James, I like it. That in-your-face trapping will be a great conversation-starter, and alludes nicely to the fact that type design is a craft. Minor: you might make the top-left trap a little bit smaller since the original angle is larger than the other three.

The only thing that jumps at me is that the “a” has a nice wonkiness, but the “t” and especially the “c” are a bit too tame in comparison.

One other thing: “australian type club” isn’t properly centered under “atc”.

> Evert Bloemsma invented that.

Evert was a singularly inventive designer*, but I don’t think we can give him credit for inventing trapping, even in the special case I suspect you mean: showing off trapping.

* Legato is the most significant font in centuries.

hhp

The cream color looks faded compared to the orange and black. I would just use white and be done with it. Or you could try using a gray instead of black. Not sure.

I’d also consider making the box a bit bigger on the left. It almost looks like a mistake.

I’d stick with this typeface. A little less of a time stamp on it.

Hello James,

I really like the colours.

Hrant said the “t” and especially the “c” are a bit too tame in comparison.
I second that.

The whole thing is not centered within the square, but also not decidedly right-aligned. I’d either center it, or make the square bigger, to the left.

The t with ink traps – is that the Crux australis? ;-) Like it.

A minor thing: the ‘ra’ combination in Australian looks unfortunate and could be fixed in a logo.

The TGA logo (Typographic Society of Austria) comes to my mind: it has also three lowercase letters. They comment on it as follows:

t — Thesis (state of the art in the founding year of tga)
g — Garamond (historic, timeless)
a — Herbert Bayer (Austria’s only noteworthy contribution to the history of type design)
The metal type impression is anachronistic detail and reminiscence.

Quite interesting, no?

Hrant —- I suppose I should call them “white spots”. They’re ink traps yes, and Evert can no more be credited with having invented such things than anyone else. But he was inventive in the way he deployed them on things like lower t’s and other kinds of cruciform joints by using exaggerated or high-concept traps to replicate the functions of serifs but in reverse, functioning as whitespots.

I’ll send you a sample of the kind of thing I’ve been working on for Linda Cunningham. Itemulates the gaps in the bowls of Vincent Connare’s Magpie with exaggerated taper on bowl joints.

Legzto, yes, I think you are accurate in characterizing it as Legato is the single-most significant font in centuries.

j a m e s

Florian—-the ra is ruff and I need to tidy that area up.

The t with ink traps – is that the Crux australis? ;-) Like it.

I actually call that a “cruciform” joint. If you examine the 100 x 100 bitmap at 3x zoom —- amazing how those things translate to aliased pixels at tiny size.

The tga logo I hadn’t seen before. Thanks for that. Um, the forms I built for this were Thesis-influenced, yes. De Goot is kind-of unavoidable, so influential on so many of us.

Garamond, yes, there is an element Garamond-like bending in the hood of the a and the cursiveness in the t and c.

Bayer I’m not greatly influenced by, altho I do love what I was able to do to Bayer Universal / Bauhaus and get away with it : ^ ) Benguiat is probably more influential on the sentinel design canon. I’ve used the principle of the quarter round in a few faces now. The original was Midnight Kernboy. The thesis / signature version is known as the Angel, and Amity is the commercial version, a “soft” angel.

There are cross-cultural design connections everywhere and I gues a lot of those things are put there specially for us to find.

I feel strongly that there should be more a bit more whitespace (er, burntorangespace?) on the left and top - but otherwise, I think it’s super! I disagree about the cream looking weak; I’d stick with it.

—-
eeblet.com

just a thought: what if you set ’atc’ in the box, but the full tag line beneath the box?

I like it. Although I would consider widening the margin between the wordmark and the left and top border. I like your idea of positioning it in the bottom right corner though. As for the colours: I think you’d either want to make the cream colour a bit darker, or the black a bit lighter, or maybe add a speck of brown to it. I’d also take a look at the r<>a in Australian and at the c<>l<>u in club. Nevertheless, I think you did an awesome job!

—
LGD • U&Me

If the t in “australian” is going to have the traps, should other letters, too (e.g. the y in “type”)? For consistency you might want to have either
- traps only in the big letters (that is, the big t)
- traps only in the big letters and the initials (that is, the t in type but not in australian)
- traps everywhere they make sense (any stroke intersection? any acute stroke intersection? not sure what the “rule” would be)

Also I’m not happy with the spacing and letterfit of the tagline at large sizes. It doesn’t look right, isn’t biting the way it seems it ought to.

j a m e s

Yes folks the kerning of the tagline is very ruff :^) Hee, moo, etcetera. I neglected to explain too that the whole typeface I’m using for this is quite ruff ’n ready. It’s a quickie bold made using a fotnlab’s bold filter. I only put traps on the t to begin with. The type needs refinement.

Yes, the proportional ratio of the mark to the left margin is a problem. Its bite has been deemed uncertain.

Darrel—-I’ve experimented with the tagline benath the box and felt it reduced the simplicity. The advantage of doing that way, the tagline ends up larger and the logo will reproduce even smaller. Another thing I experimented with was a tagline going the whole width of the box but still inside it, and letterspaced. Letterspacing the tagline I thought could be a way of evoking the vast opens spaces and distances between population centers characteristic of Oz. Unfortunately the letterspaced versions look like crap at small sizes and I don’t even want to post them.

Another reference for the cruciform t—-the Southern Cross constellation. That’s handy.