Studio Notes #84

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

🖼️

The level of detail and intricate line work of these art prints by Richard Nadler is otherworldly. The scale is immense, but I like how subtly abstract things get when you zoom way in. Outstanding art.

🥔

HVD Bodedo is a typeface designed by Hannes von Döhren in 2007, who “...had the idea to make a Bodoni interpretation with potato stamps, so we bought 8kg of potatoes, some knifes and carved a long, long evening in the kitchen”. After carving the classic font into potato halves, each letter was printed out on paper and then made into a delightfully-imperfect version of Bodoni. Dare I say I like it better than the original?

📚

I mentioned the book, Hotel Retro, in a previous issue and, after having had it for a bit now, I think it's well worthy of mentioning again. It's probably my favorite collection of type and design inspiration I've come across in a long time. Vintage luggage labels from all over the world, expertly printed—and they're all stickers. I have so many typeface ideas just rifling through this thing. One in particular might make its way into a finished font. The working title is Egypt, as it's only those five letters on the particular tag I'm working off of from the National Hotel in Cairo. Anyhow, I can't recommend this book enough.

💿

Vinyl sales were over $1 billion in 2025! This gives me hope that plenty of folks still value physical, tangible, things—even when there's a perfectly fine, digital equivalent available. I love the collectability of vinyl, and that the artwork and liner notes are front and center. Those old records influenced my design sense from an early age, and being able to hold them—inspect them up close...well, that was everything.

I also hear cassettes are making a comeback. But to me, if a full vinyl album could fit on a 7" or 8" disc—that'd be the sweet spot for large-enough-art but still portable. And remember MiniDisc? That size and durability was amazing for portability. I don't remember if the sound quality equaled CDs, but either way, it failed. Which brings us to this week's poll...

This Week’s Poll

Last week, I asked where the best pizza is from, and the results were pretty clear: New York. I still swear by Regina Pizzeria here in Boston, or Sally's Apizza in New Haven, CT. Lots of folks recommended Pequod's next time I'm in Chicago.

What are you working on?

This week has mostly been mundane admin-ish type stuff, though I did start on a set of alternates for the forthcoming Racely font. Automatic contextual alternates will kick in when two of the same letter is typed (with some subtle wind mark variations to differentiate things). That'll add some more development time to this one, but I think it'll be worth it.

Also, Queen Boost is a free band name for anyone that wants it ;-)

Many thanks, as always, for reading this little newsletter.

Cheers,