Typography

Typography

Vance, a Portland-based journalist who runs Stumptown Savings, a newsletter covering local grocery deals, had been accused of using ChatGPT to write his content. The evidence? His use of em dashes. "A Reddit user accused me of using AI, pointing to my use of, quote, extra long M dashes that are not possible to replicate on a normal keyboard," Vance recalls. The accusation stung, particularly because Vance spends 40 hours a week personally visiting grocery stores and crafting his newsletter by hand.

As time went on, I even started slowing down as I approached this junction to try to catch the offending ad. But even when I got a good look at it, I thought I must be mistaken. Eventually, at 6am one Saturday morning over Christmas, I parked, readied the camera on my phone, and waited. The roads were deathly quiet, neither car nor soul anywhere. Just me, my phone, and this wretched sign.

Blackletter typefaces elicit many contradictory emotions depending, of course, on the context in which they are used and the manner in which they are composed. Sometimes they bark commands - STOP or BEWARE. Other times they are comforting in an ecclesiastical way - Christmas and Easter greetings. During World War II Blackletter was menacing for those in occupied lands who read it as exclusionary - as in FORBIDDEN or DANGER; others accepted it as patriotic

Those he saw as "most successful" had a "bold typographic and/or illustrative treatment" which in turn "countered the dominance" of the branding strip that ran down the side. "This realisation led me to define some rules for the designs of the individual covers that tried to ensure that the covers would never feel overwhelmed by the branding system," says Pete. "The core rule was that the Editions would essentially be typographic covers, or typographically-led covers in terms of the hierarchy between type and image."

Monotypes logotype couldn't just exist in one static state - "ideas of diversity, adaptability, and boundary-pushing were central to the creation of the variable logo from the start," says Daniel. Collaborative workshops, sketching sessions and exchanges with Chantelle's global chief creative officer, Renaud Cambuzat, and head of design, Natalia Kotkowska, cemented into the idea for a shapeshifter logo capable of morphing its look through different weights and shapes.

There's something almost rebellious about spending serious design energy on a pencil. We're constantly told that screens are the future and handwriting is obsolete but Korean design studio BKID went all in on the opposite direction. Their project "Write Draw Think" asks a question nobody knew they needed answered: what if we stopped taking the pencil for granted? Created as research for the Hangeul Museum in 2025, this isn't your standard stationery lineup.

The Salt Lake City Olympics planned for 2034 are now the Utah Games after organizers announced a new logo and name to reflect the multi-community work that goes into hosting the largest winter sports event on Earth. The state's Governor, Spencer Cox, says the new logo has united people-though not in a good way. "It's really brought people together because everyone seems to not like it," Cox said at a recent press conference.

In her book Schrift und Schreiben (Leipzig, 1972), Hildegard Korger showed an "alphabet in the style of an italic Egyptienne" and two sets of decorative capitals derived from it - one with highlights and one with open letterforms - credited to Volker Küster, 1966. According to Günther Flake's biography of Küster, Black Bull is the title of a design for an Egyptienne typeface in three styles, drawn as part of his diploma project at HGB Leipzig in the mid-1960s. Korger doesn't mention the name "Black Bull", but Ihave to assume that the samples in her book show Küster's graduation project.

"Ever since I landed on Earth, I've known words to be limiting," says Jo Iijima, a graphic designer and creative based in New York City. "Visuals, however, speak to me in infinite ways." Through design, Jo layers cultures, colours and typography that go beyond mere language and dimension - and it shows. His brand identity, campaign, art direction, Risograph printing and custom typography work embraces a chaotic blend of Japanese and English, putting diverse letterforms and graphic textures into a blender.

The Phoenix Mercury have one of the best nicknames in sports. It's classical, referring to the Roman god of, among other things, travel, trickery, and luck. It's local, referring to fact that Phoenix is a monument to man's arrogance. And it is scientific, referring to one of our solar system's weirdest and most interesting planets. But until now they had a deeply unserious logo that screamed Googie by way of 1990s kitsch.

"This early preview of our 2026 stamp program underscores the Postal Service's commitment to celebrating the artistry and storytelling that make stamps so special," Stamp Services director Lisa Bobb-Semple said in a statement. "Each stamp is a small work of art - an entryway into a larger story that connects people, places and moments in history." Many of the stamps are bright or use typography in bold or creative ways.

The magazine is shrouded in biblical symbolism. Silva posits the King James Bible as the visual backbone of the issue. "The typography, the pacing of the text, even the use of white space," says Silva. "I wanted it to feel like a school Bible left in a drawer, the kind that's been scribbled on by bored kids waiting for the assembly to end."

During the flat design boom of the 2010s, blocky sans-serif fonts were everywhere. Crisp, clean text adorned websites and shopfronts, with more decorative serif fonts seen as fussy and passe. But the tide appears to have turned on the serif vs sans serif debate. From protein bars to sneaker ads to AI brands, it seems everybody is embracing retro typographical aesthetics.

The NP. mark is "deliberately simple", focusing on a character that comes from its behaviour rather than its look. "It often overlays imagery, not to obscure but to create another layer of meaning. It becomes both a window and a veil, echoing how identity functions online - always present, always mediated," says Natasha. The colour system is bright and "contrasty", creating tension and urgency,