Although they received many compliments from the rest of the world, visitors of the Finnish Designer of the Year 2010 exhibition didn’t notify them at all. Mmm. Through www.underware.nl short messages could be send by anyone, which were directly shown at the exhibition.

Not every journalist understands the difference between serif and sans serif typefaces. Dolly suddenly became a “modern sans serif”.

Finnish Design Awards exhibition 2010 with Sami + Liza + you + Timo + Kirsi + Kia + Aino + Arni + Sauli + Münchener Premium.

14 Jan 2010 will have a small spot in history as Sami’s mythical moment. During the opening of the Finnish Design Awards exhibition in Helsinki, Sami received the award for Finnish Graphic Designer of the Year 2010. Which made him happy, see the smile on his face. The opening was attended by a nice crowd, the beer was quickly gone. After consuming the alcohol rumours went like ‘Sami is Miss Underware Scandinavia’, which probably should be taken with a pinch of salt.

This exhibition gives an overview of contemporary Finnish design in versatile fields. The exhibition started its journey in Helsinki (Jan-Feb 2010), and in April it continues globetrotting to Oslo (Norway) and further.

Meanwhile this movie will give you a flashback to Helsinki’s exhibition space. Être poursuivi!

Lately Iiris has been receiving lots of banana cards from fans all over the world: from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Helsinki, Montreal, New York, Oslo, Sydney, Vienna and from countless smaller places. Here’s a fraction of those wonderful cards.

We received them at Underware’s Scandinavian office. We wrapped the first set for Iiris to Poste Restante Bambolim Beach, Goa, India. And guess what, we just heard Iiris picked the cards on the other day with a big smile. She sends warm hugs and love! And unnecessary to say: she’s happy to receive more of this stuff!

From: Bas Jacobs
Date: November 23, 2009 15:11:16
To: Akiem Helmling, Sami Kortemäki
Subject: Bello goes freestyle II

He, for sure you remember ‘Bello goes freestyle I‘ right? Well, yesterday I spotted part II, while passing a social workshop for adolescents in Zutphen, named Het Dagelijks Bestaan. The handmade lettering on their roof caught my attention. I took a picture. Man on a ladder looked at me. Our conversation went somehow like this:

Man: He you, what are you taking a picture of?
Me: The letters on the roof. Do you know who made them?
Man: I did. Why?
Me: Do you know which typeface this is?
Man: Euhm… yes. Oh no, not right now. Do you?
Me: Yes, it’s called Bello.
Man: Ah yes, that’s it. Do you know who made it?
Me: I did.

Silence. Man left behind puzzled.

We received some Brasilian links from Uncle D about typographic makeovers. Mixing type and 3D-illustration, a nice example of the so called Illustrated Type movement.

Rodrigo Francisco at Behance
Rodrigo Francisco’s portfolio

From: Urs Lehni
Date: November 6, 2009 15:21:10
Subject: Bello in use

Hey Underware, We were in Seoul two weeks ago, where I found this funny example of Bello in use – easy does it! Have a nice weekend, Urs

From: Arno Kathollnig
Date: October 26, 2009 08:21:10
Subject: Liza in use

Dear Underware Team,
Chapeau! Your Liza is indeed vraiment adorable. The link here below leads you to Your Liza in use (hopefully not abused):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/typoatelier/4041508847/

I’m not a professional in the field of visual communication. Type and Typography are passion, hobby and temps libre. I collect »font licenses« of typefaces I like, as others collect stamps or ronds de bière. The only chance to use those typefaces, are my wallpapers.

Liebe Grüße aus Österreich,
Arno Kathollnig

Liza loves Snow Leopard
Months after her release Liza Pro finally works in TextEdit

We had a similar situation with Bello Pro. At the moment the typeface was released in 2004, the fancy OpenType features worked nicely in applications like InDesign and QuarkXPress, but not in applications which rely on the operating system, like TextEdit. Luckily half a year after we released the typeface, an updated version of OSX (10.4 / Tiger) finally supported the most important features in Bello Pro (for programs like TextEdit).

5 years later history repeats itself. At the moment of its release, our über-intelligent Liza behaved nicely in applications with a sophisticated OpenType support (Adobe CS, QuarkXPress, etc), but not in TextEdit. Let’s say that Liza’s IQ was too high for the operating system.

Meanwhile Apple released a new version of OSX (10.6 / Snow Leopard), which contains an update of the Core Text engine. This has an improved OpenType support, especially for contextual alternates. Not 100% yet, but at least Liza’s superlooper, t-topper and her pretty bold ‘out-of-ink’-feature finally work in TextEdit. Now: let’s all start designing using TextEdit!