I have been meaning for awhile to write something here about Typographyshop.com, an online store that sells t-shirts you may not have known you were missing: fine, tasteful, funny designs about typography and advertising. I am not a person known to wear t-shirts with words on them. In fact I am not even a "t-shirt"-wearer. But Patrick King, chief designer and kerner at this enterprise won me over with the elegant black tanktops for women. I took my previous favorite to Mexico. People all over the Yucatan saw a woman wearing a shirt that said, "Everything is better in Bodoni." And, full of envy, they came up to me and said, (I kid you not,) "I've never been, is it beautiful?" I assured them it was, and that it was even more beautiful than Akumal, with bigger turtles.

Do take a look at the latest release, my new favorite, which bridges the hardcore world of very sans serif and the particularly zen seriflessness of the Japanese enso: "Counter," on pre-release sale until the end of April.

If you are coming to AlphabetRoadtrip from some other land, perhaps from a place where the letters have no parts and thus no names but simply emerge wholecloth as a set of pixels, this note from Patrick explains:

Counter is a new theme full of meaning far beyond the typographic. It elicited quite the discussion on our Facebook page.

Some designers and all non designers weren't familiar with the term "Counter," which among the many terms in typographic anatomy is perhaps the simplest to explain as any fully enclosed space within a letterform. Uppercase A, B, D, O, P, Q, R and lower case a, b, d, e, g, o, p, q and the numbers 4, 6, 8, 9 and 0 all contain counters. And let's not forget the & ampersand.

Or as I said to a type challenged friend, it's the hole in the letter.

What I like about Typography shop is not just the products and the complete coolness of everything they produce, but also the sense of community. Where else can you get involved as a focus group deciding just how to kern "Make the logo smaller?" (a greatest hits shirt, and if you are a graphic designer you have felt the pain.) Take a look, wear your shirt to a temple in Koyasan, and send in a photo!