Indie trends in typography

[Claire Bibio]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

hellooo everybody! a friend told me that today we will all die so i want to ask a quick question before all the smart people are gone. lately i have been going to many exhibitions and design events and one thing which has caught my attention is that i see a trend among independent hipster publications and designers who mostly use fonts such as sabon, courier and custom made ugly future like sans serif fonts in their magazines and works. so i want to know why is this. have this people been reincarnated from the last century . thank you and happy christams!!!!!!

[Té Rowan]

It's hip to be square, I'd guess.

[oldnick]

I would pin it on a profound (and Johnny-come-lately) misunderstanding of David Carson sensibilities...

[Karl Stange]

McSweeney's would perhaps no longer be considered hip but I did watch an intriguing talk on YouTube by founder Dave Eggers and was particularly amused by his comments with regards to fonts, or perhaps I should say "font" as initially he could or would only use one, Garamond 3. This was by his admission the result of not being able to fully grasp the font management software on his computer, which, as he was using Quark 4.1 in Mac OS 9 is hardly surprising : )

The video is a recording of The Art of the Book: Behind the Covers with Dave Eggers, Chip Kidd, Milton Glaser and moderator Michael Bierut at the 92nd Street Y in New York, December 4, 2006 and can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpVQRKyD_yM

Merry Christmas/Apocalypse or whatever greeting works for your preferred religious iconography or fatalistic belief structure.

[hrant]

Anti-design is the new black.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/albert-jan_pool/8038443339

People want what they don't have. Once good design saturates a culture it's inevitable for artistes posing as designers, who merely want to be trendy -as opposed to useful to society- to bring it down. And the peon masses will follow.

before all the smart people are gone

So the dumb ones get to live? So this apocalypse won't change much I guess.

hhp

[timd]

In a horrible way that logo starts to make more sense when you see other implementations of the concept

http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/stedelijk_museum_ams...

http://imgur.com/gallery/ryktw

Tim

[Demmy]

What’s wrong with Sabon? Or the last century? Or even, dare I say, Hipsterism - not that, like any trend, it doesn’t contain vast swathes of mediocrity, but there’s beauty in a distressed Gill advert too, even if Instagram has made it look otherwise. All depends on what’s behind it I’d say - something designers can easily lose sight of, at least the gentrified fools I occasionally have a fashionable coffee with.

But Happy Apocalypse to ya. That’s the main thing.

[hrant]

What's wrong with the last century? What about that it was the worst in human history.

hhp

[Demmy]

Depends by what standards you measure it, or from where. Hideous it certainly was in many many ways. But, for example, artistically, in Europe, it was a hundred times superior to the grim rationality of the preceding century. Socially it was, for pretty much anywhere in the world undiscovered by the nightmare white man, better than the century which followed. It even produced one or two decent fonts, if I’m not mistaken.

EDIT! Ooops. My mistake. ‘Last century’ means Twentieth these days dunnit? Keep forgetting. Well, my first sentence still holds true. Much marvellousness came from the Century of Horror too, as from any darkness.

[Ryan Maelhorn]

I don't see this as a current trend at all.

[EricPalmer]

Buy the BOOK

[Ryan Maelhorn]

The trends I see right now are a combination of late 1800's style type, and highly intricate vector designs. I don't see a lot of sloppy ink typewriter fonts these days.

[Stephen Coles]

http://trendlist.org/

[marcox]

Thanks, Stephen. It's exhausting trying to stay au courant.

[phrostbyte64]

hrant every last century is the worst in human history. That is until the next worst century comes along. The twenty-first century looks like it is going to be a doozy for worsts.

As for what is hip or not, trendy or not, I haven't a clue as I am neither.

Did the world end? I must have missed it.

[Té Rowan]

No worries, @phrostbyte64, there's more world-endage to come. The Big One, of course, will be the one in 2034, when the Ancient Unices' calendar rolls over.

Actually, the 20th century is sorta in-between: Worse than the ones preceding, better than the ones to come.

[phrostbyte64]

Té Rowan, I hadn't heard of the Ancient Unices. I will have to look that one up. As for your comments concerning the Twentieth, you are most likely correct.

[Nick Shinn]

The 14th century was one to avoid, what with the Black Death.