posted: February 7, 2010

Once upon a time, I received the honor of being asked to do a poster for New York is Book Country. An "honor" is what they call it went they want it for free and, having been preceded on this project by the likes of Maurice Sendak and Keith Haring, it really was an honor. In addition to publicizing the festival, it was to hang in every branch of the New York and Brooklyn public libraries.
 
I envisioned New York as a pop-up book, worked the title into the marquees of the buildings and showed a variety of the many ethnic groups which make it such an incredible place (including my two Chinese/Jewish daughters riding the subway on the bottom right}.
 
The poster was approved and printed in the thousands before some valiant protector of the public trust, freshly returned from that years' American Library Association convention, managed to uncover its racist overtones and protected the children of New York from its evil messaged by banning it from display. This effectively killed my chances for literary recognition, however, resulted in the genesis of the letterforms for Book Country and provided me with a font that complements my editorial illustration nicely for those times when it requires typography.
 
The capital letters are based, with respect and great admiration, on the lettering of Ben Shahn for a poster protesting the 1927 execution of Italian radicals Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The lowercase letters were a product of my imagination and a wish to extend its utility.
 
Oh, and I almost forgot the best part: following the debacle, Print Magazine ran an article about the Libraries' censorship and the next thing you know, one of our more predatory colleagues, upon reading it, petitioned NYBC to do the next poster and had the stones to ask if I would provide the lettering for her image!

Typography

posted: January 17, 2010

This past Saturday I had the honor of judging the Type Directors Club annual typeface competition and the privilege of being immersed in typography of many nations from Japanese Hiragana and Katakana to Indian Devangari, Russian Cyrillic, Armenian, Arabic and a healthy share of Latin typefaces including one with characters shaped from a street map of London.

Though I felt like a neophyte among a room full of grown-up type designers, I took this opportunity to keep my mouth shut (as much as possible) and absorb as much as I could from this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Originally designed to brand and package products celebrating the charm and mystery of the Ancient East, the characters in Setsuko are intended to express admiration and respect, not the stereotyping and parody sometimes evident in fonts with a particular "foreign" flavor. Rather than trying to twist pictograms into Roman letterforms or effecting a recognizable but trite idiom, I chose a more ambiguous stylization, hoping to leave room for a designer's creativity and interpretation.

Typography

posted: January 4, 2010

Much of my inspiration comes from imagery and style that technology has rendered obsolete. I treasure anachronistic artifacts of packaging and design which have somehow evaded obliteration by focus groups, and manage to still be a part of our visual landscape.
Before I was old enough to go into a supermarket alone, I was already a keen admirer and critical observer of products which found their way into our home. When my mother was finished at the checkout counter and wondered what had happened to her curious child, I would be lost among the aisles, intoxicated by the shapes and colors of post-war packaging; in particular, with products that had mercifully escape being redesigned and still had the feeling of a kinder, gentler time.

I was particularly taken with the packaging for A&P coffee brands Eight O'Clock, Red Circle and Bokar whose eccentric yet elegant typography harkened back to an earlier, less complicated era. The font Bokar is my nod of appreciation to those robust and full-bodied blends spared from the bland, tasteless scourge of corporate branding.

For one and all

posted: December 22, 2009

This has been the slowest year for business I can remember but, the support and kindness of friends & family, my two daughters of whom I am so proud, the incredible good fortune of living in the city I love and making art for a living, having a president who doesn't totally gag me and watching the greedy and selfish clowns of the evil empire shoot themselves in the collective foot, has made me the happiest and most grateful I have ever been. So, to all my colleagues at Drawger, I wish you the merriest of Christmases, and a happy, truly New Year where we use our creativity, commitment and collective good deeds to make things better for everyone.

For one and all

Recent Articles

Topics

Archive

smiling faces...sometimes (25)

it's all here in black & white (10)