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Perhaps should mention I'm on holiday so it's a no blog week. Right this minute I'm trying to organise a Thunderbird's themed birthday party for our, now, 5 year old. Found Fred's brilliant flickr set of sets from Supermarionation productions.
It can't be just me can it? The Plain English Campaign is a worthy endeavour, championing a cause that should be of interest to all of us that work on "communication" material. So why are their marks so bloody aweful?
I'm not just having a go. It's just that everytime I see one of them, I'm amazed at how out of whack their designs are with the cause the organisation champion and wonder why someone hasn't done something about it. I've seen beautiful, considered, well written material blighted by that ugly little sketch.
I have no problem with the idea, "crystal clear" is spot on; it's just drawn so badly. Surely, if it was a better, more appropriate design, that reflected clarity and precision more effectively, it would only help further the cause.
Anyway, I'm going to write to them.
When I found that British Railways booklet a while back it was really this one that I was interested in, attracted by its cover. As it turned out, the other one was much more interesting inside but the cover of this one uses that classic 50s/60s colour overprint technique.
In essay number four of Michael Bierut's book he talks about having something cool-looking to do when you can't come up with any other solution – sound advice if you ask me. Well, I have to admit that a psuedo-classic 50s/60s colour overprint technique is what I do, that and setting type at a 15° angle. Actually, I love the classic 50s/60s colour overprint technique so much, I sometimes don't even wait to see if I can come up with something else. It looks damn cool and it works.
Hey! Let's have an international found type bonanza!
First, Luz took a trip to New Orleans:
Charlie's been hanging around Bristol Docks and the canals of London:
Pedro's taken a few shots of this lovely sign in downtown Lisbon (Juvenal used to do a nice line in shirts and pullovers before they closed. I'm worried about what's to become of that sign now):
And Loïc, well...I don't know where Loïc's been but he's French and has an eye for a wierd book cover (this one's from 1965):
And all that means I'm up to date with FTF contributions (I think). If you've got any choice nuggets of type loveliness, feel free to send them here.
Big thank's go to Luz, Charlie, Pedro and Loïc.
And Jonathan Hoefler explains this (which, incidentally, I have tattooed on my upper arm...it's a long story of vodka breakfasts, foolishness and the love of a good woman, unsuitable for these pages).
Uppy and downy figures on The Font Feed.
Now on Flickr, Volume 52 is exeptional. As well as being the edition that comes with that amazing Swissair leaflet, inside you'll find work by Ken Garland, Carlo Vivarelli, a certain Max Miedinger and articles on Ordnance Survey map production and "Advertising in the Atomic Age".
There's a brilliant article called "Management training: the new concept" by Major-General C. Lloyd, specifically about the state of printing education at the time, lavishly illustrated with examples of beautiful typography, illustration and layout, including work from the Central School of Arts and Crafts (when Colin Forbes was Head of Department).
Here's another specimen from Nick's bumper box of maps etc (one day, he might get it back).
Nowhere near as glamorous as the previous example it's printed on really awful paper. Dated 1943, the general poor quality of the material and print make this a strangely interesting piece of work.
Found this recently (on ebay for a couple of quid) and thought it might reveal an interesting map.
It didn't...well not that interesting.
Still, it doesn't matter because it has other things going for it to compensate. Specifically, and discovered to my great (if sad) delight: the sloping 'tab' system designed to help you identify which quarter of North America you want to look at. It's dead simple of course; the one edge is cut at a slight angle so when it's folded, map-stylee, it creates zip-zagging coloured strips that correspond to the colours in that diagram.
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