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It's short but sweet this week. Loïc form Bureau L'Imprimante has sent me more lovely French labels.
Thanks Loïc!
Way way back at the beginning of all this, I blogged my love of the cigar box. Here's another one I re-discovered gathering a fuzzy coating in our garage:
If anyone else would like to contribute you can email me here.
Lovely new ads for The Guardian from Wieden + Kennedy London.
Via Beeker.
Read a bit about them here.
That last post reminds me of something that might be interesting. It's something that's definitely been a source of inspiration for me and it is that when you look at what people like Spencer did and very notably Jan Tschichold (and other great figures from graphic design history) you'll notice that they didn't just make major, ground breaking graphic design work but took fanatical interest in the details. Both men, for example, devised composition rules for publishers (Tschichold for Penguin). I've seen many portfolios of very good design work let down badly by little attention to such details. Blah, blah, blah, yadder, yadder yadder...
I could go on, but won't.
The reason I set up Ace Jet 170 was because I have stuff stashed all over the house. Tucked at the bottom of a wardrobe, gathering dust on top, getting damp in the garage or (mostly) relatively unreachable in the loft. Ace Jet gives me a place to put it all, one place.
Of course, what's nice about having these little stashes all over the place is that every now and then I stumble across something forgotten. Like these two little booklets from Lund Humphries. The first being their type specimen booklet (the photos of that bit of type on the cover came out so well I felt the need to include all three).
There's no date in the booklets but I'd guess they'd be from the late 50s. Hot Metal days of course so fonts/sizes would be limited. A number of matrices give an overview of what was available.
The second booklet is their composition rules, compiled by the very great Herbert Spencer (which reminds me that I have Penrose Annuals to blog) who was responsible for these and this essential book for anyone interested in typography, amongst other things.
Read more about him here.
The booklet deserves close examination and, thankfully, backs up this.
This is a small one but I was reminded of it today when a friend asked me to cast my eyes over some ad layouts he was working on.
Unless you're doing it for a specific effect or are referencing an historic style like these:
it has a tendency to look just plain boring. These, of course, look stunning.
Last week's release of the much anticipated Helvetica film reminded me that I haven't yet blogged these Cartlidge Levene designed issues of Issue, the Design Museum's quarterly, from the early 90s.
(Incidentally, Chris from Fallt and Fehler is trying to get the film to Belfast, which would be brilliant).
Issue specifically, and more generally the work of Cartlidge Levene, had a big effect on me as a novice designer. You see, I had originally set out to become a technical illustrator but, after a while, realised that that career wouldn't offer the creative opportunities that I craved. So I diverted towards graphic design but retained a liking for construction, mathematics and draughtsmanship.
I think these disciplines are evident in much of Cartlidge Levene's work, which is often very structured, constructivist (in the broader sense of the word), dynamic and very beautiful.
Issue shows how a strict grid system, limited use of color, Helvetica and economic use of photography can still mean surprising, exciting and dramatic page layout.
This one should be common knowledge and in a way I feel like I'm stating the obvious. But then I'm also aware that many designers still don't do this, so for what it's worth, here goes...
You see, whether we like it or not, most designers are accidental typesetters. Few of us ever set out to be typesetters, but we find ourselves in a time when as part of our daily work we're knocking out text on our Macs. It can be a big part of our day.
Problem is, lots of us are still doing just that, knocking it out. What do we know about the details of good typography/typesetting? In the old days (ah, the old days...cow gum for goal posts...) we had typesetters to take care of the details for us, details like this:
Of course, if you're from the US you might have a liking for the em-rule, but that's another story.
If you want to find out more about doing it the right way, buy a copy of Hart's Rules or Copy-editing, or both!
This kind of stuff reminds me of the Fletcher quote, "You can only muck about with language if you know what you're doing. Otherwise you're just being sloppy". I think the same goes for typography.
David's found a brilliant Flickr set of Hotel Labels (via Serif).
Now I don't know if anyone reading this is familiar with James Webb-Young's little book, perhaps lots of you know it. For that matter I don't know whether the technique he describes is taught in college. I didn't discover the book until I'd been working for years, which is a shame because it's ace. And here's the fundamental principle around which he presents his technique:
JWY goes on to suggest a system for collecting and ordering the stuff you collect. I found adopting it, a) encouraged a more systematic and varied collection, and b) keeps it all together so it's easier to find later. His Technique for Producing Ideas goes further and has proved invaluable.
The combinations thing goes for everything we do: On one level we combine colours with shapes and typefaces and words, and end up with logos. On another level we take an airmail letter and the idea of love songs and think about love letters, and end up with things like this, despite who the client is.
In amongst the images that Nin sent me a couple of weeks ago was a scan of one of these. It was one of the very few labels I already had. Actually, there's more to the set (don't know why I didn't snap them all).
Update: Looking back at this I've made it sound like a cure-all, which it isn't - perhaps I've been a tad flippant. But hey, the beauty of the blog is that I can pop back in and fiddle about a bit more, so here goes:
This has worked for me many times, when I'm working on a simple, usually asymmetric* layout. Bold text, simple graphics. Very much in the Constructivist or Swiss styles, or epitomised by the likes of Matter, Zwart, Muller-Brockman. The angle has a tendency to suggest movement, upward in this case, while the horizontal can feel too stable when drama/dynamism is required. Think Suprematist paintings like this more specifically stuff like this or this. Or this.
Is that any better?
* Actually, I really only ever do asymmetric, but that's another story.
I've had an idea for something new. I've mulled it over, bounced it off a colleague or two and I think it might, just might, be a goer.
You see, every know and then I get the urge to impart knowledge that I've accumulated on others, usually younger designers. OK, sometimes it's reminisciences about PMT cameras and Rotring pens, but sometimes, very occasionally, it's something that might actually prove useful. Usually, it's stuff that I wish I'd known when I was at their stage of life/career.
It might be something very small, like The En-rule Rule, or it might be something big, like The Dead Designer Rule. Whatever it is, I give it in good faith and in the geniune hope that it proves useful.
So here we are then: introducing a new Ace Jet series: Uncommon Knowledge, a bit snappier than my original title (but which might serve as a suitable sub-heading), Stuff I wish I'd known much, much earlier in my career.
Perhaps it'll prove to be a very short series or perhaps I'll just be telling you things you already know but I'm going to give it a whirl and see how it goes. Let me know what you think.
And I'm going to use John Blyberg's brilliant Card Generator to present the ideas. That way, they'll at least look nice.
Over on Design Observer Michael Bierut has linked to David Levine's fantastic collection of travel posters and brochures. In his Swiss section I found these photomontages by the very brilliant Herbert Matter.
Hugo sent me excerpts from Allan Hutt's Newspaper Design a couple of weeks ago, then our internet died on us and we were webless for days. Think I've already mentioned it but it went on a bit. Frankly, we were professionally crippled and personally frustrated. Life without the web is horrible.
Special thanks to Hugo who sent me lots more interesting stuff too.
They reminded me of these pamphlets* that I found in the amazing but sadly short-lived Naylor's Emporium. It was years ago and my memory of it is sketchy but what I remember is that Naylor's was a London printer with an abundance of defunct letterpress paraphenalia: wood and metal type, type specimens, sales literature and manuals etc. So they opended a shop and flogged the lot.
We bought what we could afford and sadly, before we could save our pennies for another spending frenzy, it closed, never to be heard of again. In fact, I was recounting all this in a comment on NDG a while back and I started to wonder if I'd just imagined the whole thing, likening Naylor's to some kind of graphic designer's Brigadoon. Thankfully, I have these and a pile of, to be blogged, wood type as hard evidence (exhibits A, B, C, D, E, F etc, you might say).
* You don't hear the word 'pamphlet' much nowadays do you? Leaflets, flyers, handouts but not 'pamphlets'. I like the word pamphlet, I'm going to use it more. We used to have a client who loved the fact that we used the word 'groovy' a lot. We used to like using the word 'snazzy' too. Actually, still do. There's just no substitute for 'groovy' or 'snazzy'. You can try your best, try cleverer words if you like but you won't better them.
'Brilliant', now that's a good word. I use that an awful lot on Ace Jet. It's just, well you know...
If anyone else would like to contribute to FTF you can now email me at foundtype[at]acejet170.com.
Nip over to the We Made This blog and go "ooooh" at this beauty. I for one am mighty envious. They've got lots of really lovely stuff, like these, this and this.
(Thanks Alistair!)
You don't want to know this but we have a pet rabbit (called X) with conjunctivitis. That means every night I have to take X into our garage, sit him on a piece of newspaper and use cool boiled water to wash the gunk from his eye. Only the other night, pulling a sheet out of my in-law's copy of the Daily Mail, I spotted this ad.
I think it's brilliant. Really clever. Spot on. Yes, it's a shame it has to have that awful "Think!" logo in the corner but for me it's a simple, perfect idea.
Well then, Andy Altmann:
We were a little late, only ten minutes, but we'd spent the day in presentations. Fourteen in total. I'm digressing but I think it's interesting. You see, we do some work with a local, government funded, organisation who connect us with small businesses looking to grow or move forward in some way. We get some really nice work this way, including that neon job.
There's a number of design studios on the roster and we all get a fair share of projects to work on. Then we all get together and spend a day with the clients and the organisers, and present what we're doing. So we're presenting to, amongst other people, our peers. Scarey biscuits!
We had two projects to present and we felt they went pretty well: the neon one was tricky; it's a niche product and you really need to understand some background and technical stuff. Problem is that you only get 10 minutes to show followed by 10 minutes of question time. Our other one was a food product. That seemed to go especially well.
It was a good day, challenging and actually fun. Best of all, you get to see what everyone else is doing. Some of it was brilliant, actually, a lot of it was brilliant.
It finished at 5.30pm so we had to zoom back to the studio, slip into something more comfortable and be back at the University of Ulster by 6.30pm.
Slipping into the darkened room with Altmann in full swing, my initial reaction was to grown inwardly; on screen was an old Next Directory. I'd seen that last time, in 1990. But then it was clear that Andy was skimming through their "life's work" and it wasn't long before he was showing much more interesting things (actually, what was interesting and important about the Directory and other work he showed that was in a similar vein was how they created the imagery inside the camera, not inside the computer, it was, in it's time pretty ground breaking).
You can see most of what Andy showed on the Why Not Associates website but here's a taster:
This Julian Germain catalogue was a surprise. It's so simple; just beautiful photography. Hardly any design except for the cover and the lack of introduction. The book is designed to take you straight into the images with the "introduction" coming right at the end.
Above left is from the Walk of Art at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, above right is the Cursing Stone in Carlisle.
The images immediately below are form A Flock of Words, basically a footpath like no other footpath, built in Morecambe. And that one right at the bottom is in Swansea. Pobl + Machines is based on that A M Cassandre typeface, here turned into a series of weird park benches.
What soon became fascinating about their work was how vital process was. Andy and his colleagues do some amazing work with artists, engineers and craftsmen, metal workers, welders and builders. And the impression I got was that they embrace the idiosyncrocies of techniques and the accidents that occur along the way. Andy also has an admirable taste for "shite", keeping boxes of ephemera to hand all the time; he showed how they find their way into his work.
As ever, I went in "not a big fan" and came out full of respect and admiration. By the end, we were literally crying out for more.
I should point out that I've nicked all these images off the WNA website without permission. If you're reading this lads, hope you don't mind.
Those nice people over on The optimism of modernity have put some stuff from the Edward Wright: design work exhibition online, for those of us that can't get there.
One of the things I learned while at the job I mentioned in the previous post was the power of the long copy ad. Perhaps these, found on Ads of the World, aren't quite typical long copy ads in that they kind of use all that text as an illustration of a product benefit rather than lots of text to sell a product but what the hell...I think they're ace anyway. Do take a closer look.
While I was there and in stark contrast, I also found these practically no copy ads which illustrates something else I learnt, and something Paul Arden talks about in this book, which is that a crappy little sketch can be so much better than the most beautifully taken photograph.
Way, way back in 1990 I was fortunate enough* to work for a direct response advertising agency who were big on personal development. So when I spotted that Type90 was coming up, in Oxford, they were happy to pay for me to go and stay for the three days and pay my expenses.
I've mentioned it before I'm sure but forgive me for repeating myself: on the bill was Brody, Baines and the Why Nots (which is why I'm looking forward to this on Thursday to see what they've been up to lately). I think it was the first time I heard Speikermann speak too. Adrian Frutiger was their, which was thrilling and so was Ed Benguiat, who was brilliant.
There were lots of other interesting people there and I came away with bucket fulls of goodies, including this letterpress keepsake.
* I say "fortunate" although I didn't know quite how fortunate at the time. It took a while to understand what they were trying to do, I came from a design background and had little direct experience of advertising, let alone direct response stuff but the money was good and at the time that's what I needed. I did, however, learn loads of really useful things, if not produce many portfolio pieces. Now I think those 18 months were invaluable and what I learned I've applied to some of my best work since.
Nin in Slovakia very kindly sent me lots of Czech Match label images. I love these, they're invariably printed of very thin, pulpy paper so the ink coverage has a beatuful, bled quality. I've got quite a few myself but none of these. Thanks Nin.
And following up the airmail stuff from a couple of weeks ago, David has sent me a pic of this one from Brazil, pointing out its interesting use of the national colours. He said he could send me one too! Cheers David.
If anyone else would like to contribute, please do. You can email me here.
It was way back in the summer of '94 that I first learnt about Sutnar, thanks to Issue 13, Vol 4 of Eye and it's Steven Heller written article on the great man (read it here).
For those that don't know, Sutnar was a pioneer of information design, he "made Constructivism playful and used its geometry to forge the dynamics of catalogue organisation". His approach to organising complex information has, apparently, been influencial to many web designers long after his death in '76 (notably years before the advent of internet).
The man was prolific and a genius; designing toys, stage sets, ceramics and glasswear, painting saucy pictures once he'd moved to the US, as well as designing for print. You'll be pleased to know that I don't need to ramble on about him because there's an excellent website, originally set up to accompany an exhibition of his work in Prague 2003.
At the time I couldn't go; we'd just had our first child but went to great lengths to try and get hold of the accompanying book. I failed.
A year or so later we all went to Prague for a weekend break and while said small child was in our apartment having his midday sleep I went a wandering on my own. Turning down a side street I passed a secondhand bookshop and in the window was the book. I couldn't believe my luck and went straight in only to find it was the Czech version.
Fortunately, I live a blessed life and under the counter, the owner had an english copy stashed. And here it is.
More Sutnar links:
Design for Point of Sale
Design in Action exhibition review
Designer in Two Worlds exhibition review
You might be able to buy it here
