann on Vimeo.

What is the­atre? It reflects real­ity, its own take on it. So we took the name, mir­rored it and placed the reflected image behind the leg­i­ble one. That was turned into an alpha­bet which, set in two colours, says the name of the the­atre plus other head­lines: Stadss­chouw­burg Utrecht. The lit­tle movie is a short overview of one of the best projects that has come out of the Ams­ter­dam office of Eden­spiek­er­mann recently. If I say so myself…

stadsschouwburg_web

Every day I get emails from stu­dents who have a project to fin­ish. They ask me about my work, my opin­ions and often want me to send them my fonts as that would make the design of their the­sis much eas­ier. More often than not they ask about things they could have found out about if they had only spent a bit more time look­ing around or by going to a library, instead of just check­ing the first page of a Google query. So I tell them that I will answer proper ques­tions that are directed at me and that con­cern my work, my expe­ri­ence or even my opin­ions, but that I will only do so once they’ve done their home­work.
Just the other day I got a request from a stu­dent who is inter­ested in the typog­ra­phy on foot­ball shirts. Great topic, and one that has been writ­ten about a lot. But he obvi­ously hadn’t looked any­where before writ­ing to me. He even asks me why this »infor­ma­tion is lim­ited and dif­fi­cult to get hold of?«.
But read our cor­re­spon­dence for yourselves.

***

Dear Mr Spiek­er­mann,
My name is Rajeev Saroy and I am cur­rently study­ing Graphic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Wolver­hamp­ton. The final year of my degree requires me to write a dis­ser­ta­tion on a topic of inter­est related to a major sub­ject within my degree. Foot­ball is a very big part of my life and I have always ques­tioned the typog­ra­phy on foot­ball t-shirts. This is the sub­ject that I have cho­sen to explore and inves­ti­gate.
I am hav­ing great dif­fi­cul­ties in gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion around my cho­sen sub­ject and I have put together a few ques­tions that I would like you to answer in as much detail as you pos­si­bly can.

1.     Who designs the type­faces that are employed on foot­ball t-shirts?

2.     Why is this infor­ma­tion lim­ited and very dif­fi­cult to get hold of?

3.     Why is it that many foot­ball teams can­not choose their own shirt num­bers and fonts?

4.     In the Eng­lish Pre­mier League, all teams are obliged to obtain the same type­face. Who autho­rises this?

5.     Type­faces and the arrange­ment on foot­ball t-shirts is spe­cial job for graphic design­ers. How many design­ers have con­tributed towards this that you are aware of?

6.     If type­faces are not designed by Graphic design­ers, who has cre­ated them in the past and who has it been approved by?

7.     Do FIFA, UEFA and the FA have a set of rules and reg­u­la­tions, which restrict the true form of type? Is it due to these rules that type is deformed, chopped and changed?

8.     Once a type­face is cre­ated, who approves it?

9.     Is typog­ra­phy neglected on foot­ball t-shirts? If the answer is yes, why is this? Is it down to mega cor­po­ra­tions or is it due to the lack of typo­graphic knowl­edge by foot­ball organisations?

10. Are there any con­tem­po­rary typog­ra­phers that can con­tribute their skills towards type on foot­ball t-shirts?

11. Can new/existing type­faces replace ones that have been manip­u­lated?
If there are any issues or views that you would like to men­tion, please feel free to do so.
May I thank you for your time and co-operation.

RAJEEV SAROY.

***

Dear Rajeev,
most of your ques­tions can only be answered by the peo­ple in the foot­ball busi­ness. How should I know who approves the design? Why do you ask me why this infor­ma­tion is dif­fi­cult to get hold of? Aren’t you the stu­dent who is sup­posed to do the assignment?

Could it be that you haven’t done your home­work? Surely this is some­thing the FA or FIFA will answer. Those are scary bureau­cra­cies, but I’m not going to tackle them on your behalf.

There is plenty of infor­ma­tion out there, on the blogs, on typophile.com. The mak­ers of kit, like Puma, Umbro, Adi­das et al com­mis­sion this stuff, of course, because they make it.
One designer in Lon­don has actu­ally designed type for foot­ball shirts (Puma?): Bruno Maag, of Dal­ton Maag.

Ask him, but do more of your home­work first. If foot­ball is a very big part of your life, then get off your arse and look around. Of course it’s dif­fi­cult, but it is also dif­fi­cult for me to spend part of my spare time on a sat­ur­day answer­ing emails from kids who haven’t even looked at the infor­ma­tion from the asso­ci­a­tions, the mak­ers of kit.

Being a stu­dent means learn­ing to learn, not sim­ply writ­ing an email and hop­ing that some­body else will do the work for you. There was a world before Google.

Deutsche Welle TV, Germany’s chan­nel for view­ers abroad, filmed an inter­view with me for their pro­gramme euro­maxx. Unfor­tu­nately, the Eng­lish voiceover keeps call­ing me a “font designer” and refers to type­faces as “let­ter fonts”. I insist that we design type­faces. Those are then made into fonts which is what you buy.

I’ll have the oppor­tu­nity to make that point and oth­ers when the exhi­bi­tion opens at the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin on 15 March 2011. They’ve asked me to tell my story because I have been awarded the Fed­eral Ger­man Design Prize 2011 as a Life­time Achieve­ment Award from the Ger­man Design Council.

A link to the orig­i­nal Ger­man ver­sion of this video can be found over on the Ger­man por­tion of this blog; just click the link at the top of the page.

Swedish pub­lish­ers Bon­nier demon­strate how they imag­ine the future of news­pa­pers on tablets:

found on kress.de

Erik van Blokland’s lit­tle movie for his FF Kos­mik is 20 old. A designer in Ger­many man­aged to open the orig­i­nal floppy disk on an old Mac and con­vert the Quick­Time movie to the cur­rent MP4 for­mat.