NOW EMBEDDED! Click “continue reading” to view the trailer on our site. (thanks to YouTube.com)

My recent resurgence of interest into comic books has led me to try to understand the medium from the perspective of a graphic designer. Basically comic books are the same as any other standard layout: text and images working together. They work together in a very specialized way, illuminated most fully in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. That’s a topic I hope to dive into fully another day. Today, I’ve seen the most amazing thing. A visually-stunning, √ºber-kinetic new medium: The Digital Graphic Novel.

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Once again I find myself inspired by resident BADG author Nate Voss. His recent venture into typography reminded me of this terrific sign I nearly choked on a year or so ago. It’s presence dominates an Edmonton intersection, overcoming the likes of suburban giants such as Blockbuster, KFC and McDonalds.

The first time I saw it, I had just rolled up to the stoplight and did a double take at this nearly sixteen-foot tall titan of typographic terror that sits unsettlingly close to the street. There was silence in our car, until my wife read it, as it appeared, in an eighth-grade boy’s puberty-stricken voice, “baAAYYYWWwood.”

Now, every time I drive by this corner, the same voice finds its way out of my lungs, and every time I see typographic exercises like the ones Nate is undertaking, this sign flashes into my eyes, and I feel compelled to warn students, designers and the general public to be careful with type. It is very powerful, and mustn’t fall into the wrong hands.

UPDATED AGAIN! This week we add a little more complexity to our extremely limited assignment from last week, and I drop an in-class assignment on my students… which I then have to sit down and do right along with them.

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“I’m Pete Ricketts and I believe in kids, America, apple pie and fun fonts!”

Well, I’m Tom Nemitz and I believe when a congressional candidate uses Comic Sans in his television spots that he gets automatically DQ’d from my ballot. No iffs, ands, butts or serifs about it.

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The Assignment:
Four typefaces (Garamond, Baskerville, Bodoni, and Univers), 2 characters each-with no mixing-drawn into five compositions representing opposition, tension, overlapping, details, and scale. Twice. No repeats. No tracing. 2″ x 2″. Total of 40 hand-drawn compositions. And black on white type only.

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