It was a little more than a month ago that I purchased my ticket to TYPO on a whim. Yep. Lots of money out the door for a design conference. But as my husband said (read: justified the purchase to me after experiencing a spell of buyer’s remorse) “We live in San Francisco. You need to take advantage of things like this.” And he’s right.

For those of you who may not be familiar with names like Neville Brody, Erik Spiekermann, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Michael Bierut, Jessica Hische, and many others, they are the Steve Jobs’ and George Lucas’ of my design world. I’m going to see these people talk. In person.

To make things more exciting, a couple of weeks ago, I answered a call for volunteers for the TYPO Press Team. So now, not only do I find myself attending TYPO, I’ll be blogging / tweeting throughout various sessions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts during the 2 days. And I get a free ticket for next year’s conference. Worth it? I think so.

If you’re sad to be missing the action, you can follow my tweets at @bfrancesi or catch me on the Font Shop blog.  I’ll be in design heaven.

Word Poem #6: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

Mid-day menu from Dobbs Ferry in Hayes Valley on 03/03/2012.

Word Poem #5: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

Word Poem #4: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

Retro Taco Train on magazine

Lately I’ve been experimenting with taking my personal work from the digital realm to the physical. The irony of this strikes me because the work I’ve been exploring handwriting (human typography) and dealing with it as imagery rather than written representation.

Lonely Creepy Private Comfortable Train on magazine

It bothers me that someone can only look at my work – I want people to interact with, touch, and be able to look at my work from different perspectives. As a designer who has made a career out of creating things digitally, I understand what a complete cynic I sound like when I say that digital design feels empty when it isn’t paired with some sort of tangible design.

More on this another time. I’m heading back to my sketchpad and cutting board.

Word Poem #2: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

Word poem #1: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

The most successful book is that which inspires you to put it aside and create.

Thank you to my sweet, thoughtful husband who surprised me with Typography Sketchbooks, curated by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything new to my Twitter series, so over the weekend I decided it was time to get inspired.

While lazily scrolling through Twitterland, a stream of tweets by @splorp caught my eye. They were simple one-word posts with a single image. Rather than just one design, I’ve created a short series that highlights the strange yet endearing tweet. You can thank me later that I refrained from writing peachy

I’ve been thinking about getting a few of my designs printed, and these tiny 7×7 inch designs just might be the first.

The Commute Design Project is my personal challenge to create designs on my train commute from work to home. The Twitter series is part of my goal to document spamm-y, interesting, and funny tweets through hand drawn type