A guide to type design and lettering that includes relevant theory, history, explanatory diagrams, exercises, photographs, and illustrations, and features interviews with various designers, artists, and illustrators.

Graphic Design in Urban Environments introduces the idea of a category of designed graphic objects that significantly contribute to the functioning of urban systems. These elements, smaller than buildings, are generally understood by urban designers to comprise such phenomena as sculpture, clock towers, banners, signs, large screens, the portrayal of images on buildings through “smart screens,” and other examples of what urban designers call “urban objects.”The graphic object as it is defined here also refers to a range of familiar things invariably named in the literature as maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards, signs, architectural communication, commercial vernacular, outdoor publicity, lettering, banners, screens, traffic and direction signs and street furniture. One can also add markings of a sports pitch, lighting, bollards, even red carpets or well dressings. By looking at the environment, and design and deconstructing form and context relationships, the defining properties and configurational patterns that make up graphic objects are shown in this book to link the smallest graphic detail (e.g. the number 16) to larger symbolic statements (e.g. the Empire State Building). From a professional design practice perspective, a cross section through type, typographic, graphic and urban design will provide a framework for considering the design transition between alphabets, writing systems, images (in the broadest sense) and environments.

This comprehensive, well-illustrated volume ranges from the earliest pictographs and hieroglyphics to the work of 20th-century designers. Subjects include early writing forms; Roman lettering; runes and medieval hands; the Carolingian minuscule and derivative types; humanistic writing and derivative fonts; and much more. 89 complete alphabets and more than 165 additional specimens.

Using a combination of explanatory text, step-by-step photographs and classic and contemporary examples, this unique survey brings together over 80 processes involved in creating lettering and applying it to surfaces. Included are hand-drawn lettering techniques (from sign writing to tattooing); dimensional lettering (hand engraving to laser cutting); typesetting (from letterpress to lettering in food); printing (Letraset to printing on bank notes); lettering on textiles (embroidery to flag-making); and illuminated type (neon signage to holography). Lettering is an essential and exhaustive reference guide for any designer wishing either to create lettering themselves or to commission work from external sources.

Award-winning comic book letterer and founder of Blambot.com NATE PIEKOS provides in-depth tips and techniques for modern digital comic book lettering. From creating your own lettering templates and developing design skills to crafting emotive dialogue and dynamic sound effects, PIEKOS offers a comprehensive look at what it means to build a lettering career in the comics industry today. Featuring a foreword by famed X-Men letterer TOM ORZECHOWSKI.

Details of all towns using multi-town slogan postmarks in the UK over four decades 1960-1999