catchword

David Pearson
Great Ideas Vol. 1, Penguin Books

I really struggle with the idea that book covers should have a distinct voice. In many ways I think a book cover should do no more than titillate, leaving the blurb — and reader — to do the rest. I don’t think it should be down to me to reveal what the chief protagonist looks like, nor to imbue a piece of photography with a meaning for which it was never intended. Typographic or pattern-led covers challenge the reader to project meaning onto them, which feels entirely more sympathetic and — luckily for me — the French publishing industry seems to embrace quietly suggestive cover designs.

Text Designer David Pearson, interviewed by Peter Terzian in Print: Design for Curious Minds

It's not clear to me how I missed Penguin's reissue of the Great Ideas series, in four volumes no less with a fifth imminent, designed exquisitely by David Pearson. My only excuse is that, perhaps, the releases with their extraordinary book design didn't make it to the US, and we all know I've had my own difficulties leaving these shores of late.

Although I fear the reason may be that I don't spend enough time in bookstores anymore, browsing the tables with the latest releases; that I rely too much on the Internet for information and insights; that I buy too frequently from Amazon; that I've neglected my first, my truest, my dearest friends: books.

How curious that I would discover what I've missed through a random Flickr photostream encounter.

Whatever the reason, Mr. Pearson's work is exquisite and makes me want to toss off my responsibilities and spend a good solid series of weeks catching up with the great ideas books, and then weeks more discovering new books that his covers tease out for me.

Enjoy.

Great Ideas Vol. 1 »
Great Ideas Vol. 2 »
Great Ideas Vol. 3 »
davidpearsondesign.com

Internally, illustrative endpapers and a decorative title page are joined by a rather unusual text setting method rarely seen in the last hundred years. Each right-hand page sports what is known as a catchword: a hanging word that provides the opening of the following page. We believe that this aids the flow of reading, especially when using a larger, heavy page with a slow turning rate.

From the same interview cited above.

today's post in which my illustrative hero, Chris Ware, single-handedly saves print media by creating remarkable cover art

Illus: New Yorker 2 Nov 2009 by Chris Ware via @scottknaster
Two lovely covers by Chris Ware are currently on the newsstands. I explained to mr. hoo that Granta's measly $17 price tag will easily be recouped years from now when I sell my pristine copy (except for the spine breaks at the Stu Dybek short story) on eBay for hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of dollars.

Or maybe I'll just read the rest and keep my copy close.

I had the chance to see Chris Ware and Lynda Barry on a panel at the Printers Row Book Fair this last summer. (Forgive me: it's the Lit Fest now. still feels unnatural.) Would have blogged about watching the two of them alive in their friendship and their love of what they do if I hadn't received some bad news just as the session wrapped up that took the wind out of my sails.

Suffice it to say: I'm convinced that each is doing the best kind of service to the world, setting their imaginations loose to bravely make stuff up that, on contact with paper, ink and air, transmogrifies into that lovely thing called art that catches in the soft spot between the ribs, and cracks the heart open like an oyster to the ache and wonder and pearly stuff of life.

Thanks, guys. You rock.

p.s. They're coming back -- you can catch Chris Ware and Lynda Barry at the Chicago Humanities Fest. (Matt Groening will be there too.)

Illus: Granta 108 Chicago by Chris Ware

magnificent desolation

Photo: Apollo 11: East Crater Panorama, Apollo 11 Crew, NASA;
Mosaic Assembly: Mike Constantine

Although Mr. Armstrong is known as a man of few words, his heartbeats told of his excitement upon leading man's first landing on the moon.

At the time of the descent rocket ignition, his heartbeat rate registered 110 a minute -- 77 is normal for him -- and it shot up to 156 at touchdown.

From ASTRONAUTS LAND ON PLAIN; COLLECT ROCKS, PLANT FLAG; A Powdery Surface Is Closely Explored in the 21 July 1969 issue of the New York Times, rerun in today's paper as a special advertising supplement sponsored by Louis Vuitton.

It's worth picking up a print copy of the New York Times today -- it's that cool to read the story as it was reported when it happened.

Also in the insert, from a special report by Harold M. Schmeck Jr.:

Two American Astronauts proved last night that man can see, walk, and work on the surface of the moon.

Moving very cautiously at first, they soon found they could walk across the lunar surface easily in bounding, almost floating steps.

They seemed to have a little difficulty in adjusting their vision to the deep shadows of the airless moon, but their depth perception appeared not to suffer at all, nor did their appreciation of the scene.

"Magnificent desolation," was the phrase Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. used to describe the view.

on gams and dames

Guys that talk about the ideal woman just don't like women. I don't want an ideal woman, I just like dames.

John Steinbeck in the July 1950 "All Male Issue" of Flair Magazine, when "handed a sketch pad and a snapshot of [a] plastic manikin" and asked by the editor "to draw his Ideal Woman in the same pose and give us his whys and wherefores."

Flair asked columnist Earl Wilson, couturier Jacques Fath and child actor Brandon de Wilde (Shane! Come back Shane!) to do the same.

I got my hands on this particular copy of Flair through eBay when I read that its editor, Fleur Cowles, passed away a couple of weeks ago. Flair counted W. H. Auden, Jean Cocteau, Simone de Beauvoir, Angus Wilson, Tennessee Williams, Ogden Nash and Clare Boothe Luce, Salvador Dalí, Saul Steinberg, Lucian Freud, Rufino Tamayo and Winston Churchill among its contributors.

At 50 cents a copy, Flair's standards and elaborate art direction managed to lose the publication money at a time when print was still going strong and most magazines sold for 20 cents. According to the New York Times:

Although there were just 12 issues of Flair, published from February 1950 to January 1951, the magazine caused a sensation and is still admired for its coverage of fashion, décor, travel, art, literature and other enthusiasms of Ms. Cowles’s. It was part of the Cowles publishing empire, which included newspapers in the Midwest and, most notably, Look magazine, of which Ms. Cowles had been an influential editor.

But Flair, incorporating cutouts, fold-outs, pop-ups, removable reproductions of artworks and a variety of paper stocks of different sizes and textures, was simply too expensive to produce, even though it sold for 50 cents a copy when Time and Life were selling for 20 cents.

When Flair ceased publication, Mr. Cowles, who had financed it, estimated that it had lost $2.5 million. Circulation, less than 100,000 for the first issue, eventually doubled, but advertising did not follow, and losses were running about 75 cents a copy.

Ms. Cowles would be pleased to learn that issues are currently trending considerably higher than that, and have exploded even in the few short days since her death.

(Which is why I'm no longer buying.)

where there's more of singing and less of sighing

Where the West Begins

Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,
Out where friendship's a little truer,
That's where the West begins:
Out where a fresher breeze is blowing,
Where there's laughter in every streamlet flowing,
Where there's more of reaping and less of sowing
That's where the West begins.

Out where the world is in the making,
Where fewer hearts in despair are aching,
That's where the West begins;
Where there's more of singing and less of sighing,
Where there's more of giving and less of buying,
And a mana makes friends without half trying,
That's where the West begins.

Picked this up at the Arts & Crafts Chicago show this morning at Concordia University in River Forest: it's a 1920s print with a piece by a fellow named Arthur Chapman -- whom Google tells me is a classic cowboy poet -- in the original frame. It's a lovely spot printing job -- although I'm not convinced the bristle cone pine and the mesas make a whole lot of sense together.

Still. Makes me lonesome for the American West.

Also brought home a couple of oak pieces to fill out the floor plan. Because that's the rule: there's no leaving an Arts & Crafts show without a little oak.

cup of coffee by the fire

Last interior page of a facsimile of the 1933 Taliesin Fellowship Brochure written and designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The brochure is an application for residence in the apprentice program at Taliesin where:

Each is required to pay a fixed fee according to the terms stated on the application blank herewith. In addition they will be required to do their share of work in the upkeep and care of the grounds and buildings and the productive activities of the farm for the participating in practical work in the studios and shops and in the production of art objects and exemplars for industry and building, or for exhibition and perhaps sale.

In the course of the 18 page brochure FLW also rises up on his soapbox:

Taliesin is concerned with the impotence that is the consequence of the gamble in education, believing young America over-educated and under-cultued: Sex over emphasized, present sex social differentiations absurd or obscene.

And waxes poetic:

The being that is unconcerned with seeming has found in our life little soil in which to grow.

I was flipping through the brochure last night in preparation for (don't laugh) Architecture Fantasy Camp (I wish they called it something else) this weekend at the Frank Lloyd Wright Studio in Oak Park.

We get to draw on those pretty drafting tables.

chestnuts

embiggen »
Bag for holding roasted chestnuts with chestnut meat smudges (upper right hand corner).

Nara, Japan
New Year's Day 2003

bolsa de mareo

Mexicana Airlines
spot color on vinyl
with sticky peel tape affixiant
and palimpsest
11 1/2" x 4 1/2"
click.com.mx

of Batman, Superman and the Marquis de Sade

Life Magazine, 1960s sometime

Really wanted to find out what the headline was all about, but didn't want to spend the $35 to do it.

Printer's Row Book Fair
Chicago, IL

of american politics and the defenestration of panties

A greeting card from my sister, aka she who aspired to be a mermaid. Annotated.






The Text:

(canned hallmark copy) When I'm President, I'm gonna settle all disputes with a dance-off. // You're gonna be Vice President, so work on your moves.

(deb copy) But you know, I'll probably be impeached after only a month in office for throwing your underpants off the White House balcony [1] into the Rose Garden 500 times [2]. You'll tap Johnny Whitaker [3] for your Veep & usher in a new era where everyone is nice to everyone, they all have enough money, and cars run on grape juice [4] -- which is very, very cheap. And pollution free. [5] Plus they'll put your face on all the stamps even while you're still in office. So let's just forget the whole thing & hope Barack wins. [6]

The Annotations:
[1] The author alludes to the defenestration of panties of our childhood, in which she, the older sister, tormented me, the younger sister, by dropping my underwear through our open second-story bedroom window into the flower bed below. Repeatedly.

She did this publicly and in broad daylight, and frequently when her friends were over, to demonstrate her mastery over me. I, in my horror, would run down the stairs and out to the flowerbed to retrieve the panties, mortified that the cute boys playing hockey in the street would have witnessed the incident and known they were mine. They only knew they were mine, of course, because I was the only one rushing down to the flowerbed in horror. Had I stayed inside no one would have noticed the brief whisper of white that floated down and settled into the soil.

Almost without fail Deb would be waiting for me, on my return, with another pair of panties poised and ready to drop through the open window. She would release them as soon as she saw that I saw what was about to occur.

And so it would begin again.

[2] And again. And again. And again.

[3] Johnny Whitaker, you may remember, stared alongside Sigmund in the Saturday morning live action show Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. Deb had a thing for Johnny, and daydreamed about writing love letters to the budding young star, which she would sign "Love, Debby" with a generously flourished cursive "L".

[4] We were sometimes broke growing up, sometimes not, depending upon my parents' immediate fortunes. Broke times were powered by much grape juice because yes: it is very very cheap.

[5] Nothing if not environmentally virtuous, my sister.

[6] This would be the political part.


(The only thing more surreal than coming off two weeks on the road covering both coasts late late late on a Friday night, is coming home to something like this.

Which, of course, made my day.)

oh behave

Video: Yes We Can

They once called John Kennedy the first television president, and I think it's fair to predict that Obama could turn out to be the first internet president.

John Dukakis, Sr VP-branded entertainment at Boston ad agency Hill Holliday, and the son of past-presidential contender Michael Dukakis, as cited in today's AdAge piece Creatives Have a Crush on Obama.

The piece, which speaks to the facetime that Obama's receiving online and the creatives who have made gratis contributions to Obama's efforts to take the White House, also cites Shepard Fairey, who's created several pro-bono print pieces for the campaign, and leaks the fact that he'll soon be revealing another that he developed in cooperation with the Obama campaign. (Still pro-bono, though.) Says Fairey:

His politics fall perfectly in line with what I do as an artist. In advertising and marketing, things are simplified to accentuate the positive and utilize soundbites that are really powerful; it's about economical communications, and [Barack Obama] is really good at that.

That type of approach to politics -- when it seems like he really has conviction, too -- is really easy to distill down to marketable images. It felt really easy for me to make a poster for him.

Most disturbing quote of the piece? Barack Obama "behaves like a well-defined brand".

go tell mama

Aija's mention of Shepard Fairey's Obama posters led to me to chase down a thread that emerged from my Flickrstream some time back when I posted a cameraphone shot of a creepy Obama poster -- one of many that was plastered about downtown Chicago.

Someone in the know left the essential breadcrumb -- which, on clickthrough, also provided an answer to where this lovely stencil came from -- all part and parcel of a grassroots art campaign to get the word out on Obama.

Or, more succinctly: "Go Tell Mama I'm for Obama!"

I.e. gotellmama.org

Good stuff. Come to find out, Shepard Fairey's work is here too, as a guest artist, along with Mike Genovese, Cody Hudson, and Lashun F. Tines.

And they have an online store (but, lord love 'em, not one stinkin' permalink on the whole site. You'll have to pick and poke through the top nav to get there).

jodi green's mfa thesis

dress #7 state 5 (back)
Originally uploaded by jodigreen.
I'm so digging this dress.

Posted by Flickrite Jodi Green -- an installment in her MFA Thesis project in which she's:

wearing exclusively dresses that I have made and printed on, wearing each only once before printing on it again, and documenting the printing, the wearing and the building up of ink/breaking down of fabric that occurs.

She's documenting the project on her blog »

make it neue

helvetica
Originally uploaded by Michael Surtees.

Before you laugh about the fact that I attended the Gene Siskel Film Center screening of Helvetica [1] last night – a documentary about a typeface – you should know that the event was sold out. As were both screenings the night before.

Of course, the room seated about a fraction of a regular movie house. But still.

I’d call myself a type wonk; my husband calls me (and did, just last night) a type whore.

Maybe because I spent a little too long pouring over cases of old type at last weekend’s Printers Row Book Fair (“you go ahead, sweetie – I’ll catch up”); maybe because I read Jan Tschihold for kicks and have a hunch that the 1949 Playbill for Kiss Me Kate that I inherited from my grandfather was strongly influenced – if not designed by -- a young Paul Rand (my money’s on the latter), who was kicking around New York at that time . (Just as my money’s on the hunch that Al Hirschfield drew the cover of the 1950 Playbill for Kizmet that hangs alongside it, carefully framed on the wall, even though when I pinged the good folks at Playbill to confirm either they said “our records don’t go back that far”).

But in truth I’m a pimp and procurer; more John than whore. I use type, devour it, expect it to please me and am willing to pay for the privilege.

I’ll spare you my reaction to seeing Zapf himself on screen; save you the discussions of weight and line and heft and containment; ascenders, descenders, x-heights and baselines; and give you just this: the movie is about more than Helvetica. And it doesn’t take sides (well, nearly not). So if you’re not a fan of the ubiquitous Swiss face, you can still have a good time.

The conflict that the movie chases down is whether or not, in design, we expect to speak through our letterforms – expect them to remain “invisible”, “like the air”, as Helvetica was described several times in this film -- or whether we want our letterforms to speak for us -- to assist the word, to shape the emotional impact that it will have on us. Do we want “explosion” to explode; the word “caffeinated” to be wired, jittery, amped up, alive? Or do we want a clarity of form that’s nearly translucent, one that allows letterforms to emerge without hindrance to become what they’re meant to be – words.

To my mind, type, for those who know they care [2], is a matter of taste, like lingerie – some prefer to cloak the form through which they realize their desires in lace, bows and ties; others prefer the barest concealment, so that the curve of the word can come through true.

Hiding somewhere in the back and forth bickering among the rock stars of typography and design who populate the movie were some interesting questions about modernism, post-modernism, and the way each generation reinvents itself, smashes the constructs that the last generation worked so diligently to create anew so that something of theirs will last them out -- but of course it doesn't. Not all of it, anyway. Because of course the next round of dreamers and believers will smash it down and begin again.

And maybe at the end of the day they come up with something that, fundamentally, is very much like the thing that circulated not too long before – maybe two, three, generations ago. Maybe. Or maybe not.

But it’s new, and it’s theirs.

And then we begin again.



p.s. There was a joke in the film about type wonks who have a hard time with period films that get the typefaces wrong – for those with an interest in these things, Mark Simonson fires off about that very thing in his classic piece, Typecasting »


[1] And you thought I was kidding.
[2] And anyone who reads is impacted by type, whether they realize it or not.

gill sans culottes

When not carving letters or at his devotions, the randy inventor of Gill Sans and Perpetua entertained himself -- sultan-like -- by rogering his wife, sisters, daughters, disciples (male and female), and the long-suffering family dog.

Stanford English professor Terry Castle blurbing on Fiona MacCarthy's book "Eric Gill: A Lover's Quest for Art and God in the March issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

Apologies to all who may not have wanted to know this unsavory fact about Mr. Gill, "the greatest British type designer of the twentieth century."

I'm wondering if I can ever recommend a Gill Sans or Perpetua type treatment to a client again, without looking terribly embarassed.