Promo art for Heimsbrunnar, a tabletop roleplaying game

Musings: Steven Heller, "I Heart Design: Remarkable Graphic Design Selected by Designers, Illustrators, and Critics", 1

Cyrus Highsmith of Occupant Fonts Foundry cites Banco Type (1951) as his favorite typeface.

Banco Type is a display typeface - something used for large-size headings and inspired by hand-painted signs and calligraphy. Display typefaces tend to be more eccentric and aim at drawing attention to them, rather than improving readability - they are not intended for long text passages anyways.

Highsmith also mentions other fonts by Excoffon: Mistral (1953), a casual script typeface modeled after Excoffon's handwriting, Choc (1955), designed after Japanese brush techniques, the unusual Calypso (1958) and Antique Olive (1962-66) - Antique being the generic French name for sans-serif fonts, and Antique Olive being Fonderie Olive's  answer to other popular sans-serif fonts like Max Miedinger's Helvetica (1957) and Adrian Frutiger's Univers (1957).

While both Helvetica and Univers are neo-grotesque fonts based on Akzidenz-Grotesk, a famous 19th century sans-serif fonts, Antique Olive features a more humanist, non-mechanical design.

UNDERSTANDING LETTERING TERMS

Antique, Gothic, Sans-Serif are the same thing - typefaces lacking the extension features called serif at the end of the strokes.

Grotesque are an early family of Sans-Serif typefaces pioneered in the 90th century. They are also called realist typefaces for their practicality and simplicity. Neo-grotesque typefaces are a revival of the traditional grotesque typefaces in the 1950s, and are a direct evolution of those.

Geometric are typefaces that replicate almost perfect geometric shapes and proportions. These originated in Germany in the 1920s.

Humanist typefaces are inspired both by Serif fonts, traditional lettering and calligraphy. They often have stroke modulation - strokes vary in with along the line or use alternating thick and thin strokes.

A dream within a dream

Covers & Shelters

Concept Art for "Tales of the Black Forest"

Tales of the Black Forest is a puzzle-platformer game planned for development by Futhark Games. The plot revolves around Rose of Sharon, a girl suffering from leukemia, and her adventures among things real and imaginary.

New tracks recorded for Triptych soundtrack

A Song for Teddy (with lyrics and chords)

C/Em/F/Am
Em/F/Am

(Am) Memories
(G) Wash (Em) over (F) me (F/E)
(Am) Like the (G) salty (Em) waves
(F) We were born on the (C) ground
So the (D) sea will not (Am) take us down
(C) In its (G) water (D) embrace

(C) Grass will (F) grow
From the (Am) sockets of our eyes
And (Em) worms
Will (F) live in our (Am) chests,
There's no (C) Heaven or (F) Hell
For the (Dm) likes of us
Not even the (Am) fields of Fiddler's Green (F)

Last farewells denied
I'm mythologizing your death
There were you, swollen fingers
And the hope for the things to come
On that hospital bed

Remember, we lay on the hill
Or can you remember at all
The moment had stopped when our lips almost met
And then it just passed away

Grass will grow in the sockets of our eyes
And worms will live in our chests
There's no Heaven or Hell for the likes of us

Not even the fields of Fiddler's Green

April 2015