Mathieu In Reading

Coming soon!

2008-07-19T14:33:00.002+01:00

Cassius is getting ready to rumble!
Stay tuned: sneak previews, full trailers and pdfs are on their way. As well as some fun/entertaining/tragic/exiting/missing/incredible/true story telling items!
Some bits and pieces are already available on Flickr here or here.
[ Éventuelle traduction automatique dans les commentaires les mecs ! ]

The Great Robbery

2008-07-19T01:45:00.007+01:00

Yes, back in March Foxhill got some unwilling visitors. Damned.
But don’t worry, unlike this blog, we’ve got over it!
And, well, procrastination have to plead guilty in the lack-of-update case too.

Tales of a Time Traveller

2008-03-02T17:45:00.009Z

Now we know. We know where Jonathan Hoefler’s outrageous talent come from: he is in possession of the mythical time machine, constantly travelling with his type DoLorean, collecting the most valuable type treasures from all times and all spaces. The evidences can’t lie, we spotted him on a picture published in the 1957 issue of Caractère Noël.

Caractère Noël — 1957 issue.

Indeed during his last visit Gerard Unger shown a couple issues of the French type and graphic annual Caractère Noël, the gorgeous ‘that’s what we can do’ publication’ published every year by the Compagnie Française d’Édition during the late 50’s and 60’s.

Caractère Noël — 1957 issue.

Caractère Noël — 1957 issue.

Caractère Noël — 1957 issue.

Gerard pointed a very interesting comparison with Caractère Noël older brother and model, the famous –not less gorgeous– English Penrose Annual, maybe (?) not as flamboyant but probably more constructed, deep and ambitious.
Two equally infinite sources of fascination anyway.

Penrose Annual volume 58 — 1965 issue.

Penrose Annual volume 59 — 1966 issue.

♥

2008-02-23T20:17:00.002Z

things We Don’t Have In France: Feathered Students

2008-02-23T18:56:00.001Z

I just realised that the ‘Things We Don’t Have In France’ series might be read as cynical way to mock United Kingdom or express a more than very doubtful French primacy. It is absolutely not. No irony there, England rocks (so does France, once in a while, and a truckload lot of other countries anyway).
Here is the evidence: we have wonderful swans swimming over the lake in the campus. And as the year goes on we are getting really good friends. We’ll soon chat with them as we daily cross the bridge to get some Student Union Magic Sandwich Deals.

Michael Twyman on Non-Latin Books

2008-02-23T18:55:00.001Z

I now need a little help from my thesaurus to keep on saying how Mychael Twyman’s sessions are great. And that week –28 January– it was slpendiferous, as usual.
Note that you have an opportunity to see the almost complete crew of the MA Typeface design students on the picture, we just missed Yvonne. And guess what? We had two guests! Seb et popsy étaient dans la place. Clin d’œil les mec.

Greek Week!

2008-02-23T18:53:00.004Z

Here it was, inevitable, fascinating, gorgeous, famous: the week long Greek workshop!

Gerry started with a quick but deep and dense overview of the history of Greek typography by showing us some amazing pieces of printed matters from his collection, from 16th century (and earlier) to present days

Garamond’s Grecs du Roi, printed by Henri Estienne in 1591
in Dionis Cassii Romanarum Historiarum.
Didot’s Greek in Hymne d’Aristote à la vertue, 1832.
We also reviewed digital typefaces and explored some former students workfiles. Then came the writing and sketching time, and we quickly ended with some draft digital versions we could talk about.

First printout on day 3. A lot of thing to do and more to come, I promise (maybe).
What a fantastic week! Our understanding of Greek, Greek type, and Greek history got of course a lot greater. So did our understanding of type design and typography themselves. I now fully realise the importance of seeing things rather than pictures of things. We all got a pretty strong demonstration that type has to be taught and seen in its context, in relation with its history and the history of languages and culture. The whole approach of multi-script type family as system of relationships get now even more exiting and challenging, opening new routes for the Latin design itself. Yoohoo.
Read more on your usual story dealer.

Michael Twyman on Pop Up Books

2008-02-23T18:50:00.006Z

The ‘Monday’ saga goes on and on. On the 21 January, Michael Twyman shown us his pop up books collection. Again amazing stuff and gorgeous lecture, unfortunately Dan and I were not good enough to save the poor lady above. Condolences.

Spéciale dédicace Valentine, you are not alone.
Picture by Michi

One Laptop Per Grown Up (?) Kid

2008-02-23T18:08:00.001Z

In the beginning of January, Dave brought his XO laptop in the department. Some aspects are maybe disappointing (or free) but we all got quite excited about the ‘one laptop per child’ machine and some of its really cool features such as a pretty smart screen luminosity/definition management and a cheap robustness.
Thank you Dave for bringing us in the heart of hot technology! We are now waiting for Gerry’s future Macbook Air (or Michi's desired iPhone) to compare. More on TypeOff, of course.

A Night In The Department

2008-01-22T18:35:00.000Z

Later is better than never, here are the adventures I postponed to blog about. Be prepare for everyday updates this week, I have a lot to tell… But let’s start from the beginning.

Another big step in our way to learn type design.We were back in Reading with a tough program: one week for an essay. After Gerry’s last guide lines and a slight topic change for me —from Arabic dictionaries to ‘Secondary types’ strategies in Arabic typography– we all got through 6 days of hard work outlining, writing, drafting, reading, note-taking, researching, scanning in various orders, a few times overlapped by sleep and food – Dan used to talk about blurry memory refering to this time of our lives.

Derek Birdsall said you always have to multiply a dead-line by π, since the University is not really joking about multiplication Manu, Dan aka lovely-effecient-super-proof-reader, Joke & I decided to spend the Sunday evening in the Department. Work, fun, gymnastic, coke light and printers were there too… Soon the evening turned into night and we had the pleasure to enjoy our first sunrise on campus (a lot before generating the definitive pdf files).
And by 12 pm on Monday essays were dropped in the box!

Others ‘we did it’ pictures here and here!

Vacances de Noël

2008-01-19T19:17:00.000Z

Des couscous chez Mamane, des sapins de Noël, des vrais, des faux, des huitres, des bobouns chez Schen, des concert de jazz, des bierres, une amoureuse, des aubergines, des bornes et des bornes, des tours Eiffel, des nouvels ans, des friends, des bretons, des metros, des meufs, des mecs, des soldes, des tarrots, des Auchans, des décapsuleurs Coca Cola, des cousins, des maisons au bord de la mer, des vélos, des bisous, des copains, des copines, du coca sur les canapés, des nouveaux appartements, des cadeaux and so on. Hum, nothing really translatable…

Forever love les tout petits amis.

Last night in Reading

2008-01-19T18:58:00.001Z

For our last night in the UK, a few days before Christmas, Yvonne got a call from one of her German friends whose boyfriend was playing in Reading – ?! – Without deeply questioning the probability of such things happening, Yvonne, Manu, Ibrahim & I went there. We ended in a ‘tuxedo cheap Oscar dress estate agency private almost over Christmas party’.
I must say we ruled the dance floor

Things We Don’t Have In France: Chocolate Letters

2008-01-19T18:48:00.000Z

Two weeks before Christmas we had the pleasure to welcome Gerben, former student at the MATD and previous occupier of the Foxhill castle. He and some of his classmates were back in Reading to received the fruit of their hard work, during the so-called graduation ceremony!
Beside wearing a squarish hat he also brought us a little part of his Nerderlandish home country: a massive chocolate V. It seems that this not well enough known field of typography raise some challenging design issues, since all the letters should weight the same…
Thank you folk, congratulations!

Things We Don’t Have In France: Burger King

2007-12-15T19:43:00.000Z

As a lot of people requested it, here is the shameful truth: there is no Burger King in France.
National tragedy.

Voyage au bout de la nuit

2007-12-14T18:43:00.000Z

Last Saturday after Gerry visited us for a macbook party, Yvonne, Michi, Simi & I decided to have a drink in a pub. But Saturday 11pm is out of time in Reading. Sad pubs, closed ones, loud music, limited entrance, locked doors, hot Brit chicks, cold, vomit flacks, uk ID card, nurses and angels leaded us to dangerous initiatory travel through the local nightlife.
3 hours of errancy later we were back home without having drunk anything, but changed forever.

Things We Don’t Have In France: Expressive Typography Road Signs

2007-12-08T17:56:00.000Z

Grrr.

Joehoe

2007-12-08T17:49:00.000Z

Picture by Yvonne

On Wenesday Santa Claus brought us a lot of chocolate and clementines plus some awesome letter badges nicknames.
Dank u wel Sinter Klaaske!

Things We Don’t Have In France: Peanuts Butter Kit Kat Chunky

2007-12-08T17:29:00.000Z

Oui, c’est bien un Kit Kat Chunky au beurre de cacahouète…

GU on WAD, Hurray

2007-12-07T00:13:00.001Z

Gerard Unger is with us again this week! Beside our full time but colourful typeface design sessions with him, he offered us a couple of lectures, all great… as expected. On Tuesday he told us about one of his many personal heroes: the amazing puppet maker William Addison Dwiggins. His enthusiasm about Dwiggins' skilful freshness became even more communicative as we were looking at some of his books designs from the Gerry’s collection.
More on Dan’s blog.

Matthew Was There!

2007-12-05T23:12:00.000Z

Ou, l’homme au catogan

Thanks to Gerry, we got invitations to a lecture given by Matthew Carter at the RSA in London.
After some exciting adventures in a unmoving train we finally got there right in time to attempt the show. With emotion we listen too him going through a presentation of some of his emblematic works, explaining with clarity, humour and elegance what ‘hardcore’ typography is. Simon Esterson was there to lead the discussion.

What a nice groupie audience
But a night in London is way longer than a typographic lecture, and, after we enjoyed the glass(es) of wine the event sponsors really wanted us to drink, we had a wonderful magic time in the City, crossing bridges, having diner, jogging over the river, wagga mamming, gossiping in different languages and a lot more fun!
Yvonne and her gansta camera where there too…

Michael Twyman on Cinema Magazines

2007-12-05T03:19:00.000Z

Manu looking at Cinémonde.
This week Michael Twyman told us about Cinema magazines, Art Déco, photogravure printing & world/pictures relationship. It appears that ‘photogravure’ has a rather different meaning in English than in French: the English term refers a very specific printing process based on metallic cylinder while the French one concerns the general prepress processing. Despite this little quiproquo we all enjoyed a lot these gorgeous pieces of printing.
Curiously there is nothing about that yet on Michi’s Flicker…

Mid-Week-Pictorial issues

Non-Latin Session: Day 2

2007-11-29T02:38:00.000Z

Devanagari lettering (picture by Paul Hunt).
After the theoretical session on Tuesday we started practising North Indian scripts today. Some lettering exercises, with various tools, let us identify the different signs, getting a writing comprehension of the shapes and a better understanding of the letter combination systems.
Fiona shared her amazing experience with us, kindly criticising our sketches with precious and accurate advices.
Enjoy a more enjoyable overview –free beer included– on Dan’s blog!

It’s Devanagari, Paul is happy.

«The Three Is The One Which Looks Like a Two!»

2007-11-27T03:41:00.000Z

Today was the first day of the Non-Latin workshop about North Indian scripts. Fiona Ross gave us an efficient overview of each major writing systems used in North Indian –including Devanagari, Bengali & Gujarati– always linked to past and current technological limitation and a vast amount of local documents.

The goal of the week is to demonstrate to us a way to approach Non-Latin typeface design, confidence and questioning documentation seems to be key issues according to Fiona. By the way, it appeared the the ratio of available good typefaces per Indian reader is kind of low… unlike the number of photocopied sheets we got to cover the subject.

Things We Don’t Have In France: Cleaning Spiders

2007-11-27T03:32:00.000Z

Some strange cybernetic creatures are wandering around in the departement.

Michael Twyman on 17th French Manuscripts

2007-11-27T03:08:00.000Z

As usual Michael Twyman gave us an amazingly well documented talk about French manuscripts yesterday, looking for a way to qualify average 17th century French writing.
Some very intersting statements were made about document safety and some amazingly skilled kids were been jealous of…

17th century fun.

Gerry’s Collective Crit Session On Early Typeface Designs

2007-11-24T01:20:00.000Z

No Black Friday in the department!

Thanksgiving Massive Shopping

2007-11-23T17:54:00.000Z

Thanks to Dan Reynolds’ enthusiasm we were involved in a huge thanksgiving celebration last night. Although we were European newcomers, Joke, Yvonne & I quickly got the core idea of the event and, like everybody, spent several hours in Tesco, buying everything you need to kill hunger.
Fortunately there is no picture of the way back home, too much food on too small bikes.

A lot more on Dan’s and Joke’s blogs, guest starring a wonderfully cooked turkey and a lot of love embedded in some delightful dishes from all over the world (some mothers were involved!).

Michael Twyman on Puffin Books

2007-11-22T23:57:00.000Z

Weeks after weeks, the Michael Twyman show & tell sessions are going on, always new and exiting.
Guest staring blurry Paul, Fernando, Andrew & ghosty Gareth.
A lot more on Michi's Flickr, as usual.

Skillfull Supermarket Home Delivery

2007-11-22T18:11:00.000Z

Manu, Yvonne & I performed a Tesco Online Shopping last week. It seems badly designed website, non native speakers and tired students can lead to such funny things as a single green bean home delivered.
Only 2p! Such a good deal! Thank you Mister Tesco!
Picture by Yvonne.

Things We Have In France Too: User Friendly Postal Architecture.

2007-11-18T15:27:00.000Z

You must really love books to go to grab them at the Reading Royal Mail Head-quarters.
I guess Yvonne & I are considered as true Amazonian adventurers now…

Love At Foxhill

2007-11-13T01:50:00.000Z

Gwen was in Reading this weekend! Je t’aime mon amour!

2007-11-07T01:36:00.000Z

Thank you everybody for all the midnight balloons, the lovely Hand Job Books, the graffiti cacedédi, les colis mystère encore à Paris, the special Pez candies, les écharpes, Weng Weng, the Typotheque gogogirls forever love cards dairies, the fcbk walls, the indian dinners, the party commers, the French Oreos, the msn Greets, les Bacot Geeks Challenges, the suprise cakes and so on, and on and on…
Merci beaucoup!
Love!

Improvised (?) Birthday Dinner

2007-11-07T01:25:00.000Z

Chef’s choice with Yvonne, Joke, Michi, Paul and Manu! Thank you chaps!

Things We Don’t Have In France: BK's Onion Rings

2007-11-06T01:08:00.000Z

Spécial dédicace. But they close at 9pm, perfection is an unreachable illusion.

Shopping…

2007-11-06T01:03:00.000Z

Upgrade, lighter wallet & full Hard drive!

Michael Twyman on Monograms

2007-11-05T18:26:00.000Z

Unfortunately, Michael Twyman was not abble to give us one of his weekly lovely show & tell sessions today. Here is a cellphone picture of the last week one, about cyphers and monograms.
Guest starring fellow MAs Andrew (researcher) & Paul (type designer). A lot more on Michi's Flickr.

Things We Have In A Fancy Place In Paris.

2007-11-04T02:39:00.000Z

Dan brought Michi, Dan, Anke & myself to a lovely Brazilian restaurant/grocery/salon de thé today. We enjoied a very nice meal and des bières trops mortelles.
Almost feel like home!

Phileas Fogg Pop World Tour

2007-11-04T02:28:00.000Z

What a Reading typical day: Brazilian late lunch, American movies, Arabic news paper, Indian take away dinner, pfiou.

Things We Don’t Have in France: Giant Sized Glasses of Coke

2007-10-30T18:18:00.000Z

And guess what, it’s free refill!
Gansgter picture by Michi ‘Scoots’ Hochleitner.

First Unger Week

2007-10-30T16:14:00.001Z

«always go to extrem!»
(it’s easy to make some step backs)
Last week Gerard Unger was visiting the department for the first time. He came with a new Unger Method: a dense 4 days work session, experimenting with the design of a very condensed typeface.

First sketches, never condensed enough.

I explored five direction by sketching, reducing, reducing again, reducing more, composing words and going back to sketch. Then the experiment keeps going on FontLab with digitalised forms and printouts.

Picture by Dan ‘TypeOff’ Reynolds.
The use of computer allowed us to to explore the automatic extansion of typeforms as a design process. We all made some really surprising and exiting statements about the realtion of body size, x-height, wideness and optical sizes. The following pictures show some tex set with exactly same body and x-height !

Thanks to Gerard I learned a lot, both from my own design and those of my classmates!
Dan Reynolds and Paul Hunt made some more detailled ‘english native speaking’ reports on their own blog.

French Joke

2007-10-28T18:09:00.001Z

Italian restaurants have some strange names in Reading.

27 Days Later (or the True First Message)

2007-10-27T17:01:00.000+01:00

I am in Reading–UK since the October the 1st and I finaly stoped procrastinating and set up my own blog. Yeah.
Some ‘Back To The Future’ posts are planed to tell my first days in the MATD at the Typography and Graphic Comunication Departement of the UoR (A non-default template is also on the go!).
Picture by Yvonne ‘Ysch’ Schüttler, hallowen cupcakes by Dan ‘ultrasparky’ Rhatigan.