A Holiday Greeting from Quakenbush from quakenbush design on Vimeo.

The Inaugural Indiana Bicycle Summit was quite a success this past Saturday. Cyclists from around the state came together. The League of American Bicyclists recognized Indianapolis as a “Bicycle Friendly Community” on the bronze level! An exciting development, yet we still have some definite room for improvement.

I was really pleased with how the collateral for the event turned out. Here are a few photos of the signage. We will be posting more of our work for the Summit on our website in the near future!

How many times have you come into contact with Times New Roman? I know. I can’t begin to count that either. Have you ever wondered who birthed this typeface that has so saturated our visual landscape? I sure as heck have!

The year was 1931. The Times, Britian’s voice of the Establishment, was selling the Monotype Corporation some ad space. To sweeten the deal they offered to design the advertisements for no extra charge. This is where we meet Stanely Morison, the hard-nosed Typographical Adviser at the Monotype Corporation. He was completely repulsed by their offer. Evidently, he responded that he would rather pay them not to create the ad because their typography was so poor. The Times responded by challenging Morison to come up with a better option. So he did. Victor Lardent, who worked for the paper, drew the face for Morison.

The typeface made it’s debut on October 3, 1932. Simon Loxely, in Type: The Secret History of Letters, describes the face as, “Solid and businesslike, the characters were designed to have no sharp angles to trap ink and subsequently smudge, and could be read easily, even in the smallest-ever typesize, 4.5 pt.” Since 1932, Times Roman has spread like wildfire, as you are well aware. Whether you love it or hate it, at least now you know where it came from.

Simon Loxley. Type: The Secret History of Letters. London, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2004.

I am happy to report that yesterday, August 17th, at 8:10pm Henry Jay Quakenbush entered the world! He and Christen are both in great health!

We are so thankful for this little one!

Karisma is an adorable boutique located in downtown Noblesville. Christen and I had both visited the store and were really impressed. However, their logo and signage just weren’t living up to the quality of their shop. So we began working with the owner Kari Kirk on a new design. 

This is the original logo.

I took some photos inside the boutique for inspiration.

Karisma has a shabby chic side and a bit more edgy side. I chose to render a pale pink rose using sleek polygons. Kari felt strongly that she wanted to use all lowercase letters, so I decided on a typeface with a very slight serif. I think that the final logo communicates both femininity and strength. Kari was very happy with the results. She was great to work with.

Karisma recently moved next door from their old location, so we repurposed the old tenants sign and hand painted the new logo on it. The letters came from Logan Street signs.

Next time you are in downtown Noblesville, be sure to stop in and check out Karisma!