“the” project

February 2nd 2012

It looks like a lettering exercise. Here is a Speedball B knibbed pen, you have quite a little bit of space to between the Dell logo and “ONE.” Give us a “The.” You have two minutes. [Dip. Scritch. Scratch. Swoop. Done.] Hasty and instinctual and tight, all of which is fitting. The cramped squirm of the “h” writhes like the pinned man in sad yellow socks, all the more humane for its discomfort next to solid, inevitable crime block gothics. Victimlettering. Swiped from UK Vintage.

Download

Creative Commons, etc…

All © and ™ 1949 Dell and Helen McCloy?

Posted at 9:26am and tagged with: lettering, book, script, monoline, 1940s,.

August 26th 2011

6 notes |#

Old Church Slavonic writing, as seen in decorative Russian Orthodox manuscripts which obviously influenced illustrator Zvorykin, is innately fiery. Dancing and spiky. Violently pretty and so dizzying to my comfort zone. Flame lettering is obviously appropriate to the story, and so someone decided it ought to live on in translation. I don’t know who adapted Zvorykin’s early Cryillic letterforms to Latin (possibly the artist himself?) but they did an interesting if not “good” job of it. The amount of subtle variation (to connect or leave “R” bowls open?) makes me wonder whether bilingual Russians would look at this mingling, faux Cyrillic, as insulting or aptly guided? For once it’s not used to mock or lionize Soviet-era strength, order, or severity and instead projects a “different degree of ‘Russianness,’” the intricate and the historical pride absent from most of our contemporary (Western) notions of Russian aesthetics. The mind wanders to fuzzy Cold War political and cultural ramifications considering this book and “In the Russian Style” seemed to boom under Jacqueline Onassis’s tenure as an editor at Viking Press in the late 70s. Perhaps that’s appropriate, Zvorykin did make the book while exiled in France during the Revolution, a gift to a Western employer.

Download

Creative commons, etc…

Posted at 1:34pm and tagged with: lettering, caps, 1930s, book, pen-based,.

August 23rd 2011

40 notes |#

Changeling lettering. What happens when serifs are kidnapped by the lettering fairy? Overkill becomes feature. Perhaps “THE” ate of the fae food, drank the nectar, got stuck in their garden forever. Germinating, reshaping, growing extra bits, forsaking then forgetting its own legible heritage as it roots-in permanent. How might letters go native in a world of phoenixes and minor deities? Extraneous additions. Superfluous unknown biology. Indulgent letterers with little imagination might have taken that challenge and swashed out the little word till its actual width tripled with ever more decorative swoops, overpowering its function as definitive article. But, illustrator D. S. Walker twisted letter anatomy as tools to defy the common, within his layout’s spacing constraints. How many crossbars are too many? Why shouldn’t the “T” invade the “H“‘s sovereignty, like creeping vines seeking some other plant’s water source, wild. No gardening sheers in sight. Waists and crossbars lift to the sun. I’m curious if left to their new magical flora state, out of sight, how might “THE” look in another 80 years?

Download

Creative commons, etc…

Posted at 1:16pm and tagged with: 1920s, book, lettering, serif, caps,.

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.

Download

Creative commons, etc…

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

July 10th 2011

7 notes |#

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.

Download

Creative commons, etc…

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

June 27th 2011

4 notes |#

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.

Download

Creative commons etc…

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

June 22nd 2011

3 notes |#

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.

Download

Creative commons, etc…

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

May 22nd 2011

25 notes |#

What looks good small might lose its sheen big. Consistently contradictory methods drive this site and declare I don’t adjust the spacing for whim or preservation’s sake. The excitable reader in me, not just the traditionalist typographic education etched into my post-script tracking bones, wants those letters to tighten up. Big and bare, “The” is no longer urgent as it shouts on the cover. Letters enlarge, so must the vacancy between them. Users would be best to cram those stems as tight as legibility and output can handle for the suspenseful effect compressed italic sans were historically perfected for (not to mention the now vacuous counters and gaping “e” aperture.) Bear with the tangent, but might the notion of tight spacing best sells EXCITEMENT be both economical as well as aesthetic? Busier tense flickering of dark and light positive/negative shapes make the links between eye-brain-nervous system trigger faster and harder? And, we were raised in an era of advertising descended from broadsides. Ink plus paper plus space (on and off the paper) equaled money so space was filled with tight headlines yielding greater copyfit as a result of thrift which became urgency’s look and feel? Scrollable (and “pinchable?”) screens become endless. How much longer will the notion of FILL ’ER UP last? When can tall letters track out beyond our current comfort zone? When, or has, the nineties’ broken rule returned as a viable option? Perhaps it is, perhaps this looks fine to the fresh-faced youth. To my eye, the “e” yawns, no danger is pending at The Farmhouse.

Download

Creative Commons, etc…

Posted at 7:05pm and tagged with: 1950s, book, condensed, italic, sans, lettering,.

April 29th 2011

|#

Economical blends of calligraphy paired with calligraphic foundry type (Warren Chappell’s Lydian from ATF) are a treat. The layout and illustration team Im-Ho (which stands for Sol Immerman and Lawrence Hoffman or Robert Holly) had taste enough to letter beyond Lydian’s cursive companion, whose spacing limitations cannot cut as dashing a lockup and are a little feeble by comparison. Formally, the notches of negative space left between vertical stroke entry and horizontals (sometimes overlapping are are more gradually tapered upon intersection) repeat the diagonals of Lydian better and more aggressively than Lydian Cursive. “The” has the wingspan of gloating culprits here. Fiend serifs. Conniving serifs. Sharpness confident enough to leave taunting clues to the detective. I’m curious whether the lacquered box in question is Asian or Russian? I want to hope the knib-like sans typography is a tasteful distance from the lazier Charlie Channed take-out menu type. I want trash pulp layouts to have a touch of domestic restraint for once, and not default to sad stereotypes.

Swiped from uk vintage

Download

Creative commons, etc…

Posted at 3:00pm and tagged with: lettering, 1940s, book, pen-based,.

March 23rd 2011

|#

Studies in contrasts like this generally floor me, mixing long shots and one grand stroke countered by small touches. Here, almost negligent shallow connecting strokes and loops are polite little handkerchief-covered coughs next to the throaty bark of a “T” swoop. Something in parallel strokes vs. rounds like those found in the Hoover logo, those just into or out of the streamlined era when all commercial products looked like they went zoom, seem to contain Class. But Working Class? Classy Work? Work with Class? The “The” here is so mannerly postured and ought not be selling Atkins sawblades. Those ascenders are starched stiff and the little curves have been brought in, tailored. This gent does not Do-It himself. He hires someone and complains about their mud dragged into his foyer. This “The” has a foyer.

Download

Posted at 9:13pm and tagged with: script, book, lettering, connecting,.