“the” project

August 5th 2011

Lately, there has been less revision, less challenge in shapes shown. Inker’s tracings of selections held enough artistry to build commentary soapboxes upon. After hearing a Carter lecture, again, a non-existent challenge was accepted to avoid thoughtless preservation leading to “taxidermy,” if only for the length of a post. This revisionist exercise was fun, but will be very short lived. It is doubtful anyone will take offense at adjusting Crack Comics’ lettered legacy, no matter how loved Gill Fox may have been. This cover is hardly a cherished artifact nor cultural touch point, even for funny books. Bubbled sans are plentiful. What caught my eye was the contrast in plumpness within and outside the “E.” Its structure seemed upholstered, a stiff frame padded outward and minimal fluff around to the crossbar. I wondered whether the effect could sober up, deflate and approach the crop of recent mutant sans which smartly utilize shallow curves in all characters to upend possible boredom with straight-sided historical sans. Diminish the bounce and level out the interior angles. What if a sausage-link sans like VAG Rounded went to boot camp, trained under a humorless drill sergeant and came out with a broken spirit but lots of resolve?

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Posted at 10:12am and tagged with: lettering, 1940s, sans, caps, comic, rounded,.

August 4th 2011

24 notes |#

Suzie Wong’s significance, book to stage to film to ballet adaptations was unknown to me, before my media-aware time. Some claim the story classic. Others may target it for any number of offenses: Estranged Westerner in an Exoticized Eastern Land. Saving the Hooker with a Heart of Gold. Pandering Pidgin English. Yellow Fever. Regardless, it stuck. Maybe “the west [America] was trying to prove they have gotten over racism” according to France Nuyen (Suzie on stage) or Ming Wen’s reductive speculation that “male fantasy for a pretty subservient concubine” is key? The character’s appeal, or attraction to postwar East/West culture clashed lovers schtick endured, revived as nightclubs on three continents, implying a lifestyle beyond story. The aesthetics range, it is curious to see which interpretations of nostalgia were adopted. Amsterdam and New York chose squared geometry of ebony window screens. Beijing revived the film’s 60s gogo jetstream sans logo, full-sail shapes previewing the international swinging world to come, where large scale free form plastic or fiberglass paneling was grafted to functional bodywork, obscuring the boring normal bits of life. Too much speculation over Brush Script titled 2010 novel retelling the story for today’s global economy could spiral into questioning whether the art director was typographically misinformed, a sad attempt at calligraphy, or meant it to look appropriately street-level OEM cheap in a fit of brilliance. Or, was it a contemporary typographic “retelling” of the hand lettered 1950s cover shown here? My favorite bit, is that the lettering coupled with the illustrated girl of indeterminate age (ignoring shifty shore leave sailor background and her brazen red nail polish) could very well be Suzie Wong Girl Detective/Reporter/Blogger. Harriet the Spy by way of Veronica Mars. Time and place are anywhere/when choker-collared dresses could be deemed fashionable on a girl with more determination than you. Handwritten script runs all vague directions, kid carefree or adult vice. It is Reiner Script to the (crooked) bone. Differences in letter construction vary, and perhaps the letterer doused the pen with too much ink, changes in direction left globbier rounds unlike the chiseled look of Reiner.

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Posted at 9:16am and tagged with: lettering, script, brush, lowercase, 1950s, book,.

July 22nd 2011

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Tie bars, lapel pins, monogrammed cigarillo cases, and other manly finery. Not cars. Script this fine cannot cut it for mass market auto today. Cadillac is the only major manufacturer savvy enough to cling to the swoop and swash of their historic identity or advertising. I type upon a phone looking out the bus window at parked-speed rush hour. Rear ends of many makes and models named in noncommittal sans, no enameled scripts to be seen. Perhaps it makes technological sense, we’ve safely driven out of the human age where the disappearance of script might mark the last remnants of time when cars could be linked to hand craft in the making as well as (attainable) luxury in the buying? That’s a lot of speculation for one ad series’ lettering, but why not? Our contemporary relation to fine script should be scrapped. In 1939 unemployment was still 15% but businessmen were still familiar with the penmanship of Zaner + Bloser manuals as a matter of visual course. Very thick in touches but mostly very thin while very sloped. The script, despite subtle variations and capitals across competing publishers’ copy books, demanded strict adherence, a universal hand recognizable across the nation’s account books and correspondence. Not quite Arial-familiar, but not too distant either. An interesting notion we’re not used to today beyond crafting or cooking: replicably handmade. Sounds like then. Big industry was still factory lines of workers, people touching metal, before programmed robot arms repeated assembly motions ad infinitum. Cars were made by hand(s), sort of. Machine precision improved engineering, manufacturing, then park assist then smart driving google cars. Somewhere along the way the script stopped making sense, software doesn’t leave signatures this looped nor sloped upon its “handiwork.” Business associations fell, executive business class associations stood. So the Lincoln Series K ad from then looks, now, like a gentlemanly bauble worn for style alone. “The” seems a manly broach unclasped. Once tailoring/millinery accessories came to mind, calligraphic license was taken with the exit strokes, honing them to pin points, the sort which don’t hurt until after pricked realization sets in. How many business clerk ghosts dance on the head of fine lettering pins?

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Posted at 12:09am and tagged with: lettering, connecting, script, 1930s, ad,.

July 14th 2011

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Consider life in the 1890s. Ink was big business, but a tradesmanly one. Ault & Wiborg paid out to top talent. Boston Art Nouveau titan (and fellow pressman) William Bradley or Toulouse-Lautrec shilling ink was like Scorcese directing commercials for Final Cut Pro. Business to business advertising on a gorgeous scale. Design and art history have salvaged these for their beauty, but let’s not forget their original context. Colored chemicals for profit. But, the lettering… Bradley consulted with ATF. He had chops, even if they tended to big flouncy display chops. Big serifs. Eave serifs. Weaponized canopy serifs, bowing low with gravity to wicked points. Serifs to hold back the rain from above or thresh wheat down below.

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©1898 and ™ William Bradley and The Ault & Wiborg Company?

Posted at 5:01pm and tagged with: lettering, ad, serif, caps, 1890s,.

July 10th 2011

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I never trusted Lombardic lettering, nor uncials. There was genetical-level opposition, a flight instinct similar to gradeschool incomprehension toward doodled abstract swirls, paisley amoebas vining up hippy margins. Such shapes were root different from what I knew and trusted. I drew creatures driving motorcycles wearing sunglasses. Since, there has been flirtation then reconciliation with disquieting gooey letters. I approach them with an entomological distance, rubber gloved, holding tweezers analyzing the spider silk connections closing off counters (which should be open as we’re now accustomed), swaying snail eye stalk terminals. It’s fascinating how, when strung together as a block of text, the letters’ many beady eyes seem to watch you read through their tidal loopy movement, weaving in out and cycling backwards rather than push ever forward. Mixed case contemporary latin shapes, bedrock of our present day reading, evolved to mush through with a propulsive rhythm. Our cost of paper is not the luxury it was when 15th Century manuscripts utilized these shapes for biblical contemplation. Information was slow, capitals and text were decorative to dazzle. Now we don’t have time, we like our efficient letters. So, revivals, Goudy and after, feel festive or just open ended historical kitsch. Wyeth, or the uncredited title page letterer, even got the time period wrong considering the 14th Century 100 Years’ War subject matter in Doyle’s novel.

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Posted at 3:04pm and tagged with: lettering, 1920s, lombardic, manuscript, book, doyle,.

July 9th 2011

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Now, some proper art appreciation of repetition and contrast for such a small ditty of sheet music ephemera (note this particular scan is cropped, it’s On not In the BEACH at BALI BALI.) Contrast: artist and letterer Jeff Miska emphasizes the words from script to roman but links the two smartly. Discipline kept things in a sans world, little to no flex in weight. Even while the script’s slope is so fierce and space tightens up, “Look at me!” diagonal emphasis is repeated in the “A”s which dominate the caps. The “E” foot even anchors the overt “A” diagonal with a snug slanted end unlike it’s two other cross strokes. Further contrast: all those circles in the art. But, all those zig zags everywhere else macro layout to micro lettering. Foreground people look -zig- to thoughtbubble people whom look -zag- to titling filled with -zigs- to -zags- in the script. Isolating “the” led into a little analytical bunker, deep dark subterranean tunnel vision. Sounds of worldly logic were ignored. “The” seemed organic despite the uniform weight and parallel logic driving its curveless course. Or, probably, I blew up a low resolution image and saw what I wanted. The lettering here, hand rendered as ever, “lived” in a way more machined diagonal sans/script/italic-y type does not. Not all strokes followed uniform trajectories. Some arced more. Some shear edges bubbled in the heat. I doubt Miska intended any of it, his vision may have been more precise, like 2012. Ink and fingers and paper just veered off course of their own volition, resulting in implied straight edges built by the slightest of curves.

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Posted at 11:48am and tagged with: 1930s, lettering, connecting, script, lowercase, sheet music,.

July 2nd 2011

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It is tempting to see this as a black sheep of the WPA’s Federal Theater Project. Criminal psychology and aesthetics aping the era’s titan German film industry (which would also work its way into the EG Robinson and Bogart film version released the same year due to director Anatole Litvak’s transEuropean stage and screen pedigree) don’t particularly fit the bolstering social goals of the program. But, doom and gloom sell best in bad times. But, the visuals. Tense wrists produce quick and sharp curves, fitting as suspicion bets silk screen films were made with knives rather than brushes. There are no bubbling strokes seen in other painterly FTP poster lettering. Ends are snipped clean rather than taper where a brush would flex and strain, thinning as edges join producing a nip/point which betrays direction of the signpainter’s exit stroke. Here, certain southeastern curves go awkward where an arm could no longer bend with grace and safety, when the artist opted for better control over surface bite of a sharp blade tip. Pure conjecture, but the downward arc of “The”’s “E” and “Clitterhouse”’s “C” do not look comfortable. Luckily, when a title is filled with long straight-stroked words like “DR. CLITTERHOUSE,” awkward round details easily exaggerate to shout louder from the crowded set. The secondary information, the Who, Where, and When of the poster, belong to that faux-inscriptional form of lettering which influenced the heavy and disconnected 70s styles pushed by ITC? If only the FTP kept better records about the artists specially employed to make the posters, or the digital librarians cared enough to cite them. (S)he was responsible for several, all of them striking.

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Posted at 12:46pm and tagged with: lettering, sans, theater, 1930s, poster,.

June 27th 2011

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Sometimes the printer is not your friend, sometimes history is left with androgynous cowboygirl legionnaires, and sometimes this is inspiring. As before, one variation is not fit to close my interest in this lettering. The core is fine, a sample of common early century arcing shapes bending to and around one another, a cohesive set which look like they shun the poor swash “y” in Grey as it’s just trying too hard. Next, the misregistered colors overlap to create special FX, possibly fitting: design by heat stroke in the wild west? “The” lettering can withstand this mechanical mistake, and shine for it, because the curves embrace the shift by softly merging with the overprint’s outline (more-within the letter, not the likely intentional highlight rule). The parallel curves are dancey as befits a swashy wordmark. The sans on the other hand becomes vertically striated with many straight characters. Hard lines are not forgiving. So I made two. One plain because the source lettering’s intent was good, and the second toned because the printer’s sloppiness output a “better” accident. And, the poor “e” looks out of place without any ball terminals. This is frilly, for rugged yet fashionable cowboygirl.

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Posted at 7:08am and tagged with: lettering, script, Toned, book, 1910s,.

June 22nd 2011

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The little I know of this book: it was based on Gauguin’s life and met with scandal upon publication (burnt in a filming of Fahrenheit 451) for all the irresponsible libertine artiste urges? Society was shunned in the name of capital “A” Art. So too was typographic logic cast aside for the freedom of organic pen and brush strokes in the Bantam edition’s title. Caps do not match their lowercase by traditional standards. Caps do not match themselves. Two out of three (“T” and “M”) are what I generalize as Nonthreatening Postwar Modern, built upon the legacy of Bodoni but drawn with cartoon squish and bounce for midcentury headlines. Baselines wavered. Straight strokes swung gently, warped inward a little, like letters stretching after a nap. Sometimes waists, like the “T” here, are cinched a little, sucked in ensuring a gut is kept at bay. Lowercase serifs climb up above the usual ramrod straight clip, a more human touch with some historic precedent. The lowercase x-height is inconsistent. Stress dips back to oldstyle. Relationships from thick to thin stay sparkly Modern, connections are fragile like candy floss and begin to pull pieces away from the “h” stem which looks unsettling and biological, as if the entry point was barbed? I don’t understand why serifless “h” feet ignore the logic of the single serifed “n.” Perhaps the transparency got damaged before press, features were lost. Perhaps the letterer could not be bothered by my narrow expectations of serif relations’ diversity. Philistine am I.

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Posted at 12:51pm and tagged with: lettering, book, serif, book, 1950s,.

June 15th 2011

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The tendency to admire the naive is easy, but it is tricky thinking to equate: the more amateur the effort, the deeper its authenticity. That is a very punk notion. Type/lettering folk and punks share common aptitude to needlessly quibble over small details and how they signify something’s whole merit. I have never heard this 7” released on Tremor records, I only know local journalists deemed it punk. Any drivel on naivety and goodness is mine, because I admire the lettering in confusion. It is a punk deviation from connecting scripts and logical abstract doodling. Punk is two minute music with easy power chords, it is negligent for the sake of speed and middle fingers. The striving amateur letterer was dedicated to the jaggedy and inefficient craft of coloring in. Not speedy, but simple and focused. The haste of fluid calligraphy is impersonated with blunt outlining tools then shapes are filled by techniques many of us explored when idle with graph paper. As points connect along straight(ish) lines, shapes triangulate and a rudimentary typographic “stress” fizzles into being. Extrema are pulled in and through themselves, lines cross, analog Flash tween morphing is invoked. The sharp corners bulge with marker bleed because punk works on cheap absorbent paper. This is reconstructed calligraphy in slow tangram pieces. The time spent crafting such a brash punk script seems so unpunk. And was it amateur? A typographer would question too much about the inconsistent play of positive and negative shapes, so, probably. I’ve no idea anymore, it’s just good.

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Posted at 4:24pm and tagged with: 1970s, distressed, lettering, lowercase, music, ragged, script,.