Ace Jet 170

Supertimeawayonvacation

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.

Slightly grubby, mostly inconsistent

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.

Your place in the scheme

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.

"the less popular side of postcards"

Caspian's got a brilliant Flickr set of postcard backs.

Found Type Friday #48

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.

The Pilcrow

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).

Oldstyle/Lining/Tabular figures explained

Uppy and downy figures on The Font Feed.

The Penrose Annual 1958, Volume 52

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).

Don't mention the...

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.

A few words about emergency exits

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.

David Gentleman/New Penguin Shakespeare

 

James has kindly sent me reference to the New Penguin Shakespeare's, with the David Gentleman covers, taken from the book Artwork on the great man. Er...Gentleman that is, not Shakey. It highlights what a great task it must have been to illustrate all these covers and do it so well, although it took him around ten years to get through them all. It also highlights the task I have ahead of me in trying to collect the lot.

Typographica's favourite fonts of 2007

Typographica’s fourth annual review showcases the best in new typeface design. Twenty four of the world’s brightest type and graphic designers selected their favorite releases of the year...

Read all about it.

Kitching and the truth of actual size

Not surprisingly, managing two data projectors through one PC interface doesn't come naturally to Alan Kitching. But although he struggled throughout his talk to master the new fangles contraption, he remained unfazed.

In a down-to-earth, northern accent, that made me think of him (oddly I know) as some kind of typographic John Shuttleworth (with apologies to less local readers for that reference), Kitching began by explaining how he started out: First, in a composing room, he talked about the influence the work of Tschichold and Max Bill had had on him. Then how he found himself working with the legendary Anthony Froshaug, one of my personal heroes Derek Birdsall, Fletcher and Colin Forbes. He talked about his vagabond existance in the sixties and how it took him years to break away from his early influences.

He told us how he likes to, whenever possible, work at actual size becuase of it's "truth" and how he has the largest wood type collection in Europe; how Fletcher showed him how to compose work in a way that Froshaug could never do; how there are times when you just have to get out your tennant saw and slice off a bit of your wood type to fix the kerning; how to make your ink glow on black art paper by underpinning it with perfectly registered opaque white first and how some of his stuff takes 3 months to print.

Brilliant.

Lots of yellow and black

Well, forgive the cliché, but it really was an evening of two halves at Ulster Uni last night. First off, it was the last day of the FontFont exhibition which I hadn't had a chance to get to. Even last night I didn't have much time, so whizzed round, snapping away.

There was Spiekermann's bitmapped mush; an exhiition-within-an-exhibition/Fuse retrospective; yes, lots of yellow and black; some stuff that I hated; some stuff that I really liked; and overall, a great show on a significant development in contemporary type.

But it was the second half that I was really there for...

4x4 meme

Oh crap, Anne tagged me. Damn it! Yes Anne, I hate these things. But seeing as you've asked and without wanting to appear rude but with a certain amount of modesty and sensitivity for others that might hate these things more, I've posted my answers, discretely here.

Swiss precision and Swiss hospitality...over five continents

My first job in this business was as a pityfully paid Junior Finished Artist for one of Birmingham's oldest design studios, a place called Hurlston's (now no more). It was all PMT cameras and Cow Gum. A superb place to start out and a place whose library reflected it's age; in amongst the Graphis and Modern Publicity Annuals were mighty Penrose volumes dating back to the Fifties.

That's where I first spied this monumentally fine piece of work, tucked into a cellophane pocket on page 69 of the 1958 Annual, Volume 52 (although, I'd since forgotten those details). Up until that point, I don't think I'd ever been so excited about a single piece of print. It just fitted under the glass of the afore mentioned PMT camera so I was able to make a dot-screen copy onto bromide paper, which I still have, but it wasn't until David Sames told me about his extensive collection of the Annuals that I thought to seek out a copy of the real thing.

Thanks to David confirming in which edition this Swissair leaflet could be found, and on what page, I bought a copy via Abe for not too much (remembering to confirm with the seller that the leaflet was actually still included).

When it arrived and I pulled out the near mint condition piece, I realised that I'd forgotten just how vivid and, well, beautiful this thing is.

The leaflet is shown in the Annual as part of an article on Graphic 57, a major print and graphic arts trade show held in Geneva. The piece was designed by Kurt Wirth (who also did this), assisted by Paul Beer.

I've uploaded larger than usual images and there's a few more here.