Liquid Treat

Our highly unscientific survey of designers’ summer reading revealed rave reviews for David Barringer’s There’s Nothing Funny About Design (Princeton Architectural Press). In his first collection of essays, the writer and self-taught graphic designer takes on topics ranging from Chip Kidd and blood-soaked DVD cover art to his father’s business card collection and why drug names overdose on the letter “X.” The take-home message: there’s a whole lot that’s funny about design, including Barringer’s update of the Kubler-Ross Model, “Nine Emotions of the Working Designer,” which comes in the section of the book devoted to the business of design. “I used it as a funny way to advise young designers today, but I let the form evolve into something stranger, part fiction, part philosophy, some of it contradictory, poetic, satirical,” he said. “You should laugh at some parts, shake your head at others, but at some point nod and think, ‘Yes. Exactly.’”

We find Comic Sans terribly depressing, but is there change afoot in the status of this typographical albatross? Signs of backlash to the graphic design community's longstanding Comic Sans disdain are evident in Veer's Comic Sans Love T-shirt. Created "to convey the mixed emotions Comic Sans evokes," the shirt features a detailed drawing of the human heart -- "ventricles, valves, and veins" -- comprised of letters set in various sizes of Comic Sans on a "snug-fitting" American Apparel T-shirt. Veer's pumping irony will set you back $22, a small price to pay to tell the world that you heart Comic Sans -- even if you hate it.

Few design-minded Web searchers can resist Google's occasional day-long tweaks of its logo to commemorate everything from Thanksgiving and the Olympics to the 25th Anniversary of Tetris and Malaysian Independence Day (August 31, in case you missed it), but that's not the only place to find whimsical "Google Doodles." Marissa Meyer, the company's vice president of search product and user experience, recently Twittered about some new "ASCII art fun": the multi-colored Google logo made up of dashes and slashes. Have a look by Googling "ascii art" and then looking to the left of the search box.

A new online database promises to help designers avoid cases of mistaken identity: The Identity Archives Project (IdAP) aims to be "the most complete online keyword-searchable database of logos and brand identity designs from around the world." Developed by San Francisco graphic designer Gabe Ruane, IdAP is a free resource that relies upon the contributions of designers and branding gurus. Active or antiquated logos, logotypes, icons, brand identities, brand marks, and corporate identities are all fair game, providing that they were approved by the client, have been used publicly, and are submitted by their creators. The key, however, is in the keywords, on which the value -- and searchability -- of the database will depend. Ruane advises those submitting designs to consider subjective and conceptual aspects, including the emotions a logo conveys, whether it's masculine or feminine, and what it represents. "Don't hold back!" He notes on the site. "The more info you can associate with the logo design, the better!"

"Plenty of white space and generous line spacing, and don't make the type size too miserly," wrote Giambattista Bodoni in the early 1800s. "Then you will have a product fit for a king." The royalty-ready work of Bodoni ("the king of typographers and the typographer of kings") and hundreds more lettering legends is collected in Type. A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles by Jan Tholenaar, Alston W. Purvis, and Cees De Jong. The first in a two-volume set from Taschen, the book is a lush index of type specimens dating from 1628 to 1900, accented with the borders, ornaments, and graphical flourishes of the day. The evolution of the printed letter is traced through the work of typographers such as William Caslon, John Baskerville, and Claude Garamond, who claimed he could cut printed stamps in "Cicero size" (12 point) at the age of 15. Brush up on your Victorian fonts in preparation for volume two, which will be published early next year.

Hate advertising? Make better ads. Filmmaker Doug Pray shows how it's done in the documentary Art & Copy. Now playing in select cities, the film spotlights influential advertising creatives such as George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, and Lee Clow, and legendary campaigns, from "I Love NY" to "Got Milk?" But Art & Copy is no history lesson. "In my interviews, I stuck to emotions, creative motivation, and big-idea philosophies of the ad creatives rather than 'how-to' stories, industry-insider talk, or the politics of their clients' products, which is a different film altogether," notes Pray, who secured sponsorship from The One Club to realize the project. "By interviewing these icons, they became real for me, and I saw advertising as an art form with enormous potential -- when done well."