type distortion

Graphis cover by Eberhard Rensch, 1965

advertisement for fruit essences, 1962
(funny how sterile, unfruitlike and German it is. Geschmack!)

brochure cover by Ivan Chermayeff, 1960advertisement for a Milan-based printer, 1964type studies, above and below, 1994 by me

I found a couple old Graphis magazines (very serious Swiss "bastion of excellence in design" since 1944) at my local flea market for a couple bucks apiece. This one, from 1965, was a gem. The issue featured an article about Geigy, the legendary Swiss chemical/pharmaceutical company whose brilliant and prescient attention to all things graphic was influential and, well, very Swiss (more in a future post). In addition, it also included samples from "the most ambitious typographic exhibition ever staged" Typomundus 20, which opened in New York, October 1965. There are many examples of stretched, distorted and generally groovy manipulated type, much of it reminding me of film effects in tv or old film (you know, the "hippy party scene with the wild cavorting dancers" effect, or the "you are getting very sleepy" waves). Of course this makes sense with the times: psychedelia, Op Art, and experimentation of many kinds.

I started thinking about how all this was done back in the old analog days, before you could choose a warp or fisheye filter and be done with it. This Graphis cover, by someone named Eberhard Rensch, is described as "a typographic composition that was then photographed through glass structures." How crafty it all was and had to be. Designers were ripping and pasting together images of type or developing type on acetate film, twisting and crunching it and then rephotographing, or manipulating things on stat cameras . (In a recent lecture I went to about book jacket design at Knopf Chip Kidd and Barbara de Wilde went on and on about the stat camera; it seemed to be the magic box of tricks for all their early work.)

I rooted through my old design sample folders to find these sketches I'd done (15 years ago!) Now Photoshop was around then, it debuted in 1990, but I think we just didnt have it at my office or maybe I was afraid of it. At the time I was doing a poster and brochure/checklist for an exhibit of mid-19th century railroad documentary photography called "Tracking the West." I set the title in ITC Machine and played with a printout on the xerox, moving it slightly as the light scanned. I liked the ghostly ephemeral "tracks shifting in the sand" idea but I didnt end up using it as the rationale didnt seem right: they were talking, in part, about railroad tracks!

an insider's view of cattle country*

Fat Mouth, 2008

Reindeer Vivification, 2008

Rashers. 2004

Kiss the Fat, 2005

Down the Primrose Path, 2003

I am dazzled by the old-master skill of Victoria Reynolds' paintings of meat of all kinds: oily swells of viscera, marbled swathes, and dappled and flecked prepared luncheon loaves. Like hellish Dutch still lifes her meticulously rendered slabs and piles of raw flesh mesmerize—when they don't induce a gag-reflex. I find the top piece particularly compelling, bringing out the grotesquerie of baroque and Rococo ornament. The disquieting excess of the carved decoration echoes in the whorls and folds of the meat... .

* a little dark humor... I was astounded to discover the artist is a native of Texas, with an MFA from the University of Nevada — I was sure she was British. She is represented by the Richard Heller Gallery

Grace notes

Today I happened across an article in the Times about a secret one minute grace period New York commuter rail factors in on all departing schedules. The piece was nothing special, and a good 350 words too long, but having just had a day on Metro North Thursday, it stuck with me. Evidently a unwritten tradition in New York rail going back decades, "gate time" is the extra minute it took for the last passenger through said gate as it closed, to make it to the train. Thus the train I took to New Haven the other day, listed everywhere from departure board to paper schedule as the 10:08 was in actuality parked until 10:09. At least in theory.

While in New Haven I stopped in at the Anchor. I was meeting up with an old friend whom I hadnt sat down with in about 23 years— basically since the days we might have hung out at the Anchor. The city is the same, the bar is the same, literally, and we are the same people. But not. Twenty-three years alternately slip away and intervene again.

Unfortunately I had one eye on the clock because I was cold, tired and didn't want to miss the 6:57 train. All of a sudden it was 6:35, it was raining and I needed a cab. As I was getting frantic my friend says "Dont worry, its bar time." Bar time? Setting the time ahead with a traditional fifteen minute grace period to make sure the bar closes promptly after last call. How did I not know this?

As an aside: I always think it odd how literally the clock is thought of-- as though it were somehow connected to time itself. As though a clock were like a radio tuning in to the time airwaves...

Photo by CarbonNYC

The [Brutally Honest] Language of Flowers

"Your self-love and stupidity excite my pity"

a favorite from

The Language of Flowers
The Floral Offering: A token of affection and esteem;
comprising the language and poetry of flowers
by Henrietta Dumont, 1852

A compendium of definitions and quotes on the Victorian tradition of floriography in which "various flowers and floral arrangements were used to send coded messages, allowing individuals to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken."

Do with less

After the post about British wartime posters I came across a limited but great collection of American ones at Northwestern University Library. As the site describes it,

these posters represent the government's effort, through art, illustration, and photographs, to pull the American people together in a time of adversity for the country and its population.

The only time in recent era I've felt American people "pulling together" was in the stunned aftermath of 9/11, and in a very different way, in rallying behind Barack Obama. Americans need some commonality to counterbalance the puerile "its a free country I can do what I want" reflex. I fear the country is stuck in polarity and atomizing. As Sophie Munns puts it in a comment here:

there are times for distinct messages to be put to the public reminding us of that working together for the greater good is critical - even though the "greater good scenarios" are immensely complex and global now

Not that posters could accomplish this in 2009 but a creative effort deploying ads and youtube with content created by different independent artists and small design studios might be worthwhile. (I've long thought that someone should do a pro bono ad campaign for fruit aimed at children). Alas, there's so much crap bombarding us perhaps there's no mental bandwidth to absorb civics reminders...
some random thoughts:
"Scrap" is astonishing—why the US gov't appropriated a very European fascist graphic idiom is mysterious but effective.

"United we win" is very poignant.... civil rights still had decades to go

I particularly respond to "Is your trip necessary" and "Do with less" philosophically — I could see these working today: "Leave the car at home: Walk it", and "Do with less" needs to be posted at every Costco, Walmart and Olive Garden Never-Ending Pasta Bowl and Salad bar...

note to self: Eat Greens, Defend Freedom

About two years ago, online, I came across a brilliant reproduction World War II poster sold by a gallery in London. It was silkscreened (pale blue) and I thought I'd made the most fabulous and quirky find. When it arrived friends were immediately impressed and my framer he said he'd never seen something as simple and cool. It said "Keep Calm and Carry On." Not too long after I saw one in a shop downtown, and then in Domino magazine, and... the rest is history.

I still like the poster. It's an oddly comforting voice of reason, it's beautifully spare, and it retains its permanently disquieting provenance: it was created for use in the event that the Germans occupied London. This now-famous poster, produced anonymously within the British Ministry of Information, was never in wide distribution. Some of these others, above, had print runs of up to a million and were plastered all over Britain.

Having experienced (however fleetingly and at arm's length) the apocalyptic frenzy and blind dread of 9/11, I'm barely able to comprehend what London/England went through—for years. Blackouts, nightly bombing raids, destruction of portions of the City, sleeping in subway stations, sending children out of the city, rationing... The stalwart cheeriness of a poster like "And still the railways carry on!" amazes and irritates me. "The city's being reduced to rubble and Panzer tanks will be rolling down the block next week and the government thinks it best to spend money, time and effort on patronizing ephemera!?" is probably what I would have said at the time. Now, though, I'm drawn to the we're-all-in-this-together no-bullshit tone, the chanelling of Churchillian steadfastness.

I sometimes think a series of civic-oriented posters wouldn't be a bad idea today...can we get any anti-high fructose corn syrup campaigns going?

Purple prose of yore

photo of the tomb of Olivier de Clisson (d. 1407), Notre Dame du Roncier, France, by Edwin Rae/Trinity College Dublin

photo of John, 14th Earl of Arundel (d. 1435) by flambard

The longer I don't update this blog, the more difficult it becomes to come back. Mostly this is because I get caught up in endless research and self-editing, which then leads to procrastination, frustration with my topic and a subsequent search for another topic...effectively extinguishing flames of interest at every turn. Bad.

As a perverse antidote to my debilitating, wrong-headed and ultimately fruitless quest for perfection I offer here an unvarnished piece of my early "creative writing," unearthed on a visit to my mother's today. Written when I was 16, the piece was a last gasp of my long-abiding medievalist fancies. Heavy-handed and adolescent and... I still kind of like it! It appeared in my high school literary magazine.

I marveled at the effigies
lined up along the wall,
of kings and queens and poets,
bowed equal to Death's call.

Marble rendered pious, brass,
and fragile filigree,
each erased and broken
by countless centuries.

There was but one small window,
casting a wearied light,
recounting a soul's lone passage
to Hell, its tormented flight.

The solitary casement
suffused its jeweled glow
into gray, sepulchral darkness,
rising from below.

Painfully etched in stone
the sanctae of the dead,
nisi dominus, frustra*
was all that could be read.

And I noticed as I passed
by each neglected tomb
that moss crept slowly over them
imperceptible in the gloom.

* This translates to "Except the Lord in Vain" or "Everything is in vain without the Lord" and is evidently the motto of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland.
While I have no recollection of where I picked this up, I undoubtedly read the phrase somewhere and thought it was cool.

attention art directors

I clicked through to the New York Times'
"reader submitted" video of "Woodstock Memories,"
God knows why.
Most of what's there is uninteresting current remembrance by the grizzled and the not-so, filmed in their kitchens and rec rooms.
There is, however, one haunting, mysterious home video from the time, of people driving away from the Woodstock site. It is faded, decayed, haloed and choppy and the only sound is that of a movie projector.
It is almost too oddly beautiful to be true.
The people, smiling and acknowledging the camera, seem like peace-sign flashing apparitions. The parade of cars alone is noteworthy: a record of a time when DIY jalopies were a huge automobile category....
The footage, with no other explanation, is credited to Robert Bedick.

Postscript thought: How many middle aged advertising and fashion executives of the '60s fetishized the look or music of their youth: the 1920s. (Yes— the equivalent of the Woodstockers today would have recalled Good Old Days of wind-up Victrolas, raccoon coats and silent movies.) I suppose the simple shift dresses of Courreges, say, and the boyish Twiggy silhouette owed something to the Flapper...Something I never thought about before.

my iPhone purchase, a psychological study

“I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”
— Oscar Wilde, c. 1878-80

Aesthetic Bridegroom— ‘It is quite consummate, is it not!’
Intense Bride— ‘It is indeed! Oh Algernon, let us live up to it!’

George du Maurier, Punch, October 30, 1880

After much hemming, hawing and hand-wringing, after purchasing a Blackberry and almost immediately regretting it and returning it, I bought an iPhone. I had my previous phone, a no-frills samsung which was built like a tank, for about 4-1/2 years. If the flip top (barely tethered on one side by a husk of plastic but still working) hadn't finally given way, and which required my holding the phone open with two hands, I would have kept putting off the phone purchase. (This appears to be my M.O. See my TV wrap-up, with German vocabulary)

I signed on for my Blackberry at the Verizon store on Flatbush Avenue in my neighborhood. It was just me—anxious, browsing— and the salesman, a very laissez-faire Russian guy whom I'll call Yuri. I told myself that by getting a Blackberry I was by my own volition NOT joining the cool kids, not drinking the Kool Aid. I imagined I was placing pure basic communication (phone? "check," text? "check," email? "check") over hyped gadgetry. My silent reverie of justification was interrupted by a guy who blustered in, threw down a $20 and left. Yuri explained it was simply remittance for a prepaid cell phone but somehow it gave the place a sort of a OTB feel. Once I got the thing home I sensed I was making the choice of budget managers and Human Resources VPs everywhere. I knew I was in trouble the moment I tried to reach into the screen and move something.This was not where I, a design professional, needed to be. 
 
Needless to say the Soho Apple store, crystalline and humming with genius, was my mecca. My personal iPhone facilitator, a late-20s tattooed and short-pantsed guy I'll call Hector, was chipper and i-fluent and patient as I stumbled over the touch screen and repeatedly forgot my passwords. Hector didnt miss a beat when he suggested I might want to take the free iPhone class. I am considering taking a class. For my phone.
...

Whereas previously, things I stumbled upon, or had a fleeting interest in—things that crossed my field of vision momentarily while outside— could easily be dismissed, forgotten or, if absolutely necessary, be put into long term mental or paper storage, since, well, I was outside. Now, with the iPhone am I obliged to do something? Seize and frame the moment by uploading a status report, making a video of it, searching, identifying or mapping it?
 
With this phone I can no longer forget it at home, I can no longer NOT turn it on or refuse to participate. I could find my way around in an unfamiliar city, I could upload the photos of birds I identified with my phone to flickr, I could name obscure typefaces, I could draw the cover of the NYer fer chrissakes. There's so much I could be doing, there's so much I should be doing with this phone. I hope I can live up to it.

Hollandaise source

(the pattern above, is called Holy Ghost Fire)

At top, Yinka Shonibare How to Blow up two heads at once, 2006, incorporating Vlisco Dutch Wax fabric
Shonibare's work deals with post-colonial cultural amlgamations and cultural authenticity

All other images, Vlisco

I was vaguely familiar with what I thought of, generically, as African print cloth: bright–often harsh– color choices, large patterns. That was about the sum of my knowledge. I nearly gasped when I found out about Vlisco, the Dutch fabric company that produces* much of this wax print "African cloth." In Ghana, Ivory Coast and other West African countries, "Veritable Wax Hollandaise Vlisco" (Real Dutch Wax, Vlisco) carries the same cachet as Rolex or Louis Vuitton. Popular with the "Nana-Benzes," (ladies who favor their Mercedes) Vlisco evidently pairs well with their gold-framed eyeglasses, necklaces, and gold wristwatches.

How did a company in a small town in Holland become the major purveyor of quinessentially "African fabrics"? By way of Indonesia. Dutch traders discovered Indonesian dyed fabrics and imported them back to Europe. The van Vlissingens, a Dutch merchant family, had the idea that batik dying could be mass-produced in Europe and Vlisco was established on August 15, 1846. By the late nineteenth century Dutch factories were supplying the bulk of the Indonesian batik market, and as Dutch freighters stopped at various African ports on their way over, the fabrics began to gain an African clientele. West African soldiers serving in the East Indies also took to the fabrics and brought them back when they returned home. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when economic restrictions were enacted to protect domestic Indonesian batik production, Africa gradually became the exclusive market for Dutch batik. Central and West Africa in particular embraced the fabrics, integrating them into the local culture.

Do-lo-rez ottomans upholstered in Vlisco by Ron Arad for Moroso
photo from yatzer

The prints are vivid, overscaled and exhilarating.
Many of the fabrics, though, feature incongruously representational—realistic—subject matter. It is this literalness that I find difficult to... parse. Vlisco has been showing up in Western fashion and now industrial and interior designers are incorporating it as well (see above). The fabric's use in nontraditional ways has a brio and irony that is ravishing. But with the wax print fabric's original colonial provenance in mind, out-sized patterns of table fans, video game control panels, wristwatches and richly outfitted kitchens veer uncomfortably close to 'naive' and 'totemic' for me. A kind of conflation of animist wish fulfillment and western status good. Rather than wearing the logo, wear (the representation of) the object itself— or a list of your favorite possessions.

Some background from the exhibit Fabric of a Nation: textiles and identity in modern Ghana held at the British Museum in 2007:

Wax prints are prestigious cloths with a high social value... Cloths are also widely used as a powerful mass communication media, for commemorative, political, religious, social and other message conveying purposes.

Similarly a Vlisco press blurb offers this quasi mystical take on, essentially, wearable inventories of material goods:

This collection is a symbolic interpretation of crowning moments and treasured possessions. The designs reflect abstract objects and images that bring memories to life in vivid, fantastical form. Each fabric tells a colourful story of its own, personal to those who wear them and those who admire them. How looking through a key hole or ringing a door bell or taking a journey may have changed your destiny. How precious items or music may speak volumes to you alone. Each design evokes a personal, unique connection and bond. So, reflect upon your own journey.

Surreal. Equal parts "shocking" Schiaparelli gesture, superstition, and status trade trinket...

* Some explanation of the process: Wax print fabrics are created with a resist-dye technique akin to Indonesian batik. Engraved copper rollers spread hot wax on both sides of a roll of fabric. The cloth is then dipped into a dye bath, color penetrating into the areas that are not covered with wax. (The sign of a quality wax print is that the cloth is printed on both sides.) The wax is washed off in varying stages and the process is repeated, layering the color prints. The technical difficulty in trying to align patterns in different colors gives the lesser quality productions a slightly haphazard organic quality. Colors that don't align properly come out looking like bad offset printing, which I find enormously appealing...

Addendum: interesting information and observations from someone familiar with some of the traditional fabrics in Africa (Thank you, Nina):

When we lived in Cameroon I collected a lot of cloth materials (called "pagnes" which is french for loincloth) but unfortunately the Chinese have now entered the market and are doing it much cheaper than anyone else. Subsequently people are buying it from them rather than the Dutch and the quality is entirely different. Also, because of the immense volume of used western clothing being shipped to Africa it is so much cheaper for people to buy western clothing instead of having things made out of the traditional cloth. That is also a reason for the decline. Here in Madagascar, except on the coasts, no one wears the traditional lamba material either. In the markets you can buy t-shirts, pants, shirts, etc. for pennies. It is a great pity. I miss a lot the color and mix of design from Central and West Africa. Something else that was also fun to see were the cloths printed for every occasion by businesses. The beer manufacturers, electric companies, etc. and bible verses, too, very popular.