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Mirko Ilić’s op-ed pages for the New York Times are fantastic. It’s amazing how expressive considered body copy can be.

Gosh I love Fiodor Sumkin’s hand lettering. Working across an incredible range of typographic styles, Fiodor creates intricately illustrated work — often with nothing more than a gel pen and his imagination.

Inspiring stuff from Paris’s A is a name. Particularly digging this series of images for furniture designer Magali Jeambrun. (via The Strange Attractor, who’s newest contributor, Mark Pernice, championed Gratuitous Type in his inaugural post. Awesome.)

Sorry to be light on posting lately. Here’s something fun to make it up to you. Custom logo by Sydney-based creative production house Toby & Pete. Founded in early 2010, the studio has managed to produce loads of great stuff in just a year’s time. (via Copy Paste)

Can’t resist the opportunity to share a well-done “X”. Adorable tic-tac-toe set from Yellow Owl Workshop — where you’ll also find quite a few more charming stamp and stationary sets. (via DesignSponge)

If you’ve seen the amazing Italian film I Am Love, you’re already familiar with the stunning work of Luca Barcellona, the designer and calligrapher responsible for the film’s titles. If not, get acquainted — Barcellona’s lettering is absolutely inspiring. Check out his multidisciplinary work on Flickr and not-to-be-missed video of the artist in action. Wow.

More dreary weather in New York (snow?!) calls for something more fun this morning, and the work of Olympia Le-Tan certainly fits the bill. The Parisian artist creates hand-embroided clutches inspired by book covers and lined with Liberty prints. Her latest, sweetly bleak collection, It’s Not the End of the World, is inspired by sci-fi books, astronomy, and doomsday. Olympia has also collaborated with Spike Jonze on the stop-motion short film Mourir Auprès de Toi, which will be released this year. Ride out the bad weather with a look at Opening Ceremony’s recent studio visit with the artist and a behind-the-scenes look at her new film.

This oldie-but-goodie, comes from the archives of the wonderful Gail Anderson. Totally inspired spreads from the Type Directors Club’s 2002 Typography Annual. Love. It. Look’s like Gail will also be hosting an awesome type workshop at SVA this summer.

In 1985, Zuzana Licko created Oakland, a digital typeface that set off a debate about the viability of bitmapped faces in print. In Emigre 15 (1990), Zuzana asked, “why did letter press type start to look a certain way, and why was that eventually accepted? Not because people were reading the type off the bed of the letterpress…. That didn’t have anything more to do with casting lead than it does with computer chips today, but that’s where it comes from, and that’s what we’ve gotten used to.” This year, Evan Christie, a student at Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts, has given a physical form to Zuzana’s digital face, recreating Oakland in moveable type. More at Emigre.

Gratuitous Type is coming to New York’s mecca for great magazines, artist publications, and books—Printed Matter! Awesome news and a great way to kick off the week. If you’re in New York, don’t forget you can also buy the magazine at Spoonbill & Sugartown in Williamsburg and McNally Jackson in Nolita.

A cleverly conceived and executed project from Briton Smith and James Kape (whose lovely self promotional book has been making the rounds online recently). The pair seem to have a knack for conceptualizing and executing three dimensional vignettes like the image above, created for Shore Thing, an annual event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

Apologies for the single-mindedness, but it seems that I’ve got magazines on the brain. One of the consistently great ones these days is It’s Nice That, and Issue #5 looks to be no exception. Of particular interest is photographer Qiu Yang’s peek into the studio of Letman (Job Wouters). Looking forward to it!

Stumbled across some exciting work at No.Zines (a great online resource for the independent magazine/publishing addict): Buffalo Zine is a fresh-looking biannual magazine of art, music and writing based in Madrid. Love the type and play on the newspaper-within-a-newspaper, while totally subverting this idea at the same time. Great. Stuff. See the whole issue here. And don’t forget to check out No.Zines. Really, it’s excellent.

When reading a physical book is just too easy, there’s Books2Barcodes, a site that offers some of literature’s greatest works for download via thousands of QR barcodes. The project was created by Wonder-Tonic (Mike Lacher), who’s got a fantastic portfolio of equally nonsensical work, like The Geocities-izer (transform your website into a Geocities page circa 1996), Cage Flix (add every film from Nicolas Cage’s oeuvre to your Netflix queue) and parodies of celebrity gossip rags, like this and this.

Awesome — er, sweeeet — sweatshirt by Jeff & Paul.

Gratuitous Type has found it’s way to Sweden. If you’re in Stockholm, stop by the fabulous Papercut (located at Krukmakargatan 24) to grab a copy of our first issue. While you’re there, co-owner Alexander Dahlberg also recommends having a look at these favorite magazines: Apartamento, Put A Egg On It, 032c, The Journal, and Purple Fashion.

A clever project from Justin LaRose and Samuel Cox, Physical Fiction is what you get when you mix a Vandercook press with a pile of LEGOs, a serious interest in analogue printing, and a healthy dose of ingenuity. The result is a series of posters featuring lovingly pressed type, geometric forms, food (dill pixels, anyone?), and creepy creatures. More at NPR.

Please allow me to gush about Mike Perry this morning. The designer/artist/king of hand-lettered type, who publishes fantastic books and magazine, draws, paints, screenprints, sculpts and just makes all-around kick ass work, is also a very kind guy. 100% of the proceeds from all purchases made through his online store now through the end of the month will be donated to disaster relief in Japan. Shop at Mike’s store now and follow him on Twitter. If you want to donate directly, GOOD is maintaining a list of ways to help.

What a lovely blog concept from Craig Wills. Twenty-Six Types collects beautiful letters, which are handily recategorized for your viewing pleasure. Browse by letter, material, type category, color, and more.

There’s been lots of love on the internet for Gratuitous Type recently, so I’d like to say hello to any new followers who’ve joined us through another blog post. I’d also like to thank those who’ve covered the magazine recently, it’s been a thrill to see it appear on some of my favorite blogs ever. Some recent GT-related posts: MagCulture, It’s Nice That, Quintatinta, TypoJungle, Swiss Legacy, and No.Zines. Awesome.