What 100 bucks a night will get you in the middle of Rome
Posted: September 19th, 2010 | Author: Devon | Filed under: Italy | 6 Comments »
We’re in Rome! Our trip through Europe is almost complete. After a few days of sightseeing, on the 21st we fly back to the United States to begin a month-long, welcome back lap of the country (two weddings (one on each coast) and parents and friends to visit in four cities). Then, real life again.
But first, bella Roma. Tonight we stumbled upon the Trajan column, which holds special relevance for the typography nerd in me. The lettering chiseled into the marble at the base of this column is the basis for a typeface (designed by Carol Twombly and named, appropriately, “Trajan”) which has become omnipresent. It’s often used on movie posters (Armageddon, Letters to Iwojima, etc, etc). We studied those letterforms, tracing and replicating them freehand and learning about their ratios, in preparation for making our own typefaces.
Actually I’ve spent more than $100 on a Rome hotel room and it was even more spartan than yours. Hope you keep blogging after you’re back in USA; I want to hear about the ducks, etc. Spent the evening with Joe and Patty Doughtery last night at an outdoor concert and I caught Joe up on your adventures. He’s a couple of days behind; imagine that!
Victoria,
I’m so glad to hear you’re enjoying the blog! Uncle Joe is wonderful for sharing the trip with others. Next time you see them, give them a hug for me. And yes, I think we do plan to blog when we get back. The focus will obviously be different, but we really enjoy writing the posts so you’ll surely see more on the U.S. of A. side.
Apropos and coincidental: saw this infographic linked from boingboing today: http://inspirationlab.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/infographiclarge_v2.png
Also, your mentioning Trajan made me curious to see how it looked on movie posters, and lo and behold there’s an entire Flickr pool of a lot of movie posters that use it: http://www.flickr.com/groups/trajanfilmposter/pool/
Awesome links, Erik. That infographic had me chuckling.
Love Halbe’s outfit. Can’t wait for more pics of Rome. See you soon!!!!!!!
travel safe, enjoy your last day(s) and see you soon. xo