how to get a flomm font me mug for free*

Sev­er­al years ago I came up with this idea: 

Why not put a pro­fes­sion­al type gauge (with pica/point/inch) on a cof­fee mug? 

Graph­ic de­sign­ers, type­set­ters, and print­ers have used some form of these over the years. Ex­treme­ly help­ful, vin­tage, in­dus­tri­al ephemera. 

I added in proof­read­er marks (from a 19th cen­tu­ry busi­ness manual),
his­tor­i­cal font measurements,
type classifications,
type­set­ting rules,
and (most im­por­tant for any­one work­ing with graph­ic design/desktop publishing/page lay­out software)
    dec­i­mal inch con­ver­sions –
since a big chunk of graph­ic design/advertising work­ers still use inch­es for mea­sure­ment. (When work­ing as a pro­duc­tion artist, I used to car­ry a dec­i­mal con­ver­sion chart with me; so, why not put it on a mug?)

My FONT ME mug (above) hit the Zaz­zle mar­ket in 2009 and it sort of went vi­ral.

Graph­ic de­sign­ers love ’em.
I sell a lot of them.
Just sold a few more last week.
And my stu­dents – af­ter grad­u­a­tion – would get them for their desks. 

One com­ment­ed, “You should have had this mug as your re­quired text.”
 

Tho per­son­al­ly, I kept us­ing my EX­TRA-LARGE Star­bucks City Mug for cof­fee. Be­cause bigger. 

And I was nev­er re­al­ly hap­py that I couldn’t fit every­thing I want­ed to in the small FONT ME space.
 
 

mak­ing it big: in­tro­duc­ing ex­tra-large font me
This year Zaz­zle not only has im­proved their imag­ing process, they now have EX­TRA-LARGE Star­bucks City Mug-size cups available. 

So I spent last week­end pulling out my old notes, go­ing through old ty­pog­ra­phy books and ephemera, and fig­ur­ing out what else should go on an UP­DAT­ED EDI­TION of this mug.

Since 2003, I’ve been teach­ing some sort of BE­GIN­NING to IN­TER­ME­DI­ATE to AD­VANCED Ty­pog­ra­phy course. And in the last few years, I’ve been us­ing a lot of new con­cepts to de­scribe What Makes Ty­pog­ra­phy Good. 

So I’ve adapt­ed in­fo­graph­ic pieces of my lecture/discussion ma­te­ri­als to fill the ex­tra space – in­clud­ing the his­tor­i­cal dif­fer­ence be­tween DIS­PLAY and TEXT type, things NOT to do with TYPE, word shapes and prob­a­bly the most im­por­tant thing that sort of just spout­ed from my mouth one day:

‘Any­where type is used is graph­ic design.’

     ~ be­cause so many peo­ple think graph­ic de­sign­ers are com­put­er pro­gram­mers, logo mak­ers and goofy artists. We’re not. Graph­ic de­sign is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion field. And ty­pog­ra­phy is our most pow­er­ful tool.

AND if you are a GRAPH­IC DE­SIGN­ER, this sen­tence on this mug can be point­ed out to ANY­ONE in your of­fice who doesn’t know ex­act­ly what it is you do.
 

* so, how to get it free
Which brings me to the eas­i­est way to get your hands on one of these mugs: 

If you’re a graph­ic or web de­sign­er, ed­i­tor, or work with fonts in any way, ask some­one who buys you gifts this time of year to get one of these mugs for you.

Se­cret San­ta, es­tranged fam­i­ly mem­ber, who owes you a gift? And who re­al­ly doesn’t know what to buy for you?

「 Here’s a link   」

And here’s an easy-to-re­mem­ber URL:  flomm.us/FONTme

FONT ME mugs are now avail­able in 4 ver­sions: Orig­i­nal Two-Tone, Ex­tra­Bold, and as TWO FLOMM vari­ants; cause I do FLOMM now. And per­son­al­ly, I’m snag­ging the FLomm­wo­orde Edi­tion cause my Star­bucks City Mug van­ished in a move years ago. 

Kind of pricey? It’s just a bit more than the orig­i­nal AND Zaz­zle runs sales. A lot. As I write this, mugs are 20% off. Al­ways look for the code at the top of the page. And we have oth­er ex­tra-large FLOMM mugs too.

Drink and be mer­ry! And note that this is one of the few FLOMM things that is ac­tu­al­ly Safe for Dish­wash­er and SFW.

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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