Eek: Obsene!
March 11th, 2009Daniel and me were walking into a room under renovation and found these words slowly deforming themselves into various forms of obscene words. How rude:
Work: It’s tight
March 11th, 2009
The size for this years (or last) Kancil Awards annual is 21cm x 28cm. Paper is sponsored by Antalis Malaysia; Fine Print Edixion Matt White 120GSM. Probably the only book I’ve worked with up to date with the tightest kerning (generally). General typographic rules are to allow extra kerning on text in all caps but in this scenario, unkerned, and even decreased kerning points in certain cases.
General headlines are flushed right, started off with a virgule (more commonly known as a slash or frontslash), pending on whether the category falls under a particular main section. If an element falls under the category, the underscore will come in then.
Typeface is H&F Knockout. Set in 12 columns with 9.638pt of gutter space. Baseline grids are set to increase every 4.286pt. (I know, designer jargon)
I guess some might argue that I’m putting legibility after styling but in this case I would say it’s pretty much what I was ready to do and had in mind. Opposing last years FF Super Grotesk driven design.
Anyway enjoy:
Work: Georgetown typeface
December 21st, 2008Just three basic rules to use the typeface. If you want the Cheap Chip release 1, which contains the Myra font and Georgetown font and some bonus features, drop me an email at gordonated [at] gmail.com.
Work: Hello & the retro poster.
November 13th, 2008I was kind of surprised to discover that my poster design for the Retrospective_my exhibition actually made it through the beautiful exhibition held in conjunction with Kyoorius Designyatra Malaysia. Honestly, I thought that my poster is the most not-eye-pleasing thing and not-worthy to be exhibited in that beautiful exhibition thing.
Okay, the poster is really not a cool poster in my honest opinion. Robert Bringhurst advised on kerning; either you kern modestly or not at all. I ignored and totally rebelled against it. It took me only about 3 minutes to put the text together.
Typeface; it’s actually a typeface* made for a project with something to do with culture. Well, since I made it for a cultural project, and this is suppose to be an exhibition on the intriguing retrospective of Malaysia’s past and history, it works fine for me.
Plus, I really didn’t vote. Had to attend a very close friends wedding in an island far away. And I really did felt an honest sense of regret that I didn’t vote. It was an ugly one.
Point is, it’s not meant to be cool and hip. I love my country but I do hope for a better future for us all. I didn’t mean to be rude to all designers who think I did not put in effort and passion in my work. I felt a better projection of my voice on this subject matter that way; and at the same time test and see if that typeface works fine or not in 30% K under the worst condition (a poster on the floor!).
Lastly, chances are, you might have read the my biodata on the leaflet in the exhibition, saw this link to this site and wonder who am I; hello, I’m Gordon who did not graduate properly for real.
*The typeface was based on this really vintage signage my colleagues found when they were on that “cultural” project road-trip tour. They thought it was really cool and since we had someone in the studio who is willing to labour for it, why not? Tried to retain the proportions of the original typeface as much as possible; top contours were more angled while the lower ones rounder. The width of each letters had to be balanced, in respect of the ascender height because there’s no lowercase version for this.
Had to increase the metric kerning space of each alphabet in-respective of the nature which this typeface came from, the loosely kerned signage. So do not use optical kerning when using this typeface ok? It’ll look too modern believe me. Below are the reference images:
And some Fontlab doodles:
Work: Some drafts
August 19th, 2008I was digging through some old files to recover a certain image for a certain type of project for a certain client. Guess what I found!
I remember sticking these drafts up on the glass door sometime ago and photographing them. As you can see, I had a great time with my limited photography skills. Still one of my favorite projects so far.
Penguin Great Ideas 3
August 8th, 2008By now, some of you would have guessed that I’m a Penguin geek. My collection of Great Ideas (of which some are not displayed here) is not complete but I guess enough to prove the value these books have to me. Do check out their amazing website.
Idea 321
May 7th, 2008Here you go; Idea magazine, for March 2007, volume 55, issue 2, no. 321. The green sticker is actually the price tag. Features the Works of Jan Tschichold from 1902 – 1974. With essays by Christopter Burke (who also authored Active Literature, another Tschichold book focusing on earlier works), Robin Kinross, John D. Berry, Jean-François Porchez on a little bit of insights on Sabon Next, etc. It also features his Penguin years, which is pretty insightful and serves as a good addition to geeks who dig the Penguin design history (read Penguin by Design by Phil Baines for more insights).
The Gill Sans (left) & Uhertype (right) spread: