COLOPHACTS
Ideas, inspirations and other good stuff.
How the world’s worst typo cost $22 billion
In what may go down in history as the greatest printer’s error of all time, Google suffered a rapid $22 billion fall in its share value following an accidental email…
BRANDING DISASTERS – Dairy-based haircare
Why take two bottles of yoghurt into the shower? The resplendently coiffed Billy Connolly’s remark about the bewildering variety of shampoo choices: “Where I come from, Jojoba is the month…
What’s the point? How to measure type.
Thanks to the wonders of digitisation we now have more typefaces to choose from than ever before and they come in an infinite variety of sizes. But it wasn’t always…
COPYWRITING – effective rules for clear communication
If you ever struggle over a piece of copy because you think it sounds too familiar, return to George Orwell for help. Best known today for 1984 and Animal Farm,…
FONT ID – How Helvetica conquered the world
It was font guru Erik Spiekermann who pointed out that Helvetica, one of the world’s most ubiquitous typefaces should actually have been called Teutonica because of its overwhelming use in…
CORPORATE IDENTITY – Hidden image points the way
Every now and then a piece of graphic design becomes such a common sight that we stop looking at it. How many people notice the hidden arrow in the FedEx…
FONT ID – The hounding of the Baskerville
The elegant letterforms of the Baskerville typeface were not widely appreciated when they were first introduced in 1754. The face is best known for its crisp edges, high contrast and…
FONT ID – How Johnston’s Underground bridged the class gap
In an earlier post, we highlighted the way that Helvetica has taken over the world as one of the most ubiquitous typefaces, to the extent that it has become almost…
Life imitates art in logo rebrand
Spurred on by the £30 million it was going to save by taking its “youth-oriented” offering Channel 3 off air and online, the BBC decided that what it needed to do…