But the beer is very good.
Tag: typography
Type that makes me smile #1
Typographic Chess Set
Marvellous limited edition typographic chess set by Hat-Trick. Laser cut acrylic pieces based on the typeface Champion (Lightweight) by Hoefler Frere Jones. My birthday is coming up…
Afterthought?
Thought for Friday
“Not everything is design. But design is about everything. So do yourself a favor: be ready for anything.”
Michael Bierut
I also came across this from Michael Bierut via the excellent Design Observer. It’s an extract from an article entitle, ‘I hate ITC Garamond’ and both the full article and comments make entertaining reading. I was aware of some designer’s abhorrence for Comic Sans, but this level of distaste for another typeface came as a surprise.
ITC Garamond enjoyed its apotheosis when it was adapted as the official corporate typeface of Apple Computer in 1984; adding insult to injury, the font was condensed horizontally 80%. Associated with Apple’s brilliant packaging and advertising for the next 20 years, the resulting mutation became a part of the global landscape, seeming no less impregnable and unchanging as the Soviet empire. And then, just like global communism, it just went away, replaced overnight with a sleek customized version of Myriad.
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) described himself on his gravestone as a stone carver. To many who appreciated his work as a sculptor, printmaker and typeface designer he is far more than that.
Gill remains a controversial figure even today. But it is his for his work that he will be chiefly remembered. I have posted about him before and wanted to commemorate his birthday with a further post today.
Designers and typographers are very familiar with his types which include: Gill Sans (perhaps his most famous), Perpetua, Solus, Joanna, Aries, Bunyan, Pilgrim (a recut of Bunyan) and Jubilee.
The BBC adopted Gill Sans in the 90s for its famous wordmark and on-screen graphics.
For more information on Eric Gill you can go to Wikipedia, The Eric Gill Society, The Ditchling Museum and Identifont.
Foto-Auge
I was sorting out the studio as things had recently reached a tipping point, and rediscovered a number of older books on typography, design and photography. Foto-Auge was a particular pleasure to thumb through again. I found it years ago in a book sale a the late and lamented Philip Son & Nephew in Liverpool. More about that bookshop another time maybe.
Two books were published to accompany the 1929 “Film und Foto” exhibition in Stuttgart organized by the Deutscher Werkbund — Foto-Auge, edited by Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold, and Es kommt der neue Fotograf!, edited by Werner Gräff (Art Locked Stacks).
My copy of Foto-Auge is a 1974 facsimile edition published by Thames and Hudson.
The cover depicts El Lissitzky’s now famous “Self Portrait” of the artist as a hand in service to the eye celebrating photography and the book features work from the world’s leading modernist photographers, as well as anonymous news and bureau photos. Tschichold ensures a clean design with the text entirely in lower case.
Foto-Auge served as the catalog of the work exhibited in the exhibition in 1929.
This spread shows Photograms by Man Ray – see my previous post on Man Ray.
Thought for Friday
It is most important that the workman should not have to watch his instrument, that his whole attention should be given to the work. A sculptor does not see his hammer and chisel when he is carving, but only the stone in front of him. Similarly the hand press printer can give his whole attention to inking & printing, and hardly sees his press.
Eric Gill
An essay on typography. 1931
Machine mind(er)?
“… on the other hand, the introduction of mechanical methods into small workshops has an immediate effect on the workmen. Inevitably they tend to take more interest in the machine and less in the work…”
From An essay on typography by Eric Gill, 1936.
I read this passage a few days ago and I felt it to be a pertinent reminder that the ‘work’ has to come first. It’s all too easy to allow the machine to help you make shortcuts when you know damn well there’s a better solution to be had. Sometimes a designer has to pull back from the technology (brilliant though it has become) and concentrate on the work itself. Before it’s too late.
Prophetic words by Eric Gill
I’m currently reading An essay on typography by Eric Gill. My copy is a beautiful little hardback edition. A photolithography copy of the 1936 edition. It is set in Joanna, designed by Gill in 1930 and the 1936 edition was the first use for this typeface.
The proportions of the book are very pleasing and the work itself, though somewhat dated now, remains well worth reading. One paragraph struck me as being as relevant today as it was when it was first penned by Gill.
The industrial world may be wrecked by its bad finance and the wars which bad finance foments, or, as seems less likely, a brave new world of logically organised machine production may be achieved. In either case human communications will continue, printing will still be called for, & much of this book may still be useful.
Eric Gill, 1936
Do typefaces really matter?
A very interesting article currently on the BBC ‘magazine’ section of their website discussing typefaces. If you want to take a look go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10689931
Street Typography 2
Walking along Berry Street, near China Town I found this example of ‘street typography’ – and it looks like it’s been done by the same person/people as the first one. See my previous post.
Making Words
I stumbled across this little photoblog: “We Make Words” where creative friends Amy and Luci make words from different materials and photograph the results.
“We like words and we like arranging objects and we like taking photos, too. So we invented up a little project to keep our over-active imaginations occupied. We take it in turns to photograph a word made of things. Each words somehow relates with the word that has gone before.”
Street Typography 1
This large and unusual example of street typography appears in Liverpool’s city centre, just off Bold Street.
What do Albert Einstein, Frank Zappa, Pepsi Cola and IBM have in common?
What do Albert Einstein, Frank Zappa, Pepsi Cola and IBM all have in common? The answer is they all had a good ‘old fashioned’ off-line vehicle for social networking and correspondence – the letterhead.
Way back in the days before email, MySpace, MSN, Facebook and Twitter the ordinary letter was a major means of personal communication.
The bespoke letterhead was a way of giving a letter a more personal or professional appeal.
Letterheady is website devoted to collecting and displaying all kinds of letterheads, not the content, but rather the design of the letterhead itself. There are many surprising and interesting examples covering business, celebrity and others and the site is well worth a browse.
Letterheady: http://www.letterheady.com/
a plan conceived in the mind 