Roger Black Launches TYPE
The legendary publication designer behind Rolling Stone, Scientific American, Newsweek, New York, Esquire, and others has launched a print magazine devoted to typography. The first issue of Roger Black’s TYPE: A magazine for people curious about fonts came out in September 2017 and will continue as a quarterly with accompanying website. TYPE is a non-profit with sponsorship from organizations including Morisawa, Type Network, Adobe Typekit, and Google Fonts. To receive all 2018 issues of the magazine, sign up as a charter member ($29/year domestic; $59/year outside the U.S.). Benefits include discounts on TYPE live events, the first of which will take place in New York City in March. typemag.org
“Our focus is on the people behind the letterforms. We tell their stories, and have some fun along the way. We are as enthralled by the future of typography as we are of the past. TYPE talks about current trends, best practices, and the inspirational past with wit, charm, and a bit of a critical eye.” — Roger Black
Covers That Smack You in the Face
“… or that you wanna lick.” That’s how Dutch art director and magazine fanatic Jaap Biemans describes the bar he has set for the magazine covers showcased on his website, coverjunkie.com. Biemans personally curates the collection on a near-daily basis, pulling from covers published around the world. The ones that make his discerning cut are displayed on a scrolling homepage, starting with the most current. Covers are tagged to enable effective search; pre-set categories include award winners, type covers, and coverjunkie’s favorites by year going back to 2008. The site is a great resource for keeping tabs on the latest in cover design and finding inspiration for your own work. Sign up for a free account to maintain a library of your flagged covers, easily accessible at a personalized url: coverjunkie.com/[username]. Biemans accepts nominations at [email protected]. coverjunkie.com
“Personally I think a magazine cover is all about temptation. A cover that rocks is the one you can’t resist the temptation of picking it up, reading it.” — Jaap Biemans
Zamzar That File!
Need to quickly convert a PNG file to a JPG? A PDF to a Word doc? Zamzar is a free online
file converter that makes it incredibly easy. Zamzar supports over 1,200 different conversions —
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Beautiful FREE Images
Need striking images but have little-to-no budget for them? Pixabay is a vibrant online community of creative minds sharing high-quality, copyright-free images and videos. All content is released under Creative Commons CC0 (no rights reserved), which makes it safe to use, modify, and redistribute without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist — even when used for commercial purposes. A free registration is required to upload files and download full-sized images. To find just-the-right image, search by type (photo, vector graphic, illustration, and video) and, optionally, by orientation, size, color, or subject (20 pre-determined). Submitted content must meet Pixabay’s quality standards. pixabay.com
A Color Picker for
the Real World
The iPhone app Cone enables you to identify colors around you using your phone’s camera. Point the target to any color — in the sky, on a building, in a logo — and the app will give you the hexadecimal, RGB, and CMYK values, as well as the closest Pantone color. If there’s too much movement on the screen, use the “freeze frame” feature to still the shot for a closer look. Save colors to your library and share them with others via custom URLs. Bring a little fresh inspiration to your design work. $2.99 in the iPhone App Store. coneapp.io
Harvest of
Wisdom
If you’re interested in looking back — way back — to understand the full history of graphic communication and its influence on civilization, watch “Harvest of Wisdom.” The film, originally produced 20 years ago by printing industry scholar Nolan Moore, was updated in 2014 through a joint effort by the Nolan Moore Memorial Education Foundation and the Graphic Communication Institute at Cal Poly. It’s a time-tested, fascinating look at the role of written and printed communication in our world. Available online at tinyurl.com/HarvestOfWisdom.
Pantone Names Color of the Year
The Pantone Color of the Year for 2018 is … drumroll … PANTONE® 18-3838 Ultra Violet. “Inventive and imaginative, Ultra Violet lights the way to what is yet to come,” states the company. “A dramatically provocative and thoughtful purple shade, PANTONE® 18-3838 Ultra Violet communicates originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking that points us toward the future.” The Pantone Color of the Year is selected by the Pantone Color Institute, which forecasts global color trends and advises companies on color in brand identity and product development, for the application and integration of color as a strategic asset. There you have it. Will you use Ultra Violet this year?tinyurl.com/PantoneColor2018
