Shacking Up With Typography

I love typography, and it's absolutely everywhere in our daily environment. Store Signage, construction-site posters, catalogs, stenciled on sidewalks, book covers, opening credits sequences in movies and on and on. And with the democratizing influence of the computer more and more non-designers and weekend Photoshop tinkerers are becoming savvy about type. Ask a room full of people what their opinion is of Helvetica and you could start a brawl. There's definitely a growing trend in home decor towards incorporating typographic elements into furniture and accessories of every kind. It used to only show up in places dedicated to enshrining (and selling at a hefty price) mid-century modern furniture and home design. But now you can find typography-centric decor from high end to low and every price-point in between. Here's a roundup of what I think are some of the best applications of type to home decor.

Let's start with a company that's actually a type foundry that happens to sell type-related merchandise on the side — House Industries. Above is a decorative iron ampersand.

Another site that's primarily selling fonts with a few products on the side is Veer.com. This is a set of laser-cut wood coasters.

This is a typography + coffee joke. The designations work both to describe the font weight and the coffee strength. [Helvetica mug by Veer.]

This is a wall piece from Land of Nod (they're basically the kid's branch of CB2). I don't see why this should be something meant only for children. I'd gladly hang this on my wall.

Garvey Chair by Anthropologie. The upholstery is covered in names of New York subway stations.

This one comes from a British company, Kent and London, via Design Sponge.

Now this is a bit of a rare piece designed by Finnish furniture designer Lincoln Kayiwa. It's ostensibly a book shelf but acts more like a room divider.

These are Fontables. They're designed by a pair of Italian designers and come in all the letters of the alphabet, lower and uppercase, and any numeral. Their height is adjustable so they can be arranged to overlap each other.

This is the Font Clock from Established & Sons. As the day/month/date and time flip over they change font.

Graham & Brown alphabet wallpaper. It's the Greek alphabet but that's typography as well.

This wallpaper is by Italian company Wall and Deco and is called Sans.

Also by Wall and Deco this one is called Typology.

This set of linens is from Heather Lins Home. There are numbered coasters and napkins and the measurement placemat completes the set.

Scott Albrecht is an artist who creates these colorful typographic shadow boxes with different phrases.

Jessica Hische, an illustrator and typographer started a Daily Drop Cap project for herself in which she would create a different decorative letter each day. She sells letter-pressed prints of these elaborate characters.

John Boardley of the I Love Typography blog is a talented typographer and letterer who sells a limited number of prints through his blog.

Ork Posters' typographic interpretation of a map of San Francisco neighborhoods.

This is a poster by Tor Weeks (who was also responsible for the Bikes of San Francisco poster in an earlier post). Here she takes one the more obscure typographic bits — the brackets — from different fonts to build her chart of typestaches.