Chicago | August 2015

I visited Chicago for a long weekend in late August 2015 and absolutely fell in love with it’s architecture, people, food, and overall accessibility. 

Here are some of my favorite shots from the trip! It’s an odd mix of everything I admired about Chicago: the eclectic mix of architecture, art & design styles; the inventive food; the welcoming people; and the beauty of the city at large.

Around the world with type

These are stunning. Super simple, elegant, and sharp. 

Favorite letters: C, H, O, R

Type Exercise: 376

This video shows the process and collection of covers that were designed (and presumably pitched) for the new novel Hausfrau.

I love this! I could have continued to watch for another 10 minutes. 

Best of 2014 (Movie posters / Album covers / Book covers)

Movie posters

• Gone Girl: One of my most anticipated movies of 2014 was David Fincher’s adaption of Gillian Flynn’s thriller “Gone Girl”. As posters and production stills started being released, posters like this one not only spoke to Fincher’s signature style, but also a visual adaption of Flynn’s mysterious and haunting book. The cheeky/clever use of the text and it’s meaning work incredibly well as a teaser for the film. 
• Inherent Vice: As of this post, I have not seen Inherent Vice, but the poster immediately grabbed my attention. The poster feels both referential of earlier decades and completely new and fresh. The design is playful, and the typography is elegant and purposeful. The composition is somewhat expected, but all of the pieces come together to create a memorable poster. 
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1: The Hunger Games movie franchise has always had some incredible creative direction and marketing rollout. While this isn’t the full movie poster, this teaser photograph/poster conveys so much interest and mystery in one image. The all-white photograph is haunting and makes the subjects look both statuesque and futuristic. 

Album covers

• St. Vincent, St. Vincent: I’ve written about this album cover before here, but it’s still one of my favorites from the year (and one of my favorite albums.) St. Vincent’s bright, rich, and enigmatic sound is replicated with a simple, stirring, and (fake) minimalistic-inspired cover. The typography is weird and geometric, her pose is regal and elegant, and the severe contrast of colors work to make the cover visually stunning.
• FKA twigs, LP1: There’s something so unique, moving, and subtle about FKA twigs’ music, and this cover helps to communicate all of those things. Photographed and manipulated by artist Jesse Kanda, the bright, stirring, surreal cover is one that I think will be continually regarded as an important and “classic” album cover.
• Tycho, Awake:  This minimalistic and restrained album cover is elegant in it’s simplicity. The range of colors and geometry convey the ambient and calming music that Tycho releases. 

Book covers

• Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle: While almost headache-inducing, this weird, challenging, and maze of a book cover is really eye-catching. The two-color cover evokes a sense of mystery, curiosity, and confusion - all while being visually appealing and well-designed.
• Your Face in Mine by Jess Row: I love this book cover for it’s simplicity, character, and elegance in it’s geometry. The abstracted geometric shapes come together to form an interesting shape (I see a geometric interpretation of an ampersand.) I particularly enjoy the change in typeface for the word “in” - it’s simple and almost goes by without notice, but everything comes together to form a simple, geometric, and pleasing cover.
• The Silent History by Eli Horowitz, Kevin Moffett, Matthew Derby: This cover utilizes a clever typographic solution - a combination of geometric letters and blank spaces, with hand-written text set inside. The book is about a new generation of children who are born unable to understand language. It’s a dense topic, but the cover is deceptively simple and features some mystery in the combination of the set/written text. 

Books I Read in 2014

Goal: 14

Total: 32

Memoirs: 7 (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Medium Raw, I Don’t Know What You Know Me From, Heat, Joan Rivers: I Hate Everyone Starting With Me, My Horizontal Life, Not That Kind of Girl)

Books with left-justified type in the upper left corner: 4 (In The Woods, Tenth of December, Not That Kind of Girl, An Object of Beauty)

“Classics”: 6 (The Importance of Being Earnest, The Glass Menagerie, Of Mice and Men, Our Town, The Stranger, Frankenstein)

Books written by authors who aren’t white men: 17 (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Dark Places, This Is How You Lose Her, In The Woods, I Don’t Know What You Know Me From, Harry Potter 1-5, Tell The Wolves I’m Home, Joan Rivers: I Hate Everyone Starting With Me, Where’d You Go Bernadette?, My Horizontal Life, Sharp Objects, Not That Kind of Girl, Frankenstein)

Favorites: In The Woods, Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore, An Object of Beauty

Favorite covers: This Is How You Lose Her, In The Woods, Where’d You Go Bernadette, An Object of Beauty

What are some books you would recommend?

Type Safari with James Victore

This is really fun and feels very relatable.  James and his driver are clearly driving around REAL parts of a city (in this case Brooklyn and Queens) - seeing that wonderful mix of big name brands and smaller outfits, with both beautiful and sometimes unimagined design.  

I’d love to do this in Philadelphia. *starts thinking*

Found via The Casual Optimist

Album Art / CD Cover Designs

In choosing these 10 album covers, I tried to select 10 that would ultimately catch my eye if I saw them in a store or advertised online or in person. Many of the covers feature photography and typography working simultaneously to create one final composition.  In these covers, I wanted examples of the typography adding to the cover, and not looking like an afterthought.

With the more experimental and illustrative covers, I tried to select different styles - all which feel very appropriate to the tone/genre of the music. With the Grizzly Bear and the Shins albums in particular, the illustration styles are geometric and experimental.  These two album covers also utilize the famous rule-of-thirds. 

Björk always manages to produce absolutely vivid, striking, and bizarre covers that often come off looking as if they belong in a high-fashion editorial magazine. For some other examples of her artwork, click here and here.

casaltaxavier:

The entire collection of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” made with 0.10mm - 0.35mm - 0.70mm dots.

This collection was made for a workshop and a conference that I held in the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point during the NowHere conference, an annual event organized by the UWSP-AIGA chapter.

More  details on Behance

Limited edition prints are available - Store

Casalta Xavier
Facebook | Tumblr | Instagram

I am blown away at this.  If I am ever 5% as talented, patient, and dedicated as Casalta Xavier…

Little: Ephemera

Design goals.

via DesignWorkLife

Font Men - SXSW 2014 Official Selection

Food Maps | Henry Hargreaves and Caitlin Levin

Maps & food? No brainer.

whatanart:

Artist: Lex Wilson

3D Typographic Drawings That Seem to Pop Out of the Page

His Behance page is so inspiring (and envy-inducing.)

New Year, Same You

Happy New Year, everyone!

Good Luck

Hand-drawn typography, scanned and not cleaned up. 

Handmade Thank You Notes

I made some homemade collaged thank you notes for some of my family members who helped make this past birthday special.  

I wanted each card to be unique and have a different style/aesthetic to them.  Collages were made from assorted magazines.

Plus, who doesn’t love snail mail? I’m a huge proponent of actually hand-writing thank you notes.  It goes a lot farther than you might think. Send a thank you note this holiday season.  It won;t go unnoticed.

Typography | Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Juneau, Skagway. the Yukon)

I’m (finally….) getting around to editing/organizing my pictures from my trip with my family back in August 2013 to Seattle + Alaska.  

More photos to come.
(All photos shot with iPhone 5 and edited in Photoshop CS6.)

© Herbie Hickmott 2013

Gravity alternative fan-made posters.

I saw Gravity over the weekend and found it equally visually stunning and frightening. No space travel for me!

I saw a bunch of fan-made posters bumping around the internet this week and really like these three in particular.  

(1) - via deviantArt
There’s so much beauty to look at in this complex poster (kind of like the film itself!) The illustration style is a surreal mix of realism with graphic undertones.  The clever division of space and image not only creates an interesting and arresting image, but also speaks to the general plot arc of the film (without 100% spoiling anything…kind of…) The minimalist/distressed typography is great, too.

(2) - via Chris Thornley’s tumblr
Another instance of great illustration and powerful visual imagery to convey the film’s chaotic and disorienting subject matter. I love the way the typography recedes into the poster.  

(3) - via Tom Muller
Super simple, clever, and powerful.  The little touch of the arm at the top is perfect.

Inspiration: Vintage French Typography

I’m working on a friend’s Save the Date (and eventually wedding invitations) and have been researching vintage French typography, labels, flourishes, and style in general.

A friend of mine at work sent me this link today, and I decided to have some fun.  

Can’t get much better than fried eggs, typography, and some unlikely inspiration. 

Check out more HandMadeFonts here.