Hel Grotesk Gothiq Typeface. 2006.

This typeface was born as the bastard love child of Helvetica Neue and Wilhelm Klinspor Gotisch during a tryst they had one sad, desperate night. The calligrapher seduced the industry leader with her curves, elegant vocabulary and hand skills. But the affair was not to last, and though their union was never recounted (Helvetica being one to bury the past), the hidden story of that night lives on in Hel Grotesk Gothiq.

I designed Hel as a critique of the supposed neutrality and authority of Helvetica and the stylistic reappropriations of Blackletter typefaces in contemporary design. A subversive typeface steeped in history and irony.

FREE download of Hel Grotesk Gothiq (OTF).

Hel is an all-caps typeface, and can prove a little difficult to work with on her own. However, her hefty-size and shape works perfectly paired with lowercase Helvetica Neue Black (she’s her daddy’s little girl…).

Launch Images >

The very interesting Things Magazine website features an amazing gallery of vintage Pelican Book covers from the 1930s to 1980s. According to the Penguin website the Pelican imprint was launched in 1937 to “cover serious contemporary issues and represented the first new and original books to be published by Penguin… The series was weighted towards History, Sociology, Economics and Politics and continued the ‘good books cheap’ philosophy of Penguin.”

The extensive gallery is an amazing historical and aesthetic archive. The 1960s collection is particularly revealing of the revolutionary nature (both technological and cultural) of the times.

Also worth checking out is David Pearson Design’s recent work for Penguin, especially the Great Ideas series (direct links here, here, and here) . Mmmm… debossed type on uncoated paper stock. Beautiful…

Jason Gillingham (issue 9 contributor) just sent me this beautiful image, composed with rub-down lettering at our launch party.

Pop and Politics Poster Series, 2005

A series of posters designed for the 2005 edition of the Pop and Politics conference, part of the Pop Montreal music festival. Working with my good friend Jay Delmarr, we created a series of bold typographic posters to promote the conference which dealt with wide-ranging issues at the intersection of music and politics. The conference included performances by Saul Williams and K’naan, two of my favourite artists, and having the opportunity to design these posters was an absolute treat.

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Estilo from DSType.