Quite why you really need yet another apple product in your life Steve Jobs only knows, but it appears that you do. And just incase it was feeling neglected while all your other screens brandish delicious VirusFonts wallpapers, we have a new selection available for the iPad.

The designs (clockwise from top left) are as follows:
1. Litmus is based on the colours found on the pH scale, with a nod to the colourless, odourless, yet explosive gas – Hydrogen. Litmus also relates to the figurative, decisive indicative test which is often applied to the political process.
2. Hebetude is based on ethargy and insipidity; a living coma that people go through their day subjected to. Hebetude makes use of the monospaced qualities of Coma in its apparent repetition.
3. Coalition incorporates both the unprecedented nature of the new government and the rotating feature of the iPad, depicted as the inner workings of a mysterious machine.
4. Trident, showing both the terrible power and beauty of a nuclear deterrent, includes numerous editions of the Trident II D-5 missile arranged in a floral composition that is also intentionally phallic.

To download, just head for the Virusfonts Downloads page.

We are now offering The Little Book of Shocking Global Facts in the VirusFonts bookstore. The book is one of the first books to be published by the new design-focused publishing house Fiell Publishing. You can read more about the the ideas behind the book in this previous blog post and this interview with digital arts.

Following high demand, all VirusFonts are finally available in OpenType. Now you can enjoy the multi-platform capability of this format without having to fiddle about with bitmap fonts and AFM files. Please note though this is a new format option only and offers no new features such as extra ligatures etc. This is mainly for people who are buying the fonts for the first time, however if you would like to upgrade any fonts purchased directly from us, please contact us for upgrade pricing.

For more information on the VirusFonts pricing policy click here.

Dezeen magazine are giving away ten copies of the Little Book of Shocking Global Facts. For your chance to win, just head over to their website.

We have launched a new website showcasing all our film work. The site features our commissioned commercial and short films, as well as self-initiated social films and VJ clips created for live performances. As one of the original ‘New Wave’ of motion graphics designers, Barnbrook were one of the first studios to use the then new digital technology to create motion graphics typography for young directors and risk-taking advertising agencies who recognised the potential of this new undeveloped area. Today Barnbrook are still at the forefront of motion graphics creating a variety of work from TV commercials to live VJ performances and short animated films.

Barnbrook were invited to contribute to a new exhibition of graphic design from the United Kingdom, UK? OK!!, which opened on Friday at Parco Factory in Shibuya, Tokyo. The exhibition features the work of graphic design luminaries such as Tomato, Neville Brody and Non-Format and is curated around the idea of sound. Our submission was a poster – Murmurs – a visualisation of The Sounds of Earth, an audio track on The Golden Record – a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk that was sent into space by NASA aboard the Voyager spacecrafts in 1977.

The Sounds of Earth contains a plethora of natural sounds including those of Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Thunder, Mud Pots, Wind, Rain, Surf, Crickets, Frogs, Birds, Hyenas, Elephants, Chimpanzees, Wild Dogs, Tame Dogs, Footsteps, Heartbeats, Laughter, Fire, Speech, The First Tools, Herding Sheep, Blacksmiths, Sawing, Tractors, Riveters, Morse Code, Ships, Trains, F-111 Aircraft, Saturn 5 Lift-off, a Kiss, Mother and Child, Life Signs and Pulsar. Selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth The Golden Record is a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. It will be forty thousand years before the Voyager spacecrafts make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” Each coloured square in the poster captures 1 second of the 746 second track.

For more information on the exhibition you can follow UK? OK!! on twitter or check out the Parco Art site (links are in Japanese).

If you are of a certain age you will remember ‘the mixtape’ – a cassette tape you made with a personal selection of music. These amateur DJ efforts were for many purposes, sometimes to get a party going were you arrived at a very sober occasion and proclaimed you could liven up the place with the magic ingredient of ‘the best party mixtape ever (usually starting with James Brown's ‘Sex machine’ and following with a selection that wouldn't have been out of place at a bad wedding reception). Some mixtapes were to woo girls clearly showing ‘what a sensitive caring guy you were’; and you hoped that subliminally recording ‘please sleep with me’ in a whisper in the quiet bits of the tracks would guarantee you some kind of success with them. The final category were much more dark in intent; part of a wider evangelical mission you had to convert the whole world to the music and sub-culture you were almost religiously part of. 

So, recently Richard Squires, an old college friend contacted Jonathan with some rather professional images of an example in the third category (thankfully), that Jonathan did for him when they were both at St.Martins in 1988. We don't think it is the most amazing piece of design he has done but they do serve to show the intensity of Jonathan as a student – that he was prepared to go to such design lengths to simply give a friend some music he liked, especially since he has has cited record covers as one of his biggest influenced on him becoming a graphic designer. Also on seeing this we are lamenting something human that has been lost in the iTunes playlist or Spotify link.

And what was on the tape? A selection of Tuxedomoon so… A very special box with a little bit of burnt theme. Strange how life repeats itself – he did exactly the same thing as a real project a while ago.

Track listing:

SIDE A
1. Tuxedomoon – Ninotchka
2. Tuxedomoon – Watching the Blood Flow
3. Tuxedomoon – Break the Rules
4. Tuxedomoon – Litebulb Overkill
5. Tuxedomoon – Tritone
6. Steven Brown – Scene1: The Street
7. Steven Brown – Scene2: The Bar
8. Steven Brown – Scene3: The Ship
9. Blaine L. Reininger – Der Hamburger Veermaster
10. Tuxedomoon – Hugging the Earth

SIDE B
Tuxedomoon – You (Album)
1. Roman P.
2. The Train
3. 2000
4. Never Ending Story
5. Stockholm
6. Boxman (Mr. Niles)
7. Spirits and Ghosts
8. Boxman (The City)
9. You
10. Boxman (Home)

Catalan designer Xavier Puig is the latest intern to have worked at Barnbrook design. Xavier made some valuable contributions to various projects and pitches including books, posters and VirusFonts promotions. We are grateful for all his hard work.
You can see more of Xavier’s work here.

If you don’t already know, every month or so we send out the VirusFonts newsletter. If you want to be the first to find out about free downloads, new limited edition prints and any other random waffle we choose to include, sign up at VirusFonts.

If you are not a subscriber and you want to get a taste of what you are missing, you can view the latest newsletter here.

Digital Arts have interviewed us about our work on the book The Little Book of Shocking Global Facts. The interview will be published in the magazine on the 5th of August. You can also read the interview on their website.