Hey, how you doing? 

But really? I hope all’s good with you today. If not, call a friend, text a colleague, check in and say hi. Maybe after reading this, you could say hi to a friend you haven’t heard from in a while. You might make a massive difference to their day.

I’ve had a good, balanced few weeks of checking in and being present. But I gotta work, gotta pay those bills. So, on Saturday, I caught up with some work and also wrote this newsletter. As I was writing, I had the BBC TV programme ‘Flog It’ on in the background (don’t judge me!). The presenter visited the Oxford University Press, which printed its first book in 1478. 

Of course, I downed tools and watched. It was only about 5 minutes long, but it gave a nice quick history lesson in fonts. The presenter said we take for granted the type around us on signs/wayfinding, products, packaging, the magazines we read… so true. 

It made me think of the BBC font. They used Gill Sans (GS) for many years, as have Penguin books, London Transport, and many others. You will have seen it all over the place. But the BBC changed its font over to BBC Reith in 2018… who knew? So, this month’s newsletter highlights:

To be honest I thought the BBC still used GS, as it’s so similar. But the new BBC Reith is a bespoke font family named after the BBC's founder, John Reith. At the time they said audiences felt GS was dated. Hmm... In fact, lots of organisations and brands have now moved away from the font due to the designer’s behaviour. But we won’t delve into that here.

Anyway, the subtle changes to the BBC font cost £50m to redesign and implement. Nice work if you can get it, right? What do you think of it? The differences are highlighted below:

Image credit: www.typeroom.eu

You can read more about the new (well, old now) typeface here.

Throughout the month, I save any designery things that catch my eye so I can share them with you in this newsletter. Taking a leaf out of Lucy Werner’s book, I’m going to use this space to hype other creatives. 

Ashwin Chako

First up, the positively positive Ashwin Chako. He’s an illustrator, author and speaker. Ashwin’s YouTube videos, books and prints are vibrant, full of energy and so colourful.

I’ve got one of the prints Ashwin created for the Being Freelance Community. There are still some left, and 20% of the sales go to UNICEF to fund their High Energy Biscuits for children suffering from malnutrition.

Credit: BeingFreelance.com

Neil Whitman 

Neil’s an award-winning animator. You’ll see from his site; he’s worked with some major brands and has a huge portfolio showcasing various styles. I love the projects he created at the Aardman Academy.

Meticulous Ink 

Meticulous Ink is a small, women-led team of lovely, diverse, creative folk that really care about creating beautiful, unusual, tactile stationery and prints. They have their own printing press (I repeat, their own printing press!) to create bespoke prints. Can you tell I’m so excited by this? Ohhhh if I’m ever in Bath I have an open invite to meet Athena and her team. So I neeeeed to go. 

Have you ever seen a printing press in action? I used to get so excited about the big Heidelberg machines, seeing my work come off the press.
Printing is a real skill, and Athena has created beautiful products. If you love print, give Athena a follow on Instagram.