12 May 2013
A brief update before this blog is full of spider web. The following 3 weeks I will be in Spain in different typographic events: Jornadas de Tipografía de Granada, also called Tipos de Interés (17-18 May). This is a very special one-day conference because it has been organized by students and its a non-lucrative project. I’ve been(…)
12 Mar 2013
Back in 2005 I was living in the southeast of Spain, in the city of Valencia. I was studying an MA on Graphic Design where I met people as interested as me in typography. In no time my three colleagues –Rubén Arnal, Ainhoa Fernández and Ricardo Peña– and I were deciding to publish a new(…)
18 Feb 2013
An honest confession. Until recently, I’ve never been truly interested in typeface classification, somewhat because I find myself inevitably too lazy for classifying anything (even my Pinterest account is just one big container with everything I like); in part because I find classification rather arbitrary, depending on the needs and thoughts of those who write them, and therefore(…)
19 Jan 2013
Or how to drink throughout the year enjoying typographical events. No doubt that design and type conferences are living a wonderful time, there are conferences everywhere in the globe and traveling has never been so easy. But are they all worth it or are we looking at a saturated offer? Looking through the calendar one can(…)
19 Dec 2012
Off topic is a new section in this blog: topics not particularly about to graphic and typography but somehow related. In this case Pedro Arilla,* a close friend and type designer who is visiting London this Christmas, asked me about second hand bookshops in London. I could have sent him a list of bookshops but(…)
3 Dec 2012
The kerning & the fence it is not a pub, but the typographic problem that the architects Emberton, Franck & Tardre forget to check when the designed the Brunswick Close Estate, in Tompion Street, Islington, London, back in 1956–58. Every time I walk to the grocery store I can see the building front name and(…)
23 Nov 2012
Sometimes when I am in Spain people–friends and family mostly–ask me why I do love London, why I keep trying to survive in this city. Many times, honestly, I dont have a proper answer. I dont think there is only one response to this, but many little reasons, and they are hidden in the streets(…)
14 Nov 2012
Letterpress is definitely not just retro-nostalgia anymore. This is a quite a statement to make, but in the event ‘Letterpress: Something to say’, held at St. Bride, several clues pointed int that direction: there were not nostalgic printers whimpering for ‘the better times’ of hand composition, nor there were old black and white movies with(…)
30 Oct 2012
Commercial lettering copybooks in Britain. Ten case studies from 1895 to 1965: contents, authors, readers and formal aspects* Introduction Since man’s need to undertake commercial transactions, publicising one’s wares with the aim of selling them has been essential. This publicity was mainly in the form of pictorial signs until literacy rates increased at the time of the Industrial Revolution(…)
23 Oct 2012
It is difficult to reconstruct the visual history of graphic design, even more if this gaze is directed towards the present, and it is particularly difficult if you field of study is a phenomenon as lettering, a discipline between calligraphy and typography. Perhaps, the the best way to begin is by defining the fields of action of each one of these(…)
