Brian Paul Nelson – Branding / Design / Illustration">Brian Paul Nelson

The info-graphic work of Nicholas Feltron has to be some of the most well rounded in the business. His attention to detail is flawless and the use of color and type is spot on. It’s easy for info-graphics to become too over crowded and cluttered with information, but Feltron’s work breathes with a huge sigh of relief so the statistics are still easily understood. Above are just a few samples of his extended portfolio. Check out more of his work.

Dating from the late 1700s up through the 1990s playbills were the main form of communication for theatrical events and as you can see utilized some very impressive type and layout options to really grab hold of the public’s attention. Leeds Playbills contains nearly 5,000 high resolution scans of these vibrant playbills which are part of the Leodis digitization project from the Local Studies Library collection in Leeds. The time and care that went into setting the type and printing these bills is amazing and well worth the tedious effort to produce posters like these.

Via Woodtyper.

The ampersand has always been one of my favorite characters. In many good typefaces it usually has a little more personality than the rest of the character set and is always fun to design with. The Ampersand is a nice blog dedicated to the little guy where users submit pictures of any type of ampersand they come across. Above are some of my favorites from the site, especially that last one from House Industries.

Unicorn Graphics recently uploaded their Web Museum of Wood Types and Ornaments with a large collection of scans and photographs of wood type and wood type catalogues, most of which are over 100 years old. It’s amazing to see just how precise and deliberate type designers and setters were well before the global age of technology. You can really pin-point where many later fonts got their start from. This is the sort of stuff that should make anyone appreciate type on an even higher level if you don’t value it with prestige already, which you should.

“As the demand for broadsides increased during first years of the nineteenth century, the need for the process of producing large letters cheaply arose. Wood was a logical material choice because of its ready availability, lightness, and proven printing qualities. In 1827, Darius Wells of New York City first found the means to mass produce wood letters. In March of 1828, first wood type catalogue was published by Wells. Throughout the wood type manufacturing history, many manufactories were in business. Among those, Wm. H. Page & Co., Vanderburgh, Wells & Co. and Hamilton Mfg. Co. was the most noted ones.”

This museum serves as a great reference for any designer, especially type designers, who are looking for typography inspiration for their next design. I would love to have an actual copy of the Hamilton #14 catalogue which is where the images above came from, it’s beyond amazing.

Most matchboxes are no more than a couple inches in size, yet that didn’t constrain the awesomeness you see above in these old European matchbox covers. All of these could easily work as posters if they were 10 times larger, yet their small size sort of makes you appreciate them that much more. And even though I can’t translate most of the type, all of which is amazing by the way, there is something about different languages that I have always admired, especially within design. The imagery and play on words, no matter what language it might be in, can still communicate effectively and allow you to grasp the overall experience and concept the designer set out to get across. This in my opinion is what continually pushes the visual arts as a universal language around the world.

Check out more of these covers at Shailesh Chavda’s photostream.

Total mind blower. These luggage labels are from the “golden age of travel” from the 1900′s to 1960′s and were used as a small way to advertise cities and hotels. The illustrations, color combinations and typography of these things are incredible — and to think they were all created by hand! If I ever got something like this tagged to my luggage I would flip, it would seriously complete the trip. Something so simple and common as a luggage label can be designed so well that it makes you want to hang on to it forever. Then, after a good amount of time the paper starts getting old and worn and just makes it that much more appealing and sweet. Such a great source of inspiration. I could look at these things all day.

Courtesy of Tom Schifanella’s flickr stream.

I love when I come across design that utilizes photography, illustration and type so well. These awesome vintage Porsche posters still hold strong today, I just wish some of their cars still looked like the ones here — especially that top one, with the numbers and all. The warm color palette along with the diagonal layout of certain elements really evoke speed and energy, which says a lot about the type of cars Porsche produced during the time these were created. Would love to have one of these up on my wall.

Check out the larger versions and more at Pelican Parts.

Chromeography is an on-going site dedicated to chrome badges, emblems and logos on vintage cars, cameras and appliances. To me, this kind of stuff is what really adds soul to items like these and makes them feel as if they are one of a kind. Type just isn’t set like this on most of this sort of stuff these days and definitely not in chrome — well true chrome. I pulled some of my favorites from the large, continual list of the site that’s worth checking out.