It’s chilly Monday morning in Knoxville, and I’m thinking of the colder climate of Brooklyn. I’ve hung out with my old Cranbrook art friend Kathleen McShane twice in New York’s largest borough. The first time was in 1990 in the Polish enclave of Greenpoint. On the second visit I walked the Brooklyn Bridge and stayed in Kathleen’s apartment and studio in Carroll Garden, with Sesame Street-like brownstones and an ice cream shop on the corner. Paul Shaw’s Lettering Grows in Brooklyn article fits perfectly with our first exercise in my Typography course. For students trying to seperate the baseline from the x-height, take a look at Mike Cuenca’s Typography Basics. It’s a nice little interactive presentation that illustrates the anatomy of type. And finally, The Design Museum has a lovely article on the grand old man of type design, Matthew Carter. Carter’s career actually spans metal and digital types, and includes several timeless text faces.
