52 - endstart

Woohoo! we're here! It's the end of the year - and the begining of another...
gabi and Phil would like to thank everyone who's taken the time to look, and a very special thanks to everyone who contributed to our year long project - we don't think we could have done it without you!

To celebrate the end of the project and the start of a new year - Phil has made a typeface based on a clock face. seriously abstract - but strangly readable... well, he thinks so!

Gabi and Phil will be continuing their creative output with other projects in 2010 - but we might just drop a few typefaces in TFAW here and there - but, we won't be doing it on a weekly basis in 2010!...

Thank you all again - and we wish you a fantastic 2010 in whatever you do.



You can download it here (endstart.zip 7.13Kbs). You can subscribe to the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces that will be available at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk

If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

50 - ratmnumberone

woo hoo! rage Against the Machine got the number one slot over the usual turgid ballad we all come to expect at christmas from the x factor programme...and that man that runs it / owns it / profits from it / tell stupid people what music is...

well, we've all heard the "RATM are signed to Sony too" - so what... at least their music is written by them , made by them, played by them - they got where they are with hard work, integrity and the ability to write a bloody good tune. Oh, and a fantastic campaign by Tracey & Jon on facebook...lots of lovely money for Shelter too...nice.

Anyway - I've decided to celebrate this event by making a typeface made up of photos of RATM... I hope that's cool witht he powers that be!



This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk. If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

38 - doves

It's been a sad week, after the wonderful NEOS event, we heard that artist, Jen Beattie, sadly passed away. We were invited by her very close friends (Susie Hunt and Lindsay Stewart) to paint Jen's coffin.

We arrived at Jen's on Sunday morning to see lots of Jen's friends and fellow artists painting the cardboard coffin in the studio, a rather sobering sight. A mixture of sadness, collective spirit and joy - we all worked together to create an amazing work of art for Jen.

Jen's family were very moved by the work, and very grateful for all our contributions...

Gabi was taking some time out with Poppy, taking a stroll through Jen & Jim's amazing garden, watching their white doves... inspiration for Gabi's tribute typeface to Jen. Rest in Peace Jen.



This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk. If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

29 - untitled

This week's typeface is by a guest contributor, Mobius Engine... a force for mystery and restraint, Mobius Engine has sent us "Untitled"...

A Man of minimal (and very well chosen) words - no information has been sent - nor image to "showcase"... so we decided to add a simple 400*400 image (with his snazzy logo too!) and these minimal words to hopefully get you to dip your toe in the mysterious world of the Mobius Engine

This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

28 - paperpop

The long road to completion is still ongoing at Claypots... this weekend we were stripping some delightful, perfumed, mouldy wall paper from the bedrooms...whilst dirty and laborious, it's quite satisfying when you get a big strip off in one go, I am sure you know what I mean...


We've decided to make a typeface based on peeling paper / paper cut outs...there are two "Styles" to the typeface, the uppercase has a decorative wall paper pattern going through it, and the lower case / numbers / special characters are all solid.

It's a bold, Saul Bass stylee retro / contemporary affair, which I am sure there are many uses for... have fun!

This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

22 - Perspex

Claypots again!... the builders are getting on great guns, the chippies are working so fast, it looks like they might set fire to the wood they use! and the plumbers nabbed all the copper. (They didn't think we'd want £200 worth of scrap metal)Anyway!... in praise of the stripping of the walls and making new framing & insulation - Phil has constructed a typeface called "perspex".

The type can be used as readable text - but it can also be used for construction purposes too...We'd love to see people's illustrations made from this! send them in if you do make anything!



This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

12 - applestalk

We know it's spring...and the apples are still the brushings of a bees legs - but we're excited...about growth - change - new possibilities... so as a tribute to our new found energy and sense of growth - Gabi has created a rather cool typeface based on apples...

This typeface has no uppercase - but as you can see - looks rather good as a spindly, Tim Burton-esque tribute. We'll be using it in the Small Stories range....

This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

11 - birds

In conjunction with our new exhibition - "Avian Constructs" (at Limousine Bull - March 20 - 29th) Gabi has prepared 26 illustrations to be used as a "typeface" for the typefaceaweek project.

We thought it would be good to let everyone see that a typeface, doesn't need to be "A B C"...and hopefully this will inspire and open the ideas up from our potential collaborators. We are still looking for creative people join in with out project - so if you want to get involved, or know of someone that you might want to get involved, please send us an email! (or leave a comment below!)


During the production of the work for the show, we had also filmed this rather wonderful snippet of footage -


Isn't it wonderful how everything appears to be related...I swear that crow is pinching a bit from January's "twigtype"...

This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

10 - Ammonites

To keep dipping into the theme of Darwin (it is his 200th anniversary this year peeps...) We've produced a decorative typeface inspired by ammonites. This is typeface only has upper and lowercase letters - no numbers or punctuation...I guess they evolve at a later stage ;)

This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

05 - Blizzard (8 weights)

Well...the weather, lets get all British about it!...We here at G-R-A have been so inspired by the torrents of snow over the last week - we made a typeface about it!



There are 8 "weights" to the blizzard typeface from the simple dots of DB_nobox to the whiteout that is DB_forty... We think the typeface can be used as decoration or as readable text - so quite a versatile font.

This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

04 - Backy (uppercase)

Backy is the big brother of "TwigType" - a documentation of our back garden through hand cut stencils. Our "Backy" is a bit of an anomaly – an oasis of two established trees (30+ years old) in a desert of kept gardens.
I love looking up and watching the shapes of the branches create their own forms and symbols – the lack of scale and context reflects our situation with moving house.

We had also removed our anniversary present from our old house yesterday too – and I am not sure if this is a defiant statement – to the problems we’d had getting what was ours back (I won’t go into the details!)…
This letterset is very limited – it is not only massive in the amount of points to create a font – but also very much designed for single words or short phrases – by no means a font to be used as body text!

We love our trees at G-R-A – we hope you do too!
This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

01 - Twigtype (jan11)

Well folks, here it is, the first typeface for our project.

This was originally a hand made alphabet to show at the NEOS2008 event Gabi and I held at the the Gordon Highlanders Museum ( http://g-r-a.co.uk/blog_photos.htm ).

We are preparing for a show at Limousine Bull - entitled "Avian constructs (in a human context)" - and we'd started to explore the materials birds make nests from. We had also recently moved to Inverurie, and started the garden from scratch... we are taking some of the work we created further, for the final exhibition (in March..."some time" (we need to finalise the dates)) - and after living in a detached "private" space (Kingswells), we now live in a semi detached, very close community, where people like to "kain fit's ginging on"... so we are exploring communication, secrecy, seclusion and subtlety (no alliteration was hurt in the making of the blog).

This typeface is now unavailable for download - but will be included in the limited edition CD Rom of all 52 Typefaces at the beginning of 2010. To secure a CD Rom, please email us (Phil & Gabi) at info@g-r-a.co.uk.

If you would like to get involved in making a typeface for the project, please email us at : info@g-r-a.co.uk or leave a comment below!

thanks, Phil & Gabi