Helvetica the film

I thought it was a pretty good film, which surprised me. It did get a little long at some points, but most of it was interesting. I wasn't even aware that there was a debate about Helvetica... And who knew you could get so impassioned about a font? I guess what I got from the film is that Helvetica is versatile, but you shouldn't use it just because you can and ignore every other option out there. Don't jump on the Helvetica bandwagon, or something like that. I have also started noticing it more around town.

Everything you always wanted to know, but were too afraid to ask...
Each human head carries roughly 100,000 hair follicles.
http://www.pg.com/science/haircare/hair_twh_23.htm

Carlos Segura Paper

Carlos Segura is one of today’s most well known and influential designers. He has won multiple awards such as Europe’s 2004 Red Dot Award for his continuing work with Corbis on their publication Crop as well as earning multiple certificates of award, in the United States and abroad, for his work. Segura was born in Santiago, Cuba in 1956 but soon moved to Miami, Florida when he was nine. He joined a band at age twelve and stayed with them until he was nineteen. During this time he acted as their drummer, driver, and promoter. This was his first introduction to design. Unlike many other of his well know contemporaries, Segura never pursued a degree in design. He picked up knowledge as he went along. One of his first jobs after leaving the band was designing the return addresses on bank deposit envelopes. He had several different jobs before he got his first big break at an ad agency in New Orleans. He changed jobs a few more times before his move to Chicago, Illinois. In Chicago he worked for such companies as Young & Rubicam, HCM Marstellar, Foote Cone & Belding, Ketchum, DDB Needham, FCB, Bayer Bess Vanderwacker, and BBDO as an art director. Although Segura was well known and extremely successful at this time, he was dissatisfied with the work he was doing.

Instead of making yet another job switch, he decided to start his own design firm, Segura Inc., in 1991. Carlos Segura and his wife and business partner Sun still run the design firm today in Chicago. Over the years, Segura Inc. has become multifaceted. Segura developed and oversees the five connected businesses: Segura Inc., [T-26] Digital Type Foundry, 5inch, Cartype, and Thickface. Segura Inc. is somewhat similar to many design firms today. They work on designs for graphics, advertising, branding, and print collateral. Segura Inc. has worked on projects for CafeFX, Dictionary.com, American Eagle, Nissan Altima, DC Comics, Rock the Vote, Corbis, Garbage, Nintendo, and Penske Racing among many others. Although Segura Inc. takes on similar types of clients as other design firms, it has qualities that set it apart from the crowd and make it one of the forerunners of the design industry. The first of these qualities centers on Carlos Segura’s belief in embracing new, and sometimes untried, technology and design solutions. In fact, Segura is known for saying that “Communication that doesn’t take a chance, doesn’t stand a chance.” Another way that Segura, Inc. is different from other design firms is the number of employees. For a firm that is known internationally as being one of the best, Segura Inc. does not have an overabundance of workers. A third quality that sets Segura Inc. and its owner apart is the amount of freedom that the employees have in the workplace. Carlos Segura has said that “I’ve only had six good clients in my career. I define [a good] one as ‘allowing me to what they hired me to do.’ I try very hard to do the same when I hire someone.” This means that he allows his workers to have a certain amount of freedom. Another quality is Segura Inc.’s devotion to founding a cohesive partnership with its clients. Carlos Segura does not believe in aiming only for quick, one time projects. Instead, he works on nurturing relationships with his clients that will bring them back to Segura Inc. again and again. One of the ways he does this is by treating his clients the way he expects to be treated: courteously, professionally, and with understanding. All of these qualities that are in Segura Inc. are also present in Carlos Segura’s other ventures.

The next business that Segura founded was [T-26] Digital Type Foundry in 1994, three years after first starting Segura Inc. [T-26] Digital Type Foundry was one of the first among its kind. He saw the establishment of [T-26] Digital Type Foundry as a solution to several problems he had encountered in his time as a designer as well as those he could see occurring in the near future. Firstly, he realized that it was more difficult than it had to be for a business, or anyone for that matter, to find a font. These people were pretty much forced to either search manually for a typeface or go to someone to have him or her design a whole new font. Segura saw no reason for this. He made ease of access a big concern when he founded [T-26] Digital Type Foundry. [T26] Digital Type Foundry was one of the very first type foundries to be web based. Most of their business is conducted online. He also made an effort to expand the customer’s user license. At the time that the company was first introduced, other type foundries were making people purchase one copy of a font per each computer they planned to install it on. Segura understood that this was unnecessarily costly for the user and realized that people were probably falsely representing the number of computers used in order to escape the extra cost. He decided to allow the type purchases from [T-26] Type Foundry to be installed on ten separate computers by people customer. Also, the customer has the chance to purchase licensing for an additional computer at only two percent of the original cost. Segura figured that this would cut back on the number of people stealing as well as allowing his business to be more user friendly. Segura also saw the benefits of relaxing some rules for service bureaus. Instead of making every third party printing company buy [T26] Digital Type Foundry’s fonts if they were used within the product that they were printing, he allowed them to go ahead and print without an additional cost, as long as the printing company did not archive the font. As with the previous point about installing fonts on multiple computers, Carlos Segura was aware that people were already doing this and he may as well make it legal. He also made this change in order to prevent any mistakes in printing, which would have cost his actual customers, not the service bureau, money. He also helped fulltime student afford the cost of fonts from [T-26] Type Foundry. Fulltime students are able to purchase any font from the website at a forty percent discount. Carlos Segura was also interested in donating some of [T26] Digital Type Foundry’s proceeds towards charitable organizations. He has donated money towards organizations dealing with AIDS as well as giving parts of the library of typefaces to organizations like AIGA. Lastly, Segura encouraged everyone and anyone to send work into [T26] Digital Type Foundry. This is especially helpful for designers that are just graduating from college and others who have little experience and are not well known. These beginning designers are treated just as seriously as well established designers at [T26] Digital Type Foundry.

Carlos Segura’s third business venture is a company called 5inch. Segura launched 5inch in 2001 after he noticed that there was a market for blank silk screened CDRs and DVDs, but no one else had taken advantage of it. There was no place that the average person could go if he or she wanted a blank disc with some design. Currently, 5inch has fifty different designs for CDRs and nine different DVD designs. Furthermore, 5inch will actually allow people to make their own design to be silkscreened onto the disk for an additional fee. 5inch also sells cases and hubs for their discs as well as wearable merchandise. Segura’s final two ventures were probably started because of his other hobbies and interests. Segura’s love of music can still be seen today, many years after he left his band. Thickface is an independent record label that was started in 1996 and is currently managed through [T26] Digital Type Foundry. Thickface has recorded for bands such as NYCO for their 2005 release Two. Carlos Segura’s last venture is a website called CarType. Segura has a passion for anything with an engine and that is reflected in this website which, as its name suggests, explores the history and trends of typography in the automobile industry as well as the cars themselves. Although Carlos Segura has set up five separate companies, they still are cohesive and unified. Each venture brings something different and useful to the table. 5inch, Thickface, and Cartype are benefited from Segura Inc.’s advertising and [T26] Digital Type Foundry’s typeface designs. Segura Inc. and [T26] Digital Type Foundry benefit from their business as well as benefiting from the other companies’ exposure.

Carlos Segura’s business ethics and principles are evident in his design. His philanthropic efforts with [T26] Digital Type Foundry are reflected in his mission to bring as much fine art as possible into everyday design. He loves the work that he does and wants others to be aware of it. Although his designs are extremely varied, he has said that he gets a lot of his inspiration from Japan and London.

Fonts designed by Carlos Segura:
· Boxspring
· Faxfont
· Faxfont Fine
· Faxfont Standard
· Faxfont Tone
· Flaco Inline
· Flaco Solid
· Peepod
· Pintor
· RPM
· Sport
· Square 40
· Square 40 Outline
· Square 45 Thin
· Time in Hell

Boxspring is a sans serif font Carlos Segura designed in 1995.
Six facts about Boxspring:
1. it is geometric
2. the horizontal strokes are often wider than the vertical
3. it is entirely in caps
4. the crossing part on the “W” is filled in
5. the leg of the “R” is jagged
6. the tail of the “Q” bends back towards the left

What (else) happened in 1995?
· terrorist attack in Oklahoma City kills 168 on April 19
· the internet becomes commercial and widely used
· peace treaty signed to halt three years of fighting in Bosnia on December 14
· eBay is founded
· Windows95 is released

This is a link to a video of a short interview with Carlos Segura.

"massaging of your life"... that has to be one of the weirdest expressions I have ever heard.

Sources:

"1995: A look back." CNN. 6 Nov. 2008 .

5inch. 6 Nov. 2008 .

Arber, Jason. "Carlos Segura." Pixelsurgeon. 6 Nov. 2008 .

"Carlos Segura." Identifont. 6 Nov. 2008 .

CarType. 6 Nov. 2008 .

Drate, Spencer, and Judith Salavetz. Swag 2: Rock Posters of the '90s and Beyond. New York: Abrams, 2005.

Fiell, Charlotte, and Peter Fiell. Graphic Design for the 21st Century: 100 of the World's Best Graphic Designers. N.p.: Taschen, n.d.

"Fireside Chat: Richard Bird, Jim Coudal, and Carlos Segura ." 37signals. 6 Nov. 2008 .

Fishel, Cathy. "Japan Honors Carlos Segura." U&LC Online. Upper and Lower Case Magazine. 6 Nov. 2008 .

Logo Design. Ed. Julius Wiedemann. Los Angeles: Taschen, n.d.

Segura Inc. 6 Nov. 2008 .

[T26] Digital Type Foundry. 6 Nov. 2008 .

"TDC Annual Awards 2001, Bronze Prize : Carlos Segura." TOKYOTDC. 6 Nov. 2008 .

Everything you always wanted to know, but were too afraid to ask...

The pomegranate originated in the area from Iran to the Himalayas in northern India.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/pomegranate.html

Redesigning the stop sign and Crazyness

I was working on my typography paper and this was posted on my typographer's website. It's good fun.

Also, here is another video. This had to have taken forever and a day. And I thought frame by frame animation in Flash was a pain...

Everything you always wanted to know, but were too afraid to ask...
Archaeologists have found fragments of cotton cloth dating as far back as 3000 B.C.
http://www.cottonsjourney.com/Storyofcotton/page2.asp