Letterforensics 101

In my last post about the mid-19th century alphabet, I gave acknowledgement to the printer/publisher, Charles Joseph Hullmandel and the likely British artist of these rustic landscape letters, who is known simply as "L.E.M. Jones". I even asserted that this Jones character was a man, which in retrospect, was rather presumptuous of me. It maddens me somewhat when artists of this caliber and standard can fall into relative obscurity, yet their work has survived in at least two of the world's leading art museums. My curiosity of L.E.M. Jones lead me to do some further sleuthing, and I located another similar work to those I posted yesterday. This single "graphite" drawing of the C&K is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jones is listed as "active" from 1800-1870, and the image is described as "Alphabet Book Design (Letters C and K)". The only distinguishing mark on the sheet is a blind stamp appearing on the lower right corner with the word "Bate" above a crown. 

Can you spot the differences?

Pardon my redundancy to repeat the last two images from yesterday's post again, but I wanted to draw a comparison between the two versions. On closer examination, it appears this C and the K from the British Museums' archives is just slightly different than the "graphite" CK drawing from the Met Museum seen at the top of this post. In addition to the ever-so-subtle differences, the CK version is drawn in two or more colors of grey it appears, and I am wondering now if this had anything to do with Hullmandel's invented method of adding "tone" to his lithographic prints, as I mentioned yesterday. This largely depends upon what his method was, but maybe the Jones CK drawing was a master guide to indicate where to add the 2nd color for the final print. If someone has further insight to add or correct me, I would love to hear it. I am not a lithographer or printer by any measure, but just have a curiosity about printing processes. All of this brings me no closer to identifying Jones, but I like to think that I am connecting a few of the dots here. Below, are two macro images of the graphite CK drawing for a much closer view. 

Update: Mystery Solved

Friend of Letterology, and face behind the scholarly Circuitous Root, Dr. David M. MacMillan has helped to solve the mystery behind the artist and the printing of Hullmandel's Landscape Alphabets. He sent me a text image from Michael Twyman's recently published book, A History of Chromolithography: Printed Colour for All, which explains much about the story. According to Tywman, Hullmandel found himself in a public spat with an associate of printer, Charles Engelmann, who was said to be the inventor of chromolithography in 1837. This rivalry between the two printing firms lead to some fierce competition. Engelmann published "an inventive little alphabet book with the title The Landscape Alphabet (Paris, 1830), each letter being drawn in a more-or-less contrived way within a landscape setting." Using the very same title, Hullmandel then published his own, more elaborate version of a landscape alphabet the very next year. It was for a charity publication using the beautiful crayon-drawn letters by a Miss L.E.M. Jones. (She was indeed a woman artist, as I second-guessed.) It would make sense then to believe that this 1831 edition, with the grey tone letters doubled up on each page, was Hullmandel's first printing. His second edition with just one letter per page printed black only, came later. I am grateful to Dr. MacMillan for bringing Michael Twymans' findings to light, and connecting all the dots.

The 2012 xType Chronicles Continue

Student Earica Brown used an acetylene gas flame torch as a tool to create her xType font, Carbon. With the flame turned low, a dense black carbon (soot) is released, enabling her to draw some very ethereal letterforms. She then bound all 26 of her original carbon copies into the handmade portfolio she is seen holding below.

Brendan Lattin took a lot of time outside of class to build his experimental typeface, Time Out. He cut 26 letters of the alphabet from 2 pieces of plywood each, and formed them into right angles. His objective was to experiment with light, however he had no preconceived notion for its outcome when he initially began the ambitious project. When viewed straight on, the light casts a nice glow around each letterform. What is less predictable is how the letter and light transform as you change viewing positions. Now he just has to figure how to get it all off his living room floor. ; )    

Neil Palmer's font, Remnant, was inspired by a wall of pasted posters just down the block from the school. He saw beauty in the letters that formed when layers of posters were torn away and loved the concept of trying to recreate them. He experimented with hand tearing and glueing letters, but opted to assemble them digitally from various abstract pieces in the end.

An Alternate 3D Univers

Second year design student Sean Loomis takes on a 3D Univers, and deconstructs all 26 letters of the alphabet with hand-cut and folded paper for his recent experimental type project. Using stop-motion animation, he films the distorted uppercase letters with a revolving motion until each one comes into vision, closely resembling Adrian Frutigers' original designs for Univers 59 Ultra Condensed. Nicely synced with a soundtrack by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, (Ok, Across the Universe might have been too obvious a choice), Sean's alternate condensed universe is a great experimental adventure.

2012 Student xType Projects, Part 5

Bugs never looked so beautiful. Student Claire Parkin had a ball with these letter bugs, assembling them into large letterforms.
      Corinna Rodriguez illustrated an Avian Alphabet of 26 species of birds seen below, and assembled them into an accordion book.  

Ayla Jacob took the term "experimental typography" quite literally for her project. Test Type is made of hand-formed paper clay letters which are dropped into small text tubes containing water. Added to each are several drops of colored ink. She photographed the reaction the colored ink had on each of the fragile paper clay letterforms.
      Christian Valencia's geometric font Plexi, was first drawn in Illustrator and then laser cut into plexiglas. The letterforms were then glued onto clear plexiglas for display. Christian's next task is to try to photograph the light each letter casts onto a white wall. 

Bespoke Bloc Type

"Bloc Type" is the work of second year design student Bridget Nielsen, for her xType assignment Winter quarter. It was inspired by some of Neville Brodys' condensed sans serif fonts and her love of Cyrillic font designs. To create her letterforms, she hand-cut paper stencils from light cardstock and silkscreened a small edition of posters in various colors as seen above. Having never designed a typeface, Bridget found it a challenge to create a design which was consistent, functional and yet beautiful at the same time, and to produce it entirely by hand. So popular was her 3-color proletariat typesetting poster Shh!, inspired by the 1941 Russian poster "Don't Gossip" by Vatolina and Denisov, Bridget has promised to print a second edition. I'll be sure to make an announcement when this happens. 

Old School Type

Part 3 in the series of recent student experimental typography works reveals John Aspinall's parody of the 1985 Super Mario Bros. computer game. John refers to this parody as "Old School Type", as he inserted 26 mega-low-rez letters of the alphabet for the two Mario Bros. to navigate. This video shows his experimental game in linear action while Mario and his bro Luigi jump and dodge enemy attacks and navigate all 26 letters. Venturing into it, John was uncertain if his concept was even conceivable, but he discovered a way to manipulate the existing architecture of the classic 27 year-old Nintendo game in order to accommodate all 26 letters as part of the game's strategy. When he recently previewed the interactive game on a big screen at school, students—younger than the game itself—were standing in line to play it. John has now earned official old school, "game boy" status.

Who Killed Smith Corona?

Second year design student Ryan Anderson did some forensic undercover investigations of his own this quarter in the creation of his experimental type assignment. What he uncovered has all the makings of a crime scene whodunit-type drama with twenty-six extremely suspect characters. In true type crime noir fashion, he cast himself in the part of Weegee, the NY crime scene photographer, taking many blown-out flash photos of the mayhem that occurred. Also typecast as a forensic specialist, he carefully examined all the evidence to solve a puzzle only a type sleuth could reveal.
      Lying in a pool of parts in a friend's garage, this broke-down, Smith Corona Super Sterling typewriter (1965-2012) suffered a bitter end. Ryan's friend was quickly vindicated of the murder when he claimed he had no clue how it even landed there. It just appeared one day. Ryan admits he then tampered with the evidence by removing the typewriter and parts and re-staging the entire crime scene in front of an old Royal typewriter he owned. To solve the mystery, he tinkered with every arm, leg and lever of the typewriter until he found a key to each character of the alphabet. In the process of uncovering the case and unravelling the inked ribbon, he found fingerprints all over the case. "Holy crap! I'll never solve this mystery now!" he said to himself as he carried the remains of the Smith Corona, smeared black with fingerprints, to the trash. As it goes, he never completely solved the murder case, but he documented each suspect character of this hardboiled mystery and got a grade A for his efforts. His appropriately titled, "Dead Type" poster, as seen below, may be hanging in a post office near you soon.  

xType on Center Stage

Each year about this time I feature the work of many of my Experimental Typography students which happen to be some of my favorite posts. After five years of teaching this class (it took a vacation last year ;), I am happy to say my students just keep raising the type bar. This time around, I would like to introduce the video Alphabemation, which was created by second year design student Brie Elam. This was her first attempt at animation, and it is a remarkable piece of work with over 1300 images she created with clay letters and compiled into a stop-motion video using Adobe Premiere and iMovie. The music which is so beautifully synced with it is by the Cinematic Orchestra. Any animation is a leap of faith until the final editing and assembly is completed, and I am so delighted with the outcome of Brie's ambitious work. The xType assignment (a technical type term I coined for this experimental class) was just one among many, many which she and other students had to complete this Winter quarter. Now their work deserves to take center stage. Many more of my students' various xType projects are waiting in the green room for their cameo appearances. Please stand by.

The 3D CMYK Print

It was quite by accident that I stumbled into the cross-stitch design work of Evelin Kasikov after yesterday's post on the Manolo sisters and their embroidered type. All of these artists are based in London, but the only common thread between their work is embroidery.
      Evelin Kasikov has long had a fascination with typography and printed matter along with a love of craft, and decided to combine her interests by exploring cross-stitch as part of her academic studies at Central St. Martin's in 2008. She began by deconstructing the 4-color CMYK print composed of various sized dots and replaced each dot with hand embroidered cross-stitches. Where many CMYK prints might be made with a screen of 150 dots-per-inch, Kasikov can reduce her cross-stitched resolution to as little as 2 or 3 dots-per-inch. Just as the dot size in a print can effect tone and saturation, she varies the thickness of the thread in order to create subtleties of tone. To further imitate a 4-color print, she also adjusts the angle of each cross-stitched color. This is what I find so engaging about Kasikov's work—beauty of craft meets the science of color reproduction. She can methodically mirror a 4-color print with the precision of a pressman—but does so with the trained eye of a designer. A nice reminder that craft and design are not inseparable.
      Below is Kasikov's first fully handprinted alphabet of 26 lowercase san serif letterforms. They are 4-color CMYK made with 26,773 stitches. The challenge, Kasikov claims, was to construct a coherent character set with 10 cross-stitches per x-height. The screens for each color were set to a different angle and the combined blend of the stitched CMYK colors effectively result in a handmade Registration Black when viewed at a distance.

Below are images from Kasikov's Printed Matter project, created for her final MA project and based upon her cross-stitch technique. In the four different books, she explored craft and color in three-dimensional form within the context of graphic design.  

The images below are hand embroidered posters based on Gill Sans Light. They are examples of the blend of CMYK colors stitched in four different thread thicknesses. In addition to her website, you can find much more of her colorful work on Flickr and her blog Craft meets Graphic Design. Editioned prints and stitched originals are for sale here.