typography
“The Society of Typographic Aficionados is organizing Font Aid V — a collaborative project uniting the typographic and design communities with a goal of raising funds to expedite relief efforts after the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan.” Send in a glyph to be included in a font for sale. The deadline is next Friday: March 25, 2011. Previously: Font Aid IV
18 March 2011 | Do Good Design
Lovely type from Brian Gosset. Happy New Year!
Type and Nation, 5
Via Language Log I found this bit on Another battle of the alphabets shaping up in Central Asia:
“A statement by a Kazakhstan minister that his country will eventually shift from a Cyrillic-based alphabet to a Latin-based script and reports that some scholars in Dushanbe are considering dropping another four Russian letters from the Tajik alphabet suggest that a new battle of the alphabets may again be shaping up in Central Asia.
Russian commentators have reacted by suggesting that this is yet another effort by nationalists in those countries to reduce the role of the Russian language and hence of the influence of Russian culture, but in fact the controversy over any such change is far more complicated than that.”
Not a new story, Kazakhstan conducted a feasibility study on the switch back in 2007, but it seems to be gaining momentum. And not just a matter of international geopolitics either — Kazakhstan has a sizable Russian population in the north, a source of tension within the country.
While Cyrillic is the official script of Kazakhstan, the Latin alphabet is already used by the Kazakh diaspora in Turkey, Western Europe and the US, while Kazakhs in China use a modified Arabic alphabet. There’s more on Kazakh alphabets on Wikipedia and more on typography and nationalism here.
Visual AIDS has posted a small gallery of typographically-driven work from artists with HIV. In context, some of the images are quite devastating. Here’s the curator’s statement. 
More on typography and nationalism: Victor Mair looks at implications of the memo, possibily orginating in the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, advising to broadcasters in the PRC to stop using popular English-based acronyms such as NBA, WTO and GDP.Related: see his fascinating post on the invasion of China and Taiwan by the roman letter Q.
The Society of Typographic Aficionados is calling for designers to submit a black and white "ampersand" icon to build a collaborative font that will be sold to raise funds for relief efforts in Haiti. Previous Font Aid fonts have benefitted UNICEF to help war and disaster refugees, victims of the September 11 tragedies in the US, and relief efforts in countries affected by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis.Type and Nation, 4
After 50 years of the US Government’s forced assimilation policy, the native Lushootseed language was near extinction. Without a written tradition, by the 1960’s the history of the culture had all but vanished. Only five tribal elders were known to be fluent in the language. A preservation effort was mounted to record stories and create a phonetic alphabet. In December 2008, the Tulalip Tribes Lushootseed Department commissioned Juliet Shen to design a complete font solely for Lushootseed. Their mission is to restore Lushootseed to everyday use. Read more.Agitate! Educate! Organize!
My interview with Lincoln Cushing, co-author of Agitate! Educate! Organize!: American Labor Posters is up at Design Observer along with a brief slideshow of selections from the book.
We talk about the book, its origins, and the trouble with political posters.
100+ Years of Design Manifestos
Since the days of radical printer-pamphleteers, design and designers have a long history of fighting for what’s right and working to transform society. The rise of the literary form of the manifesto also parallels the rise of modernity and the spread of letterpress printing.
This list of design manifestos was buried in a previous post but deserves its own permalink. The original list was largely drawn from Mario Piazza’s presentation at the 2009 conference Più Design Può in Florence, though I’ve edited and added to it. I’ve also incorporated links where I was able to find them.
