“Mind your p’s from your q’s!”

To learn more about type and its history I decided to watch a film called Typeface. Typeface is centered around Hamilton Type Museum in Wisconsin and tells the history about American wood Type (letterpress).

I am familiar with letterpress but never actually knew what was involved with it or how it technically worked. This film goes through the whole process of letterpress from beginning to end; from cutting and carefully carving and measuring the blocks to actually storing them and filing each alphabet of blocks away carefully to how the letterpress actually works in the machines. It reminds me a lot of screenprinting. The machines have rollers which paint is squeezed onto; very simialr to a squeegee in screen print. Every piece done by a letterpress is unique and different and has “flaws”. One of the designers on the film states that you can try and get a scratched effect on Illustrator or Photoshop but it just isn’t as good as the actual flaws and scratches created by a letterpress.

I learned an interesting fact though; The saying “Mind your p’s and q’s” originates from letterpress! On the letter plates the P and Q are on opposite sides and very often people would get them confused with one another!

There was a university lecturer who featured on this film, he was a massive fan of letterpress and believed that all his students should see how old type was made to fully appreciate type now in modern times. He showed some of his work on this film and it was basically him using very vibrant neon colours and him just layering up type. The overall finish was very effective and it made me think that I could trial something similar maybe in a future assignment. Even just to create something letterpress to then import into Illustrator and Photoshop would still show different skills.

i AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS POST! I know!…. I really do live a sad life! 😛 I do love stumbling across acidental design gems though and I feel like this might be one of them!….

I was writing my post for my “Netflix, Design and Chill” section of my blog about the Abstract Documentary featuring Paula Scher and Pentagram when I accidentally stumbled across something interesting as part of my research for assignment 1!

Trying to find a decent image to upload to my blog post about Paula Scher led me to her Pentagram design agency website in which there was some of their recent work uploaded to the home page; one of Pentagrams clients is a Catholic University in Los Angeles called Loyola Marymount University and their publication called LMU Magazine. LMU have been completely rebranded by Pentagram and their relaunch issue “The Los Angeles Edition” is EVERYTHING relating to my design ideas around the “Los Angelenos”

….(I can’t help but feel a bit smug that my mind obviously works in a similar way to the great Scher and Pentagram! :P)….

The idea and concept, the images used and the way in which they are used to link to the articles and cleverly communicate a message. It really stands out to me. The layout is also flawless. The content of the magazine obviously also looks very educational and interesting and completely relates to my interest of LA, the history, the locals, the arts and surrounding area.

I HAVE to get a copy of this magazine to read!

https://www.pentagram.com/work/lmu-magazine/story

So.. I have emailed LMU very nicely to see if they might kindly be able to send me a copy all the way across the pond to me! (I know!.. it’s quite a long way!) I eagerly await their response!

Here are a few snippets of the articles I found online.. the layout and images used!

This is a series on Netflix covering a different designer each episode from all different areas of Design and each episode follows their work, their background history and what drives and motivates them.

Episode 6; The one I was most interested in watching was the one featuring Paula Scher an American Graphic Designer who specialises in hand lettering and type. As this is an area I am particularly interested in I decided it was worth a watch as I had never really heard of Paula Scher and her work before.

The episode looks at the influence New York City has had on the designer’s work, her lifelong love of typography, and the map paintings she hand draws and paints alongside her client projects.

I was pleasantly surrpised to see that she is very old school in her designing. My personal style and my strong area has always been hand drawn and more traditional in approach and she was very much the same. Up until watching the documentary I had always worried that to be an amazing designer you need to be a whizz digitally. Schers work started as illustrations and hand drawn sketches which she then imports in and alters digitally.

It was interesting to see how she undergoes projects and how she creatively thinks; I could see many things that I shared in common with her about how I see and view things creatively.

A post appeared on my Facebook news feed of inspiring films for Designers. One of them that was mentioned was Helvetica. I decided to download it on my Amazon prime and give it a watch!

The film consists of interviews from lots of designers from different age ranges and backgrounds giving their opinions on the infamous typeface. The majority of the designers featured in this film use Helvetica religiously within their work and would consist it the best typeface. Most of these designers however I noticed originate as designers from the 1950s onwards and what I would refer to as “old school type” The young blood that they interview such as David Carson rebel against the formalities and the old traditions and reinvent type in a different way.

In the 1950s after the war, it brought about the Swiss way of designing! Swiss designers paved the way in type and the general outlook was that type should be simplistic, straight to the point and do what it is simply meant to do; be readable, clear and basic! Helvetica was designed in 1957 purely for just this! – clarity, no meaning to its form and to be used in signage. It became a hallmark for the International Typographic style. The film covers how it started as a typeface, how it changed name and showed many major brands that use it in their branding; There are many diverse brands who use it in very different ways – American Apparel, American Airlines and Coke in one of their early advertisements. Many adverts in the 1950s/60s used very “fun” hand lettered style fonts in their advertisements, it showed how this changed when Coke simply released their advert with a simple image and “It’s the real thing. Coke.” in Helvetica Bold; there is nothing else fancy needed, the typeface speaks for itself – the seriousness and confidence of it simply tells the reader “Drink Coke. End of!”

The interview then moves on to some of the more “modern” designers; David Carson being one of the most iconic. He is very humerous in the film by printing out several words in Helvetica and explaining how the typeface does not do the words justice. E.g. Explosive written in Helvetica not looking explosive at all! In the 90s Carson stuck 2 fingers up to the formalities and the traditions of type, took away the mathematical grid systems and basically experimented and rebelled with the image of type. He admits that he had no real training or idea what he was doing and was naive to the fact that he had caused such uproar against the traditionalists and that it just sort of happened how it happened! He brought about Grunge type. He designed a magazine layout for his Ray gun magazine – an interview with Bryan Ferry in which he stated that it was the most boring interview he had ever had to publish or design around and that no one would really care about anything the interview said; messing around with typefaces for the article he came across Dingbats (completely unreadable) but for the impact and the logic he felt behind it he published and designed it his way with that font! He has his own unique, rebelness “careless” way of designing type and this is why his work against the type designers of the Helvetica Swiss era stood out. After the 90s grunge type era had ran its course there was no way to go back to what once was… the traditionalists had to invent new systems.

Overall it was a good film showing the importance of Helvetica and how well it does its job as one of the most popular typefaces of all time. It has definitely shown me more how type can have such an impact in your work and how it is seen and “heard”.

I like looking through peoples sketches and drawings and understanding different ideas, concepts and mindsets so this was the perfect book to have a look at. It is mostly all pictures from various artists sketchbooks, there is a short bio on each artist or designer and then just an insight into their work.

When I first enrolled onto this course I was apprehensive about what my sketchbooks should look like and include; that is why I took a look at this book. This book is purely illustrative and raw ideas at their initial idea stages. This is the kind of style I am interested in; raw artwork which can then be taken and developed further into a final outcome.

I am pretty old school in regards to that I much prefer hand drawing to digital work; as much as I do love digital work, my strongest area is definitely hand drawn. I have always liked hand lettering and when I listened to a design podcast with Jessica Hische I knew I had to take a look at her book.

Although a lot of what she mentions in the book in regards to Illustrator I am already familiar with, I like looking at the different lettering styles and the projects which she has worked on. It is a great source for inspiration and ideas.