The gift of typography

This Christmas, I've decided to make all of the presents I'm giving by hand.  Which means that I'll have a ton of things to write about once the people receiving the gifts open them.  I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise by pre-blogging.

That being said, I don't think my dad reads this blog.  If he does (hi dad!), he should NOT click through to the rest of the post, or else he'll be decidedly unsurprised on Christmas.

 My parents used to tell my sisters and me that all our presents were in their closet and if we wanted to ruin our Christmas that was fine by them.  So, consider this the same.


 Hello, non-paternal-figure-people.  Welcome to the other side.

I wanted to share this project because it's very quick and easy, and looks great.  If you're a typography nerd, then half the fun is choosing fonts that go well together.  But you can always just go with one font and vary the sizes.  There are also tons of posters in this same style all over the internet, so if you need inspiration, just seek out a couple typography blogs and you'll no doubt find it.


The fonts I've used are Pigeon, Liberator and Tommaso which are available at the Lost Type Co-Op (http://www.losttype.com/).  Lost Type Co-Op is :

"[...] a Pay-What-You-Want Type foundry, the first of its kind. 

Founded by Riley Cran and Tyler Galpin, originally in a whirlwind 24-hour adventure to distribute a single typeface, Lost Type has blossomed into a full-fledged foundry, distributing fonts from designers all over the world, with its unique model. 

Users have the opportunity to pay whatever they like for a font, you can even type in '$0' for a free download.  

100% of funds from these sales go directly to the designers of the fonts, respectively. 

Lost Type takes no cut of sales, and holds no funds."

How cool is that!? If you're ever on the hunt for a great font, I suggest you head over to their site and check out the great work.

For the poster, I chose to use lyrics from Stan Roger's Northwest Passage.  It's something Dad used to play around the campfire.  Pretty much any song by Rogers reminds me of my dad and my family's camping trips to Fundy National Park.  I figured that a personalized music poster would suit him, spruce up his den at home and allow me to flex my creative muscles.

I'm still fiddling around with the details: spacing, font size, colours etc, but this is pretty close to the final product.

It's easiest to do this project on Photoshop because you can create separate layers for each section of text, and move them around like that.  Not to mention you can work with a canvas the size you want (this is 24" by 36'') However, you could easily complete it on a word processing program as well. 

The whole thing took me about 30 minutes.  Nothing too exhausting, it's a good project to work away at on a lazy afternoon.

By reading this you are sworn to secrecy.  I know where you all live.

* The ampersand is Baskerville, italic.  The sexiest ampersand in the whole world.