When Steve Jobs takes the stage next Wednesday at Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, he will be attempting to pull off the kind of dramatic debut that seems almost impossible in this age of unreal expectation and insatiable hype. Outside of the rumored announcement of the iPhone 4G, it’s the iSlate, (or Apple Tablet, or MacBook touch) that industry insiders are convinced will be the life of this party. The tablet PC has been attempted in one form or another for years now, but most gadget-crazed consumers believe that if anyone can convince us that we need this thing, it’s Apple… and they’re right. I’d confidently (but uncomfortably) place myself in the Mac fanboy camp, and if they somehow manage to blow us all away on the 27th (and keep the price below $1,000) I could find myself saving up for that early adopter’s license. I’m actually quite surprised that we still know as little as we do about the iSlate so close to it’s unveiling. What doesn’t shock me however, is the rabid speculation regarding it’s form factor and the dozens of impressive mock-ups that have made their rounds on the old interslice. I’ve included a few of my favorites after the jump, and would love to hear what kind of unreal features you all feel would make Apple’s tablet a must-own device in 2010. [click to continue…]

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I must implore you to click the image above and head over to iLT for what’s becoming a legitimate treat, a proper typophile’s list of favorite typefaces from the previous year. Within just a couple of hours, this post has generated comments from some of type’s biggest names and includes selections that are likely on my list of favorite faces of all time, let alone last year. What are you still doing here? I’m not even joking. Please go…

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At it’s inception, the ampersand was a ligature of the letters e and t, an efficiency for the latin et, meaning “and” . That perception has since changed, and the & now stands as it’s own unique and beautiful character. Enough of that, just add this new Tumblr project to the list of sites you have to visit on the daily. AmpersandAmpersand offers up a new and lovely ampersand, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. With big, clean glyphs (ligatures are not considered glyphs, but a quirk of the typeface) that link to each ampersand’s parent typeface, this is a perfect example of a site doing one simple thing, and doing it very well.

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Film buffs from around the world are descending upon Park City, Utah to celebrate the smaller side of the film industry at this year’s Sundance Festival. For François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain of French directing collective H5, it’s another chance to show off their very first short film, Logorama. Four years in the making, this 17 minute short attempts to visualize and explore a world saturated by brands and marketing mascots. With car chases, natural disasters and Bob’s Big Boy, Mr. Pringle and Ronald McDonald portraying classic movie archetypes, it’s easy to see how this film won the Kodak Prix at Cannes. I’ve included a short clip below, and will keep you posted on what I hope will be a long list of future screenings as they’re released.

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You already  know the man on the left, and perhaps you’ve seen the recently released “wanted poster” of what Bin Laden may look like today (center). It’s the man on the right that many of us may not recognize. May I introduce Spanish lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares. Former leader of the United Left coalition in parliament, Llamazares was shocked to hear of the similarities between the Bin Laden poster and his 2004 general election headshot. “I was surprised and angered because it’s the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist,” Llamazares said Saturday at a news conference. “It’s almost like out of a comedy if it didn’t deal with matters as serious as bin Laden and citizens’ security.” The FBI claimed to have used “cutting edge” technology to create the image, but when pressed, revealed that “When producing age-progressed photographs, forensic artists typically select features from a database of stock reference photographs to create the new image. After a preliminary review, it appears that in this instance the forensic artist was unable to find suitable features among the reference photographs and obtained those features, in part, from a photograph he found on the internet.” The poster has since been removed from the State Department’s Rewards for Justice site, but Llamazares has sworn off travel to America saying “Bin Laden’s safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is.” Sadly, this is only runner-up for this week’s criminal abuse of Adobe’s Creative Suite. Check out the train wreck that is the Takers movie poster after the jump. In what I can only assume to be a cost cutting measure, someone’s cousin “who knows how to Photoshop” was paid $20 to paste the heads of legitimate movie stars onto the bodies of stand-ins, then assemble them to vaguely resemble six people at the same photo shoot. Without question, this is the worst work I’ve ever seen from a major studio release.

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Orlando designer Jason Dean has recently made the beautiful ABC’s of Branding poster available on his new storefront for The Best Part.com. Created without ink, these eye-catching, 18″ x 24″ pieces are foil stamped, then embossed on 100 lb. French Pop-Tone, individually stamped, signed and numbered. Featuring many of the world’s most famous (and infamous) logos and logotypes arranged to form the alphabet, the limited edition (1000) posters are available for $50 and come in two equally brilliant flavors, silver on black or gold on cream (pictured after the jump).  [click to continue…]

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It’s been a few years now, but when I first took on a job at CustomInk.com as a Production Artist, I was affectionately refereed to as “the Kernal” due to my hyper critical attention to kerning pairs when proofing customer orders about to print. I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that my perceptions of “wrong” weren’t based on any typographic rules (for example, the kerning of VA in Adobe’s Helvetica font is -80) but more a purely aesthetic reaction to the space between letters. In this awesome FontFeed video podcast you can listen to Font Bureau type designer Dyana Weissman explain the difference between kerning and spacing, why it should be done by hand, and generally geek out on the nuanced beauty of perfectly kerned type. For more from Ms. Weissman, check out her fascinating post on Font Bureau’s Type 101 blog titled Kerning, Flow & Music.

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As we draw ever closer to Apple’s iSlate announcement later this month, WebDesignLedger.com has been nice enough to assemble a great collection of vintage Apple advertisements on their site, including the above image of (my family’s very first home computer) the Apple IIc. For me, these photos bring with them a rash of sepia-toned memories of dusty floppy disks, pounding the arrow keys for Olympic Decathlon, and endless hours with my first electronic obsession, Zork. Whether these fading images make you feel astonishingly old, remind you how very far the home computer has come in a relatively short period of time, or some sickening combination of the two, this quick stroll down memory lane is one well worth taking.

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