Mission Mission

What started as a school project for these two Swedish designers turned into 7 years of research, 10 million dollars in venture funding, and what might be the hot new solution to helmet hair. I’m not going to spoil it for you, so you should watch the video for yourself. If it works, it’d be pret-ty incredible.

[via Booooooom]

If you can’t already tell, I’m a huge fan of local typographer James T. Edmondson and his contributions to the world of letters. Well, James has done it again. Mission Script is a tribute of the hand-painted signage of the liquor stores, taquerias, doughnut shops, and bodegas of our neighborhood, and it’s the first typeface to come out of Lost Type’s Mission Collection.

You can download Mission Script (and a bunch of other snazzy typefaces) over at Lost Type. And do consider making a contribution if you’re really going to use it.

By now, we’re all familiar with the complaints of how New York sucks at burritos. A graduate design student at NYU has taken the matter into his own hands, and has invented a robot that makes customizable burritos using 3D printing technology.

Unlike the TacoCopter, the BurritoBot does not appear to be a joke. Just check out this accompanying stop motion video, which hints at a future Kickstarter campaign:

Now, how long until I can train one to make me Taqueria Cancun veggie burritos, black beans/no dairy/extra salsa?

[via Fastco]

Lost Type is an amazing pay-what-you-want type foundry, also known as the place where that trendy new restaurant got those cool fonts for their menus. They’re also previously known for releasing a font inspired by Mission laundromats.

They’ve just completed Field Trip SF, a four-day reality TV-style trip to San Francisco, where “a handful of Lost Type’s designers [lived] under one roof with a common goal – to create a typeface inspired by San Francisco.”

As it turns out, the designers spent a lot of time in the Mission, developing type inspired by St. Francis Fountain, liquor store signage, that one optometrist/art gallery place on Valencia, and other notable Mission landmarks.

Lost Type plans to release three typefaces produced during Field Trip as a Mission-themed collection in the near future, so get excited, type nerds!

P.S. These guys aren’t the first to delve into Mission-themed typography. Just check out our sidebar headers, all referencing iconic Mission signage and all designed by our buddy Sexpigeon. Can you identify them all?

No idea what these miscreants may have been up to or if an Office Space-style beatdown was about to take place, but here’s hoping they were taking this beast to the top of a staircase so they could kick it down to make it produce some rad fucked-up Cometbus-esque Xerox copies for their zine.

Our pal Brittney had a serious scare, and lived to tell about it:

Then the elevator moved, but then it stopped. Then the display began FLASHING. Then nothing. No movement. No opening of doors. Just the silent flashing of the following:

_ _

After about 30 seconds I began to jab wildly at the Open Doors button, even though I’ve been told by numerous know-it-alls that that button is impotent and does nothing. Still I stabbed at it like a frenzied murderer.

Then the elevator began to ascend, maybe descend, it was hard to  tell, because the elevator began to move while still FLASHING the ominous:

_ _

“Are we moving?!” The young man hand both palms flat against the side of the elevator walls and his eyes bulged from his face.

“I don’t knowwwwhatthefuckisgoingon?!?!?,” was my approximate reaction.

The quickness with which I began to lose my shit was astounding. I immediately had trouble breathing and when I realized I might be stuck inside that elevator I knew I couldn’t do it. I knew my whole body would shut right down.

Yikes! Read on for the dramatic conclusion.

[GIF via Honey Jets]

This is most likely a joke (or an ambitious extracurricular activity of Andrew’s), but can you imagine if it wasn’t? Have robots already begun to take over? Watch out, delivery bike squad, for it’s only a matter of time…

Local design and technology studio Stamen is probably best known for all of the cool interactive maps they make, like Prettymaps and Crimespotting. They’ve just released a beautiful watercolor basemap to be used with OpenStreetMap data. It’s a great day to be a map nerd.

Local designer James T. Edmondson has created a new font based on the lettering found on laundromat windows in the Mission, aptly named Lavanderia. Fancy!

Here’s what James had to say about his font:

Laundry is an incredibly tedious task—the antithesis of glamour, so I have massive appreciation for the guy that decided to letter the window with a script that captures all the essence of what a laundromat lacks. Excitement, passion, love. It’s all in that script.

How nice it is to create something beautiful, where boring, stagnant lettering would have easily sufficed! My latest typeface Lavanderia is a celebration and a tribute to the enthusiasm that influences those who go above and beyond to create beauty where there is none.

Inspiration came from San Francisco’s Mission District, a vibrant and at times foul smelling part of town, rich with dive bars, taquerias, and unemployed twenty-somethings who look extremely creative but actually do very little. It’s a magical place.

Download Lavanderia here, and consider leaving a donation. Making fonts is hard!

Some Aussie friends of ours were perplexed to learn recently that hot water bottles are not really a common household item here in the Mission. Some Missionites hadn’t heard of them at all, and they’re not exactly readily available at the corner drugstore like they would be back in Brisbane (the best our local Walgreens could do was a douche bag).

So, where do you go? Bed, Bath and Beyond, surely, but they’re a giant corporation. Some cute shop on Valencia, maybe? We should all have hot water bottles now that it’s THE DEAD OF WINTER.

If all else fails, just make a douche sweater for your douche bag like Laura here did:

Thanks for the story and the photos, David!