We just released the new Vaud family of typefaces.

Vaud is a family of 40 weights of neutral, yet formally nuanced grotesk typefaces that takes inspiration from Helvetica, Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers and the original metal types from Switzerland, yet had a slightly larger x-height for more pronounced legibility.

Each weight is designed to be highly readable in print and on-screen. The italic variations are true italics, having a single-storied italic a and have been designed for smooth, fluid reading and text-setting. Lovingly spaced and kerned, the Vaud family works equally well for text typesetting and for display design work.

For a limited time, the entire family of typefaces is available for $49 via YouWorkForThem.

The entire family is comprised of a range of weights and a matching display family that features rounded terminals for large-scale display work.

Sans serif fonts, no matter how neutral they feel, are ultimately formally nuanced. I wanted to add to this legacy, but bring in elements of the grotesks of the Stephenson Blake foundry to add humanizing features, creating a formal and conceptual interplay to delight the senses.

Vaud appears neutral in tone, has an enlarged x-height, works great on-screen and in print.

The lighter weights are slightly slimmer than the regular and bold weights to give the typeface more of a vertical feel, inviting readers’ to rapidly read typeset text with a maximum of contrast and a minimum of optical dazzle.

The entire family was given rigorous testing using Craig Mod’s Bibliotype html-based book layout system for on-screen rendering checks and innumerable print proofs using actual text (not Greek) in InDesign.

The Vaud family is hugely diverse and will work well in a variety of contexts and media.

The complete family is on sale now at YouWorkForThem.

There’s been a date, time and location change:
Idea Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Kiyonori Muroga and I will be giving a lecture and week-long workshop at CalArts. The lecture will be on Thursday April 11th at 7pm in the C-Art classroom.

Updated new website for Japanese experience atelier BeBespoke.

Tee shirt design for CalArts Graphic Design Department‘s tee shirt exhibition and sale. This one’s a shoutout to the assorted folks who have taught at the school throughout the years (as well as design educators everywhere) who constantly catch shit from students while simultaneously whipping them into some of the best designers out there. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I am delighted to pay my student loan bill every month. My time earning my MFA at CalArts was some of the best of my life. The folks I studied under taught me so much.

We recently finished up a redesign of BeBespoke’s website – webfonts, some snazzy javascript and a bunch of wonderful imagery.

Idea Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Kiyonori Muroga and I will be giving a lecture and week-long workshop at CalArts. The lecture will be on Thursday April 11th at 7pm in the C-Art classroom.

Identity update for the Washington County Museum. We drew a custom wordmark for the museum with an increased x-height for higher readability and legibility on-screen and in print. Each character was drawn from scratch, improving on the old logo – a default setting of Robert Slimbach’s Arno Caption. Each capital letter has differentiated shapes, while lowercase characters have been made more readable and friendly. Overall, the logo is slightly heavier, allowing for increased presence across all media.

Identity and environmental design for Le Comptoir Occitan, a new Basque restaurant in the Daikanyama district of Tokyo. The project included signage, business cards, posters, flyers, lettering for glassware and stationery.

Photos by Michael Holmes Photography.

A collaboration with Klein Dytham architecture. Ian Lynam Design created the interior graphic design scheme for Google’s new floor of offices in Roppongi. Hundreds of meters of custom wallpapers with bespoke graphics were designed that crossed six complementary graphic themes:

• a stylized koi pond for the office entrance with dual projections
• an abstracted, hyper-pop alternate Tokyo for meeting rooms
• garden brickwork with emphasized decorative elements revealing the hidden gardens of Tokyo for hallways and common areas
• sedate gardens for the relaxation and wellness area
• a modular Tokyo for the technical services area
• windows into the Tokyo of the future created in a psychedelic take on 60s and 70s science fiction book covers

We also designed a trilingual room signage system using an alternate, but complementary graphic language.

Photos by Koichi Torimura & Toshiki Senoue

I contributed to Karen To’s Dead Words project recently. I was asked to typographically illustrate the  term “ebaptization” – a retired word declaring that someone has not been properly baptized from 1659.

Within, I used Queen Mary’s secret cipher to spell out the word – the language of a woman who changed a church, and in a sense, both de- and un-baptize it.

A dead word rendered in a dead language.

We released a new typeface this week – SketchCaslon Italic – a hand-rendered display typeface with its formal base in the structure of the types of William Caslon.

One can obtain SketchCaslon Italic from MyFonts and YouWorkForThem.