Custom handmade metal typograph

I found this typography made by the company Drop metal.
http://www.dropmetal.com/2011/handmade-typography-decor/
It is a great inspiration because I think that textures in the lettters are an interesting way of transmit some concrete feelings.

Paul Dersidan typography

Handmade font

Splash

http://www.handmadefont.com

Karamel Sans CE by Marta Maštálková

Czech graphic design student Marta Maštálková has designed a typeface by pouring liquid caramel onto glass.

A4 Handmadefont

An interesting video showing an original way to make a font.
http://vimeo.com/21063281

Matthew Croft

An interesting typographic exploration. An isometric grid consisting of hundreds of nails, around which string and lace were wrapped in order to produce typographic illustrations. the grid attempts not to restrict, but to restrain the typographic forms produced by the user - whilst allowing for 'expressive' and distinct solutions, cohesion is maintain throughout.

Abdallah Akar

During the early 2000s, Abdallah completed an Installation: 16 textiles richly decorated with calligraphy, a tribute to the Pre-Islamic poetry, followed in 2007 by a publication of Poèmes Suspendus (Muallaq’at) edited in both languages, French and Arabic.
Abdallah Akar is always searching for a renewed rendition of the calligraphic language, exploring mediums such as fabric, canvas, wood and even glass. He shows his work extensively in Europe and is a well known artist on the Middle Eastern contemporary art scene.

http://www.abdallah-akar.com

Shukor Yahya typography

With over thirty years of experience in graphic design, Shukor Yahya has revolutionised the art of the Kufi square – the oldest calligraphic form whose origins could be traced way before the coming of Islam, first used in ancient religious scripts – into a contemporary form that we see today.

Julien Breton typography

Completely self-taught and unable to speak Arabic, the French artist Julien Breton has developed his own unique form of virtual calligraphy, based on a Latin-style alphabet and inspired by an Arabic and Eastern aesthetic. With a multi-cultural take on calligraphy, Breton’s work incorporates the cultural identity and style of East and West, often taking inspiration from western philosophy, hip hop and street art. 

He works with calligraphy with the desire to transcend the very meaning of the sentence to generate a clean aesthetic – a balanced form that stands out from the arbitrary letter composition that makes up a word or phrase. His lack of knowledge of codes, rules of calligraphy enabled him to detach himself from any coercion and rules. That allowed him to mix styles with the desire to create a universal language, without barriers or code.

Despite not being able to speak Arabic, Julien Breton he says that everyday brings him closer to the language and culture.

Calligraphy's beauty is universal, not religious

A new exhibition of Arabic calligraphy reveals its historical significance – and its complex place in modern art
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/26/arabic-calligraphy-beauty-universal

Into the Eisenshpritz

An interesting article about comics

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n07/elif-batuman/into-the-eisenshpritz/print

PARACUELLOS by Carlos Gimenez

This comic tells the story of some children`s lives who lived in the Franquist postwar peiod in an orphan. The novel is based on the own memories of the artist. It is very precise and sincere, he select each instant moment and each fear that this kids had to live during the dictature in Spain. The simplicity of the drawings works very well with the story and the reader can easily feel identifyed and moved with the children suffering.

http://www.carlosgimenez.com/obra/paracuellos.htm

JOE SACCO

By combining eyewitness reportage with the political and philosophical perspectives of those he meets, Sacco tells stories in which the experiences, memories, and voices systematically excluded from mainstream news coverage — those pushed aside, to the margins of history — are recuperated.

LOBAS by Rachel Deville

Rachel Deville relates, in a powerful metaphorical way, the fascinating and mysterious issue of doubles and dual identity, with references to Narcisa, Cain and Abel or Romulus and Remus, the twins founders of Rome who were raised by a wolf. Rachel and Anne are twin sisters who come to the world together and face life together. They will invent their own language, create a common imaginary world and develop a unique complicity. If this relationship can be a strong protection against the gaze of others, it can also be dangerous when each of them looks for herself in the reflection of the other...
Lobas goes deep into the autobiographical dimension of the story, revealing the wounds of the author’s past that this book closes.

http://racheldeville.wordpress.com

OUR CANCER YEAR by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner with art by Frank Stack.

Peckar is one of the first writers to think that everyday life could provide the basis for comic book stories.
Our Cancer Year  portrays the diagnosis and treatment of Harvey Pekar's lymphoma against a backdrop of domestic upheaval and the momentous political and social events of the first gulf war. The recurring theme in the book is fear. In big ways and small ways, and all in different ways, everyone lives in fear.
Frank Stack's scratchy monochrome brush and pen work lend the panels an air of anxiety and disorder.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Based on her own personal experience of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Marjane Satrapi introduces us to the effects of cultural change through the eyes of a child. The graphic novel entitled, Persepolis, is a political, historical, and extremely personal account of a girl’s growth into maturity. There are a great range of emotions disseminated in this novel. The reader is sidelined by murky melancholic feelings of familiarity and disdain. Such is a tale of life. Persepolis is an account of demands made without understanding of repercussions. A child can only see so far into the future, and even then, the tendency is for years to be skipped and hardships, overlooked.

As our society is continuingly putting up boundaries and constructing ideas of “ingroups and outgroups”, it is important to realize and understand the effects on the present. We may be fighting for the future, but are we looking ahead before looking to those beside us. Persepolis is a novel of the importance of being aware of ourselves and understanding the consequences of change.

Adam Gopnik, "Comics and Catastrophe," New Republic, 22 June l987.

If you ask educated people to tell you everything they know about the history and psychology of cartooning, they will robably offer something like this: cartoons (taking caricature, political cartooning, and comic strips all together as a single form) are a relic of the infancy of art, one of the earliest forms of visual communication (and therefore, by implication, especially well-suited to children); they are naturally funny and popular; and their gift is above all for the diminutive.

MAUS by Art Spiegelman

Maus is a compelling story of the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors. it uses humor and characters with animal masks to talk about serious subjects. Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father and mother's experiences in Poland just as World War II was beginning and describes the German persecution of the Polish Jews both in the towns and cities of Poland and in the concentration camps. Its is one of the graphic novels going up against several decades of mainstream marginalization. 

As Spiegelman progressed into the drawing of Maus, he became concerned with various aesthetic aspects that were important from the point of view of the visual artist. "He was becoming increasingly concerned with deconstructing the basic narrative and visual elements of the comic strip: How does one panel on a page relate to others? How do a strip's artificial cropping and use of pictorial illusion manipulate reality?...How do words and pictures combine in the human brain." In this quest, the artist rejected photo-realism, elaborate detailing and shading, and ultimately developed a particular reduction process in which text was reduced to fit the artistic space.

BLUE PILLS by Frederik Peeters

"Blue Pills", an intimate, poetic and accessible black-and-white graphic novel.
A deeply moving and universal love story about how we face, and overcome, adversity in our everyday lives - told through the story of Peeters' relationship with his girlfriend Cati and her three-year-old son, both of whom are HIV positive .

YOU DON’T HAVE TO FUCK PEOPLE OVER TO SURVIVE by Seth Tobocman

Originally published in the 1980s, this book became an underground classic. It is an attack on the morality, politics and social conditions of the Reagan era, expressing the passions and convictions that led to the formation of ACT-UP and to the Tompkins Square Riots. Many of these graphics have been used by peoples movements world wide, from the Squatters on New York’s Lower East Side to the African National Congress in South Africa.

http://www.sethtobocman.com/

PLANNING FOR TRAVELLERS AND GYPSIES IN UK

An interesting view about the constant problem that Travellers and gypsys have to take planning permisions in their own land.

http://www.gypsy-traveller.org/resources/films/

GYPSY WARS

Depending on which paper you read, Gypsies are either spongers and the scourge of society or a respectable community of people who have chosen a different way of life.

Filmed over eight months, Gypsy Wars offers a unique insight into the often violent confrontations between local residents and the travellers who set up camp in their 'back yard.'

Three films explore the lives of those who live on either side of the divide: travellers driven from town to town by the law, forced into huge illegal sites; and residents waging solitary campaigns defending their own 'human rights'.

Not for the faint-hearted, the series delivers stories of eviction, destruction, revolt and murder.Gypsy Wars reveals the jagged relationship between people who see themselves on the verge of civil war.

 (Full documentary in youtube)

DALE FARM DIFFERENT OPINIONS

DALE FARM SITE