Ace Jet 170

Ace Jet 170 is closed for Christmas...

I was in Harrogate for a few days years ago with my soon to be wife and saw this in a secondhand bookshop. For some reason I hesitated to buy it and when I went back the next day, it was gone. Little did I know, until that Christmas, that my wife-to-be had sneaked back and bought it for me (she knows me so well).

It seems like an appropriate header for this...

Hopefully, I'll be having too good a time over the Christmas holiday to blog, so in my absence here's a list of my favourite posts from the Ace Jet 2006 Archives (in no particular order):

Type Tray 1 (Type Tray 2 to come in 2007)

Descriptive geometry with 3D figures (My first ever post)

Bruno Maag at the University of Ulster (Never ever minus track)

View-Master Stereoscope

I never saw another butterfly…

Urinating Spiekermann Incident (Well, we thought it was funny)

I wish I'd done that... (Loveliness at the Trip Print Press)

Great Central Railway (A great day out)

Typography School

Penguin Poets: Stephen Russ (Thanks to Adam)

Found Type Friday #7

Friday again. Only this one is the last one of 2006 probably. Next week I certainly should be having far too much fun to blog.

David sent me these Premium Bonds from the seventies. Only the photos, so I'm not going to win anything with them. Actually, neither did he.

Susan sent me these, about which she says, "as I pulled out a semi-ancient cookie press that my mother passed on to me to make my Christmas cookies, I was struck by the logo on the crumbling box in which the press was originally sold...The kitchen gadget is called the "Mirro Cooky and Pastry Press." I also love the layout of the recipe booklet that was included with the press".

We (I mean me and my colleagues) were talking about Futura recently and saying how ugly it often looks when used for body text, like in this brilliant book by Bob Gill (with ugly text), but here it looks really nice.

Derek in Toronto sent me these brilliant letters, having taken pity on me after my "sniff" and "sob" last Friday. He explains the letters: "The cartoon lettering was on a construction hoarding in Chicago in the fall. It was an art installation, though I didn't of course make note of the artist, title, or point – just took photos of the letters I liked. (The 'F' is admittedly not great, but the toast is just so enthusiastic!)".

That "F" reminds me of this.

A special Christmasy thank you to David, Susan and Derek.

(Derek, don't look at the file names for your letter because I got you momentarily mixed up with David and named them incorrectly, which is very rude. Of course, you'll now go and check because I've pointed out my error. I, at least, feel better for being up front about it).

If anyone else would like to contribute, try using Email Me in my About thing. If that doesn't work leave a comment and I'll give you alternative route.

The first Ace Jet 170 Christmas Card

Matt Busher has moved

Look what Matt at Mandatory Thinking has sent me. It's brilliant. Read about it here. Thanks Matt.

It's a brilliantly simple idea (nice), letterpress printed (fantastic) and he typed the envelope and note on an old typewritter (bloody brilliant!).

Now I love old typewriters for the same reason I love letterpress, rubber stamps and lino cut: the results are inherantly flawed and that gives them soul. In these days of Mac "perfection", beautiful imperfections should be cherished, celebrated, encouraged.

Even Matt's envelopes are lovely, off-the-shelf though they may be: off-white uncoated paper, printed inside with a repetitive pattern to help keep the content private. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not harking back to "better days". What I mean is that these things; the typewriter, the envelope, the letterpress; have humanist, tactile, craft qualities that are so often lost in our need to be fast, convenient and efficient.

Bodoni

A little while ago David at Celsius blogged his love of Bodoni. It reminded me of this type specimen that I found in Quinto years ago. Bodoni is unquestionably beautiful and these samples show it off brilliantly.

Amongst my many weaknesses is one for traditional typographic ornamentation like you can see here. We do quite a lot of work for artisan food producers (creamerys, bakers, smokers, preservers) where traditional values are an essential part of what they're about. That's great because it's given me opportunities to join these two things up.

Helvetica: Documentary Update

I'd be surprised if you haven't heard about this yet, but if you haven't signed up for updates, there's some new clips here. Something from Speikermann, Wim Crouwel, Brody and Poyner, and Experimental Jetset.

The audio seems a bit quiet to me so crank up the volume.

Found Type Friday #6

This week's slot is all from me. Mainly due to no other contributions (sniff, sob). Still, don't matter; got lot's of stuff stashed away. Although all this is from, yes you guessed it, our big day out...

OK, if you're a Londoner, you see things like this every day but I haven't been in London for a couple of years now. Actually, even if I lived there I'd still love this kind of thing, in all it's decrepit glory.

Passed the Metropolitan Workshop on the way to SOS and they have this really nice advent calendar in their window at the moment. Don't know much about them, but it looks like they do really interesting things.

"No Admittance" is from Tower Bridge and lastly, I've included the sign above Quinto's door for old times sake. Sometimes it's brilliant (it's where I found these). At the moment it's rubbish.

If anyone else would like to contribute, try using Email Me in my About thing. If that doesn't work leave a comment and I'll give you alternative route.

Fletcher Week Part 7

To polish off Fletcher Week, here's his cover for Wallpaper, one of his last comissions. You may have seen this on the Creative Review Blog a couple of weeks ago (finger on the pulse then!). It's a particularly interesting cover because they left off the mast heading as a kind of tribute to Fletcher (e-cr explains it). Someone commented that it wouldn't make the news stands, presumably because of this, so it was only available through the Wallpaper website or through boutique outlets like Magma.

So that was Fletcher Week. Any good? A bit too much Fletcher? Too much collage?

Back to normal next week.

Fletcher Week Part 6

This is Fletcher's Wonderwall. He explains, in a bit of film, that he designed this for a school and how it could be used as a teaching aid; for counting (How many animals are there?) or for languages (What's the French for this thing here?) and how he imagined it being painted a new colour each year to refresh it.

These images are just details; the actual thing is about 4 x 2 metres. Looks pretty impressive in the flesh.

(That's Jodie peeking through the moth. Still no luck).

Fletcher Week Part 5

There's a surprise, some more collage. Think these and the illustrations below are from Pentagram calendars. Nice.

(Now that's what I call an incisive critique).

Fletcher Week Part 4

A liking for the red stuff, an obsessive nature and some glue.

Fletcher Week Part 3

Mr Fletcher loved a bit of collage (and so do I). The first image above is of his bags of letters. Stands to reason really doesn't it? He had to have them all stashed somewhere but it hadn't occured to me before.

"&drew" is very cunning, but "Stupid" is my favourite.

Fletcher Week Part 2

Look! That's us lot at the Design Museum. I'm taking the picture of course.

Would ramble on foolishly about how great Fletcher was, but we all know that by now so I'm going to cop out and let the pictures do most of the talking. Anyway, it's pretty much been covered here, here and here.

What I will say, briefly, is:

a) We all thought the show was bloody brilliant

b) Fletcher Forbes and Gill looked dead cool in the 60s

c) That Graphis 119 cover shows why it's good to collect stuff

d) Most of his stuff still looks good today

e) I didn't appreciate him fully when he was alive

f) He didn't 'alf do alot of stuff

These points are amongst the reasons why this is probably the best graphic design exhibition you will see.

Fletcher Week Part 1

So last Thursday we took a bleary eyed flight from Belfast to London to see the Fletcher Exhibition. (Up at 3.30am for a 6.15am flight!)

Not surprisingly then our first stop was for breakfast. Because we like their branding, we went to Smith's of Smithfield. Now we like their double bacon and fried egg sandwiches too. Should know, but can't remember, who did the branding (anyone know?) but it's nicely carried through. The place is run by John Torode, the surly faced chef from the BBC's MasterChef Goes Large (although he looks quite cheerful here) and while the fodder was excellent and very welcome, they wouldn't give me one of their ashtrays, which was a bit tight.

Fortified, we jumped on the Tube for Tower Hill.

(By the way, we didn't drink that beer, just spotted it in the bin outside).

Actually, I should add now a very special thanks to Kenney and Mark for paying for, well, pretty much everything.

The Willimantic Chronicle in 1961

Fascinating Flickr set found via the very interesting Mandatory Thinking blog.

From the Flickr set:
This set details production of a 10,000-circulation daily newspaper in Connecticut during March 1961. I found these slides among those of my father, the paper's general manager. The Chronicle has been owned by my family since 1877. I'm the fifth generation and the sixth is already working there.

Mandatory Thinking also have a great Flickr set of their stripped down Adana Press. Makes me want to do the same to mine.

Found Type Friday #5

Ben at Noisy Decent Graphics has raided his wood type collection and found these*. He's got lots of stuff and is very interesting. If you haven't been yet (what the hell have been doing?!), go now.

On I Like Anne describes her visit to the UN HQ in NY. It look like an amazing place. I scrounged these brilliant images from her. See more here. Anne's got lots of nice things over there. Have a look at that too.

Not wanting to look like a lazy, good for nothing, work-shy fop, here's some type from the Czech Republic from me:

Big thanks to Ben and Anne.

If anyone else would like to contribute, try using Email Me in my About thing. If that doesn't work leave a comment and I'll give you an alternative route.

* Note to self: photograph garage-based wood and metal type collection.

Veer

A big thank you to the very nice people at Veer for featuring Ace Jet. Viewing figures have rocketed!

Greetings to all Veerers! (Is that the right term?)

By the way, we're all in London today, at the Alan Fletcher show, so if anyone's down there and see's an englishman with a digital camera hanging around with a group of very nice Northern Irish designer types, it's ME!

If all goes well, next week will be Alan Fletcher week so be prepared to see all the stuff you've already seen on NDG.

The Death of Don Pedro (and other stories)

I was going to include these on Friday's Found Type feature but can't wait that long. Paul at BibliOdyssey has some quite remarkable stuff. These are from his current post about Ancient Spanish Ballads. Incredibly beautiful borders and typography. These images don't do them justice, have a look at BibliOdyssey to see larger versions.

So Tomma Abts won the prize. Find out all about her here. I would have voted "Titchner", perhaps the obvious designer's choice, but no one asked me. I missed it on TV which is a shame, I really like Matt Collings' presentation. Very funny man.

Alvin Lustig

PJ in Budapest has a fantastic type blog and has very kindly featured Ace Jet 170 a little while back. It's written in Hungarian, which you won't be surprised to learn I unfortunately don't speak, but it's worth a good look around, it's ace!

For example, there's a link to an amazing and comprehensive tribute to Alvin Lustig, who made these incredible typographic compositions. I'm surprised you don't hear more about him, although he died quite young his output was impressive both in it's quality and it's originality.

Root around that a bit and you'll find the Dr Leslie Project which tells of the good Dr and the Composing Room:

Founded in 1927 by Sol Cantor and Dr. Robert L. Leslie, The Composing Room set out to be the cream of the crop in typesetting firms. Described in a promotional piece as "a shop where type is set intelligently for intelligent clients. Also promptly, reasonably, and with true professional enthusiasm. An outfit which plays up the art in every particular, and doesn't and doesn't miss the fun in fundamentals either."

Like Paul Giambarba's account of his work with Polaroid, it's a fascinating flash back into American Graphic Design history.

Back to PJ's blog and you'll find a wealth of other brilliant material. I could just lift it all and post it here but that would be doing PJ a terrible injustice. Go and have a look.

Penguin Poets: Dryden & Manley Hopkins

I'm suddenly conscious that I've still got a pile of these to show. Just because it shows a certain humour I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the Manley Hopkins cover is by Stephen Russ. Pretty confident the Dryden isn't but it's a striking cover anyway.

Don't think I've ever mentioned it before but if you're at all interested in Penguin Books, particularly from a design or historical point of view then it would pay to sign up to the brilliant Penguin Collector's Society. It doesn't cost much and you get their periodical full of fascinating and often intimate details of Penguin history, access to the Society's other, more irregular but equally revealling publications and even opportunities to attend occasional events.

Saul Bass

Back in 2004, just before we moved to NI, I went along to the Saul Bass exhibition at the Design Museum in London. Everyone knows that Saul Bass did amazing stuff so I'm probably stating the obvious when I say the exhibition was totally brilliant and very inspiring. There was a promise of a follow up book which has never (to my knowledge at least) materialised. That's a terrible shame.

Every now and then I think about this and go looking but there's not really one comprehensive archive. Just stuff spread all over the place.

Thankfully, the Design Observer has a link to this that helps a little.

And there's his logos on Wikipedia.

Then there's always AIGA.

The torn out graphic for Bunny Lake is Missing is probably my favourite.

Found Type Friday #4

This week's FTF kicks off with a fabulous big Gill Sans "W" from David from Celsius. Oh, and a 2CV. David has told be where this is but the text file I brought home with the details in doesn't open so could you remind me David please? Goodwood?

Stephen Coles from Typographica (new site coming soon!) sent in evidence of serious font research. See more Stockholm type here and Berlin type here (along with disturbing photos of a man in a woolly hat and an equally frightening schnitzel).

Nothing to keep you awake at night from Brandspankingnew's Tim Groves just some brilliant Bavarian type.

And finally (this bit's turning into something like the amusing vegetable slot from That's Life) Ben Hamilton sent me this quite remarkable (??!!?) sign. How the hell does that happen? Ben remarked how poignant the falling letters are now we're well into Autumn. Unfortunately, the sign is like this all year round.

Many thanks to everyone for taking part.

If anyone else would like to contribute, try using Email Me in my About thing. If that doesn't work leave a comment and I'll give you an alternative route.

If anyone has sent anything and I haven't used it, that's because my home email account is broken and I don't know how to fix it. I've redirected mail today to the studio but it's possible things have got lost. Very sorry if that's the case, please re-send.

Perhaps that's why I still haven't had anything from Ben's wall.