exclamation mark

Wild guesses:

To make it something more memorable than plain text.

To create an ’exclamation point’ recalling the sensationalism of tabloid press.

Interestingly, the ’i’ is shifted down, putting the dot below the baseline, perhaps a metaphor for something buried or underground, reinforcing the dirt. I was pondering this already, thanks to heavy advertisement featuring ’Digging in the Dirt’ by Peter Gabriel.

Choz
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
The Snark

I saw the inverted “i” as a shovel, suggesting “digging for dirt” as investigative tabloids do.

David Thometz

I could swear this is a play on a British tabloid. Perhaps someone can comfirm. I see it as an exclamation point as well. In the media nothing can be big enough or bold enough. So, of course, they use lots of exclamation points thinking this is another way to emphasize the point.

It is similar to the Sun and the tabloids here are called red tops (all coincidentally use red for their nameplates) but I don’t think they would use as “sophisticated” a typographic device.

The i could be an exclamation point (I saw it as that), could represent something buried by dirt, but I like the digging the dirt view as well.
Tim

The negative eye, looking for the bad stuff, punctuating the dirt—Upside down as in “Down and Dirty”

ChrisL

I can’t seem to find it now, but there’s a dropped out version of this logo as well with a red background. It looks sort of like a torn raffle ticket, with the dot of the “i” as a half circle.

the i is having a s**t, of course. Uhm – Dirrrrrrrrrrty, as they say :-)

Chcking my Unicode book it’s technially a “dotless i with combining dot accent below” - not sure that helps any... ;-)

Unicode always beats non-Unicode on any given day :)

lack of creativity...

lol

That’s not the dot of the i, or the exclamation point, which is “square” in this face.

Well, what’s the “combining dot accent below” look like?

I see it as an exclamation point. but, it does remind me of british tablods, too.

>Well, what’s the “combining dot accent below” look like?

Code point is 0323

See... http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0300.pdf

I was toying with Nick, for what the dot accent looked like in that face.

(But thanks for that link, much faster than using the web pages to find things!)

2 nights ago we were watching CSI-Miami on ’five’
and there was an Ad with also an upside down i but I can’t remember it specifically.. I think it was something about being or thinking different.

http://www.five.tv/

also there were ads for Channel 4’s Desperate Housewives on their competitors channel ’five’

The logo of a finnish tabloid. I think it’s quite a bit lefty and totally free. I think they’re trying to communicate their ‘opposite’ views.