Saturday, February 12, 2011

Good JuJu


This pre-Valentine squib is inspired by a foray into the pantry to clean out ancient treats (unconsumed for a year and exhumed to avoid waste). The gummy hearts are a product (and a train wreck of a package) of Mayfair Sales, Buffalo, NY. A shallow search for Mayfair's site led me to a post by a gent named Michael Marcus, who normally posts about publishing, but reminisced about Jan/Feb candies.

But I digress. The heart of this post is the typography for "Mayfair." Can you name the face? A hint: I found its name in Photolettering's One Line Manual of Styles, one of the now-vintage type books on BTD's shelves. BTW, you could give your students an interesting sidebar discussion about Art Nouveau-inspired funky faces from the ______by luminaries such as______________. Extra points and picas for naming the the outlined "JuJu!"

* I first heard the term "good juju" from Amy D, originally from New Orleans, who worked at BTD in the early 1990s. Valentine candy could be "good juju"—i.e. a fetish or some sort of toy or magic to ensure romance. It's a stretch, but so's eating those gummy hearts!

8 comments:

Suzanne Dell'Orto said...

I don't know at all what typeface this is so I'm just going to take a stab in the dark at the blanks and say...1970's, Ed Benguiat?

Suzanne Dell'Orto said...

By the way, I love this game!

Beth Tondreau said...

1970s is correct. However, the luminary is not. Think of a buddy of Benguiat. Once you get the creator's name, you can probably take another stab at the name of the typeface.

Suzanne Dell'Orto said...

I'm laughing that it's Herb Lubalin...I was trying to make a punny typeface name out of LUB, rhyming with LUV, but I thought that LUB doesn't get the right pronunciation across (more likely you'd rhyme it with DUB). So then I' moved on to making it look more like LOVE, but only came up with "Lube".

That is my new typeface inspiration!

And...am I warmer?

Beth Tondreau said...

Same timeframe, but Benguiat is closer in spirit than Lubalin. A hint: it's NOT Milton Glaser.

Suzanne Dell'Orto said...

I was thinking that Benguiat was closer, too, but I'm running out of options, so I give up!

Meanwhile, in my search for 1970's typeface designers, I found this treasure trove of a blog post about it, complete with terrific images.
http://www.creativepro.com/article/scanning-around-gene-part-1-70s-type

Beth Tondreau said...

Part of the name is "Art Tone." Do you need to see more letters? It won't cost me much time. Yes, the rest of the answer is buried in my question.

Suzanne Dell'Orto said...

A ha! Seymour Chwast: Chwast Art Tone. I always think of him as an illustrator and not a type designer.

And here's a more bell-bottomed looking use of the same typeface, I think:
http://allmusic.galeon.com/caratulas/i/Iron_Butterfly_-_In_A_Gadda_Da_Vida-Front.jpg