As a story, The Secret of Kells is nothing to write home about. The characters are very straight forward and quickly overcome any situations of doubt or conflict. As this is a film meant for children, it makes sense that nothing is terribly complex, but as an adult, the plot seemed overly thin. Sadly, the last sequence of the film moved far too quickly, skimming over a great deal of potential story and ends abruptly, leaving me a bit disappointed and wanting more.

However, where this film truly shines is in the art direction and execution.

In a world where more and more 3d films are being made and promoted, The Secret of Kells goes in the absolute opposite direction, trumpets its 2d nature with fascinating perspective and framing. While seeing utterly flat scenes can be a little surprising at first, one quickly becomes accustomed and enjoy the visual choices made by the film makers.

The character designs too are all extremely unique, each bring their own charm and look to each of their scenes. In contrast with the beautiful and intricate patterns of the Book of Kells, the characters are very simple, with only enough lines colour to bring them to life. I really loved seeing the tall, striking figure of the Abbot in each of the scenes he appeared. Also, Panger the cat’s expressions and personality are presented extremely well.

What I found most beautiful about the film was the integration of Celtic symbols and patterns worked into the backgrounds throughout the film. For the most part, these symbols are used in the more natural elements — trees in the forest and (my favourite) the snow falling during winter. Thusly, one can strongly see where the inspiration for those symbols originated and perhaps what drove young Brendan.

Music in the film is well done and appropriately Celtic, featuring the talent of Bruno Coulais and Kila. For a sense of it, I’d recommend listening to some of the youtube videos with the soundtrack or on the Amazon preview (though that has spoilers about the film story). I really enjoyed the music throughout.

As a typographer, my interest in the film was primarily in its connection to the Book of Kells — the imagery, patterns and the pages themselves. Unfortunately, the sections that involve the most stunning elements of integration with the Book are all in the film’s trailer and the film doesn’t bring too much more to bear. The only exception comes in the last 15 to 20 seconds, which are absolutely beautiful, but painfully short. However, as I mentioned earlier, the whole film is littered with Celtic symbols and patterns and I would be extremely happy to watch it again if only to look for those elements and appreciate the art.

While I enjoyed the integration of insular type and forms in the film itself, I did not particularly appreciate it in the opening and closing credits. Set in a more traditional insular script / Celtic typeface in smaller sizes, I found them difficult to read, especially as they were not on screen for particularly long. While keeping in spirit with the setting and basis for the film, I felt the negative impact on readability was more significant than the overt connection with the period. A typeface with Celtic “touch-points”, but more aimed at usage for text sizes would have been more appropriate. After some research (and suggestions from Dan Reynolds) , I’ve found some possibilities that could work better.

Luminari is more firmly based in insular scripts, but has a little more readability thanks to a taller capital height and U&lc.

Amulet offers a large x-height, open counters and more Roman letterforms, making it more readable, but also features many of the stylistic elements found in Insular scripts.

Hamlet is one of my favourites, despite not being primarily based on insular forms. With an integration of Blackletter style and Roman forms as well as large, open counters, the typeface achieves a high level of readability, even at smaller sizes.

Rieven Uncial has many touch-points with Celtic insular scripts, but brings more regular forms to create a typeface that works well at medium sizes.

ITC Korigan is similar to Luminari, but with slightly simpler letterforms that may be more readable at smaller sizes. It wouldn’t work very well in extended text, but in short bursts is rather beautiful.

A final item I wanted to point out was the main title. It seems there was some disagreement over the choice of typeface used for the main title of the film. “The Blog of Kells”, the book and soundtrack feature a lovely illuminated version of the title set in insular script and feels very appropriate to the context of the film.

Then we look at the title used in the French Theatrical Poster and on the website set up by BV International & Disney — the title has been redone in FF Fontesque by Nick Shinn.

FF Fontesque is indeed based on calligraphic forms, but not the ones found in insular scripts. Rather that “Shinn explains that he was actually inspired by faces with extreme contrasts of proportion like Garamond and calligraphers like Fred Goudy who believed that type shouldn’t be too perfect” (via Typedia). The illuminated version used elsewhere is lovely, so why the change to this ill-fitting and (to my eyes) inappropriate type choice? My guess is that the international distributers felt the insular film titling wouldn’t be friendly enough to kids and in order to make it seem more “appealing” changed it to something far less effective.

Oddly, after discovering the theatrical poster set in FF Fontesque, I found two other posters floating out there in the internet. One bears similar type to that used on the blog and a second that uses the frame of Aisling’s face in the leaves as the basis. The first, I believe, is the Irish release poster and uses the same image as the soundtrack. I’m not a fan of the usage of heavily saturated colour and odd contrast in the poster design as it draws the eye away from the central focal point, though I really like the usage of Aiden’s and the Abbot’s heads in the bottom right and left respectively. The second is the official US distribution poster created by NYICFF. I really like this version of the poster — it is simple, invokes the sensibilities of the film and has an attractive quality. However, I’m not entirely sure why “The Secret of” is set in small caps while “Kells” is U&lc (see the difference between the ‘E’ and ‘e’ as well as the height of the ‘l’s)?

All in all, I greatly enjoyed watching The Secret of Kells and the art direction, but feel the type treatment for it, while not necessarily inappropriate (except for the Fontesque titling), could have been improved with more careful selection.

I highly recommend The Secret of Kells as it brings a fabulous art and style to an industry that so often lacks it.

Film stills are from The Secret of Kells official website.

[updated with new information courtesy of Eric from NYICFF]

I’ve started off focusing on Swiss type and grids, since they have been so influential in the development of modern design. One of the first sites I came across that really caught my eye was the blog / portfolio of Wilson Miner. He does so many things right with this design and coding, I may have to borrow elements from it. Of course, he borrowed elements from this poster by Josef Müller–Brockmann. Seeing that poster myself, I started to wonder if there were any other swiss posters that had layouts or grids that I would want to base my own designs off of. This led me to the following sites:

The Grid System is a blog of articles centered around the ubiquitous grid. There are a large number of excellent articles there, so I highly recommend checking it out if you are interested in developing and using grid systems in every day life.

Typographic Posters is a site dedicated to presenting and preserving posters involving typography and graphical elements. To get one’s work on the site, you have to apply especially and show your work to be of a certain level of excellence. However, as a resource for inspiration, it is wonderful. There are tons of different styles and designs from modern designers all around the world. I especially liked the work of Benjamin Lambinet, but I will need to spend more time on the site! I do wish their user interface was a bit better though. Navigating the site via the sidebar proved a chore since with every reload, the scrollbar would reset to the top, regardless of which artist you were currently looking at. Ultimately, I took to just opening artists in new tabs and breaking the experience for the sake of ease-of-use.

Speaking of ease-of-use, I point you now to the Swiss Poster Collection. Run by the Swiss National Library and other prestigious agencies, it aspires to be a searchable collection of swiss typography posters. As with most public / government run sites, the design and UI aren’t particularly well executed, but if you know the name of the person in particular you are researching, it will provide large, high quality images of posters by that person. A bit hit or miss, but could prove useful. I really wanted a “browse” option, but could not find one…

One of the best sites I came across was Swiss Legacy, a blog run by Xavier Encinas, amalgamating new works and content in the tradition of the swiss typographers. I found numerous little gems and interesting links from his blog. One of my favorite was Type Trumps, “playing cards” of different typefaces. I am really fond of physical objects and to have reference cards for typefaces would be rather nice. Such things really help me come to understand better than just seeing it on the computer screen. Another great piece were these business cards made by a company called Hello, out of the UK. The thin layer of green in between the white edges of the card, plus the embossed backside really add character and life to the cards. I can’t imagine what the cost ended up being, but my is the effect nice. Finally, I wanted to bring up this article about Helvetica in the New York Subway system. Many designers have seen the film Helvetica, but it doesn’t really tell the true story of the typefaces used in New York. It is a really interesting read, so I recommend checking it out!

So that concludes my evening’s activities for swiss type exploration. I got some good ideas and will be spending more time in the coming days to see what designs I can come up with!

As a last note, I still really want these shirts, but wow expensive.

I decided to do something a little different today, and spent some time in Garageband, making a song. It was something I used to do more in the past, but haven’t done enough of recently. In fact, this was the first time I’ve opened the program since I got this machine in the early summer, last year!

Garageband is useful in that it provides musical loops, small sample bits of music, that can be meshed together to create a full song. The only problem is that because Garageband is included on every Mac and since music loops are so easy to use, you will hear them used over and over in more indie video and audio creations. In any case, if one is feeling musical, but doesn’t have the time to spend on creating a song from totally original elements or if one just wants to play around for a bit!

I started creating this piece in a different direction, but when I found the dog barking loop, I had to figure out something with it. Hearing it, I was reminded of the track “Bad Dog, No Biscuit” from Cowboy Bebop. It has a really funky and wacky sound to it and that feeling was what I wanted to capture with the sounds in this song. Overall, the song came out a bit stranger than I anticipated, but I like it overall!

I downloaded the additional music loops available from Apple, so maybe next time I will have more variety to work with!

In other news, I tried a new experiment with my geometric squares. Normally, when I make designs that have the rhombuses on the outside, the square on the inside end up parallel to the outer frame. This time, I thought I would try to create one in which the inner square is rotated 45 degrees from the outer frame, creating a diamond look.

The most fascinating part of this design was that it resulted in a diamond square in the middle of the design. It appears that all the extra space that was present in the other designs I’ve done, which usually shows up at one edge of the design, was pushed into the middle as a little square. Seems pretty cool that there is enough space to fit another square into the whole layout! I would have never guessed from my previous designs.

Interestingly, the fact that this is possible makes me think a bit about the design process. Even if one sets up a box of limitations and has a limited type of tool to work with, there are always options and possibilities to create solutions that are special and unique. This design in particular is special because it was unexpected. The best designs are the ones that surprise you and show options that were inconceivable, but inherently awesome.

Interestingly, there isn’t an equal set of shapes for each color. The blue / uncolored ones have all the rhombuses and the green/red have all the squares. In addition, there are four more blue triangles than uncolored ones.

I found it was rather fun to make different little designs using the limitations of the space and kind of shapes. Course, at the same time, I wasn’t sure what to do! I think my first design was centered around creating one that had mirrored elements and colored. At the time, I just started putting pieces into the little holder and then composed from there.

Today, I thought I would play with it and see what sort of designs I could come up with. After making one style, I thought about doing something a with more limitations. My first concept was to see if it would be possible to create a design in which no two pieces of the same color shared a side. It was an interesting, but ultimately simple exercise.

It was easy to burn through the blue and uncolored pieces on the edges, so all I needed to do was figure out the middle. Of course, with less space and more tight controls on which pieces could go where, it came along quickly.

Next, I thought about creating a design in which none of the uncolored pieces touched the edge. This proved much more of a challenge, especially combined with the “no two connected pieces can share a color” rule I used in the previous challenge. I struggled with the lack of uncolored rhombuses for the outer edge. However, the most difficult issue I ran into was how to make the outer border fit into the containing box. In my attempts to prevent the uncolored pieces from touching the edges, I ended up using the different pieces in ways that prevented a clean edge to be formed. While I created some nifty designs, none of them were usable.

In frustration, I took a look at the photo I took of the first challenge. I realized that in order to create an edge that would properly fill the box, I needed a very particular set of pieces. As you can see, from the previous one, it was 4 rhombus sides and a triangle’s long side. Now, the rhombus edge is the same length as the short side of the triangle and the side of the square. Aha! A breakthrough at last. Now, armed with the knowledge of what I can and cannot have on the outer border, it became significantly easier to construct the outer edge and then build inward.

I thought the final design was kinda classy, though now I wish I had switched the red and green squares on the right side so that there was consistency in arrangement, but that’s ok! I was happy with how the blue and uncolored rhombuses came together in the middle to make the cross.

After completing this design, I wondered if it would be possible to prevent there from being any blue or uncolored pieces touching the edge. Turned out that it was pretty simple and just required a slight adjustment of the design.

Afterward, I thought I would do one last design in which all the pieces of the same color were connected to one another. After the long slog of the previous challenge, the ease of this one was rather refreshing. Ultimately, I thought the design ended up rather nicely too!

The only odd thing was that due to the additional blue triangles, it became impossible to create a totally mirrored design. All in all, it was a fun exercise.

At one point, I was looking into buying a new mp3 player. At the time, I had been extremely frustrated with the internal battery scheme of Apple that required one to send in the device to have the battery replaced. However, nothing I saw came near to the ease and simplicity of the UI for the iPod. It was a telling moment. Despite the fact the other devices had significantly more capability, because the UI wasn’t easy to use, I knew I would never buy them. As a result, I still have my second generation iPod from 7 or 8 years ago. Yeah…

In the last few years, multitouch technology has become more and more prevalent, but it was still confined to research labs and overly expensive devices. However, the iPhone, followed closely by the iPod Touch, brought that technology into a space that consumers could purchase and interact with it. While the prices are still rather high ($200-$300 USD), it isn’t the nearly the cost of something like the Microsoft Surface (~$400k USD). The touch / iphone don’t provide the massive hard drives, the smallest form factor or the biggest screen, but it provides an experience that outstrips everything else. More than that, it inspires.

Smashing Magazine posted an collection of “100 Really Beautiful iPhone Wallpapers” today. Their post began with this paragraph:

Few products have generated the kind of hype that the iPhone has. Its beautiful design and large multi-touch screen are irresistible. Although its interface is beautifully designed, some of us want to put a little something extra in it to suit our style, personality and profession and to further beautify this magical masterpiece.

Indeed, the iPhone and touch have generated significant hype. I still remember the excitement I felt when it was first released. At last multitouch technology was provided in a package palpable to the regular person. Like many others, I was very interested in the product, but instead of rushing out to buy one given the capabilities Apple built into the device, I wanted to see the community’s reaction. It has taken time, but the developer community has really taken to the device and produced excellent applications for it. In fact, there are so many applications available (over 10K), that it hard to sort through what is good and what isn’t! However, the significant is that the response from the community has been overwhelming and it has been positive. Of course, there were issues with Apple’s “approval” process resulting in useless apps (I Am Rich) being accepted while quality apps (podcaster) were rejected for purely selfish reasons (Apple wants podcasts to go through iTunes, not a third party app). Even with these issues, the products that have been released for the device have been excellent and there are a number of “Top Apps of 2008″ lists available now.

This brings me to the other aspect that Smashing’s post is looking at, the wallpaper. I always have a particular challenge in finding wallpapers for my computers given my aesthetic choices and a necessity to have things visible. I rather enjoy “design” wallpapers more than other sorts, but I find it rather difficult to get quality ones at the sizes I’m looking for. So, when I scanned the list of images that Smashing gathered, I was amazed at the sheer number of them that I really liked (see the gallery below). My favorite comment in relation to these wallpapers comes from Tylor j. Reimer:

Here’s some goodies for you all: TJR iPhone wallpapers. I’ve been making these for fun for a while and I figured I should post/share them. The funny part is I don’t even have an iPhone (yet).

Even for those who don’t have or aren’t “in” the community, there is something that inspires creation. I think that’s awesome. I really look forward to seeing where the community goes and what else is created. Perhaps I’ll try to get involved and leave my own mark!

Also be sure to check out Poolga for an extremely impressive collection of wallpapers.