9 new prints for 2013

After months of preparation, I am thrilled to unveil 9 new pieces of art, all available in my shop.

Drumroll please!

1) Square brush script alphabet print
This alphabet was hand-lettered with a Pentel brush pen, scanned, and screen printed by hand in Toronto with black water-based ink on 245gsm pure white 100% cotton archival paper.



2) Triangle brush script alphabet print
This alphabet was hand-lettered with a Pentel brush pen, scanned, and screen printed by hand in Toronto with black water-based ink on 245gsm pure white 100% cotton archival paper.


3) Circle brush script alphabet print
This alphabet was hand-lettered with a Pentel brush pen, scanned, and screen printed by hand in Toronto with black water-based ink on 245gsm pure white 100% cotton archival paper.



4) Razorblade screen alphabet print
This layered alphabet features the typeface Razorblade, which I designed back in 2009. These 9" x 9" posters are screen printed by hand in Toronto with water-based ink on 245gsm pure white 100% cotton archival paper.


5) Geometrica Sans snellen chart alphabet print
This alphabet, inspired by old-fashioned eye charts, features one of the faces of Geometrica Sans, a typeface I designed back in 2010. These 9" x 18" posters are ink jet printed in Toronto in full colour on 180gsm ultra white matte cotton-based art paper.


6) Razorblade cut-and-fold alphabet print
This conceptual alphabet is a variation of the typeface Razorblade, which I designed back in 2009. These 9" x 9" posters are ink jet printed in Toronto in greyscale on 180gsm ultra white matte cotton-based art paper. (Check out the preliminary work here.)


7) Geometrica Sans school alphabet print
This elementary school-inspired alphabet features one of the faces of Geometrica Sans  a typeface I designed back in 2010. These 9" x 9" posters are ink jet printed in Toronto in full colour on 180gsm ultra white matte cotton-based art paper.


8) Geometrica Sans shapes alphabet print
This Bauhaus-inspired alphabet features one of the faces of Geometrica Sans, a typeface I designed back in 2010. These 9" x 9" posters are ink jet printed in Toronto in full colour on 180gsm ultra white matte cotton-based art paper.


9) Alphabet 100 mini-prints
You can now purchase your favourite letter from the Alphabet 100 project. There are 52 letters to choose from – A through Z, in both uppercase and lowercase. Pictured below is upper case A, B and C. View all the letters here, and the complete list of options here. These 9" x 9" posters are ink jet printed in Toronto in full colour on 180gsm ultra white matte cotton-based art paper.


All these 9" x 9" prints (with the exception of the Geometrica Sans snellen chart alphabet print) fit perfectly in the simple (and affordable!) Ikea Ribba frame.


Do you have a baby shower coming up? Need a birthday gift? Graduation present? Please keep these prints in mind if you need gifts for friends and loved ones in the coming months.

As a further incentive, I have launched an exciting promotion for the month of May (please see attached). If you spend $60 on your favourite prints, you will get $10 off! Please enter promo code ABC2013 at checkout. Offer ends May 31, 2013.

And, if that wasn't enough, if tweet or retweet about the promo on Twitter, you will be entered to win a FREE 9" x 9" print of your choice. Wee! Just make sure my handle, @Chris_Rouleau, is in your tweet. Enter as many times as you want!

I must extend a huge thank you to Raymond at Front Print, and a extra big thanks to Bianca, Mike, Jordy and everyone at Kid Icarus who helped make the screen prints come to live. I couldn't be happier!

Well, what are you waiting for? Get some new art for your home or office! And if you like the new work, please forward this blog post to your friends (especially educators and moms/moms-to-be), and share the promo details on your social networks. The best publicity is word of mouth.

Happy spring! And happy shopping!

CR

New things brewing

A pre-sneak peek at some new prints I'm prepping for my shop. Please stay tuned...

Have a great weekend!

Razorblade

In September 2009, I created my first modular font called Razorblade, using the free online application, Fontstruct.

As a uni-width font, I was quite pleased with the result. But esthetically, there were several things that bothered me about it.

With my newfound Illustrator skills (!) and my recent work on Geometrica Sans, I have been revisiting and expanding this font over the last few months. Here are the results.

I was interested in creating a geometric display face, based exclusively on shapes (circle, square, equilateral triangle) and their derivatives (no linear elements).

I am a huge fan of modular fonts; my inspirations for Razorblade include:

• Baby Teeth by Milton Glaser
• P22 Constructivist Set by Richard Kegler & Paul Hunt
• Doldrum Typeface by Ryan Adair
• Quarms font by Laura Harms & Krista Quint
• and, the GO transit logo

I was also keen to create a font that incorporated overlay / transparency / collage capabilities, similar to:

• Motto by FaceType
• Lettrage by Marin Van Uhm
• Fun Building Blocks Typeface by Mattias Mackler
• and, the excellent type treatment (by Ian Brignell?) for Flow 93.5 radio's recent rebrand

Even Toronto city streets helped in the formation of the lower case i:

And now to import into FontLab!

p.s. Lesson learned: Listen to your gut; if it feels wrong, it probably is.

p.p.s. Much thanks to Tanya for her succinct feedback and endless encouragement.

Geometrica Sans

"The intention of creating an entire alphabet from a few shapes is a design challenge — problem solving at its purest. For those with minimalist tendencies, the temptation is to strip away all the decoration and produce a simpler form." (source)

Almost one year ago, a font idea was born.

In February, I did a painting based on some preliminary ideas, and it has continued to inspire me every day.

And now, after much ado (from sketches on napkins to learning about beziers in Illustrator- thanks Anne!), my first true typeface is coming to life.

Say hello to Geometrica Sans.

(Disclaimer: From the beginning, my intention was never to be groundbreaking or innovative. I did not set out to create the next Helvetica or Gotham. This was more of an exercise in research, development, creation, and satisfying my own self-indulgent compulsion with geometry, symmetry, order and balance.)

I wanted to create a simple, geometric sans serif display font, inspired by:

• Modernism and the Bauhaus school (1920s)
• Art Deco and the attention to / focus on geometric elements
• the Golden section, a simple geometric equation for proportion (employed as early as the ancient Greece) that is considered to have universal, subconscious esthetic appeal
• antique elementary school lettering guides & posters

And specifically, inspired by these sans serif fonts:

• Renner's Futura, circa 1927, one of the most used sans serif fonts today
• Koch's system-based font, Kabel, circa 1920
• Toronto Subway Font, circa 1960, (which I am so delighted to see every time I ride the TTC)
• Lubalins's Avant Garde, circa 1970, and its use of circular letterforms and ligatures (and ligatures in general)
• Acier, circa 1930
• Century Gothic, LTC Twentieth Century, Neutraface, Brownstone... the list goes on and on

In a lot of ways, this font is a culmination of so many different ideas, sources and inspirations, it's hard to compose an concise summation.

In short, I wanted this font to be everything you expect from letters - nothing more, nothing less.

Now it's time to begin the import into FontLab... wish me luck!

p.s. Lesson learned (so far): Simplicity is not so simple after all.