I somehow persuaded the family to go the the National Print Museum in Dublin the last time we were down there. They were surprisingly tolerant and displayed unprecedent respect for my personal interests. They even showed a little interest themselves. Remarkable.
Above all the lovely presses, type and print paraphernalia, on the mezzanine gallery thing, was a lovely exhibition of Irish label porn.
Didn't get to Lulu's. Less interested in the vintage clothing, but was a little intrigued by the 'n shit'.
Bowne & Co. Stationers is billed as New York City's oldest continuously running business, founded as it was in 1775. Luckily for us, it happens to be a print shop.
If you're at the bottom of Manhattan, maybe to catch the free ferry to Staten Island or the not free ferry to Liberty Island, then you might as well take a walk up Water Street either before or after your voyage to buy letterpress prints from the shop and/or visit the South Street Seaport Museum which Bowne & Co partners. You can explore the museum's collections of photography, printing, ephemera, ship models and scrimshaws (carvings on marine mammal ivory) and the shops (there are two actually) sell a selection of irresistible and reasonably priced print porn.
It's a great location too, as you might expect right on the water's edge so there's plenty to see.
I don't really post anything specific about the day job here but I keep thinking about the work we did for the Titanic Hotel Belfast and, in particular, how it relates to things I enjoy most about what we do at Tandem.
The truth is, I stumbled into Tandem. I was only supposed to be there for ten months, covering someone's maternity leave. That was just over five years ago and, unless something drastic happens beyond my control, I have no intention of leaving.
I've completely fallen for interpretation design. Maybe I've explained this before – it's hard to keep track on what I put out on this blog – but, in summary: the work is worthwhile and we get to do great things with surprising means. It's hard, challenging work that takes us all over the island of Ireland mostly (although not exclusively). At its heart, interpretation design is loaded with values that bring cultural and societal enrichment. It's 'hearts and minds' stuff on the whole, rarely with a commercial objective.
Even with this particular project – where there is a commercial backdrop to the work we did – our focus was on preserving the stories and heritage of an important building now that it has been re-purposed as a fancy hotel.
You can read about this Titanic Hotel project on the Tandem website but here's a potted overview:
Titanic Hotel Belfast can be found right across the plaza from the 'World's Best Visitor Attraction' Titanic Belfast. The building was the Harland & Wolff Drawing Offices and Headquarters – originally designed, very cleverly, to give the designers of H&W's ocean-going vessels the very best conditions to work in. The two main drawing offices are vast, vaulted and many-windowed rooms positioned to make use of the northern (i.e. best diffused) light which swamps the spaces.
Putting that in context: other shipbuilders kept their draughtsmen in temporary sheds that they moved around their ship yards. By comparison, H&W's working conditions were literally second to none.
As part of the purchasing deal, the hotel operators were charged with being responsible for preserving the heritage of the building. And that's where we stepped in. We developed a bunch of 'light touch' interventions that highlight what working life within the building was like during H&W's glory days.
We referred to the plaques pictured above as 'Room Labels' – just one of the aforementioned interventions. They appear all over the original part of the building and tell visitors about each specific room, or original feature in some cases. They are my favourite part of the project.
A mahogany frame matches the timber work around the offices and an engraved brass surround (inspired by plaques found on H&W engines) frames a vitreous enamel text panel. The brass surround is based on the foolscap paper format which would have been used in the offices for admin docs. The H&W motif is the company's original motif.
Other interventions included routered Corian® wall panels that feature a floor tile pattern found in the building along with ships names or (as pictured) the job roles found within the walls of the Drawing Offices.
Here and there, super-discrete pieces give visitors little moments of delight – like the engraved lamp base below which features an amusing quote from the one of H&W's big cheeses, Mr Wolff himself.
It was Culture Night. My eldest teenager was heading into Belfast with some 'friends' to wallow in the free culture dripping from every corner and crevice of the city centre.
I'd never been to Culture Night in Belfast, even though I'd heard it's a great night to be out in; I'm too miserable for such free and easy public expressions of culture. No, The Night of Culture is a night for me to stay home and close the curtains. Batten down the hatches in case some culture breaks free and catches the bus out to the suburbs where we live – I keep a large stick by the front door just in case some culture comes a'knocking.
Of course, my son was really out talking to girls, his interest in an evening of extreme free-roaming culture thinly masking his real motivation.
At least my other son was safe at home.
Not for long. His mate Patrick rang and asked if he'd like to go to Culture Night. Wrenched from the comfort of our comfortable sofa (with matching very large food stool – it's soooo comfy) we head city-centre-wards; the two children too young to roam free on Crazy Night without an adult within rescue distance.
Once in town I was soon abandoned and wandered the cultural streets in search of a familiar face. Instead I discovered a familiar place – Keats & Chapman open late to cash in on the culture punters, so in I went, with cash (K&C is the city's finest book cave and it flipped my evening better side up).
Top find: This Penguin Education edition of 'Academic Freedom', circa 1974, with a top notch cover by Omnific/Peter Thompson.
Back in the day, agency types would have to defend apparent wasted space on a layout by claiming that it “illuminated the message”. Maybe they still do. No false claim though, we all know that what you leave out is as important as what you put in and yes, white space does illuminate the message.
A few weeks ago we put out a recruitment ad. It was a great opportunity for someone to join the fabulous Tandem team. All we needed to do was put the ad out there and watch the applications come flooding in…
Time passed…
No applicants.
More time passed…
Still no applicants.
I began to wonder why. The ad was thorough and truthful; detailed and clear. I showed it to some design-related friends and invited criticism. Oh boy, did it get criticism. I think “intimidating” and “a bit dull” were amongst the harshest comments. So I sought sagely advice from one who knows – from an expert in such wordly matters: ace writer for brands Mike Reed.
Mike swiftly and efficiently destroyed what I'd written and, kindly, recrafted it. It was like night and day. Dull and intimidating became interesting and welcoming. A new ad went out…
And, we got takers – some really good ones.
What Mike did played on my mind over the following days. During that time this other thing happened: I was in an internal meeting which was interrupted by a colleague who needed to ask our Creative Director an important budget-related question. Something had to be cut – maybe we could pull back on the lighting? The answer was clear: there were others things to cut before the lighting. The lighting was too important.
And it clicked. What Mike did to our ad was introduce some good lighting. The new ad said the same thing as our original…but the message had become illuminated…by better words.
I’m beginning to learn that good lighting makes all the difference in a museum or visitor experience. It guides you through a space, draws you in, reveals where to look, shows you which direction to take. It’s your invisible, intangible guide.
In copy, good writing does the same: it guides, draws you in and it reveals. Just like how bad lighting kills a museum space, bad writing kills the message.
I discussed all this briefly with Mike and he observed, “lighting and copy are often overlooked, but when they’re rubbish you really notice – of course, when they’re at their best, you don’t notice them at all”. Which nails it really: in design, even in the broadest sense, the most important things are often the things that, when done properly, no one notices. Beautiful lighting, good typography, a well proportioned page, expertly crafted copy – when executed really well, are often invisible and yet, they illuminate.
That’s how William Morris pitched his, long-time pondered printing enterprise some time after 1888. Finally tipped over the edge by an inspiring lecture to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in November that year, our hairy faced friend gathered around him a crack team; a finely-tuned, hand-crafted group – a punchcutter, a papermaker, an ink-maker, an engraver and a master printer were invited to join the fanatical craftsman at the Kelmscott Press.
52 works in 66 volumes were produced with the Kelmscott Chaucer being generally considered their masterpiece. Morris himself designed the types, title page, borders, frames and 26 initial words while his Pre-Raphaelite comrade Edward Burne-Jones produced 87 pencil illustrations, that were translated into line and engraved ready for print.
Whether it killed him or kept him alive I don’t know enough to say but Chaucer was issued in June 1896 after a two year slog and Morris died the following October.
In 1975 a facsimile copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer was produced by the Basilisk Press, following production methods that mirrored, as closely as was possible, that of the original A-Team (K-Team, actually). This time it took three years with the original volume being accompanied by a second that reproduced, for the first time, Edward Burne-Jones’ pencil sketches. 'Reproducing the Kelmscott Chaucer' is an article in The Penrose Annual from 1976. It tells of the troubles encountered by the new team: the impracticalities of using hand-made paper in the quantity required, the challenge of printing onto paper with a deckled edge, the difficulties of matting the ink and even the dangers of boredom during such a painstaking and laborious task.
During the early to mid-seventies phototypesetting was becoming standard. While they reproduced Chaucer using letterpress, the volume of drawings was produced using litho and the best phototypesetting available. That’s a huge but understandable leap from one method to the other, in craft and result. The Basilisk team went to super-human lengths to reproduce Chaucer with a spirit and effort worthy of Morris.
Now, of course, the gap between the techniques of the arty-crafty Morris and contemporary production methods is even greater. All the more admirable then that a few finely-tuned, hand-crafted individuals endeavour to keep the art of letterpress alive and relevant today.
For most of my Penrose Annual collecting career, to date, I've concentrated on the 60s. But I've come to realise the following decade has lots to offer. As phototypesetting took hold, memories of letterpress-as-standard still prevailed and also the 70s witnessed some amazing designers at work in various graphic arts.
Paul Piech had began to publish from his private press in 1959, his wood and linocuts full of purpose and protest. Follow that link, from his name, and you'll see what I mean. For this edition of Penrose, he cut motifs to illustrate an article on Caxton as well as being the focus of a piece by Kenneth Hardacre.
Tom Eckersley was in his sixties by now but his poster work was still breaking ground. There's plenty of supporting evidence in this edition to prove that.
A superb piece on the Kelmscott Chaucer gives background on the original and goes on to describe the production of a facsimile copy of the Morris/Burne-Jones masterpiece. I'm going to do a separate post about that.
David Gentleman's here, thanks to Mel Calman who wrote the article which is illustrated with finished work alongside examples of Gentleman's design developments.
As is standard with Penrose, there's a ton of other stuff including an article on the reproduction of old maps and graphic design from Canada – and then the usual technical developments of the day.
I've uploaded more highlights to Flickr.
A few more scores in now. The patterns are beautiful but every time I pick one of these up I marvel at the exquisite typography. Can't remember if it was Tschichold who was responsible for these – or maybe it was Hans Schmoller – but when I see them I see that photo of Jan in my head. This one.
The new Pentagram Paper is out.
Back in 2012 American film director Errol Morris posted a quiz online in The New York Times. On the surface it appeared to be testing whether the participant was an optimist or a pessimist but really Morris was testing typefaces. He was toying with an idea: does the choice of typeface influence the credibility of a statement. Well of course it does. Anyone half interested in typography knows it does but Morris approached the task anew and concluded, rather precisely, that the most 'believable' typeface is the one from Birmingham, my home town.
I've always liked Baskerville. Not because it's from the city of my youth, but because of those lovely wide capitals, those round C's, O's and G's; the forthright stroke contrast; and those cheeky italics. Maybe, unknowingly, it's because of the authority that comes built into the design.
Fuelled by his findings, in the Pentagram Paper version, Morris dwells on Mr B. In Chapter 4 he takes a spin around the life and times of the man who, it turns out, was not too popular in his day. Baskerville had made his money in japanning and spent his spare time on his more calligraphic yearnings. Shacked up in his mansion with Mrs Eaves, JB indulges his love of the printed page while outside his reputation was being sullied. His republican views were not popular, nor was his atheism or his sleeping arrangements. As Morris reports, even after his death, "Baskerville stands accused of most everything: priggishness, arrogance, immorality, even illiteracy." – apparently the badly dressed man's correspondents were grammatical disasters.
Baskerville died in 1775 and his house was left to Sarah Eaves. After her death it passed into new hands and in 1791 it was destroyed by what seems to have been slightly ungracious party goers who got totally pissed in the wine cellar and set fire to the place. Several singed bodies were found in the remains.
The story continues, as does the cursed connected bad luck but I'll stop there because I need to take our hound for a walk.
It's a most interesting account with Ben Franklin, Voltaire and Beaumarchais all playing their parts perfectly. Although it occurred to me, right at the end, that the whole thing might be Morris taking his test to a whole new level. Perhaps the PentaPaper was just 76 pages of bullshit, beautifully typeset in Baskerville to see if anyone would respond to it all, say in a blog post for example, convinced of its validity.
Well, it's Friday so why not – the last FTF was way back in January 2014. As Ms. Fili knows much better than I, Italia is awash with typographic joy. If you follow me on Instagram you'll have seen these and more, but I think they're worthy of another showing.
For over twenty years Louise Fili has been snapping away at Italy's signage. 440 of those photos have now been wrapped up in a rather handsome hard cover and published. Grafica della Strada celebrates the display typography of her favourite European destination.
Secondhand Bookshop loiterers will relate to this:
I was at a nearby National Trust property, mooching around the secondhand bookshop, when I spied a scruffy oddity. A strangely tall volume wrapped in an interesting elk-based photo dust jacket that was topped off with a nasty piece of outline type.
If it wasn't for the unusual format I'd have passed it by but it was poking up, head and shoulders above the other odds and ends. So I did the thing you do – we all do it, don't we? – I slipped its jacket off.
Boy am I glad I did.
We're just about to start work on a project for the NLI. In preparation for this I dived head first, into their digitised archive – their online catalogue – of print material. They have loads of stuff archived and much more still to do. It was hard not to get distracted. So I did…get distracted I mean.
The peaceful land of Punctuation
is filled with tension overnight
When the stops and commas of the nation
call the semi-colons ‘parasites’
In 1905, German poet Christian Morgenstern wrote a poem, In the Land of Punctuation. It told of an escalating fracas between certain marks and the bloody battle that ensued. It's a grim (and witty) tale.
Now translated into English by Sirish Rao and brilliantly illustrated by Rathna Ramanathan, Morgenstein's poem has a whole new lease of life thanks to Tara Books.
Do designers like an aphorism more than most? I'm not sure. We certainly do love a pithy truth about the nature of our work don't we? Whether it provides valuable insight into the inner workings of design practice and principles or reassurance of the validity of our most treasured points-of-view, a few carefully chosen words from a pier or hero can resonate. Letterpress it and hang it on a wall.
Handsomely bound and stylishly typeset (using a generous selection of Hoefler and Frere-Jones' Knockout) "The Designer Says" is packed to the rafters with the wit and wisdom of luminaries from design disciplines. Thoughtfully paired, each spread presents ideas either in tune with one another or at opposite poles.
If it were close to Christmas I'd say this is the ideal Yuletide gift for the designer you love. But it's obviously not so just buy yourself a copy – or surprise the creative you treasure most.
I was ever so slightly bowled over by this package that arrived last week. Superbly packaged in a bespoke printed envelope and wrapped in it's own unique tissue paper, my special letter forms part of Pauline Clancy's Wood Type project. You can find out more about it here. While you're over there, check out Pauline's other work. You might remember Pauline from this piece she did last year.
I stumbled across The Salvage Press the other day. Lovely work…
The Salvage Press is devoted to preserving, promoting and pursuing excellence in design, typography & letterpress printing. It is the name under which artist & designer Jamie Murphy produces his letterpress printed books and broadsides.
Take a look. Or follow them here and/or here.
An accompanying pamphlet to that Tschichold text, this is as beautifully printed. An Older Typophile in the Nineties was printed using Linotype and Monotype Baskerville types on Mohawk Vellum paper. So it's everything you want from letterpress: a roughness to the sheet, nicely impressed letters, possibly once frowned upon but actually quite satisfying show through and hand tide string binding. It's lovely. You can get your own copy from the RIT Press.
I can't remember exactly who it was (quite possibly Johnny again) but a year (or two) ago I sparked up a short exchange about the sad demise of the pamphlet. It's a delightful format, the pamphlet. Kind of like a decent sized blog entry in print. A forerunner to the blog really, the pamphlet embodies a small work, inexpensively produced that would often have delivered a text of some importance; a new idea, a political statement or a religious concept.
My all-time typo-hero Tschichold wrote Clay in the Potter's Hand for the 1948 edition of The Penrose Annual. This reproduction of the text forms part of the Red Cat Typography Set and is available from the RIT Press. It's beautifully letterpressed on a Golding No.7 press using (presumably) Linotype set Garamond No.3 (Morris Fuller Benton's version of Claude's original) and hand set Garamont (the italic headings?). A wholely appropriate choice for a Tschichold text; he based the roman weight of his own most famous typeface design Sabon on Garamond's.
Richard Holt is a complete gent. He sent me these two lovelies. As a result, by mid-February, my penmanship will be improved ten-fold. I'll be scribing wistful and poetic correspondence like nobody's business.
Printing Processes is superbly illustrated and, as you'd expect from Ladybird circa 1970, explains with absolute clarity how it was done way back then…when letterpress and the likes of the Linotype/Monotype machines were still fresh in the memory.
Towards the end of last year a friend of mine, who was working on a web-based typography tool, asked me for tips on how to pair typefaces. I know how I approach the task but I started to wondering if there were well defined techniques to share. Digging through typography books (old and new) I couldn't find much on the subject. One or two writers basically say, "Just don't do it!", advising you to stick to one font family. After all, that's why it's been designed as a family (well, one of the reasons). Interesting, good advice, but the urge to contrast typefaces is still there. Are there any more encouraging answers?
And, perhaps, now more than ever an encouraging answer would be helpful. Not least because of the whole new generation of graphic designers (whether they call themselves that or not) whose work manifests itself in some digitally-based form but whose journey has not taken the "conventional" route. They haven't got to where they are via a lengthy stay at the university of typographical hard knocks. But the desire to learn is great.
What would/do I do? The first and most obvious approach, I think, is to look to type designers who have produced a range of typefaces and see if sympathetic pairs can be identified from within their body of work.
It's not uncommon for type designers to use similar letter structures across different typefaces. Some are plainly obvious, Spiekermann's Meta goes with his Meta Serif; Sumner Stone's self-titled Sans sits nicely with it's Serif sister and Informal brother.
More recently we've seen the term "Super Families" become more visible, describing sets of typefaces, some with incredibly extensive variations. Super Families hand us sympathetic font pairs on a plate and that's very helpful; not least for the fledgling typographic designer.
But what if you want to freestyle? Go off-typedesigner or off-superfamily in search of a pairing with greater contrast or all of your own making. How do you start?
I can think of two ways (there's probably more):
The easiest way is to cheat. You go looking for examples that work and you copy the same pairing. It's not stealing; it's not a terrible way to approach it really. Except that you're not going to learn much. It's a bit like the old, clichéd "Give a man a fish…" cliché.
A better way to approach the challenge is to get closer to the type; intimate in fact. Get under the skin of type design, analyse the characteristics of typefaces to discern what one (say, serif) face has in common with a different (say, sans) face. Learn about its historical and, even, its geographical contexts.
Enter, stage left, Stephen Coles' new book The Geometry of Type (or if you're Stateside, The Anatomy of Type). A timely publication, given the still fairly new but ferocious interest in typography from the designers and builders of the digital realm; Stephen's book, I think, couldn't have come at a better time. It presents just what those new to designing with type need to know.
The Geometry of Type leads you through the classification of typefaces, their historical background and reveals their distinguishing characteristics. Armed with a detailed grasp of this knowledge, the designer can see that, for example, a particular typeface that falls into the Humanist Serif category may well work well with another face that could be described as a Humanist Sans. Or how a Geometric Sans might work well with a Rational Serif (more traditionally known as a Modern). Of course, with any one single volume only a limited collection of typefaces can be included. Perhaps the most important lesson that the book teaches is to look closer at whatever typeface we're using. It teaches what to look for; where the critical details can be gleamed.
I think this is a book that could, and probably should, become a staple for a generation of typographic designers. From talking to a few people who are coming to typographic design with a digital background, our time feels not unlike that period when design studios were just installing Macs for the first time. When graphic designers were getting their hands on type which they'd previously relied on others to control (typesetters).
It's a little different but it's similar because there are designers using type with very little proper understanding of its intricacies. I was like that way back then and what I had to do was learn lots of stuff. I can wholeheartedly relate to the plight of these designers; that's just what I was like. And what I needed back then was a nudge here and there to set me on the right track. Stephen's book is one of those very helpful nudges.
Related: Ellen Lupton's article on Thinking With Type.
Super Families: At fontshop.com and fonts.com
I feel incredibly privileged to have received Monotype's One of a kind box set. Beautifully designed by SEA, the box contains twelve bi-folded booklets; each focusing on an aspect of Monotype's work: its Britishness and its Internationalness; essential workhorse fonts, lesser known gems, type on screen and web fonts; the company's heritage, publishing sympathies, American support and most famous fans.
Each booklet presents fonts appropriate to its theme accompanied by a text from someone of note: Creative Review's Patrick Burgoyne, Pentagram's Abbott Miller, Eye's Simon Esterson, Andy Payne from Interbrand, Rankin and SEA's own Bryan Edmondson; who I have say a special thank to for very kindly organising the dispatch.
It's an impressive piece and a fitting tribute to Monotype; its rich heritage and its dedication to the future of typography.
Me and the boys went down to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum last weekend. So, of course, we slipped into the print shop. It could be so much more than it is. Right now, it's an exhibit; just that. What it really needs is a massive injection of enthusiasm then who knows what it could become.
Andrew mentioned something about foil blocking earlier in the week and it reminded me of one of favourite foil blocked spines. I flippin' love this.
Has everyone seen the amazing archive for TM? There's more info and links on Grain Edit. 1977 is a bit of a surprise but generally is an astonishing body of work.
Don't think I've ever mentioned this: I'm a cyclist. There, I've said it. I cycle. Not proper cycling I mean. Not, going out for a run at the weekend cycling. I just do a bit of cycling to work because it'll probably save my life and anyway, it's actually quicker than driving because the traffic in the morning sucks cycling. But I still love it and one effect of it is that I like cycling stuff more than I did when I wasn't a cyclist. So yes, the Olympics was trully "awesome". Wiggy and all that stuff. Brilliant.
John McD is a proper cyclist and tweeted a link to these ace ads by Mother New York earlier today. You can read a bit more about them here.
I'd originally titled this post "Mrs Heller". Ordinarily, that would be a terrible way to introduce someone like Louise Fili, but it is interesting that that is who she is…isn't it? Well, I thought so but as time's passed, I've felt it more and more innapropriate…I certainly didn't intend to give even the slightest suggestion that Fili is in any way in the shadow of her other half. In fact, a quick flick through Elegantissima (the first volume to celebrate her amazing work) and you'll be left in no doubt, Fili is clearly the one half of this particuar graphic design couple with the lion's share of the talent. Which Mr H quite openly admits himself in the book's introduction.
I imagine the work itself is not for everyone; it is a particular kind of work. Rich in apparent retro-style, there's no stripped back Helveticapseudomodernism. There is, on the other hand, page after page after page of hand-crafted beauty. At times it feels like a particularly american kind of graphic design although Fili herself may not like that description - in her opening text she emphasises her passion for Italy.
Perhaps the publication of Elegantissima is timely, following as it does that amazing volume on Herb Lubalin who she worked for before eventually setting up her own studio. And I can't help but mention that it was Fili who encouraged Ms. Hische on the creative path she chose.
Over all, it feels like this is a book well overdue.
We have a mystery on our hands. OK, a pretty small mystery but nevertheless, it's a mystery that begs answers. Path buddy Tim Fowler, from here, here and here, sent his copy of Forster's 1908 classic (well, actually, the 1955 Penguin edition).
But look at the title. Odd "A"s.
Now you can imagine how this might happen. Way back in 1955, Penguin's jobbing typesetter, momentarily distracted by thoughts of lunch and a rather tasty swan sandwich his wife had lovingly prepared for him the evening before, lifted a Gill Sans "A" out of the type tray and slipped it into position, not noticing that it didn't match the other he'd slotted into place just a few seconds earlier.
Hardly his fault. His job was to assemble the lead, he didn't put the wrong "A" into the tray. Perhaps a cleaner had found it kicking around the floor and thinking he was being very helpful and thinking that there's nothing to this type matching lark, dropped it into the little wooden compartment along with all the other "A"'s. They looked the same. An "A" is, after all, an "A".
Fast forward fifty seven years and there's a bunch of saddoes (myself and Tim inlcuded) scratching their typographically interested heads wondering about the anomaly. Of course, identifying the rogue "A", the second one, is one challenge.
Typography maestro Phil Baines wondered if it might be Curwen Sans then ace Toronto-based book designer Michel Vrana suggested Geometric 415/Metro. Our conclusions were inconclusive.
What I would really like to know is whether this error really went unnoticed. It must have been printed in its thousands. Curiously, the peculiarity has been reproduced on modern deck chairs and canvas prints - perhaps it was never corrected.
The investigation continues in ernest.
If you're on their list you'll have received this in the post a week or so back. Amazing work from one of the best contemporary practitioners of type design, in my humble opinion.
Applied Works (who, incidentally, do beautiful work) mentioned Retronaut's post of London Film Festival posters from 1957 up to 2010. It's a great collection if, as we agreed, a little patchy at times. For me, the best one was this one for the 10th festival in '66. Would love to know who designed it. Typical of the era's best graphic design it has a feel of Raymond Hawkey. If anyone knows who did design it, please let me know.
Turkish graphic designer Geray Gencer develops typographic posters that focus on social and cultural aspects of his country. Geray explains one of his latest projects:
"Essentially 'Istanbul Deko' is a type design project with a common theoretical base of architecture and typography. It uses an original typeface inspired by the multicultural heritage of İstanbul and designed with details of the city’s historical structures. Then I have produced a typographic poster series about istanbul and its architectural heritage as well."
You can see more of Geray's work on Flickr.
Er…it's Linotype: The Film. Thursday 17 May at the Unviversity of Ulster. Complete with rattling doohickies of typographical automations. Excited. Much.
Franklin Gothic was my first favourite typeface. Way back in…ehum…19…ehum…when I was just starting out as a typographer it was Morris Fuller Benton's no-nonsense 1902 hit that became a staple for my enthusiastic Piet Zwart mimicry. Whether it was a technically correct tie-in, I'm not sure.
So I was delighted to see, a few months back, a homage to the condensed version of the typeface letterpressed by Blush Publishing as part of their Assorted Types series.
More recently, they've printed a sheet for Bauer Bodoni and the voluptuous Clarendon.
Pauline Clancy is an MA student at the University of Ulster studying Mutlidisciplinary Design. Pauline very kindly sent me a copy of her new self-promotional piece: A set of screen printed cards that piece together and reveal her pre-occupation with semiotics. Check out her website or blog for more typographics.
You might already know Font Bureau have just released Neue Haas Grotesk. It's Helvetica but better and proper and long overdue.
Jeremy Tankard has delivered some truly unique fonts but I can't help feel he's really surpassed himself with Fenland. Beautiful, characterful letters I've never seem before.
I won.
FS Clerkenwell, to be precise. If you follow Fontsmith on Twitter you'd have enjoyed their anniversary typocompetition a couple of weeks back. It was simple but tricky at times: throughout the week snippets from their beautiful 10 years in type anthology teased us with abstracted font features.
I was delighted to win, Clerkenwell is awesome. But even better, I signed up for a copy of the celebratory box set and it arrived at the tail end of last week. It's an amazing thing: superbly printed by Team Impression and stupendously designed by Thompson Brand Partners. Ten booklets tell the stories of ten unique fonts. This morning saw the launch of an accompanying microsite so if you're not able to get your hand on the real thing, you can still learn about Fontsmith's dedication to their craft and find out what makes them such exemplars of the fine art of type design.
Nice bit of perforated hardboard there. Ideal for, say, a wall of tools. Imagine this: A whole wall, covered in perforated hardboard, proliferated with many hooks and pegs. Each hook or peg supporting a hand tool: a spirit level, micrometer, steel rule, height gauge, vernier calliper; carver clamp, warrington hammer, ball & claw pincer, insulated snipe-nose plier. Just imagine it; an entire wall of tools: Wire stripper, 6-way ferrule crimping tool, hand brace, spokeshave, threaded nut rivet kit, combination square, hand mitre saw. A threaded rod cutter. You never know when you might need a threaded rod cutter.
I mean, a vast panorama of precision-made usefulness, stretching for as far as the eye can see. A boundless vista of engineered practicalness at your fingertips. Each rigorously manufactured device designed to facilitate the expediting of a particular task. And all presented on a peg-board backed toolscape.
Fwaor!
Typotheque is easily my most favourite type foundry. Amazing typefaces, exeptional attention to detail, lovely type specimens. The latest (limited edition) for the sans/slab/rounded type system Irma is one of the best yet.
We're fast approaching the big One-Double-Zero FTF. Well, when I say "fast", I mean fast like evolution is fast or like the blue whale is fast or like how our tomatoes ripened fast this year.
So, "slowly" is, of course what I really mean. Slow like the speed it's taken me to get this copy of An Elementary Essay on the background of English Literature posted.
The limited edition 2012 Typotheque diary and sketchbook by Peter Bil'ak is out. Last year's was excellent. The new one is "new and improved". The perfet stocking filler (if your stocking is full, except for a diary sized gap).
You might have seen this if you get the FontShop newsletter: Mark Caneso's psTypes are now available through the FontShop catalog.
Help build the largest active collection of hot metal type in the world. The Intenational Printing Museum in Los Angeles have a new Kickstarter project: To rescue around 100 full fonts of antique Ludlow Typecasting matrices and bring them into their working collection. Find out more and support the project on its Kickstarter site.
Mr Moustache is a new font family designed by Georg Herold-Wildfellner. It's actually lovely and noodley. Display and text weights are accompanied by frames, ornaments and squiggley bits. You can take a closer look here.
Stop me if you've heard this one before.
The first book I ever read about typography was Ruari McLean's Manual of Typography. There wasn't much to choose from back then; the dark art of typographic practice was still the bastion of The Typesetter, who kept his secrets tucked securely up his jumper. The book was pretty good but, if I remember it correctly, a bit dry. When I finished it, I was a bit dispondent. I wanted to be a typographer but Ruari explained that the typographer's role was a subservient one. In service to the designer or art director.
I didn't really like that. At the time, that is what I was. But I just didn't like it.
And then, by chance, at a secondhand book fair, I happened upon a modest looking paperback volume called "Basic Typography" by some bloke called John R Biggs. It was a bit ugly on the outside, but like I said, there wasn't much around really and well, it was about typography. I snapped it up.
Now I have the utmost respect for McLean - he worked with Tschichold, he knew his stuff - but Biggsy; Biggsy, was an inspiration! There was none of that "in service to whoever", instead it was a powerhouse of typotrickery. Just what I needed. And that's why, although he's perhaps a lesser known champion of his subject, to me JRB is a hero.
Imagine then, the thrill of glancing across a table of encyclopedia's in the War on Want bookshop to see this beauty staring back at me. Shouldering an old lady out of the way, I darted across and grabbed it before anyone else could. (Well, you never know, she might have been a typographer).
All mine. £1.