“the” project

September 17th 2011

And baby makes 100. Come see the screwball 3D sans mismatch a story about Navajo and Fed agent clashing, racism, horse swindling, patriotism, enlistment, The Great War, and broken promises! This sans has joy buzzers and whoopie cushions in mind, not the weighty conflicts of The Vanishing American’s story. It makes me wonder whether 1920s Hollywood didn’t believe in advertising according to plot, or in targeting audiences. Maybe vivid color and westerns was enough to put butts in seats. Anything to jar the eye and demand attention, including confusing “inappropriate” lettering. I look at the overlapping baselineless angled shapes and think on how many contextual alternates it would take for an OpenType font to recreate this sort of complexity as a tool. The engineering feat, as an act of logic and intelligent coding would be more artful than the visual product. Incredibly smart fonts producing questionably dumb typesetting is not worth it. This sort of goofiness is best lettered, by hand, custom-fit for the job, because the number of occasions bouncy 3D sans is the best option cannot outnumber the hours or dollars dedicated to replicating its effect in software.

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Posted at 1:19pm and tagged with: 1920s, Toned, caps, lettering, poster, shadow, sans,.

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.

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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?

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

August 5th 2011

19 notes |#

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,.

July 14th 2011

11 notes |#

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,.

April 13th 2011

4 notes |#

Charles Livingston Bull invented Witch Haus graphics before vector art and synthesizers, in the pianola era. Digital children with your pyramids, artful cropping, and mutant angled sans: your art is not wholly of the future. In 1902, a mammoth contributor to the rugged pictorial identity of the US (working for Country Gentleman, Barnum + Bailey, The Saturday Evening Post, the war effort) chose to mix his signature naturalism with formally decorative frames, more in keeping with the cropping of muralists fitting scenes to the 3D whims of an architect’s frieze than filling the familiar rectangle page as a book illustrator might. More so, the titling says something (then) new in trying to look old, primally, Earthenly deep. In these instances, lettering artists evoke abstract notions so precisely that I imagine them more as gardeners in labcoats crossbreeding a new species of flower, repeatedly pollinating, beeless, using eyedroppers and Q-Tips. By adjusting only a few angles and dimensions, this sans has invented lineage in what I can only guess is the reimagining of monolinear inscriptions, decorative Uncial shapes, and a pile of guesswork post Mackintosh considering there is no canonical sans serif letter as stated by Sumner Stone who specializes in this sort of subtlety. What does that mean? If Serif Romans can link back to the Trajan Column, the Sans still has no academic consensus root. People can’t authentically suggest deep history in a sans the same way manuscript calligraphy makes us go “ooh, really old, like Monk in candlelight old.” Livingston Bull seems to take the industrial approach to fudging Mackintoshian letters, not unlike ATF and the Viennese cafes soon after. There was an international urge to slant and muck with cross bars to snap words together. Mind you, the majority of that last bit is conjecture and enthusiasm, less proper research. So, look at the angle and a jarring ligature so thick and carpenterial it appears loadbearing. Weighty connections in diminuitive words like “the” feel wrong, conspicuous. There is no room to politely ignore how unusual it is, blown up and singled out. Stare at your feet and not the unfortunate birthmark of a typoghraphic feature. It is substantial , and we cast it for our layouts due to its preternatural iffyness. Ligatures in all but light sans demand too much attention, historical fakery in ways we don’t accept. This is a functional sans in masquerade fare, I suspect this “THE” unsnaps its ligature and straightens its crossbar for work Monday morning. More pep in its step for the previous weekend’s debauched ball.

Swiped from Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

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Posted at 6:12pm and tagged with: 1900s, lettering, sans, caps, connecting,.

March 14th 2011

33 notes |#

The Strand is worth looking at as a beast, 700+ monthly issues of, primarily, fiction. Its image and logo changed to fit the times. Three years from its closure, I hope this adorable lettering did not contribute to a drastic redesign triggering poor sales. The “filigrets” as someone dubbed them are charming, if not always uniform in the outlines and bump amplitude, and better for it. The digitized version may have cleaned that up for the sake of logic and troubles of working with low res imagery. I am not familiar with multicolored Tuscans enough to say the decision to handle varying “E” vertical serif tone shifts was unique, but turning the white inward/down struck odd and good, off from the logical all up or all down? Part of me wanted to wait till December to showcase such red and white festiveness.

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Posted at 2:02pm and tagged with: toned, 1940s, magazine, lettering, Tuscan, caps,.

February 4th 2011

1 note |#

“The workman in drawing letters should use the technical limitations of the craft in which he works, to its own advantage. He should not endeavor by trickery to obtain results in one material or method that by right belong to others. Nor should he undertake to master that which in the nature of things is not to be overcome…he should not draw in line to imitate the technique of a woodcut, or design a type to give the effect of a letter engraved in copper…” — Frederic W. Goudy reflecting upon his 1905 design Engravers’ Roman, which could likely be attributed to his initial, and relatively out-of-character, weight of Copperplate Gothic drawn in succession for the invitation market. “Today, I would refuse even to consider such a commission; then my ideas were not so fixed.” I thank Goudy’s lapse. I thank a titan of original American type design for that family. Sadly, careless typographers blow it up without recognizing how fine serifs in small sizes turn warty when large, and shouty (or ignorant) typographers discredit the font as a blight. So, when I see lettering artists keep true to the engraved formula of however big+sharp thin serifs, especially with widened proportions, it looks lovely.

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Posted at 9:29am and tagged with: lettering, serif, caps, ad, 1950s,.

January 27th 2011

3 notes |#

Strip it down in caps. Four verticals. Five horizontals. Nothing else. After much wobble and show in last week’s science fiction venture, poster artist Dion’s structure plainspoken sans construction is welcomed. However, flavor is not lost as hitching a crossbar so many rungs up the “H” in an otherwise monotone sans is statement enough. Snipping the top “E” bar throws it over the top allowing the definite article to steal the titling show. Late at night, drowsy, I envision it as the flouncy scarf bunched into a suitcoat pocket, one beaming and dandified note in an otherwise sober business ensemble. Contemporary brand consultants would probably cough, advise Dion that the product name RAPID has multiple opportunities to emphasize straight-to-round relationships, then overcharge for said advice. But, 1910 was a more adventurous time, pour housewives had nothing to defend the homestead from unsettling winking suns save metal polish and odd horizontalled sans. Lithography artists liked their sans wild, before international type designers wedged traditional proportions built on familiarity and legibility into them for cast display type. Swiped from Galerie Montmarte.

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Posted at 12:50am and tagged with: lettering, caps, sans, poster, ad, 1910s,.

January 11th 2011

1 note |#

Look quick and see a lovely unremarkable 1900s layout, the jobbing sort where a lovely archival print is combined with lovely (stock?) floral line art, and is surrounded by a lovely lock up of lettering. Look close and see the foibles. Letter shapes change upon a whim. Glyphic serifs end sharp and shallow, one of those features whose effect is felt best in quantity building up a crisp layout gently guiding your eyes in and out of sparkly shapes. Then the Hands “s” ball terminal confuses it all. So round, so soft and alien in its serif surroundings, like its about to be popped. The letterer charged ever forward, imagining newer lovelier shapes, leaving mismatched “n” and “d”s in his/her wake. This is a cardinal sin to typographers reliant upon those control characters, disturbing the relationships between straight to curved shape midstream would be disaster in a font. The letterer cares not, individualized shapes reign: “T”s flex wide then shallow, some “E”s turn up their cross bar noses at their soft or hard edged brethren. The variables are what make these antiques lovely. Even the rules between the boxes shimmer and shake. Isolated, there is an admirable draping downswing in “THE” from the curved “T” serifs and wide disproportionate “E” strokes. A soft arc motion considering how chunky the weight is.

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Posted at 6:58pm and tagged with: lettering, caps, serif, sheet music, 1900s,.