Well they say the iPad is the future of publishing, so it was only a matter of time before it colonised the past too. John Bonadies’s new project on Kickstarter aims to purchase a shedload of lovely old letterpress type to be digitised, and allow iPad users to make their own virtual letterpress compositions.

These can be used to generate images on the iPad itself for emailing and such, but the really interesting part is that it sounds like the system might eventually let you order an actual letterpress print of your design, and it is planned to hit other platforms such as the Mac soon afterwards.

They’ve got 25% of their $15,000 funding as I write this, and you can join in for as little as $1. Buying a guy on the internet a lovely letterpress collection is a bit like giving somebody else a load of money to go to Disneyland and send you the pictures, but they seem to have some nice open plans for sharing the type as a resource in the future, which hopefully means everyone will see some benefit.

Still, if I could persuade the internet to buy me a DeLorean that would be fantastic.

Letterpress is so specialist now that it has moved beyond the reach of most people who might be casually interested, or only modestly financed, so this is a nice way to open it up a bit. It could also be a great educational tool to teach classes about the history of type and let them get their virtual hands inky.

Head over to Kickstarter and donate some capital. Capital, geddit?

If there’s something out there in the world which combines graphic design and Lego, I’m on it. Take a look at this, letterpress done with Lego, beautiful.

It’s the work of Justin LaRosa and Samuel Cox. I’m simultaneously amazed I haven’t seen this done before, and annoyed I didn’t think of it.

If you like what you see, you can buy prints here. Although I think I fancy having a go at it myself…

…brought to you via @espiekermann. Oh, and Happy New Year by the way, sorry I’ve been quiet recently…

I can’t remember where I found this, but it claims to be Paul Rand’s business card.

I really hope it is.

I’m not sure how long this has been around, but I just stumbled across the ecofont. Basically it’s a standard sans serif font, but using it consumes 20% less ink. That’s down to those little itty bitty holes in the letters, which viewed large look pretty odd, but apparently printed at 9 or 10 points as part of standard office communications, don’t affect the type too much. Apparently.

Hmm, I’ll wait to be convinced on that, appearance on screen in particular has got to be a bit of a nightmare, just imagine the font hinting going on in that sucker! It’s also a shame it can’t make your words 20% more effective as well, but you’ve got to admire the intention.

Of course, Budmo Jiggler by the prolific Ray Larabie has been carrying the torch for years, I’d give good money to see a PowerPoint presentation set in that…

Oh, and I found it in Wired magazine.

I think I’m going to give up and get into another career. I just can’t compete with that.

American Psycho?

Thanks to Graham Linehan, via Twitter.

Bruno Maag of independent type foundry Dalton Maag came over to work yesterday to give us a talk about all things typographic. Describing kerning as a zen like experience he took us through an amazing level of typographic detail, typography in the age of the Mac, and his dislike for Helvetica. His enthusiasm for type is infectious and he even managed to hold the room’s attention through the arcane subject of font hinting.

Dalton Maag are one of the remaining companies who still produce lovingly designed type samplers, books and type sheets. Here are some of the beautiful things he brought with him:

This is Co, a typeface I’m extremely familiar with presented in a beautiful book, produced along with North…

…their iconic typeface for Mini…

…and just a few more corporate faces from the Dalton Maag sample book…

The quote of the evening without question was:

For instance, take VAG Rounded, that’s not a nice font, print that out big and look at it if you want to ruin your weekend.

So now the title of this post makes sense…