Studio Notes #76

Greetings, friends. Here are this week’s Studio Notes™—quick bits delivered to you each Friday.

🔥

Yet another briefly-engaged-in hobby I had growing up: Collecting matchbooks. Even when I was a clueless middle schooler I was drawn to the designs, the type, printing techniques, etc. and started a little collection. They were the perfect little design calling cards for businesses back in the day. My largest source of matchbooks was my grandmother, Nanny, who handed me a large ziplock bag of 'em every time we'd visit. Mostly from restaurants and bars in Massachusetts, but others from vacation spots of their friends like Las Vegas, Upstate New York, etc. Her interest in my interests had always been a cherished memory of my grandma, and I thank recently coming across this Matchbook Book for sparking that again. A book celebrating the design of old matchbooks—and it looks like a giant matchbook!

🌱

An Italian design studio devised a way to grow a chair by making a cardboard frame that allowed being filled in with dirt and growing grass over the perfectly-contoured mound. I'm tempted to grow some chairs and maybe a loveseat in the yard to kick back and be one with the Earth, man.

👩🏻‍🚀

Original Nostromo badges and insignia sketches from the Alien (1979) film. Always neat to see behind-the-scenes designs of fictional "brands" from movies and TV. The thought and detail that goes into these things is real! (Hat tip to Dan Bostonweeks in the Secret Club)

👓

Optician Sans is "a free font based on the historical eye charts and optotypes used by opticians world wide". A cool, open source project to refine the letters that make me second guess every option the eye doctor gives me. "Is this better? Or this." Paranoid that I'll make a disastrously wrong choice, I ask to see every option multiple times. Comedian Brian Regan absolutely nails this hilarious situation/affliction.

What are you working on?

I randomly decided to take some slanted Rotundo Fat and make a Good Year logo parody for no reason whatsoever. In other news, we did a Secret Livestream last week where I demo'd starting a font from scratch in Glyphs for a bit. Fun was had.

Hang in there, keep hope, hold fast, etc. It's what I've been telling myself, anyway. See you back here with next Friday's distractions.

Cheers,