inside envision

advertising + branding blog

Typography as Art

House Industries type foundry never ceases to impress and inspire with their masterful silkscreen creations. Especially when it comes to their use of layering techniques and typography as image. Their latest limited edition tour posters for John Mayer are no exception. They created a rich typographic effect by layering metallic copper, white and fluorescent red inks on French Paper’s Steel Blue Construction stock. The font used on the posters comes from their Photo-Lettering collection.

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House Industries also produced “ready to hang” birch plywood units for the LA show.

I've followed the creative force that is Delaware-based House Industries since my college days in Maryland. What I love most about their brand is that they are so much more than just another type foundry. Their artistic passion and attention to detail is apparent in everything they create. And of course, their typographic skills are killer. I suggest heading over to the House Industries show & tell blog for creative inspiration.

– Leigh, the newest member of The Envision Group team, fresh from the east coast.

A Lost Art

I recently came across the work of London-based hand-lettering artist, Alison Carmichael, and was a little blown away. I was immediately struck, not only by the artist's skill, but by what her ornate and stylized creations bring to the work it adorns—elevating what might have been just another clever ad into something more.

Sometimes, her lettering is the star, it becomes the product, drawing the reader in to discover the message described by her beautifully nestled strokes:


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Sometimes, it serves to capture and instantly communicate the spirit of that which it embellishes:

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And it is always rendered without the aid of computers, or fancy software. Just pen, ink, brush, an evident love of letters, and a steady hand. Enjoy. If you'd like to see more, visit the artist's website here.

—Tom

Temple of Type

Sometimes I come across a piece of design that is too beautiful not to share. Such is the case with this letterpress poster of the Salt Lake Temple, by designer Cameron Moll (pronounced Mall). The result of roughly 100 hours of work, Moll used nothing but characters from the Bickham Script Pro, Engravers MT, and Epic typefaces to recreate the Salt Lake Temple. The finished work is astonishing in its complexity, delicacy, and precision.

Click on the images to embiggen:

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—Tom

God is in the details

The headline of this post, a quote generally attributed to Gustave Flaubert, simply means that details matter. A variation of the quote, “the devil is in the details,” warns of the appearance of flaws under scrutiny should said details be ignored.

Corey Holms is a guy who clearly knows about details. A designer/typographer responsible for The Sopranos logo, as well as typefaces developed for Sony's PSP and Veer, Corey's most recent project was recreating the logotype for the new film, Watchmen.

In a recent Lettercult interview, Corey discusses what changes he made to the Watchmen logotype as it appeared on the original graphic novel.

Corey immeditely noticed something was off about the type. (I noticed it right away. You probably will, too. If not, you won't be able to unsee it once you've seen it).

Here's the original Watchmen logotype as it appears on the graphic novel:


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And here is the rebuilt version used for the film, posters, etc.:

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See the difference? The “C” on the original logotype has been vertically squashed to sit on the baseline, and, thus, looks smaller than the rest of the letters in the title (not to mention that it breaks a typographic “commandment” by disproportionately scaling the type, a pet peeve of mine). Not a big deal, you say? Wrong! Little differences like this have a tendency to multiply. Left unchecked, they can easily become the difference between good design and great design.

—Tom