Blogerino

Logo Love

2009-04-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

I have a deep, abiding love of abstraction, limits, and logos that afford creative application.
Designed by DJ Stout of Pentagram, the playful logo for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History reflects the institution’s early roots as a children’s museum and their comittement to learning. The logo was also inspired by the design of the new building. Architect Ricardo Legorretta is known for his bold Mexican-influenced color palette and recurring use of the square as a design motif.

Is it abstract?
Look at all those squares! It’s just a bunch of colored shapes, and it’s a set of letters. The designers developed not only the letters within the logo, but an entire alphabet composed exclusively of . . .

On Limits:
Look at all those squares! And right angles. All in three colors. Each letter is contained within a solid, identically sized square with counters and negative space formed by squares or groups of squares.

Creativity is often seen as a product of freedom, while the vital role of restriction is overlooked. Restriction is the obstacle that must be overcome, the problem that must be solved. Limits allow creativity to shine in this work.

Creative Application:
Thinking of a logo as a building block, a sort of Lego you can play with and rearrange to create new interest is not an analogy but a literal description of this design. In the museum monogram above, the logo work beautifully in a vertical format as well as horizontally. Go to Pentagram’s site and see this design in line form on a van, integrated with graphics on a poster, and proposed as various three-dimensional objects.

Really Great Beginnings

2009-04-07T08:24:00.000-07:00

Great Beginnings is a mid-1980’s collaboration between Paula Scher and Steven Koppel. In beginning a new design studio, they believed that their strength and the reason that clients would hire them was their flexible, expressive typographic style. To sell the great beginnings of their new studio, they created a small self-promotional book that featured the first two paragraphs of famous novels. Each chapter opener was designed in the graphic style from the period in which the novel was written.

The designs are bold, the type functions both as form and content, the graphic elements are seamlessly combined with the type, and the minimal color pallet unifies the stylistically diverse spreads. The concept as a self-promotion for a new firm is excellent and portrays the designers as intelligent, tasteful, and culturally and visually literate.

The production of the book—a 5” x 7” two-color, perfect-bound piece—was both economical and effective in attracting and maintaining attention. The booklet attracted attention stylistically: in the context of the 80’s the all-type, historically informed designs were innovative. The booklet maintained attention as a physical object: Scher remarks that in all her years of receiving promotional material, she never threw away perfect-bound booklets.

Scher and Koppel printed and mailed six thousand copies of the book to potential clients. The promotion proved successful and they received calls for new buisness almost immediately. An unintended consequence of the booklet, however, was that many clients viewed it as a catalog of style. They assumed that Koppel & Scher were a period design group, that they'd be ordering a constructivist or art nouveau design. Scher writes, “All through the eighties clients seemed to believe they were buying style, not thinking.”

Images and quote from Make It Bigger, Paula Scher, pp66–69, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.

ALL ONE!

2009-03-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

Behold the magic soap that unites mankind, spaceship earth, genuine compassion, a "more is more" philosophy when it comes to copywriting, and dreadful typography — ALL ONE! First, I need to mention that this is great soap. I am especially fond of the peppermint (pictured). In reviewing the documentary "Doctor Bronner's Magic Soapbox" David White had this to say: "(I)t's great soap. You should buy some. Just make sure you follow the directions on the manifesto-crammed label ("DILUTE! DILUTE! DILUTE!") or your 'undercarriage' will sting like crazy. "

About the label. (Click on the image to see it larger.) The layout ignores any and all typographic conventions such as readable line lengths. (The longest line lengths are 50+ words.) Focus on a concise message is also out the window as the ruling principle seems to be, "Why waste space by leaving it empty?"

Doctor Bronner (It may surprise you to hear that he wasn't really a doctor.) wrote the copy using a curious strain of English that I'll call Bronglish. Bronglish employs unique sentence structure, odd abbreviations (Thos. for Thomas), creative hyphenation, and a general substitution of exclamation marks for periods. Below is an example that illustrates most of the above. I have been careful to maintain the "formatting."
5th: Whatever unites mankind is better than whatever divides us! Yet, if absolute-unselfish I am not for me, I'm not but classless, raceless, starving masses, never free nor brave! Only if constructive selfish I work hard perfecting first me, like Mark Spitz - arctic owls - penguin - pilot - cat - swallow - beaver, bee, can I teach the MORAL ABC's ALL - GOD - FAITH, that lightning-like unites the human race! For we're ALL-ONE or NONE! "listen children eternal father eternally one!" EXCEPTIONS ETERNALLY? ABSOLUTE NONE!A team of graphic designers and copywriters would have never allowed this. It's good we didn't touch the project. All these quirks are now hallmarks of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. "Oh, yeah! The soap with all the writing on it," people will say. The label is unique, recognizable, and distinguishes itself from other products.

But packaging and typography weren't important to Bronner. Even the soap was secondary to his message of teaching the moral ABC and uniting spaceship earth. Emmanuel Bronner traveled the country, spreading his teachings and distributing his soap until his death in 1997. His eldest son, Ralph, now does the same.

All this and more about the soap, the maker, the message, the company, and how they have been and continue to be a true force for good in the world are include in the documentary, Doctor Bronner's Magic Soapbox. The documentary is produced and directed by Sarah Lamm with graphic design by Dmitri Siegel.The basic message of both the documentary and the over 30,000 words on the soap bottle are summarized on the company's activism page:
1. Constructive capitalism is where you share the profit with the workers and the earth from which you made it.

2. We are all brothers and sisters and we should take care of each other and spaceship earth.
And last, a picture of Doc Bronner, uniting spaceship earth with his cool and tingly peppermint soap.

We Are (Miriam's drawings)

2009-03-08T10:28:00.000-07:00

This is the start of a new series. Each piece is executed in Rapidograph pen on 6” x 9” card stock with torn edges. You can click on the images to see them more clearly. I’ve also included a detail of each piece. Each drawing show a physical space and configuration of figures that depicts an emotional space and some elements of work or play, ease or difficulty of a relationship. The font is a hand-drawn Bodoni.

“We are in the garden” represents leisure and life’s pleasures. The image is structured after Lucas Cranach the younger's variation on Adam and Eve (1537). I’ve substituted beer and pie for fig leaves, the car for the deer in the background, and (my favorite) the garden hose as the snake.

“We are in different rooms” represents conflict and difference in a symmetrical image differentiated by value reversal and opposites—dark and light, night and day, and lights on and off.

“We are in the kitchen” represents necessity—cleaning, doing the dishes, taking out the trash. The image is about harmonious effort and the mundane.

The finished series will have six drawings, followed by stylistic and format variations.

I Heart MG

2009-02-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

I have recently become infatuated with Milton Glaser. And my husband's fine with it; in fact, he got me all the books I've been pouring over. In case you're not familiar with Milton Glaser or his work, above is probably his most famous design. I'm not crazy about the NY logo but I really like what Glaser wrote about it: "[This piece] has become so much a part of the general language that it's hard to imagine that it was designed by someone and did not always exist."

What's funny is that it is in relation to this design that I first encountered Milton Glaser and my response was, "Someone designed that?" Below are some of Glaser's other works and the real reason for why "I Heart Milton Glaser." I've focused on typographic pieces that play with both form and language.

This design is like little poem. It has words within words, all of which can be arranged and combined in different ways to create different meanings that relate to each other and to the subtext. The subtext (hard to read at this scale) says: "There are some things that make life worth living, and some things you can't live without."

My favorite thing about "Old/New" it that it uses an old-style, serif font for "OLD" and a bold sans for "NEW." Typo-historically (I just made up that word.), sans serif are comparatively new.

Next design.
First reaction, after seeing the top three lines: Wow! I can't believe how readable this is!
Second reaction, after reading "remains": OMG! It's so true! Art is what remains, incomplete in the memory but somehow still creating an impact. How cool that the letters create this message formally as well as literally.
Lastly: I'm loving the pile of debris at the bottom of the design, the remains of the statement, implying that ideas, like living beings, one day have an end.
At the end of "Art is Work" is an essay by Glaser for AIGA Journal, 2000. He writes, "[R]ead the following chart to determine how far down on the road to Hell you are willing to go." Click the image to get a larger, more readable image.
And lastly, a "content guide" for design . . . out of 250.05%.

All images from Art is Work, Milton Glaser, 2000, Overlook Press, NY.

Hey, Penguin Fans!

2009-02-17T06:31:00.000-08:00

If you have a soft spot for old Penguin book covers, you'll enjoy these parodys by M. S. Corley. He has redesigned the seven Harry Potter books in the manner of vintage Penguins. Admittedly, my interest in these is also due to being a Harry Potter fan. The choice of subject matter and imagery is really appropriate to each book. Below are two favorites.
I prefer this stylistic treatment to the actual illustrations for Harry Potter. In their generality and reduction, these images are more universal and call forth larger themes in the books. The cover for The Chamber of Secrets shows the classic subjects of vanquisher and foe, knight and dragon, menace and victory. The Deathly Hallows cover is very psychological, addressing issues of fear and isolation. Who knew that we'd end up feeling sorry for "you know who." See the whole series.

Paper, Plastic, or Canvas?

2009-02-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

There is a great article on Design Observer on canvas totes, design, and environmental concerns. I’ve included two pictures from the post along with some summary quotes. If you’re interested, check out the whole article.
I'm Not a Plastic Bag, tote bag, Anya Hindmarch, 2007
Resistance is Fertile, tote bag, Adrian Johnson, 2008

“The environmental promise of reusable bags becomes pretty dubious when there are closets and drawers full of them in every home. This contradiction can largely be traced back to the influence of graphic design. Once this gorgeous flat surface presented itself, it quickly became simply a substrate for messaging, branding, promotion, etc. Judging by the cost, producing one tote is roughly equivalent to producing 400 plastic bags. That’s fine if you actually use the tote 400 times, but what if you just end up with 40 totes in your closet? Once the emphasis shifts from reusing a bag to having a bag that reflects your status or personality, the environmental goal starts drifting out of sight.”

“The designs that make each bag unique contribute to an over-abundance of things that are essentially identical and the constant stream of newness discourages reuse.”

The gist of the article: it is tricky to solve a consumption problem with more consumption. What the canvas bag did well was create awareness: “The aesthetic power of a single design raised more awareness about the impact of plastic bags on our environment than any government or non-governmental organization. On the other hand, it is unclear that a consumable can counteract the effects of consumption.”

The New Helvetica

2009-02-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

This design by Joseph Mueller is not a logo or wordmark for a specific company, but simply a play of letters forms and content to create something fun to look at.

Set in Helvetica Neue, a nice choice as the horizontal caps of the a, c and s align and merge nicely with one another, the font is both clean and curvy. In general, the merging of the letter forms is satisfyingly fluid and the reversed s's interlock and embrace as their shared negative space creates a heart form. Overall the color choice is minimal which allows the red accent to stand out. The cream acts as a warm neutral on which black looks rich and velvety.

I Love You so Much!

2009-01-27T14:34:00.001-08:00

Is it wrong to love a bag so much?

These characters—rather than a series of computer based instructions—are so real and warm when embossed on supple leather. No bevel and emboss in photoshop—this is the real thing!

I love that the designer chose the old-style numerals with their ascenders and descenders that seem to converse with characters in the lines above and below. I am especially fond of the ball terminals on the numbers.

How to / layout

2009-01-27T14:05:00.000-08:00

The below image is the cover of Adrian Shaughnessy's book, "How to be a Graphic Designer, without Loosing Your Soul."

The cover has an appropriately contemporary and tech-savvy feel as the book is aimed at young designer whose introduction to design and to computers are intimately linked. The multiple forward slashes throughout the title recall a web address. Navigation, address, and the URL—how you get to the page—are all appropriate concepts for a book about how to navigate the "real world" as a young designer—the "real world" being as much about interpersonal relationships, organizational skills, accounting and business as it is about design. How do you do good work when you have a poor relationship with your client? How do you make sure you get paid if you are doing freelance work?

The cover is two color, and this minimal scheme continues inside. In a book more about ideas rather than showing the work of great designers, the layout maintains visual interest as well as organization with its column shifts to accommodate the blue side notes.

Book design by Bibliotheque.

Handsome

2009-01-19T08:31:00.001-08:00

This decorative typeface by Thirst/3st is called "Handsome." In a nutshell, I call this, "Letterforms meet sign laguage." Nice use of cross-contour lines to create volume.

Objectifed

2009-01-13T08:19:00.000-08:00

AHH! I wish I had done this. I love this logo for Gary Hustwit's new documentary, "Objectified." See the trailer. About Hustwit, this is the same guy who brought you the brilliant documentary, "Helvetica." I only wish political discourse could be so well presented.

The logo is by Build—an excellent name for a design firm, BTW. The lettering reads simultaneously as text and as image—the meaning of the word and the meaning of the images reinforcing one another. I want to believe that every one of the objects used to stand for a letter is featured in the documentary. I did see the chair (the "d" in the logo) in the trailer.

I'd love to see this poster—a silkscreen in black and metallic silver—in person. Very sexy. Alas, the poster is limited edition and too pricey to me; I'll have to settle for buying a t-shirt.

Note: the actual design/poster is a vertical format (16 1/2″ x 23 1/2″); I've cropped it to feature the lettering.

So Money!

2008-12-08T06:17:00.000-08:00

Check out the design of the 5-euro commemorative architecture coin for the Netherlands by designer Stani Michiels. It's amazing how much information is organized in such a small space.

79

2008-11-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

THE FIRST THING you'll notice about Micheal Bierut’s Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design is, well, its design. The book throws off the oppressive shackles of consistent typesetting. Every essay uses a different font, including a piece called “I Hate ITC Garamond”—set in ITC Garamond. The cover is simply a list of these highly-readable essays in their respective typefaces, a Whitman’s typographic sampler. Nothing fancy. There are two design rules at play: “Break the rules” and “Do the obvious.”

THE SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH—the list goes on—thing you'll notice about 79 comes from the content of the essays. Here are a few of Whitman’s conceptual samplers.

BIERUT IS INSIGHTFUL. I love his connection of design to everything else. As it happens, the first essay in the book is called, “Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content.” Design is meaningful precisely because of its integration with and participation in other facets of life—pop culture, politics, etc. I’ll pound on this point extra in the closing paragraph.

BIERUT IS FUNNY . . . while being insightful. In “Ten Footnotes to a Manifesto,” a commentary on the new First Things First Manifesto, Beirut takes a look at the signatories of the document. Though I am inclined toward the sentiment of the manifesto—of considering your values and impact as a designer—I think Beirut makes excellent criticisms of the manifesto on a practical level.
Question: who signed this thing saying we need to focus less on manufacturing demand and more on worthy causes?
Answer: mostly designers who practice as critics, curators, and academics and work outside of advertising.“A cynic, then,” he writes, “might dismiss the impact of the manifesto as no more than that of witnessing a group of eunuchs take a vow of chastity.”

BIERUT DROPS NAMES. I mean this in a good way. I appreciate the designers and other cultural items he introduces to my radar. My favorite daisy chain is from an essay called “Errol Morris Blows up Spreadsheet, Thousands Killed.” I recently saw the discussed documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara by Errol Morris. Beirut calls it, “a design achievement of high order” and its undercurrent is the question is of how ordinary people can do evil things. It is historical, political, moral, and philosophical in nature. If I say any more I’ll risk going off on a tangent instead of talking about design. Back to design: get this book. Then see The Fog of War.

BIERUT ADDRESSES COMPLEXITY. The most recent essay I read, “Graphic Designers, Flush Left?” has to do with the relationship of design and politics. It is a compelling argument against compartmentalization and for my own agenda of the problematic but rewarding balance of the competing values of design, politics, ethics, and the need to make a living.

Beirut writes, “(Y)ou can’t underestimate the power of politics and cultural identity in shaping design . . . .” He goes on to cite the lyrics of Tom Lehrer’s song about Werner von Braun. Werner Von Braun was a Nazi weapon’s expert who later switched teams and worked for NASA in the postwar space race.Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department, says Werner von Braun.Beirut: “Graphic designers work with messages, and the messages mean something. We may think we are responsible only for launching those messages, and certainly there’s some comfort (and profit) in thinking that. But if you care about your work, you have to care not only about how it goes up, but where you come down.”

Type. All Over. Again.

2008-11-06T08:58:00.001-08:00

The last two posts were images composed of edge-to-edge type. Here’s another all-type design by Paula Scher, a 1977 album cover for The Yardbirds.
The large block of type on the front cover (above) is formally composed—justified and tightly set to match the square format of the cover. The list of songs, however, are not nearly so ordered with “I Ain’t Got You” wrapping and split in two. The structure of the songs on the front cover is conceptually dictated rather than visually composed. The songs appear within a list of events of 1968 and stand out because the value and color of the type gives them greater contrast and emphasis than the rest of the text.

This list of events (song names sans emphasis) is used again as a background on the back cover (below). The band’s history is written in diagonal columns over the events of 1968. The diagonals on back repeat the smaller diagonal chunks on the front containing “The Yardbirds Great Hits.”
Type ID: Century
Image source: Make it Bigger, Paula Scher, Princeton Architectural Press, p 46.
Note: The yellowing on the right edge of the front cover is an artifact of scanning and not part of the design.

Yes, Type Can

2008-10-30T17:37:00.000-07:00

This is a poster by Gui Borchert from the “Artists for Obama” series. The image of Obama and the cropped “yes we can” in the background are created solely with type using words from Obama's speeches. As a portrait, this conveys not only Obama's appearance but the ideas and ideals for which he stands. It is a complex and beautifully organized piece.

The font is either House Industry’s Chalet Comprime or Hoefler & Frere-Jones' Knockout. The latter is the closest match and also the most likely candidate as the Obama campaign has diligently used Gotham, another H&F font, throughout its campaign. No last-minute, "We need more signs for this rally! Let's just use Arial!" for the Obama campaign. They have been incredibly consistent and organized regarding their graphic design. The campaign also has inspired some quality artistic production such as this poster. Most importantly, I love the content of their message.

A Map of South America

2008-10-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

The image below is from the personal work of designer and illustrator Paula Scher. The text functions as both texture and data, and the design works on a number of levels.

First, I am attracted to the to the irregularity, imperfection, and humanity of this hand-made map. The repetitive quality of the drawn words creates a sense of time and a value through simple labor. From a distance the concentric curving lines of text create movement and a texture like raked sand.

At a closer look you can see how the information on the map is organized by scale and contrast. For example, Columbia is the largest and most contrasting word in that country—being that it’s the country. Next, nearly as large but less contrasting are the capital, Bogota, and other major cities. The remainder of the text covers the country from edge to edge and is smaller and deep yellow. Within the Gulf of Panama “Drug Traffic” receives emphasis because of its contrasting cream stroke.

At an even closer look the map becomes almost exclusively about politics, economics, and environmental issues. The hand-drawn execution personalizes what for most of us in the US are far away places—far away geographically, far away in that we don’t think of them often, and far away being that we know very little about these countries.

By spending time and reading the text, I imagine myself writing down all these words—trying to learn what I do not know and to remember the many things I have forgotten.

Spicy

2008-10-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

The following are variations on and an application of a wordmark for Spicy restaurant by Brazilian designer, Vicente Gil. The font looks like Bodoni except that the thin strokes on the "s," "p," and "c" are thicker than Bodoni's.

The black and white and single-color designs are wonderful for their simplicity and for the unity of the spicy dots on the "i" with the rest of the text. The multiple dots remind me of peppercorns and the ball terminals of font's "c" and "y" repeat this round form. I think it's funny and suggests that one could control the spice level of a word by adding or removing dots. I will have to try this on my name.

In the color and gray scale designs, the WMF construction is very striking. It feels at once puzzle-like, woven, and overlapping.

The logo application to the letterhead has a nice compositional top-bleed of the large red box, a satisfying alignment of the company information with the seam of the red and black boxes, and an overall clear geometry that relates nicely to the rectangular format of the page.

First Chicago International Poster Biennial

2008-10-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

I found this poster (from the First Chicago International Poster Biennial) on a post at Design Observer. The posters are in Chicago in Daley Bicentennial Park until October 29.

"Titus Andronicus" by Tomasz Boguslawski of Poland is one of my favorites. I’ll start with some sensational points from the plot summary of "Titus Andronicus," Shakespeare’s bloodiest play.

The Emperor of Rome has died; hijinks ensue. Lavinia (Titus’s daughter) is made to watch the murder of her husband. Then she is raped over his dead body after which her tongue is cut out and hands cut off so she cannot reveal what she has seen. When Titus discovers the perpetrators of this crime (Lavinia writes their names in the dirt holding a stick in her mouth), Titus slits their throats, bakes them into a pie and feeds them to their mother (who encouraged the earlier rape and murder). In the end Titus, his daughter, all his sons expect one, the emperor and his wife, and countless other have died—of natural causes and at the end of long and peaceful lives, of course.

Understanding the tenor of the play explains the design choices perfectly. The bloody, decapitated meat-head wears a laurel wreath. Traditionally worn to signify victory, the bay laurel in the design is ironic--no one wins--and it also acts as bay leaf seasoning in cooking, hinting at the men who are baked into a pie and consumed.

The slanted text and use of a different font, bold or light face, size, and/or color gives an unhinged, “nervous-tick-motion-of-the-head-to-the-left” quality to the type. That most of the fonts (with the exception of the slab serif “I”) are sans serif, relatively mono-stroke, working within a monochrome, and relatively close in size provides structure and unity to the previously mentioned variety.

See a slideshow of 31 winners from the contest.

Web Design about Books

2008-09-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

I saw a wonderful book cover design by Peter Mendelsund and so went to his website. I can’t stop looking at this layout.

I love restrained creative type. The bracket-as-open-book on the left is so satisfying because the fonts and layout are not super flashy. Overall, the design has both a contemporary and traditional feel.

The wide tracking in “Peter Mendelsund” and random alignment in the list starting with “posters” is very contemporary, while the composition of the red and black bars is formal and minimal. The background image is actual paper, yellowing and slightly irregular. Both the formalism and use of paper are a nod to tradition.

People who like books are attracted to the object-quality of a book, its thingness, that you can hold it in your hands. Paper appeals to the senses—it smells, makes a sound as you turn pages, feels smooth or rough under your fingers. The idea of curling up with your laptop is not nearly as warm or appealing as curling up with a book.

The addition of the scrawled arrow is a beautiful contrast to the perfect geometric forms; it will also be recognized by the bibliophile who scrawls notes on a page margin. The message I get from this design is, “Peter Mendulsund is a smart designer who understands the book as aesthetic object.”

Smokin' Type

2008-09-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

I love how understated the creative typography is in this Tibor Kalman design. The sans serif font is mater of fact and doesn’t draw attention to itself. The image is a split composition, inviting comparison of the text on red with the photo of beautiful Joan Chen. She looks seductive, confident, and her gaze is direct. Her gesture, the act of smoking, the setting, and her “wild” shawl create an appearance that is anything but innocent. The “O” on the left is level with the smoke ring emerging from Joan’s mouth, the focal point of the photograph. While the text, “it’s very important for a woman . . . to always appear innocent” and the provocative image of Joan Chen disagree, the renegade “O” floating in a sea of red mirrors the spirit of the photograph.

About the font: I don’t have a positive ID. I looks like Helvetica Bold, but the J doesn’t look right and the s’s don’t match.

Ed. Hall, P. & Bierut, M.: Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, Princeton Architectural press, 1998, p198.

Kalman at Florent

2008-09-18T09:20:00.001-07:00

The following ads were done by Tibor Kalman for Florent Morellet, owner of Restaurant Florent. After the death of a close friend and collaborator, the nature of the posters for Restaurant Florent became more political. The following “Holiday Advisory” ads highlight social consciousness as the spirit of the season.

The first design is clearly structured into three equal parts. Each section contains a strongly related image and word with an elaborating line of text in smaller print. The images are iconic and as clear as the sans serif all-caps text. The ad actually communicates to a wide audience. If you don’t have money, the poster suggests, you can help. If you don’t have time, send money. If you’re hungry, eat at Florent. Even the last message, "Eat at Florent," emphasizes community (communion) over consumption by using the image of The Last Supper.

The second ad works with the same message of social responsibility and the same organizational structure, a division of three. The image flows left to right rather than top to bottom, but more importantly, rather than giving three options it shows three steps of a single process. The diagrammatic approach and simple design suggest that it is simple to give. The contrasting font choice for “Be Happy” says that generosity is a state of grace, lightness, and ease.

Because it’s so darn good I’m throwing in the ad below, a get out the vote campaign by Kalman in association with Florent Restaurant. It’s a happy coincidence that Dan Quayle misspelled a food product as it ties in nicely with the restaurant theme.

Florent Political Ads by Tibor Kalman.
Ed. Hall, P. & Bierut, M.: Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, Princeton Architectural press, 1998, p74.

Font. History.

2008-09-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

This series of stamps features vintage movie posters from black and white films (1920s-40s) staring African-American actors and entertainers. The fonts in the posters are similar to hand painted signs from that that time. Below are two examples of hand painted signs (circa 1930) and a detail of two stamps.

The choice of font for the text “Black Cinema USA 42” is Aldous Vertical. Designed in 1935, it is an era-appropriate, art deco font with an American feel.

What attracted me to these stamps was the layout of the page as a section of film and the conceptual use of bright color to advertise black and white movies. The black in the design represents not only the edges of film, but the darkness of a theater. The vivid colors of the posters describe the character and vitality of these African-American performers.

SYDaNcEY

2008-09-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

Everything counts in this clean and simple design. All the shapes, for example the break-up of counter of the #4 into three pieces—white space, arm, and white space—are beautiful and feel balanced. I love the interaction of the hand and the zero. Everything counts, and some things even count twice—the common letters in “SYDNEY” and “DANCE” serving a dual purpose.

Font ID: CG Symphony is close, but still not it.

“Sydney Dance Co. Annual Report 2004” by Vince Frost
Feill, C. & P.: Contemporary Graphic Design, Taschen, 2007, p193.

The Year 2040

2008-09-03T08:38:00.000-07:00

Black numbers become silhouettes as they merge with their Mr. Potatohead-style add ons. The creatures are quirky and kinetic and the drips on the #5 are a nice unifying touch. With a simple re-arrangement of numbers, 2004 becomes 2040. This numerical palindrome is a clever way of showing a time lapse and saying, “This is us looking back.”

Font ID: closet matches are Athelas Bold & Caslon Bold

“2040” by Genevieve Gauckler
Feill, C. & P.: Contemporary Graphic Design, Taschen, 2007, p202.

Troxler Rocks (or Jazzes)

2008-08-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

I found the following image in Jazz, Blvd. Niklaus Troxler Posters. (The design “Bassdrumbone” from the previous post is by the same designer and from the same book.) The font used in the poster is sans serif. I was unable to determine the font-type with Identifont, which is a cool site and from which I eventually linked to LinoType where I got my answer.

The poster shows ITC Avant Garde Gothic in both light and bold weights as well as excellent alternate letters such as the slanty upper-case A, M, and V. It is precisely the alternative characters, which allow for the tight kerning of IVAL in “festival” that caught my eye.

The poster advertises the Willisau Jazz Festival. The first thing I notice is the blue spiral—because it’s the biggest shape on the page, has strong color and value contrast with the background, and is compositionally centered. Furthermore, the spiral form, like a target, draws the eye in and (because of its above mentioned qualities shared by the header) the spiral directs us to the type at the top of the page. The heavy weight of the blue spiral relates to the bold header text, while the thin off-white line inside the spiral is nearly the same weight as the lightweight type advertising the dates “26-29 AUG.”

The type in this image is bold and clean with strong geometry. The even weight of the letter strokes has a nice relationship with shapes between the letters such as those between the T & I and I,V,A, & L in Festival—simple forms so defined they look like elements in the font. The shortened top stroke of the S accommodates the horizontal element of the T and maintains the tight letter spacing. The merging of W & I in “Willisau” is both readable and crates a playful abstract zig-zag.

In the lightweight red text there is no word spacing yet the content is still clear. The use of commas, upper and lower case, and the thoughtful selection of alternate characters make these lines readable. You can see how the alternate character is used with the letter A. The rightward slanting alternate A in “ArtEnsemble” (first line) gives additional space on the left to separate it from the previous word. On the third line find “TheTrio&Albert.” Here, the extra space to the left of the ampersand makes an alternate A unnecessary.

The blue spiral and blue text are the primary components of the design. The red text listing the musicians and the address and phone number (in the lower left) are secondary in value contrast, text size, and line weight while working nicely with the red lips as an accent color in the piece.

It’s not surprising that what attracted me to the piece is its cohesiveness and the fabulous blue spiral. The spiral reinforces the content—reminding me of a musical signature, looking like the scroll of a violin, and functioning as Marge Simpson’s sexy hair (if only she could get it to lay flat and smooth). Part of why Troxler’s jazz posters are great is because he loves music as well as design. (This is very clear if you look at the whole book.) The word play comes to mind—as in playful design and to play music.

image: Jazz Blvd. Niklaus Troxler Posters, 1999, p47, Lars Müller Publishers.

Type & Image: Type as Image

2008-08-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

I remember my first experience with semiotics in a theory class. We compared a picture of a tree (really more a drawing or icon) and the written word “tree.” The picture communicates tree by looking enough like a tree to get the idea across. The written word “tree,” however, doesn’t look like a tree. The letters stand for the sounds that together make up the spoken word “tree.” These are two different ways of thinking and “reading.” Image is visually based communication while text refers to spoken language and sound.

Most of the time text functions invisibly—the reader isn’t consciously focusing on the esthetic qualities of the letterforms. And this is as it should be; I want to be able to read a novel for its story, not for conspicuous (distracting in this context) type design. When appropriate, however, I love when text is seen as well as heard.

Sometimes text functions visually because of its relationship to an image. In A Family Life in Silhouettes by Rudolf Koch, the entire design is cut from a single piece of paper. Nothing is isolated or floating; everything is connected. As a physical object the design would literally not hold together if the type and image elements were not connected to each other and to the border. This physical unity also translates into visual unity. Additionally, both text and image read horizontally and the entire design is a series of silhouettes, an interplay of black and white, of positive and negative shape. The strong relationship of text and image serves as a cue to “read” the text for its visual qualities as well as its verbal meaning.

In Bassdrumbone by Niklaus Troxler, text functions visually because of the unusual cropping and positioning of letterforms. When I first encounter the design I notice bold blocks of type scattered on the page. Each letter has been set at an angle and cropped square. The only identifying characteristics are the interiors of the letterforms. Ah, I see different letters now and I am finally ready to read! BDB . . . ? ARO . . . ? What is this? I switch to the first reasonable word set in smaller red type. “Bassdrumbone.” Some clues. Some mystery. Finally I see that rather than reading horizontally I need to look up and down to find “bass,” “drum,” and “bone” set vertically from left to right. Even after I am able to read the black letters for their verbal denotation, I am continually aware of their visual impact—the playful bouncing quality of their loose arrangement on the page, the fact the two S’s and B’s are different, the relationship of the three vertical words and their counterparts in the central, red, horizontal row.

I think what is so satisfying about visually expressive text is the shift in the regular habit of how we approach, read, and understand words on a page. It is a change in the usual thought process, a jolt of surprise that begins aesthetic awareness.

image 1. Cinamon, G: Rudolph Koch: Letterer, Type Designer, Teacher, 2000, p46.
image 2. Jazz Blvd. Niklaus Troxler Posters, 1999, p293, Lars Müller Publishers.