Pittsburgh, USA

Artist Golan Levin has created an adjustable stencil for making infographic graffiti pie charts… you can download the pattern for it here.

Montréal, Quebec

Just in time for Canada Day, I’m happy to announce that our latest set of commemorative stamps in the Canadian Recording Artists series has been launched. This series of stamps features black & white portraits of the artists, supported by typographic tapestries comprised of song titles. The iconic Canadian artists featured in this series are Bruce Cockburn, Robbie Robertson, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, and chanteuse Ginette Reno. CD-shaped booklets of 8 die-cut, pressure-sensitive stamps (along with envelope seals and information about each artist) are available in four styles, with individualized covers for each of the four artists. Also available are souvenir sheets, postcards, and an Official First Day Cover (OFDC, popular with philatelists).

CIRCLE has been designing the Canadian Recording Artists stamp series since 2007; the first series featured Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray, and Paul Anka; series two featured Édith Butler, Stompin’ Tom (Connors), Bryan Adams, and Robert Charlebois.

These limited edition stamps are available through post offices across the country as of 30 June 2011. They can be ordered online by following the links at Canada Post’s website www.canadapost.ca, or by calling toll-free: 1-800-565-4362 (Canada and the United States), or 1-902-863-6550 (from other countries).

Images: the round souvenir sheet on gummed stock; the four “postage paid” postcards, each featuring an enlarged stamp/portrait; and the Officidal First Day Cover (OFDC) with date-of-issue cancellations.

Bloomington, Illinois

Fredric W. Goudy (sometimes also written as ‘Frederic’) was a master craftsman and an “American legend of type design,” a man of humble beginnings who started his career at the late age of almost 40. At the time of his death at the age of 82 (in 1947) he had 127 typeface designs to his credit—a list of typefaces designed by Goudy is available here. Read an interesting, in-depth magazine article about Goudy in the April, 1942 issue of Popular Science here.

The graphic above is from a promotion piece published by International Papers that’s been kicking around our design studio for quite a few years (illustrator/designer unknown).

Stuttgart, Germany

My Iranian friend Mehdi Saeedi (extraordinary calligrapher/designer) will be presenting at the Akademie Schloss Solitude next week… had it been last week, I might have been able to attend.

Ottawa, Canada

(from a piece in CBC’s Arts & Entertainment)

…Canada Post has announced that a new stamp featuring the celebrated singer-songwriter will be issued on June 30 as part of the third instalment of its Canadian Recording Artists series. His stamp will join the previously announced stamps of Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Robbie Robertson and Ginette Reno.

“This is very exciting,” the Ottawa-born Cockburn said in a statement. The stamp’s design—a black and white image of him against a red background featuring titles of his hit songs—is “beautiful,” he added. Over the years, the folk-rock singer and activist has won multiple awards for his music, which includes hits such as The Coldest Night of the Year and If I Had a Rocket Launcher. His original songs have inspired covers by a wide range of artists—from Jimmy Buffett to the Barenaked Ladies.

He released his 31st album, Small Source of Comfort, in March and is currently touring the U.S.  Cockburn, who is also an officer of the Order of Canada and member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, is slated to publish his memoir in April 2012.

We were happy to have the honor of designing this latest set of stamps featuring Canadian singer/songwriters (at CIRCLE, our third such series)… look for more news and image releases in the weeks to come.

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“With a strong background in design and illustration, Anna Garforth’s nifty fingers can work moss into beautiful lettering, cookie dough into edible posters, and rubbish into typographic wonder…”

Thanks to designer friend Tiffany Turkington for this link.

Ottawa, Canada

The Gibson font family is a humanist sans serif typeface designed by our colleague, the eminent Canadian type designer Rod McDonald. It honours John Gibson FGDC, Rod’s long-time friend and one of the original founders of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC).

As well as paying tribute to John Gibson’s productive life and love of the typographic arts, the Gibson family is intended to be a mainstay of the future of Canadian design education. The 8-font family is available at token pricing (only $48 for all eight weights!) to make it especially affordable for design students. For less than the price of a design textbook, a student can now have a sturdy and contemporary humanist sans serif family that fits pretty much any design application, and will remain useful long after academic studies and well into a professional career in design.

All the revenues from the sale of Gibson are being donated to the GDC, where they will be allocated to a variety of programs aiming to improve the creative arts and elevate design education in Canada. Read more about this special typeface launch here.

Each of the eight Gibson fonts comes with 370 characters and features extended Latin-based language support. The Gibson family ships in cross-platform OpenType format. Test or buy Gibson online here.

Sélestat, France

I’m reminiscing and mourning the loss tonight of the renowned German typographer and graphic designer Kurt Weidemann, who passed on yesterday. I was looking forward to visiting him in his Stuttgart studio ‘Stellwerk Atelier’ with my colleague Adrian Letzner in early May… looks like we’ll need to wait to ‘bend an elbow’ with the great man until we cross paths in the next dimension. Fond memories of an evening spent with Kurt in Essen, 2004…

Learn more about Kurt, who spent a decade breaking rocks as a Russian prisoner of war (from 1940-1950) before beginning his apprenticeship as a typographer, (in German) here; a brief bio (in English) here.

Karaj/Tehran, Iran

Vitrin Rooz is a “virtual exhibition platform” for graphic design and designers with the stated intention to “show the right path and deepen insight on visual communication.” After a period of restructuring, Vitrin Rooz is now back with an engaging new website offering solo exhibits, group exhibits, workshops, and more… (I’ve posted about Vitrin Rooz and designers it has featured a number of times previously, here).

(found in Design Observer)

Steven Heller had heard from various designers and design historians over the years about the existence of a Nazi graphics standards manual. No one could say they actually saw it, but they knew of someone who had… so it grew into something of a Big Foot or Loch Ness Monster tale, until one day he actually saw it too—and it had been right under his nose the whole time…

Thanks to friend Ian McCausland for the link (unfortunately, now broken).