Alex Varanese

I really like this guy's work. His website is really nice to read and generally looks great!

Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works

I read this in first year....honest! Ok so I've only just picked it up and read it this week but it was still really handy. This book about typography by Eric Spiekermann (FF Meta, ITC Officina, FF Info, LoType and Berliner Grotesk) and E.M. Ginger covers typography from the Middle Ages to forms and tables.

It really does cover everything: mobile phone screens, websites, letterpress, advertising, novels, brands, engraving, calligraphy, newspapers...the list goes on. If ever you start a new project in a field you are unsure of, I would highly recommend picking up this book and reading the section about it. It made me realise that even boring blank box forms deserve some care and attention.

50 Examples of Vintage Typography

Check out this article on vintage typography, well worth a few minutes of your time!

Leeds Industrial Museum

Today I crossed the mysterious bridge between Frankie & Bennie's and Aire of the Dog to the Leeds Industrial Museum (Armley Mills). This was a great little museum and for £1.50 you couldn't really complain!

The museum covers the cloth industry in Leeds, Film and Cinema, Letterpress, Tools, Engines and Machinery. It's main concentration is on the clothing industry as that was the original use for the mill. It has hundreds of machines on display and there are loads of pictures of the mills in operation.

The museum has its own cinema in which it plays a video on the industries in Leeds, mainly from the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The entire video is made up of period footage.
A section of interest to me was of course the Letter/Printing Press section. In it are two large chests of drawers which wide shallow drawers which would once have been filled with lead presses for each of the popular "founts" (fonts). A fount was made up of more than just the 26 letters of the alphabet, if I remember correctly, each fount had 34 "e"s alone. I was suprised to see labels on the drawers for Gill Sans and Caslon.
Layout of a drawer.