Archive for the ‘Typography’ Category
good fun
Typographic World Map
Typographic World Map (2011)
Nancy McCabe
Letterpress (blind longitude & latitude lines)
22 x 28 inches (19 x 25 image area)
Edition of 50
Printed on Savoy – Natural 118lb C
Black ink
On Kawara
On Kawara
American, born Japan 1933
Oct. 31, 1978 (Today Series, “Tuesday”), 1978
Acrylic on canvas and newspaper
155 x 226 cm (61 x 89 in.)
Twentieth-Century Purchase Fund, 1980.2a-b
©On Kawara. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York.
Oct. 31, 1978 is one of more than two thousand “date paintings” that On Kawara has produced since 1966. Though they vary in size, each work shares a similar format—the specific date, which is painted without the use of stencils in white, occupies a central location on the monochromatic canvas and is the painting’s sole image. Utilizing the language of the country where he painted the canvas, Kawara either completes each work on the day emblazoned on its surface or destroys it. While usually not exhibited, a newspaper accompanies every work to document the date and location of its execution. Deceptively simple, Oct. 31, 1978, like all of Kawara’s date paintings, both records and celebrates the simple fact that the artist, and his creative energies, existed at this point in time.
T
Ask an artist to explain his work, and there’s a good chance you’ll get a disquisition littered with $5 words and critical-theory catchphrases. Which makes it all the more refreshing to hear the set designer Gary Card, who collaborated with the photographer Jacob Sutton to create the fiery T in the our latest issue, Anglomaniacs (Oct. 18), say: “A burning effigy in a dramatic countryside setting sounded like too much fun not to do.”
Above: Card commissioned a welder to fabricate a 10-foot-tall steel T, onto which Card wove layer upon layer of lightweight sugar cane. The whole thing was then soaked with alcohol. “We lit it with a blowtorch,” he says, “and then ran for our lives.”
“Now Burning: Gary Card’s T”. T: The New York Times Style Magazine. 19 Oct 2009. [http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/now-burning-gary-cards-t/#more-38823]
Vanity Fair’s forgotten experiment
“In 1929, Vanity Fair magazine, the jewel in the crown of Condé Nast’s publishing empire, made typographic history. Influenced by Modern design trends throughout Europe, especially the Bauhaus, art director Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha introduced Paul Renner’s Futura — and also did away with all capital letters in headlines on columns and feature articles.
The result was at once jarring and elegant — illustrating the capital M of Modernism, through the sole use of lowercase letters. It was also an indication that Frank Crownishield (then editor of Vanity Fair), a highly respected literary figure and social bon vivant, and Mr. Nast, one of the most powerful men in mainstream publishing, trusted their Ukraine-born art director enough to let him challenge convention.
The lower case “experiment” certainly helped visually define Vanity Fair as a progressive force on the publishing scene for years to follow. However, in truth, its lowercase legend lasted longer than the reality. After only a year or so, just as suddenly as capitals disappeared, they reappeared in the March 1930 issue and the editors published a full-page editorial titled, “A Note on Typography.”
Such an explanation of design policy was a first for American magazines. The fact that Crownishied decided to “present the case pro and con capital letters in titles, writing finis to an experiment,” was evidence of the stature of art direction and design in the Condé Nast empire. Today the following text is a model of design erudition and a textbook example of how graphic design can be discussed on a public stage.”
- Steven Heller
July 2, 2008 for The Design Observer Group
* * *
Read Vanity Fair’s “A Note on Typography” (published March 1930) which provided readers with an insightful explanation for the experiment no one saw coming, and no one anticipated leaving.
Above: a Nickolas Muray photograph of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Crawford published in an October 1929 issue embodies the past decade’s carefree lifestyle. It seems no coincidence the wheels of such a typographic experiment started to come off the train as America moved into the Great Depression four weeks later. The publication’s return to a more sober typography in March of the following year complimented a decade where dependability trumped experimentation.
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Cutlass Supreme Brougham
SIGNS
“Pentagram Papers 39: SIGNS”
Foreword by Joe Ely
Homeless Portraits by Michael O’Brien
Signs Photographed by Randal Ford
Excerpt:
“No one is really homeless. Home has always been a place of refuge inside oneself. But fear and anxiety can lead a drifter away from that refuge and on to a life of desperation. What is said on the signs is rarely the truth. Few could bear the truth. What is said is an advertisement. That life is hard. That bad luck happens. That wrong turns have been made. That survival itself is a realization of the need to be awake.”
