At the dawn of the ’90s

  More from the slimmed-down archives. Here’s a little item from 1991, when I was 19. St Luke’s Church in Wadestown, Wellington was holding a 1960s-themed dance and I designed and hand-lettered the tickets. You can see I was into Swiss modernism even then. The large type was drawn from memory: I didn’t go back […]

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My friend Randy writes a book; our ‘Written by humans’ graphic; Hart’s is economical

  Extra plug for my friend Randy Scobey, who has written a memoir. Since Randy and I met through blogging in 2006, it seems fitting to mention this on my blog. What I wrote in Lucire about his book is heartfelt. If you want to read a first-hand account on the stigma felt by the […]

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Please help my friend Hasan and his family in Gaza

Something far, far more important than Google or Amazon—neither of which I particularly enjoy writing about, but do so only as a public service. Ditto with anything I’ve written about social media. My friend and typeface design colleague Hasan Abu Afash and his family have been displaced by the war in Gaza, and they are […]

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You never know where your interests will take you

A seven-year-old needs to figure this out: what would the Ford Escort Popular Plus be priced at if were assembled in Aotearoa?   Amanda and I were chatting about prodigies. Some young people are amazing, doing uni classes at intermediate or high-school age, or playing piano like Mozart, and while not all of us have […]

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Twenty years of blogging

First up, as I’ve publicly posted this and have helped out myself, my friend and colleague Hasan Abu Afash is in Palestine, and I don’t need to tell you what he and his people are facing. If you can help out, here’s a link to his Paypal.   Apparently, August 11, 2023 marked my 20 […]

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The designer’s quest for timelessness

In the editorial to one of our print publications—not yet at liberty to say which—I show a 2004 cover of Lucire featuring Jennifer Siebel inset in the text. It got me thinking how, when I first designed the cover, with Jon Moe’s photograph, I was aiming for a classical timelessness. Now nearly 20 years on—in […]

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Sharper headlines for Lucire

  We’ve made a tiny change to the look of the Lucire website, replacing Aileron Ultra Light in the headlines with Newsreader Display Light, namely the 72 pt cut. It always bothered me that Aileron didn’t have proper italics, only obliques. We could have licensed Freight Big Pro Light to match the print magazines, but […]

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Panos: My Life, My Odyssey wins commendation at Business Book Awards 2023

I might not have made it to London for the Business Book Awards 2023, but my mug did, as Panos: My Life, My Odyssey won a Highly Commended in the Business Journey category. The organizers were kind enough to include me on the screen as Panos picked up the prize for his autobiography. It was […]

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When you lose one parent early

This is about as personal as you’re going to ever read on this blog. It’s written for whomever needs to read it now. I felt I had to put it out there. You know who you are. When you lose your mum to cancer at 22, you feel a lot of emotions. Grief, for one. […]

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These seem very fashionable right now

  I keep saying that 2022 was a lot like 1973 stylistically, so now that it’s 1974 I find myself strangely compelled by these Audi 50 press shots. You might know this car better as the Volkswagen Polo, which it later became, though with a lower specification initially. It lasted longer than the original Audi. […]

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