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This is an on-going project to showcase current trends in design and typography. To kick-start the project, Six Black Pens has asked some of Australia’s prominent art directors and designers to submit their favourite single typographic element, whether this be a letter, number or symbol. The following examples show the variety in not only current typography, but also in the tastes of the creatives working today.
(Scroll to the right to see what they chose)
Also see: SIX OF THE BEST ILLUSTRATIONS
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Element: Uppercase 'E'
Typeface:
Cottonwood
Tony Rice, Design Director
The Australian Financial Review Magazine
"Designed in 1991, by Barbara Lind with Kim Buker
Chansler and Joy Redick. Dunno why... Just gets
me every time I look at it because it’s so ugly it's charming.
I would say it makes for great giant blackletter caps
in a special issue." |
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Element: Snowflake
Typeface:
ITC Zapf Dingbats
John Yates, Art Director
Readers Digest, Australia
"Don't ask me why I like it. It's a symbol for a quite random thing. Maybe it's the symmetry." |
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Element: Lowercase 'g'
Typeface:
New Century Schoolbook Roman
Sam Wright, Art Director
Wish Magazine, The Australian
"I've always loved New Century Schoolbook Roman lowercase ‘g’. The first magazine I art directed Belle Entertaining used New Century Schoolbook as its
display font and I used to have to trace out the
headlines – I always loved tracing the 'g'."
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Element: Pound sign
Typeface: Groteque Light
Lee Liversedge, Director
Stop.Edit
"Pound sign, because I don't get to use them
very much these days.
Something very nostalgic
and 'British' about this curly version in Grotesque Light." |
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Element: Uppercase 'Q'
Typeface: New Baskerville
Oliver Towning, Art Director
Boss, The Australian Financial Review
"Love the flowing lines and the curves of its tail." |
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Element: Lowercase 'g'
Typeface:
Clarendon
Chris Tappenden, Creative Director
Daemon Group
"At the moment I’m a big fan of type elements
that have personality & look like caricatures –
probably spent too much time watching kids TV with my son!
For me slab serifs tend to have the most amount of
personality.
My favourite is the Clarendon 'g' because
it looks like a slightly portly asthmatic bug." |
Do you agree, or disagree?
The different choices made in typography can be seen as fairly
subjective,
often one designer's reliable old typeface can cause another
designer to cringe. For example, Six Black Pens would happily see DIN
deleted from every
font
folder in the land – but you still see it around,
so obviously somebody still loves it!
Email through your favourite type element (anything but DIN!) to: sixofthebest@sixblackpens.com. Please also include a short blurb
on why you rate it, and include an outlined vector as an example.
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