In a class I took this semester, Materializing the Word: The Book as Object, Technology, Concept, and Event, 1500-1800, I researched the text font used by William Jaggard for Shakespeare's First Folio, printed from 1621 to 1623 in London. Below is a short summary of my paper. Although I feel reasonably confident about the visual and historical evidence for my conclusions, they must be viewed with some skepticism; myriad attributes can create a misleading appearance, from inking and justification to paper quality and mixed-sort fonts.

This summer I have been unbelievably lucky to work with Mario Garcia and Pegie Stark Adam on redesigning the Yale Daily News, Yale University's daily newspaper, and Mario has very graciously posted a few of my thoughts from time to time on his fantastic, revamped blog. Recently, he wrote an entry, "Text type: here are five that work for me all the time, picking Miller Daily, Poynter Oldstyle Text, Chronicle Text, Mercury Text, and Quiosco as his favorite news faces.

This week has proved a typographic adventure. After designing the Yale typeface article, I had the opportunity to work on the Yale Daily News' arts and living section, “scene.” My colleague, Greta Carlson, and I designed the cover, which is traditionally highly-themed, after Jost Amman’s “Der Bierbreuwer” in Das Ständebuch. Below I’ve attached the cover and jump page for the article (about student beer brewing at Yale), along with a close-up of the cover.

Alright, not typography related, but cool for design nerds nevertheless. Check out this post from PingMag on Atsushi Tomura, who creates incredible foam monster costumes (apparently, people dressed up in monster outfits is less odd in Japan than in the U.S.). There's something about the vivid colors, googly eyes, and sharp white teeth that makes these creatures lovable in a surreal, nightmarish way.

Imagine my surprise when, while browsing for comforters at Bed Bath & Beyond, I came across this: a serif drapery rod!

In context, the serif is pretty clearly the name for the ornament at the end of the rod, so the similarity to the typographic variety is obvious. Maybe this is well-known, but it certainly made shopping momentarily more interesting for me.

So, I'm thinking about giving blogging a go. Per the nature of this site, I'll post on type design and typography, along with other matters related to graphic design. This won't be too constraining since these topics tend to occupy much of my time anyway.