27 - Gerry Can

Another week at Claypots - the garden is turning into a monster, grasses, nettles, accursed bishops weed and bloody railway willows - all climbing higher and higher, fed and pushed on by the amazing sunny weather - followed by thirst quenching rain storms (perfect for growing rampant weeds).


SO! - we had a rake in the steading (farm building) and we've got two petrol driven devices for tackling rampant flora - a honda 4.5 lawn mower & an industrial powered strimmer (perfect!) All we needed was......petrol!

Hiding in the dust and bird plops was an old 10 litre Gerry Can - I've always loved the shape (and sound) of these military-esque objects - especially the lovely routing / indented shape on the front of them...so much so, I was inspired to make a font this week based on the elegant, rounded embossed shapes.

I've also downloaded fontCreator 6.0 - and really set to work on creating a whole range of kerning pairs - but, it's not looking like they are working... I'll need to investigate! Needless to say, it's still a working font - and you can tweak / push / pull the letters in your chosen graphics programs.

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!

26 - Blether

What's that noise?... that'll be the birds chattering in the dawn - being at 57 degrees north - we get a lot of light in the summer...and the birds seem to think the day starts at 5am...

We're waking up to all the birds on Selbie Drive having a good morning chat - so Gabi has made a typeface dedicated to all the chat from our avian friends...

It's a lower case font - but the upper case is "hollow" and the lower is "solid" - so you can overlay them.

PS...Blether is a Scottish word for "talking" (excessively!)


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!

25 - atatat

Gabi has been having some more fun with her Dell mini 9 - running the dark and mysterious (to us non geeks) UBUNTU ("Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others" - how humorous of the LINUX people who can see the matrix and think everyone else can / should!)

This week, she somehow pressed a few tiny buttons together...and she changed her keyboard layout, unbeknown to her...until she tried to write an email! Trying to type in the @ sign kept dropping in the good old " (quote)... she fiddled, she poked...she called up the help files (written in "you should understand this, 'cos I did when I wrote it, mr Anderson" script)...

Anyhoo - according to Gabi - without knowing how, where or why, the keyboard somehow managed to fix itself (boy, boys, boys... don't ask).

This typeface is a tribute to that missing at sign... A fun, hand-drawn typeface, part of the "small stories" set Gabi is working on...

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!

24 - Inevitable Alphabet

Last week, Gray's School of Art opened its doors to the public to showcase the work of all the graduating students of 2009... a fantastic date in the North East cultural calendar if ever there was one!

Gabi and I were particularly taken by the work of Tracy Gray (BAHons Graphics) - We thought that her "inevitable alphabet" project would work perfectly with Typeface A Week... and being the dedicated graduate - managed to make her way to look after her show on the Saturday morning (apres Graduation Party). We spoke, exchanged blogAddys and bing - she got back to us, very interested to participate. So thank you Tracy, well done for getting your BAHons, and thanks for wanting to share your work with us. Over to you:

"The ‘Inevitable Alphabet’ is a journey consisting of large posters with hand-drawn imagery and photography, with objects typically associated with the elderly e.g. Z = Zimmerframe. My aim is to break through stereotypical ideas of old age in order to encourage younger people to mix with the age group."

Check out http://peachplumpear-tee.blogspot.com/ for her 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!

23 - Maple

Last week, was a hectic week... I (Phil) have been concentrating on getting the NEOS (North East Open Studios) booklet off to print...and there was the small matter of going to the Gray's School of Art Degree Show on Friday night & Saturday... and we've been neglecting doing our demolition duties at Claypots - so TFAW was taking a low priority...





SO!... as we want to use typefaces to relate to our week's events... I thought "better late than never" - and in true fashion of "pulling it out the bag" - I've decided to upload an old font (CHEAT!) but - it was designed for the band I used to be in (Maple)...and fittingly, we recently got back together for a special benefit gig - and it all went swimmingly (much to Scot, Al, Murray and myself's surprise.)

The typeface is a mash up of metrostyle & times...if I remember correctly! It's a bit clunky, a bit unfinished and a bit prickly...yes, just like the band.

I've included a video of one of our performances for you to take stock of....enjoy (?)...




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!

21 - Handwrought

What a week! We're soooo busy at the moment, we (Phil & Gabi) have finished our type classes with Craigielea! What a fantastic time we had with the pupils & teachers. We've been asked to come back when the school gets back after the summer holidays! so that's fantastic news. Again, Gabi and I would like to thank Craigielea School, The Pupils and Peacock Visual Arts (Nicole & Adam) working for the Creative Identities project.
We've also had a lovely email from Gordon Watt (Morning Glass Designs) with our second "guest" font! Gordon is also working on a more stylised typeface based on a welsh typeface he's seen used in stained glass. We're loving the submissions and appreciated the time and effort everyone is taking to submit work to the project.


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!