FontShop turned my attention to some very nice fonts that they’ve released in their June newsletter. I especially like this one called Mundo Sans, a very expressive humanist sans-serif. I’ve always found humanist fonts to be very attractive; they’re the most calligraphic of the sans-serifs, and yet they’re also usually the most legible.

Too bad it’s quite expensive at €702 ($1092) for 14 weights. Maybe I can convince my next client to pay for a license…

Take a look at this poster. What would you recon; does it look like Dutch design to you? If you think it is, you’re half right—it’s by Sulki and Min Choi, two designers from South Korea who were employed at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands when they made it.

This particular work was made for the Modafe dance festival in 2005. I found it on their blog, which apparently contains more recent work than their site.

They worked in the Netherlands for only a short while, from 2003 until 2005, and both went back to Korea afterwards. Sulki is currently working at an art book publishing company called Specter Press and Min became a full-time lecturer at the University of Seoul. Hope you guys come back someday.

Here’s another one of those independent green campaigns. This one’s by Wire & Twine, a designers clothing brand, and it’s called 50 Ways to Help the Planet. They also made some nice shirts to go along with it.

Spread the word. It’s easy being green!

Graffiti doesn’t always spoil buildings. In fact, it’s the only way to improve a lot of them.

Last weekend saw a tunnel in Leake Street, near Waterloo, transformed into an oasis of colors by graffiti artist Banksy for the Cans Festival. The exhibition, which lasted three days, encouraged people to add to the art with their own stenciling.

There are some excellent photos in this Flickr photoset. Check out the site of the festival for more information.

I’ve always had a thing for unreasonably heavy fonts. Just look at the logo at the top of the screen: I just couldn’t resist using the Ultra Black weight of Interstate!

One font that caught my eye a while ago was the Black Slabbath, a slab serif font with almost ridiculous proportions. A quote from the font’s distributor, YouWorkForThem:

There’s only one thing about this new typeface that isn’t colossally black: the razor-thin white space. It slices through and between geometric characters, creating a juxtaposition of contrasts and rhythms. The heaviest typeface in the world.

I especially like the lowercase letters. Some more pictures, featuring the designer Stefan Kjartansson, can be seen in this Flickr photoset.

While browsing my Flickr groups yesterday, I stumbled upon the works of くま (ku-ma), a Japanese wagashi (和菓子) artist.

Wagashi is a traditional Japanese confectionary served with tea. Besides being very tasty, they’re also very nice to look at. Every individual piece is a work of art. With the summer approaching, Japanese confectioners turn to making special summer wagashi that express the season’s colors and scents.

Those looking to learn more about these Japanese delicacies should check out the Wikipedia article on wagashi.

Thanks to my friend Yomar Augusto sending me an invite code, I now have an account on ffffound.

ffffound is basically an image bookmarking site that showcases art and design works that its members find on the internet.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t been posting any updates, well, it’s because of that site being so addictive! Every image you view comes with a new set of “suggestions” that can keep you clicking forever. To compensate, I’ve added a little item in the sidebar to the left that shows you the latest images I’ve ♥ed.

Obviously inspired by We Feel Fine, this site shows how fun it is to play around with huge amounts of data. It’s kind of interesting how easy it becomes to find relevancy, as long as you’ve got enough input.

In case you want to do some data filtering of your own, go take a look at Summize, the Twitter search engine used for this project.

The concept came from advertisement agency and design studio 180 Los Angeles.