Dell'Italia

Okay, so it's not the most amazing example of Italian typography, but I just couldn't resist uploading this image as my first post back in the US back in the US back in the U S of A. Here's your name in a very uncharacteristic (and . . . er . . . cheesy) cursable cursive.

What I would have bought

I was fascinated by some of the artwork that was going to be in the Michael Jackson auction in February 2009. If I had to pick one thing, it would have been this painting, the Portrait of Michael Jackson dressed as a King, oil on canvas, signed and dated 1995. Housed in an elaborate gold frame. Norman Oak (American, B. 20th Century) Guide price: $4,000–$6,000.

[Photograph: Shaan Kokin/Julien's Auctions]

Now maybe I'll have to paint my own. Of me!

Guest Reporter at Large: Anél Henning

I got an invitation to a book launch, but couldn't make it. Luckily, Miss Anél Henning went and gives us her report!

Anél says, "I attended a book signing tonight for The Handy Book of Artistic Printing: A Collection of Letterpress Examples with Specimens of Type, Ornament, Corner Fills, Borders, Twisters, Wrinklers, and other Freaks of Fancy by Doug Clouse and Angela Voulangas."

"The party was at Bowne & Co., Stationers in the heart of South Street Seaport. I really enjoyed the launch and was extremely impressed by the overall design of the book as well as the examples of type specimens and letterpress design collections."

Picture day!

Some of the loveliest diner neon I've seen—this diner is near NJCU where I used to teach. This is the Miss America Diner on West Side Avenue in Jersey City, NJ. Side note: delicious spanakopita and strawberry milkshakes!

3 for 99¢

One of my prized possessions, this shopping list was left behind in a shopping cart in a supermarket. May I say (and a shout out to all of you who are reading this...and you know who you are!) that it is better than some of my students' type renderings. Ahem.

Heaven and Earth

While on the subject on environmental issues (CONGRATS ABOUT BEING A FEATURED ARTIST), I want to give a shout out to Richard Long, whose exhibit at the Tate Britain shows his forty-year run with art, words, environment and how he's used all of the above to explore a relationship between time, distance, geography and measurement. I have many images but little time to upload etc. Long is more admirable, to me, than Andy Goldsworthy. And where Ed Ruscha documented every building on the Sunset Strip, Long documented standing stones. Richard Long is to stones as Ed Ruscha is to overbuilt American roads? The show graphics are in --surprise!--Gill, but many of the works's labels are hand-lettered, in pencil, by Long. Awesome.

Oh, Beehive!

Elisa Pritzker, a local (and talented and very busy) artist, is working on a project called Project Green, an interactive project database featuring artists talking about environmental issues. One of the artists is Atticus Lanigan, whose materials list is stunningly evocative.

Materials: used honeycomb, recycled doll’s head, Chinese newspaper, blue flowers ripped from a very old tattered plastic stem found in an empty blue wedding album circa 1890s, glue, dark red thread that pervades my work, two recycled brooches altered, camphor used for prayer at Spice Aroma restaurant in Poughkeepsie, a wooden box acquired from a sad florist going out of business, nails taken From the halfway dismantled box from the sad florist.

Full disclosure: I'll be one of the featured artists soon.

WWRD? (What Would Ringo Do?)

In honor of Beth's hop across the pond, here's some killer animation for The Beatles Rock Band video game.

Mash notes

While Beth is off on vacation, I thought I'd take a bit of one myself. I'll be posting some of my "found design" stuff, like this delicious bit of business—a mash note from an alpha 13 year-old girl to a 10 year-old girl. Came complete with homemade envelope!
Front:

Back:

Flying off if not tweeting

At JFK, I hope to post a bit from England or Italy. So far, the airport's a trip.

DKNY KOd

The painted DKNY ad at Broadway and Houston was a photo magnet for lots of tourists. Complete with Statue of Liberty and the Twin Towers, it graced the corner for years (and may have begun the trend to turn Houston Street into the Boulevard of Racy Banners). As of yesterday, the wall is blank—probably not for long. For a surreal moment, note the ad in its heydey, shot from BTD to capture the sweet elusive butterfly that had appeared near the window boxes.

Endless summer

If only I could have found Helvetica numbers! Some of the horrifying options included waxen glitter, teal polka dots, and TV characters. At least the selection was better than last year—a lot of the "1"s have weird serifs that make them look like computer "L"s. Will have to do some stealth photography to make my point, but here's a link if you're dying to see!.

Speaking of stealth photography, some retrofuture Pepsi spotted in a Walmart, and some other kind of retrofuture Sunkist on a billboard.

I'm loving the acrylic look of these Sunkist ads, although it makes me think orange-soda-plastic-summer, perhaps not the advertiser's intention!

Terrible Twos

What an adorable shot of Nina. Bellissima. What a great and quirky "2." It's pretty impressive that you avoided Helvetica in favor of a waxen two with character. And who knew the Terrible Twos were typographical?

2!

So hard to find a typographically pleasing number candle!

Nina

Happy Birthday, Nina!



I hope the terrible twos are too stormy. Nina sure seems like a sweet n' easy kid. You may be amused that on my first search for an image of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, I got screens and screens of women named "Nina." Wikipedia shows a fire on reproductions of the ships; a few blogs show kids crafts; a Kriss Kross puzzle has a crossword with clues based on the names of the ships. This shot from Heritage-History is bland but historical.

Chew York, Chew York

I heart the campaign. I love the silliness, the puns, the reworked type, and the fake language, "Snacklish." My personal fave is Snaxi, as shown in the screenshot from the NY Times online. Like you, I poked around a bit. There are fans as well as detractors. Chewart Elliott wrote about it in the Chew York Times (he called it The Nougat York Times). Also, I think Snickers are delish, so my brand loyalty is high, puns or not. Isn't it interesting that brands were originally marks burned onto the outside of flesh (steer, thank god) and now a brand works because it has a life of its own, a soul that resonates with a certain group (not to mention a Facebook and Twitter presence).

Hot Peanuts!

I'm loving this campaign for Snickers, especially the Peanutarium one.

but in researching it, I found some detractors complaining (to the City, even!) about their guerrilla marketing techniques.

Boom- or Bust- ers

I, too, make a habit of running in and seeing the museum shows at the last minute—glad you and Pat got a chance to go. Was it one of the new late Monday nights? A terrible time to ask, but did you get to see the Tangled Alphabets show, too, while you were there? There's some beautiful lettered work in that show, and it closes June 15.



When I was a kid, I was totally into the idea of Manifest Destiny (I think I read those Laura Ingalls books one too many times). Now, as an adult, I can more fully understand the religious over? under? tones of that concept and I find it a bit creepier and sometimes a bit analogous to the conflicts that are happening all around that are based in the crush of dogma. That said, a lot of those images in the show are just so lovely and have been under-shown, and it looks like a beautifully curated show.

And yes, how hilarious that you took a picture of that Dyson hand dryer. If I haven't joked about this already with you, I find it hilarious that Dyson came to prominence when his wife asked him to vacuum the house one day and, he, so frustrated with the vacuum cleaner, retreated into his garage and worked for 3 years developing a vacuum with better suction instead!


Anyway, having tried that super-blower in MoMA I have to confess that it was a bit more powerful than I thought it would be and it was a bit frightening to put my (very important to me!!!) hands into what looks like a sideways meat slicer. The ensuing blast of air and sound had my hands outta that thing in like 3 seconds . . . partially out of fear! You?

Into the Sunset

There's nothing like a deadline. On its very last night, Pat and I saw MoMA's exhibition "Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West." I loved it. I loved: the classic images by Edward Curtis; some surprises by Timothy O'Sullivan, who documented the 19th century West before dying at the age of 42; Ed Ruscha's much-seen Every Building on the Sunset Strip"; Cindy Sherman's poses; everything by Robert Frank; Dennis Hopper's intersection; and David Hockney's dizzying image of the decidedly non-blossomed Pearlblossom Highway, created with wacky perseverance out of manyMANY polaroid images (online, in reproduction, the polaroids read almost as brushstrokes). I certainly got the difference between the spare expanses of the land versus the violational expansions of alleged civilization. I guess you might call this one a show for Boomers if not a Boomer show.

BUT the biggest discovery of last night wasn't "Into the Sunset" or even the performance group Stars Like Fleas; instead, it was an appliance.
The MoMA restrooms have the most extraordinary Dyson Airblade hand dryers, complete with odd little icons and numbered instructions telling you to 1. Insert hands and 2. Draw out slowly.

There are commercials on You Tube as well as a healthy discussion by detractors. I was too taken by the hygienic maw to objectively analyze the machine. We got "Into the Sunset" and into the hand dryer on the same night.

I feel pretty

Eeee-yew. Your spine was the best part of the jacket. Yes, I know that's my cue to insert an image of the spine. The inside was something to crow about it, even if Drew Hodges once said, in reply to my noting BTD designed the book, that he imagined it was "pretty." Ouch—but I still have a design crush on Drew and crew.

Broadway Baby

So great that Drew and SpotCo got such a well-deserved thank you! One of the highlights of my "career" was definitely when Julie Andrews called the BTD-designed Broadway: An American Musical "gorgeous" (or in my English accent . . . gawhgeous"!)!

And re: Sagmeister—maybe not so tidy as much as soooo readable—even when cut on the body. Not so with that lettering on the fence, my not so legible photo is also not helping! See the type on skin here.

One big Broadway step for design kind

In his acceptance speech for the Tony for best musical, one of the show's producers, thanked a raft of people, including Drew Hodges of Spotco. The extraodinarily talented owner of a design and ad agency gets a shout out at an awards show broadcast on national TV (low ratings, but who cares?). Major applause!!!

Type Soup

I never think of Stefan Sagmeiester as being Austrian tidy. Words cut into his body. Poster for AIGA with chicken with head cut off. Early (literally cheeky) work from his early jobs in the Far East. What am I missing?

Some sources date Stan Davis's futuristic font back to 1964; Linotype's version is from 1965. One blogger notes that something based on, drawn to match, or related to Amelia was used for the cover of Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock, which looks shockingly dated. Other searches bring up other dates, no doubt because various foundries bought Amelia at different times. Enough!

Speaking of dating, I recall an interview that the astoundingly eloquent and prolific Steven Heller conducted with a cantankerous Paul Rand (né Peretz Rosenbam). Heller pointed out the timelessness of Rand's work and the datedness of timely work. That said, everything has an expiration date.

I love your shot of the rapidly-disappearing downtown—and feel semi-scooped by a book published by Norton that shows many endangered Brookyn storefronts (maybe it's still possible to do versions for other boroughs). Not that I want our conversation to focus solely on the already-famous, but I must note that Paula Scher's paintings evoke the world of the accomplished-but-quirky hand.

On a different, but sort of related note, I got a huge kick out of a number of unabashedly unsophisticated logos (some with hand-drawn type, some "modern") that I noticed while walking down Madison Avenue. Created, it seems, for businesses that may have been around before iconic logos and branding became as universal as they are today, they illustrate as opposed to encapsulate. They're imperfect, but I really like them.

For instance, how could you not like Mr. Pickle? As charming/silly as Gumby, he makes me smile every time I see him and his barrels, buckets, and slogans on the truck in front of PJ Bernstein's Deli (which, by the way, used to have a sign with unwittingly funky typography and now has a sign with self-consciously funky typography).



The combo of Gas and (modern) Gabbana cracked me up.


Advantage Plumbing throws in everything but the kitchen sink in its graphics.


Finally, Eurama seems to be Mr Pickle's continental graphic cousin.


C'est si sorta bon!

And the past

I'm thinking that I "cannot blow out a match" cannot be Sagmeister, it's just not Austrian tidy enough, but I have no idea who it could be. Funny about the School of the Future—I've heard stories that Optima was banned at Pushpin!
At least they didn't go for a digital looking face (like Amelia):

Did you know that typeface was designed in 1967!
So to counter all this futurism, here's a picture (taken a couple of weeks ago downtown) of a rapidly disappearing past:

There's Optima in your Future

The School of the Future has signage in Herman Zapf's Optima. Funny (both odd and ha-ha) that Paul Renner's Futura didn't make the grade.

Yes we can blow out a match

How do you know the fence installation is not Sagmeister—the meister of taking something and doing something else to it.

As for the Fairey clones, it's amusing that poetic justice rules. Fairey appropriated Manny Garcia>'s photo; Paste and others use hilariously use Fairey's iconic approach. I love the example of the woman-as-scream-as-Fairey Obamicon. Is Fairey an icon genius? Or was Obama icon-ready? Discuss. Use extra ether if necessary.

Yes, obviously, we all can, too.

Of course, you can always make your own at Paste Magazine.

I cannot blow out a match

Reminds me of Stefan Sagmeister stuff from the show at Deitch Projects:

Younger Than Jesus

I was thinking that the "Younger Than Jesus" show is the perfect counterbalance to some current shows (although it does ignore GenX). It's down the street; I'll have to go see it—and check out the catalog as well. After the first very so-so show at the New Museum, I've been lukewarm about checking back in. Loved the building; but I didn't get the first exhibit. Maybe this time, I'll be moved. What would Jesus like?

The Moon's a Balloon

Paula Scher is just so damn likable in the Hillman Curtis series (and in Helvetica film, for that matter).
I'm not sure any of the big museums are beyond the Boomer shows, since many of the curators and big museum heads are themselves Boomers. So we've seen retrospective and big box shows of Elizabeth Murray, Brice Marden, Ed Ruscha, etc. Rightfully so–these artists certainly deserve it!

But at this rate, my poor little Generation X will be usurped by the Millennials, who will take over and every show will be a Twitter feed!

But there are artists who definitely get an idea, do something to it (Jeff Koons being a prime example—his meditations on breath from the 2 basketballs and then beyond to the puppies and balloons),



and then do something else, which was really my comment about the Holzer show. She had such a cool idea with the text and the LED—I'm hoping there's another big idea in there for her.

Meanwhile, speaking of Millennials, I also got a chance to see the one of the catalogs for the New Museum's Younger than Jesus show, which was designed by Sonia Dyakova for Phaidon.

It's a "directory" and designed (complete with Matthew Carter's Bell Centennial type) as a phone book on phone book paper!

Fabulous!

Ducking the Issue? Resetting the Art Conversation?

I know Scher's paintings make you nuts, but from what I've read and heard and seen in the Hillman Curtis films, Paula Scher seems more interested in resetting—or, more to the point, NOT setting—than advancing the conversation about painting.

Scher often talks about doing things with her hands. The paintings are a weekend respite from all those nasty (high paying, corporate) projects that enable her to hole up in her studio on the weekends and paint for pleasure (and the fun of selling the paintings for gobs of money). All cattiness aside, Scher brings craft into the conversation. There's an artisanal quality to these works. I think one of the first primitive type paintings Scher did was for the 14th AIGA Annual. I think we're up to 29 now, so it's taken fifteen years for her paintings to become an overnight success. To a trained painter like you, Scher's paintings may not really be paintings. Perhaps they're commercial as opposed to fine art.

It's interesting that the Boomer "Project Project" is a lot of words, while "The Pictures Generation" (of which Kruger was a member) got rave reviews from your nemesis.

Holzer, Kruger, Scher are indeed all boomers (I'm excluding Flavin because his name doesn't end in "er"). Whom would you suggest for an inspiring non-boomer show? I'm not being defensive; I'm wondering.

As for Pepsi/Coke | Holzer / Kruger | Braque / Picasso | Alfred Russel Wallace (good one!) / Charles Darwin | Watson n' Crick / Franklin | . . . Banks / Padel (speaking of Darwin): don't pioneers often coincide? I think we've got a new parlor game going as well!

Protect, Protect . . . Goose!

I was able to catch one of the last days of the Jenny Holzer show "Protect Protect" at the Whitney Museum on Saturday.

There was a lot to think about. She installed a new(ish) piece, an LED ticker on the floor with choreographed text running up, down, backwards, jumping, and blinking that encompasses all her past writing, so 12 tickers running for 2 hours will let you read it all.

She also had installed a room of "paintings" that are really silkscreens of declassified (and redacted) documents from the U.S. Government pertaining to the Iraq War. Some of them are maps, some of them are court documents pertaining to torture trials, some of them are declassified (and redacted) handprints.

I found myself thinking about Paula Scher. Both found that images got in the way of the message, and decided to focus more on the text. Holzer obviously wants the LED tickers to be pretty and seductive, and to draw you in to reading the messages. Same with the "paintings". She worked collaboratively, so she doesn't do the coding, the painting, or the silkscreening.
I hate to say it, but, jeez this was a Boomer show. A lot of the early writing was about love and identity and breaking up; later stuff seemed like a guilt purge of the Vietnam generation letting it happen all over again. And there's more. I know I've mentioned that I even though I think they're beautiful and clever successful and massively-scaled, I don't really feel that Paula Scher adds anything to the art conversation with her text maps in the same powerful way that her graphic design moved the graphic design conversation along.

I think the same thing about Jenny Holzer. That LED idea was massive and a great conceptual leap forward, but what she's done with it only aligns her with Dan Flavin (light pieces changing the architecture),

and LED boxes and grids that echo Donald Judd's forms.

The silkscreen "paintings" align her with Warhol and even the color field painters, but while they call back to the past, they don't move along in the future.
Meanwhile, I started to wonder what the difference really is between Holzer and Barbara Kruger . . . is there always a Pepsi to a Coke?

Or worse—a Braque to a Picasso? Or even worse—an Alfred Russel Wallace to a Charles Darwin?