Phaeton…”a very informal formal font”
Philadelphia illustrator Kevin Cornell and California graphic designer Randy Jones have teamed up to create an exciting new font family—Phaeton. It’s tall and ornate, yet neat and simple…a proper Victorian design with a handwritten, organic feel.
Kevin himself sums it up best: “It’s like the typographic equivalent of showing up to brunch in a tuxedo that’s all rumpled because you were out the entire night before, carousing and merry-making, and making gentleman’s bets on the horses.”
He’s right—it does actually make you think of gentleman’s bets and coattails, and that’s what they were going for…a Victorian inspired serif. Kevin’s research for another project, a graphic novel version of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, included a lot of Victorian ornamentation. In fact, the name ‘Phaeton’ is a type of early 19th century carriage.
It’s not just pretty either, it has nearly 600 characters, ornate banners and even 49 glyphs for words like ‘and’, ‘the’ and ‘with’. One of Cornell’s favorite features is the lowercase swash variants designed by Randy…”I’m also partial to the upper-case ‘K’. It’s hard to find a good ‘K’ sometimes, I use it a lot.”
For the most part Kevin drew the characters and Randy translated them into an actual font. Phaeton started as a side project for both of them back in the Fall of 2008. They sent the beta version to Veer by May of 2009, and it was officially released two months later in July.
Fans of the font can look forward to another collaboration from the duo; a san-serif font to compliment Phaeton. No word on a time range yet, but based on this first project, it’s definitely something to keep an eye out for.
North to Vancouver ’010
With the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver only hours away, and the Alpine Skiing qualifier already in full swing. I wanted to reflect upon the Olympic logo, which if you haven’t already, are going to be seeing a French-Canadian ton of, before the fortnight of games are over.
The logo is supposed to represent a monolithic Inuit character known as an Inukshuk. The Inuits were a tribe of people native to the Vancouver area. The name of the character is Illanaaq and it means friendship in Inuit. The illustration is chalk full of symbolism, which I guess, all Olympic logos are supposed to be. The green smiling head is for the coastal forests, the blue arms for the coast, the sky blue torso for the mountains, the red left leg is for the maple leaf, which, who doesn’t associate Canada with the maple leaf, and finally the yellow leg is for the sun. The CEO of the Vancouver Games said that the figure “reflects the sheer joy for winter sport and draws its strength from the true spirit of teamwork.” The ironic thing is that nothing about this identity equates with the speed, grace and athleticism of the Winter Games. My real question is what does the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man have to do with Alpine skiing, the Luge and speed skating. If you can’t tell, I’m not overly psyched on the 2010 Olympic logo. It seems as though the Inukshuk symbolizes so many things, but it missed out on the one that matters…sport.
I guess it could be worse, though. It could be as bad as the 2012 Summer Olympics logo from London, which looks like it could grace the cover of the newest Sex Pistols record. Stay tuned and enjoy the Games…
Investors Rule!
Charles Schwab! “Talk to Chuck!” the award-winning campaign introduced by Euro RSCG Worldwide in the fall of 2005 recently took on a new look. The new “Investors Rule” TV spots feature Schwab “investors” digitally animated using “millions” of tiny dialog balloons created by San Francisco-based Mekanism. Previous spots were widely recognized for their distinctive rotoscoping animation technique originated by Mekanism and illustrator, Aaron Sacco. Personally, I prefer the new look to the original rotoscoping technique which struck me as grotesque.
Best of all, the Charles Schwab brand is suddenly more vibrant. There’s an expanded color palette—a rainbow collection of chroma-rich hues—used to fill the oft repeated dialog balloons with passion comparable to an investor’s dream. The full spectrum of colors associated with the Schwab brand is indicative of the wide spectrum of investment strategies available to young and old, conservative and aggressive individual investors.
Charles Schwab now owns the dialog ballon just like Target owns the red bullseye. If you’re questioning whether this discount brokerage firm’s claim to dialoging with investors is a credible one, visit their website and see for yourself. One nifty tool is the Schwab Portfolio Checkup that enables Schwab investors and non-Schwab investors alike to compare their current investments with their overall aims. If you have any other questions, just call Charles Schwab at 800-435-9050. They’ll be happy to talk with you!