Sign­Sphere is a montly col­lec­tion of inspi­ra­tional design, typog­ra­phy, icons resources. This month there are many great arti­cles pub­lished from a full review of the NYC Sub­way type­face, the icons col­lec­tion of the win­ter games in 2010, a new mini-site from fontshop, pan­tone col­ored sneak­ers and much more. If you want to sub­mit news to Sign­Sphere, please send me an email via the con­tact form. Thank you and enjoy reading.

The (mostly) true story of Hel­vetica and NYC Subway

A fab­u­lous arti­cle by Paul Shaw for the New York sub­way graphic sys­tem. In a dept review of the sign sys­tem, choose of type­face and cre­ation of design man­ual this nine pages essay describes every­thing. I have enjoyed read­ing this arti­cle but was look­ing for some exam­ples of the sign man­ual, searched Google and found some images of the sign design man­ual at Flickr.

NYC Tran­sit Author­ity graph­ics system

• Visit the arti­cle by Paul Shaw at Aiga and take a look at this Flickr set of the orig­i­nal NYC Tran­sit Author­ity graph­ics system—designed by Mas­simo Vignelli and Vignelli Asso­ciates in 1970.

Min­isite FF Trixie

Dutch type teacher and designer Erik van Blok­land released with FontShop the min­isite about his type­face FF Trixie, since its release in 1991 Trixie was one of the few good work­able type­writer type­faces available.

Erik van Blok­land final­ized the type­face Trixie with two new vari­ants: FF Trixie Rough, and FF Trixie HD, avail­able each with Light and Heavy weights. At the min­isite you are able to see the type­face font­fonts and the new type­faces have much more detail than the orig­i­nal. In the images you can see the effects of the ana­log look and feel of Trixie, Erik was kind enough to send me the mast­head (at the top of the page), text design­work­plan, thank you very much for send­ing it to me.

Exam­ple of usage FF Trixie

• Visit the min­iste Trixie or see the insight arti­cle at font­feed. Down­load the type­face Trixie via Fontshop.

Van­cou­ver 2010 Pictograms

Via Icon­globe I spot­ted the newly designed pic­tograms for the Van­cou­ver Olympic Win­tergames in 2010, as part of a com­plete brand identity.

Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games designs have a long tra­di­tion of cre­ativ­ity and excellence

• Visit the brand iden­tity for Van­cou­ver 2010 and see the arti­cle at Icon­globe.

The design­ers review of Books

A new web­site about books for the cre­ative minds, writ­ten by design­ers. With design­ers reviews books the authors review (expen­sive) design books and allows you to buy or find related infor­ma­tion about the books online.

Although there are sev­eral good design web­sites that occa­sion­ally have book reviews, there didn’t seem to be a sin­gle place online where you could get con­stant updates and reviews of new (and some­times old) design books.

• Visit The Design­ers review of Books website

Thought­pile

Thought­pile a web­site where vis­i­tors are allowed to share thoughts about spe­cific (green) top­ics, users can sub­mit ideas and the most dis­cussed idea will be fea­tured in the Thought­pile. Crowd think­ing and cre­at­ing ideas and solu­tions is becom­ing more and more popular.

• Visit Thought­pile and share your thoughts and ideas.

PANTONE Sneak­ers

Today is the last day that you can pre-order spe­cial PANTONE SeaVees Sneak­ers, use the code on the web­site in the online­store to get yours! The col­lec­tion will be in stores Spring 2009.

• Visit this web­site to find the infor­ma­tion about PANTONE Sneakers.

iPhone App: Font Viewer

OSXW­erk released one of the first iPhone apps for font lovers, this free app allows you to select MACOSX fonts and enlarge the type­face. You have the abil­ity of type text and dis­play it in the selected typeface.

It would be very inter­ested to see more type related iPhone apps com­ing. For instance what I would think will work great is a iPhone ver­sion of WhatThe­Font. You make a photo of a type­face you are inter­ested in, the iWhatThe­Font will rec­og­nize the type­face and can view it online or buy the spe­cific typeface.

Please share your ideas or sug­ges­tions of type-related iPhone Apps?

• Visit the web­site of OSXW­erk for more infor­ma­tion about FontViewer iPhone App.

Not for paper

Not for paper is a web­site ded­i­cated to bring you some of the most excit­ing design work for screen. Work best real­ized away from a printed surface.

• Visit not­for­pa­per for inspiration

Fuel your cre­ativ­ity rebrands

Adelle Charles man­ages the great design & inspi­ra­tion web­site Fuel Your Cre­ativ­ity, she pub­lishes fre­quently arti­cles for a wide design audi­ence. Recently FYC rebranded with a new logo and web­site lay­out. Con­grats Adelle for this great achievement.

• Visit Fuel your cre­ativ­ity for more information

Write in Helvetica

If it would work I want one, my hand­writ­ing is ter­ri­ble, so writ­ing in Hel­vetica would be just great. Visit the web­site for more infor­ma­tion about this pen writ­ing tool.

Is Graphic Design Art?

There has been much talk about this web­site, Is Graphic Design Art?. When I first encoun­tered this ques­tion I was intrigued by the fact peo­ple think about graphic design as art. In fact most peo­ple think graphic design is art. Lets take a look at the definitions.

Graphic Design: The term graphic design can refer to a num­ber of artis­tic and pro­fes­sional dis­ci­plines which focus on visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion.
Art: Art is the process or prod­uct of delib­er­ately and cre­atively arrang­ing ele­ments in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.

• So tell me is Graphic Design Art?

Sub­mit your news

Sign­Sphere is a montly col­lec­tion of design related and inspi­ra­tional top­ics, use the con­tact form to send in your mate­ri­als. Thank you.