HONDA - Once an underdog, now an icon

I heard a story one time about the man named Honda who started the car manufacturing business that we now know. In brief, it went something like this. Mr. Honda had machinist experience and wanted to sell his piston rings to Toyota. They refused his piston rings numerous times. Mr. Honda built a motor for a bicycle. The idea caught on and before long he was building motorcycles and was becoming well known. Then war broke out and his factory was destroyed. Mr. Honda got his people together and gathered up useable materials to rebuild with. They gathered gasoline cans and other materials that were left behind in the war. Before long the business was back up and building motorcycles and then broadened out to build small cars. It is a remarkable story and I'm probably doing it no justice. To hear the story makes you think of a success story of an immigrant to America.

I have been a Ford guy all my life. I learned to drive in a '56 Ford F-250 Truck. I drove a '72 Ford Gran Torino in H.S. and I performed all of my firsts in my Gran Torino. I remember seeing the little Honda's buzzing around. I didn't care much for them. Of course my Father was and still is a very big Union Pro guy. So, to drive an import was quite scandalous in his eyes.

Later in life I got a job at an auto parts store and began to notice that people who came in for parts for their Honda were only replacing wiper blades and light bulbs. I ended up buying an old '87 Honda Civic hatchback. It was a 4 speed and I taught my wife how to drive the standard transmission in that car. We would get 40 - 44 mpg in that little car and it only once left us stranded. That was because I failed to have the timing belt replaced on time. I bought another Honda, this time a '92 Accord. I've had the car for over 12 years and it now has over 220k miles on it. I love the car and wouldn't give it up if you paid me.

Shweeeew!  Sorry. A little windy. What typeface is used for the logo / word-mark?

 

What the font had two versions of Clarendon in it's lineup of potential matches. I tried it out and it is pretty darned close. It wouldn't take much to make it right. Add the tab to the top of the "A" and probably squash the height of the letters and you've pretty much got it. The logo letters appear to be a little fatter too. I don't know if altering the letter height would change that too or not.

Chickenfoot Logo Typeface Search

In my other class, Graphic Design III, we're creating a "Gig Poster". I chose to use Chickenfoot as the band represented in my poster. I thought it would be very simple to find the text used in their logo because it is sans serif and pretty square looking. Well here goes.

The first stop was with What the Font. It said that the closest match was called Bank Gothic Medium.  I think it's pretty dang close. The "C" is obviously not correct, but the designer could have cut off the ends of the "C" in outlines. I managed to find a free download of the font, installed it for comparison and here it is.

Not a bad match.  The top text is the original logo type. The middle is the Bank Gothic Medium as typed. I then created outlines and decided that the "O" would make a better candidate for the "C" than the "C" itself. It appears that it is wider than the typeface really is. I cut the right side off of an "O" and voila. Reversing the "K" to finish it up and I think I've nailed it for the most part. Just a little grung-ing and we're rockin'. 

By the way, if you are an 80's hairband rocker, give Chickenfoot a listen. It is a Super-Group organized by The Red Rocker Sammy Hagar. Joe Satriani, Chad Smith, and Michael Anthony join to create one of the greatest sounds that rock has heard in quite a long time. 

Easter is already available at a retailer near you

Time flies by so incredibly fast. It's no wonder why really. Retailers and our consumer driven Capitalist society shoves the next thing down our throats before we have even had the chance to observe the last thing let alone digest it. Anyway, I'll step down from my soap box and share what I found in Meijer the other day.

Wasn't Valentine's Day just last week? Isn't Easter after St. Patrick's Day? That's why I can never keep the spring holidays dates straight. Anyway, I looked up Russell Stover's logo on several of the font identifier sites. The nearest I came up with is called Ladybird Std at What Font Is. The other sites couldn't even get that close. It is a script and probably a hand "Lettered" font designed just for this purpose. The text also has a bevel and emboss treatment applied to it, which could be further confusing the image identifiers.

Easter wouldn't be Easter without these little peeps. Personally, I don't care for them. But the little rascals have been around since before I was ever here. As I suspected, this logo typeface is probably a custom creation. Interesting that Korinna popped up on What Font Is search, but it isn't correct because of the capital P and the lower case e for obvious starters. Numerous other typefaces came up, but they also had no true identifying features, or only one character, but not the others. 

Who doesn't like a KISS? These little classics are just melt in your mouth good and aren't only for Easter. I knew this was going to be difficult. Again, no luck on KISSES. It is probably hand drawn. "Milk Chocolate" on the other hand appears to be District Pro Demi according to What Font Is.

I'm a sucker for peanut butter and chocolate. This is my all time favorite flavor in the "Sweets" category. Reese's is yet another trouble causing logo typeface that isn't recognizable by any of the online font identifiers. I'm sure it too is probably a hand lettered version of something inspiring. 

This is going to be soooooo Cool!!

The difference between Type and Lettering

Once again, in the effort to clear my head and get some inspiration all at the same time, I find myself with a minimum of 16 browser tabs open. Is my head clear? Probably not. But I did find this fantastic article written by Joseph Alessio for Smashing Magazine.

The comparisons in this article are like strolling back through my art history and graphic design history classes. I wanted to post this so that I can easily reference it later and to share with classmates who will no doubt find it useful and interesting.

Write what you LIKE

Austin Kleon explains on page 45 that if you write what you like while you are pumped about it, you are much more likely to write something interesting about it. The traditional advice is to write what you KNOW. Austin argues that this leads to mundane and boring lifeless crap. The idea (if I'm interpreting him correctly) is to do what you are passionate about, while you are passionate about it. When you know something inside out and backwards, up side down and polka-dotted, chances are that it just isn't interesting anymore. Or, at least it would be much more difficult to make it interesting to others because you will skip and miss simple things about what you know with the assumption that they already know those simple details and would be bored with them as well.

Goin' da school

Further reading in Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist leads me to page 19.

School Yourself.

School is one thing, Education is another. The two don't always overlap. Whether you're in school or not, it's always your job to get yourself an education.

You have to be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else — that's how you'll get ahead.

Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don't ask a question before you Google it. You'll either find the answer or you'll come up with a better question.

Image courtesy of  Public Domain Images

I try to practice this at all times. If there is one thing that I carry away from my time in college, it is that I realize I will never know everything. But, I have learned where to go to obtain the information that I need at any given time. This practice has helped me from feeling like a bonehead and asking an unnecessary question. I recently visited the Larry Kanfer Studios in Champaign and there was a beautiful photograph of an impressive and very recognizable structure. I wanted to guess that it was the Taj' Mahal, I wanted confirmation and was just milliseconds away from blurting the question to the people standing next to me observing the same image. I managed to choke my words back and get my phone out to google it for confirmation. I was right and I was not embarrassed. And actually, it did indeed prompt an even better question that I also managed to answer by searching the internet. It feels good to be self reliant.

Purdue logo and wordmark

Today coming into school I saw a Purdue window sticker and wondered what the font was that the school uses in their wordmark logo. I thought for a brief instant of taking a photo of the window sticker, but decided that it may appear invasive. So, I have gathered a few images from web sources.

This first one is very similar to what I had seen in the window of the car. It is a very three dimensional letterpress looking font. When I searched the internet for the Purdue University font though, many images arrived. I found it interesting how much change and variation can occur between the "logo / wordmark".

This Sans Serif logo appears to be the more official logo / wordmark, while the three dimensional version is likely used for sports and school spirit.

It's interesting how much difference is apparent even comparing the two visual logo pieces. The font changes there as well. 

Garden shed has type too

Miracle-Gro has had a place in my garden shed for many years. It helps to keep plants growing strong. Strength keeps them more resistant to drought and other threats. My roots are deeply embedded in the garden. I have enjoyed it both professionally and as a hobby for nearly all my life. The packaging of

Miracle-Gro hasn't changed much if at all, but its interesting to now notice the specific traits of the font.

I tried to upload my  image to the sites. Nothing came up. I tried going through the endless questionnaire at Identifont, but nothing valuable or certain came up there either. Finally I just googled "typeface used miracle gro logo" which led me to this forum post at Typophile. So, to verify that the unconfirmed answer on the post was accurate, I searched for the font by name and found that it is probably the origin of the logo.

I think that the font may have been used as a starting point for the Miracle-Gro logo, but the logo appears to be stretched vertically. Three solid selling points in supporting this are the upright "M", the "G" with no horizontal bar as well as the form of the lowercase "r" and "a".

My List.ly list of Tools to organize your mind

Tools for Archiving, Morgue Filing, and Organizing

View more lists from Burke Stanion

Save it to the Morgue

p21-22  Steal Like an Artist — Austin Kleon writes:

Save Your Thefts For Later:

Carry a notebook and a pen with you wherever you go. Get used to pulling it out and jotting down your thoughts and observations. Copy your favorite passages out of books. Record overheard conversations. Doodle when you’re on the phone.

Go to whatever lengths necessary to make sure you always have paper on you. Artist David Hockney had all the inside pockets of his suit jackets tailored to fit a sketchbook. The musician Arthur Russell liked to wear shirts with two front pockets so he could fill them with scraps of score sheets.

Keep a swipe file. It’s just what is sounds like — a file to keep track of the stuff you’ve swiped from others. It can be digital or analog — it doesn’t matter what form it takes, as long as it works. you can keep a scrapbook and cut and paste things into it. or you can just take pictures of things with your camera phone.

See something worth stealing? Put it in the swipe file. Need a little inspiration? Open up the swipe file.

Newspaper reporters call this a “morgue file” — I like that name even better. Your morgue file is where you keep the dead things that you’ll later reanimate in your work.

Image courtesy of Michael Hewitt

Once I read this, the term "Morgue File" rang in my head. I google searched it out of curiosity and found Morgue File. This is a really great site that has eluded me until now. Of course then, I had to search for even more sites that would be useful in archiving all of the bits and pieces that I find as a day goes on. I have been using (or trying to get good at using) Evernote and Mindmeister. Both of these apps are free and appear so far to be very useful to me in keeping my thoughts and finds organized & searchable via tagging.

So, as far as stealing things and saving them to your "Morgue File" goes, Evernote has a "Web Clipper" plugin that enables you to simply and easily clip a page or portion of a page to your Evernote notebook. I used to use Del.icio.us to keep many bookmarks to pages of interest. Then I started using Google Bookmarks. I just recently discovered Listly, which allows you to curate and compile lists of things and webpages for social rankings as well as comment and social contribution. Also, Pinterest has become a great tool to record things that I find useful and inspirational. As far as having ONE ALMIGHTY Morgue file somewhere. I don't know if maybe one of these apps would out perform another or become a sole keeper of information. Each one has it's merits.

Another well known tool brand

DeWalt is another well known tool brand. They are best known for their power tools. I had an easier time finding the font for this one though.  I did upload an image to WhatTheFont, as well as WhatFontIs.  I came up with many choices to further narrow the search from. Finally, I decided to settle on one that is close. But, I don't think I have it solid yet.

The uppercase "W" has a slight widening taper at the top of each outer stroke and a flat topped center hump. The uppercase "D" counter shape is nearly a perfect half circle. The uppercase "E" has nearly equal length arms, but not quite and they are very close together. It is a stout bold strong sans serif font. I'm not sure about CFB1 Shielded Avenger Normal as being the correct choice though. Especially because it appears to be a web font rather than Open Type or True Type. But, it's close. Finding out what font is used in a particular application is a very challenging endeavor.