Hopscotch & a Super-sized A+

A few weeks ago, legendary couple Josh and Lauren set up a creative studio in Sydney (part of the 66 Oxford Street Project) and named it Homework. They invited me in to to reminisce my school yard days and liven up their floors with some hopscotch, a giant A+, a few lines of cursive and of a handball court. It was a blast! The A+ was the largest letter I've drawn to date... a record just waiting to be broken!

New Peppermint Mag

The new Peppermint magazine is out this month with my masthead design in orange.

GRAFIK: Hand Drawn Type Issue

In October 2011 Grafik published their hand-drawn type issue featuring 10 lettering artists who were asked to describe their work in three words. The 10 featured designers were Jody Barton, Andy Smith, Dan Cassaro, Mario Hugo, Carolyn Sewell, Seb Lester, Deanne Cheuk, Friends of Type, Si Scott and myself. My words "Labour of Love Letters" were hand rendered in graphite.

Paper Mill Letter Drawing Workshop

As part of my residency at the Paper Mill gallery in November 2011 I hosted a letter drawing workshop. Twenty-six enthusiastic attendees took part in a series of short, creative exercises followed by some time to focus on creating one letter of the alphabet to form the group's collective set. Choice of medium was open and there was a variety of beautiful letterforms created in illustration, paper craft, watercolour and even pencil shavings. Thanks to all the legends who came along! Here is a video and some letters created during the workshop. The music on the video is the rad sounds of Australian band Jinja Safari.

Smirnoff: How you Start is Everything

While working with Toby & Pete last year, we were approached to create a custom lettering for Smirnoff's online campaign. Starting with a pure blank canvas my lettering developed over a week from pencils sketches to vectors to finally reveal the text "How you Start is Everything."

Peppermint Magazine

Hailing from my hometown IN Brisbane, Peppermint magazine is a green fashion magazine that celebrates eco-ethical style. They were looking for a fresh masthead this Summer and I was super excited to create fresh new type for them. It hit the newstands last week which is rad!

Paper Mill Residency Exhibition

This Tuesday November 22nd, FOURXFOUR will open as the last show(ever!) at the Paper Mill gallery in Angel Place, Sydney. The show features the work from the four residencies this year. The beautiful alphabet created by the workshop attendees will be on display along with other typographic musings from my residency in September. Hope to see you there!

The Designed Grammar of Type Specimens

My good friend and fellow typophile Jesse O'Neill is doing a talk today at 11am at the State Library of New South Wales. His presentation will draw on research into the design and language of Australian type specimens at the turn of the twentieth century. For more information or to book a place checkout the SLNSW page.

Paper Mill Residency

Starting next Monday 22 August, For the Love of Type will be setting up shop for a month-long residency at The Paper Mill Gallery in Angel Place, Sydney. Inspired by Nicolete Gray's (1960) text Lettering on Buildings, I will be examining letterforms as they appear on buildings and signage in the immediate surrounds of the gallery. The window space of the gallery will then become a live "screen" which will act as a live blog for a week - with all the content created in hand lettering and photographs from typespotting adventures. Would love for you to escape the screens for an afternoon and come visit! I will also be hosting two public workshops: the first is a walking tour looking at letters from my observations and the second is a drawing letterforms workshop. For more information or to book a place visit The Paper Mill website or email me for more information at info@fortheloveoftype.com.au.

Flowers & Fire

Toby & Pete have grown

Well, the two tall guys who brought you the coolest typographic jumping castle in history have grown! Toby & Pete have expanded their creative craftshop to include a new posse of seven designers, directors and creatives with a mixture of different talents. I am joining these talented fellas – Piotr Stopniak, Toby Pike, James Jirat Patradoon, Angus Forbes, Simon (Esjay) James, Lukasz Karluk, & Aaron Kuswara – to be collaborating on a host of new projects! You can check out our combined body of work here. This collection of type treatments are the result of our first efforts to create a body of promotional cards that present a variety of not-so-infamous duos such as Butch & Mason, Eva & Teddy and Randy & Fez. Taking ownership of the "and", each is a new persona of Toby & Pete. The approaches included laser etching on leather, embossing, 3D illustration, photography, vector illustration and even a magic eye! A taste of what's to come.

A Type of Show

This is probably the most epic line up of letterers, typographers and artists all in one show in Sydney...EVER! Hosted by Like Minded Studios A Type of Show coincides with the two amazing talents Alex Trochut & Tony DiSpigna being in Sydney and opens at Kind Of Gallery on Oxford Street, Darlinghurst at 7pm on August 17th 2011. Hope to see you there!

Brisbane Semi-Permanent

Time has whizzed past since Sydney Semi-Permanent and it's already time for the Brisbane conference. Tickets are sold out and I'm getting pretty hyper about Friday! See you there Brisbane!

Frankie is your friend

For the love of type was lucky enough to be featured in this month's Frankie magazine (Issue 42, p122) with typespotting pics from Rose Bay & Elizabeth Bay (Sydney), Lake Wanaka (New Zealand) and my favourite giant "T" from LA. There are also some seriously rad campervans on page 105 that will make you wanna road trip and a pretty-yet-peculiar woman with a mop for a head on page 28. Plus there's nan and pop's "Get Well Soon" guide...although it doesn't feature carrot cake ;-)! Frankie is your friend...cute and classy as always!

Rediscovered type

Title design from the Australian mystery film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)...simple but beautiful.

Semi Permanent 2011

The super cool design conference Semi Permanent is back for another year and i'll be speaking at the Sydney conference alongside We Buy Your Kids, Reg Mombassa, Michael Leon and more...so why not pop in!

V is for Verity

Canon: Inspires to Achieve More

Hand drawn type I created for Canon's masterbrand campaign creatively led by Leo Burnett.

Typespotting LA