Cloudy with a Chance of Gotham

It’s been raining heavily in New York’s Hudson Valley for what seems like weeks now. Oppressive humidity has blanketed the air with a thickness that thwarts all efforts to be a productive member of society. And the extended forecast doesn’t indicate it is going to end anytime soon.

Today’s long-awaited announcement of Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Cloud.typography came as a welcomed procrasti-distraction from the constant hum of desk fans, window ACs and cranky, bored offspring.

Since plenty will be written by more credible folk about H&FJ’s jaw-droppingly impressive webfonts, let’s talk about other sorts of Cloud Typography, during this week of cumulous typographic activity.

The Cloud Appreciation Society boasts, well, an unabashed love of clouds. Member Danièle Siebenhaar offers an ambitious collection of clouds that look like letterforms, amongst other recognizable shapes (a sleeping baby, for example).

I’m digging the F and the Z but that R is a bit suspect.

I bet you were just thinking to yourself, “Gee, I wonder if there are some awesome examples of ASCII art clouds?” Look no more.

This is exactly what yesterday’s thunderstorm looked like. EXACTLY.

ASCII Art—Nature—Clouds.

Unicode character for ‘cloud’? U+2601. ☁

Ugly typography word clouds? There’s plenty of those.

Scott McCloud’s comic fonts? Sure.

Bob Ross painting happy clouds?

Ok, a little off topic there.

As you can see, H&FJ is clearly going to encounter an uphill battle seizing that coveted number one spot in a Google search of “cloud typography”.

Nevermind.

 

This post was originally published on a long, lost Typophile blog, but has been recently rescued from the deepest depths of the Internet Archive.

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