:: backpacker ::

I was really happy to see that the website of freequency, a web radio transmitting from Athens, was one of the finalists in the corporate websites category of EBGE 2010 (Greek Design and Illustration Awards). The site was selected among 54 submissions and it is featured in the annual catalog of this year's EBGE.

Didn't you just love BPmono italics? Well, it has undergone through a transformation process and has eventually been reformed into an actual typewriter font. BPtypewrite is in fact BPmono italics standing up, with new soft edges, and a whole system of supporting fonts including underscored, strikethrough and slashed. The italics version remains in all variations, while a rough alternate complements the whole set (BPtypewriteDamaged). Let the BPtypewriting begin!
If you like BPtypewrite take a look at caketype's Nitti Typewriter designed by Pieter van Rosmalen (Pieter thanks for the support ;-).

backpacker.gr celebrates 4 years on the road with the release of BPimperial; a caps-only condensed typeface in two weights (light and bold), each one accompanied by extreme 12° italics. With several letters trying to impose on the rest, and a set of unexpected design choices in some of its puncuation marks, BPimperial is a display font that literally stands out! Give it a try (be careful though: you shouldn't mess with its spacing or kerning. It's designed to work as is)!
BPimperial showcase: don't forget to download BPimperial's pdf showcase. It includes works from a few friends that kindly responded in my invitation to try the font and design something (anything) with it. Thanks a million to all of you (Christos Tsoleridis + Christos Papatheodorou from togetherdesign, Giannis Kouroudis from K2design and Michail Semoglou from cannotnot design together with Emirihanna Litsa)
Moreover, check out a new variation of BPmono. The bold version of the font has a new stencil brother for those occasions who need the extra air. Check it out as well!
Finally, BPapeloig has been added in the chubby pack (Jan, 2010). The font was designed in 2004 and it's actually the basis (or, version 1.0 if you want) for BPchubby. As its name suggests, it was inspired by Phillipe Apeloig's work on type design and more specifically from his The P.O.S.T.E.R. poster (an all time favourite, I must admit).

Three fonts from backpacker.gr are included in the latest edition of typodarium, 2010. Check out the calendar and buy it if you like it (which I am sure you will - the publisher, Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz, did an excellent job). The three BP fonts presented are BPscript (16 January // the birthday of backpacker.gr), BPmono Italics (15 March // my birthday) and BPbigHead (20 October // my house's birthday :-)

After a request from Sotos Anagnos (art director of Babel magazine) and support from Ray Larabie, I designed the Greek alphabet for the new Bullpen font family. The font family is comprised of 7 weights, all with corresponding italics (from Ultra Light to Heavy + a 3D version) and is available at myFonts (all 15 fonts for only $22.95)

The parade of the Poles on 5th Avenue. The school band on 6th. The Sunday bazaar in front of Grand Central. Countless patrol cars, police officers, "yellow" cabs and American flags (I think I stopped counting from the first day). Employees, homeless people, tourists and "fabulous" ladies in front of expensive shops. Reporters and panic in Wall Street and a huge flag trying to "hold" and prevent the "collapse" of an entire edifice. The clamour on Times Square and the silence on Top of the Rock. The beautiful Subway and street signs. The old water reservoirs at the rooftops in Brooklyn. Manhattan seen from Tzina's appartment in Queens and the feeling of living on the 20th floor of a building. myNY is a small book of impressions from New York. A reminder assembled out of photographs. Out of instinctively captured images of one's "return" to a city so alien and strange that in the end it seems more than familiar. Available at protoporia and ianos.

Since July I have been contacted by three programmers and graphic designers from abroad (that is outside Greece) showcasing some of their works using three of the BPfonts. I was very happy to see that the fonts can actually support real-life design (and programming) projects.These usage examples include:
a. the use of BPneon in an opening sequence for a documentary on the theme of worldwide energy crisis entitled What A Waste, aired on BBC World this July and produced Rockhopper TV (see two pictures from the opening sequence),
b. the use of BPreplay in Wordle, a "word clouds" generator created by Jonathan Feinberg, and
c. the use of BPmono in Metacollider, a Roguelike game programmed in Python by Kevin James, licensed under FreeBSD general public license.Rockhopper, Jonathan and Kevin thank you very much for your choices. Your works make the whole backpacker.gr effort seem less pointless :-)

I was very happy to see that all 3 of the photographs I submitted for the Corbis Creative Behind the Lens Photo Contest were selected for exhibition. The exhibition, comprised of 30 photographs from creative professionals all around Europe (you can see the rest of the photographs on the ed-awards website), took place in Stockholm during the 2008 European Design Week from the 16th to the 18th of May. I didn't have the chance to visit Stockholm during these days but I am grateful to Konstantinos Trichas who did visit the exhibition and sent me some very nice on-site photos. You can check them out in the projects section.

backpacker.gr celebrates 2 years on the road with two new fonts families (a total of 37 + 1 new fonts) and numerous minor (to major) design updates. The first fonts family's name is the ultimate dots pack and I think it says it all ... 30 monospaced "dot" fonts in 6 alternates (round, square, diamond, plus, minus, vertical) and 2 styles (normal and unicase), together with 3 non-monospaced condensed variations (round, square, diamond). Most of the 30 monospaced fonts can be used interchangeably, since they share the same width, allowing you to create stunning layering effects. Check them out in the fonts section! The second fonts family name is BPreplay and it's a redesign of Magenta's MgOpenModata. Small caps and old style numerals were added, while new italics, bold and bold italics were designed from scratch (many thanks to Alexios Zavras for the technical review). In addition, BPmono Bold is introduced, BPmono and BPmono Italics faced some glyph and hinting corrections (many thanks to Nick Tzanos for his help and suggestions) and, finally, BPneon faced some minor changes and corrections.

The Hellenic Alphabet exhibition has taken place with success during the 3rd International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication, between the 18th and the 24th of July, 2007. The works of Alice Savoie and Thomas Grace were the two selected submissions in the text and display/experimental category respectively. You can find more information about the event and the exhibited works at http://ea.backpacker.gr

I participate in a poster exhibition entitled mapping (europe) with 2 posters. The exhibition will take place from the 9th until the 25th of May 2007 in Athens (Greece). For more information check out apeiron photos. In addition, I participate in a video exhibition entitled Contrast: A Video Projection Project with a small cg video trying to analyze the concept of contrast. The video exhibition will take place in Athens (Greece) from the 10th until the 13th of May. For more information check out gda.gr

backpacker.gr was born this very day (16 January 2006) exactly one year ago (2006) (read the first year's retrospective in english | in greek, .pdf, 60KB). As a way of celebrating this first year 4 new fonts are presented (under a Creative Commons Licence). Their names are BP display black, BP mono and BP mono italics, and BP script. Check them out in the typefaces section. Furthermore, you can read an interview with Akiem Helmling (Underware). I met Akiem Helmling last summer (July, 2006) in Underware's office in De Illussie building for an interview. Have a look at what we talked about in the projects section.
Finally, check out the new section "wear a backpacker" and order a backpacker t-shirt! backpacker.gr collaborates with T-bar and gives you the opportunity to feel like a true backpacker...

After an invitation from Dimitris Papazoglou (designersunited.gr), I designed two posters in order to comment on two preselected events of 2006 for "Epsilon" magazine. The two events given to me were (1) Russians in Aegean and (2) Baby trafficking. The poster for the first event was published in the Epsilon magazine on the 31st ofDecember 2006. You can find a more detailed presentation together with 2 texts (one for each poster) in the projects section.

backpacker.gr (actively) supports the 5th experimental video and documentary festival "Strange Screen V". I designed and developed the website and the festival programme and participate in the competition part with a (rather provocative) experimental video. Visit the site and find out more: www.strangescreen.gr

Introducing the new backpacker logos, the site has gone to some minor design updates. The new logos have been designed directly on-screen and 3 different stamps have been created (just being curious about the result). See the logos and some pictures of the stamps in the design/logos section.

Previews of 3 new upcoming fonts have been added to the site. Some of them are still under development (eg. BP PhD Sans Regular and BP PhD Sans Bold), while others are in a final stage of retouching and fine-tuning (eg. BPscript and BPinktrap). I will strongly appreciate any kind of constructive comments.

BPneon contains over 100 discretionary ligatures. This number can increase. Send me your suggestions on letters groups that could be joined into a ligature. Try out BPneon in 21px without anti-alias. The hinting works great! BPpong is a work in progress. Some glyphs (mainly greek characters like beta, epsilon, zeta, mu, xi, omega and sigma final) need revisions.