Click on the TV. Straight to the Olympics. NBC stinks, by the way, at showing this incredible athletic event. I get way more talk from non-athletes than staight up competition (this whole gripe is for an angry strongo comic on another occassion). Ski Jumping!!! Cool!!! Don't know a single athlete. Don't care! It's the Olympics! It's all about the flag on the outfit. Very exciting. Then.... the mustache. This talented jumper has an old school almost handlebar that is mighty cool. He jumps amazing. Slides over to the camera, and as usual, pops the skis off and gets them into the TV screen as soon as possible.
THEN.... The ski comes into view. It's beautiful. Clean. Gridded. Helvetica. Very Swiss. Even as I type this out and the image is before me, I keep glancing up and checking it out. Great spacing. Fits snuggly but breathes well. I would hang the ski in my house like any other piece of cool design that I may find. You can check out the skis and the typography used a bit closer at the Slatnar site here.
GO USA!!!!
Over the past few decades, my sketchbooks have slowly switched from general drawings of my surroundings and random doodles to lettering. Letter forms are inherently beautiful when done well and inherently difficult to do well. That search for making something your own and making it hold it's beauty is a challenge that drives an amazing amount of people all over the net. My nerdiness isolated me prior to the Internet. Once I made my way into the modern age, I realized that my disorder is plaguing people all over the world.
As an elementary art teacher, I am always looking for a way to inspire my students to look closer at the world around them and creatively analyze it. The "problem solvers" are what schools should be turning out. The art room is a great place to kick start this process.
When the first two paragraphs mesh, you get student names/initials as design. Some students were asked their interests and others I took as a straight typographic problem to solve. Some choices were based on student personality while others are reflective of my state of mind at the time. (Sophie, the first one shown, is my neice, not a student)....
