The Biggest Catch of Fish Lettering

Although several nice versions of this Prichard & Knoll trade card with novelty fish lettering were produced in the later 19th century, you might say they are now endangered. These two came from the same dealer and recently sold at auction for handsome sums. They are equally nice, however the first card has much finer detail held in the rainbow trout artwork and fish lettering. It was printed by Stahl & Jaeger Artistic Lithographers in NYC. The second card has the name reversed and several alternate letters, along with some clever wave-like handlettered text with flourishes below the fish which add to its appeal. They each have an eel ampersand. 
     Directly below is another unrelated trade card from 1871 with similar novelty lettering of fish. This particular card from Fisher Ice Boxes and Refrigerators of Chicago, found here, is sporting an amphibious eel for the letter S. Although this Fisher card is nowhere near as elaborate as the two above, the artist did provide some level of detail to the three-colored fish. I guess the imaginative art of fish lettering requires a fine line and some reel angling, just like fishing.

The art of fish lettering actually goes back much further than I had ever imagined. To track its amphibious influences required some further fishing of my own. Much to my surprise, I discovered this decorated initial S from a 7th or 8th century manuscript. The scribe likely had fun creating this with the aid of a compass. 
     For a completely different take, there is this contemporary Golden Fish alphabet created with goldfish tails by Lauren Nash. 

Dutch designer Monique Goossens uses actual fish called "sprats" to create her amphibious alphabet. And a bolder version you might want to wrap in newspaper from Handmade Font. Refrigerate after serving.

  

For The Love of Type

View this entire Doyald Young, Logotype Designer course and more in the lynda.com Online Training Library®.

     Doyald Young (1926-2011) left school in the 10th grade and began lettering show cards for W.T. Grant Five-and-Dime store in Los Angeles. He studied at the Frank Wiggins Trade School and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena (formerly Art Center School), where he went on to teach hand lettering and logo design for 30 years. He authored several great books on lettering and logo design and released a number of commercial fonts over the course of his long career. Young was always a lover of language and words, and of course letters, which he designed with exquisite detail and craft.

Architectural Wonders

Seeing the Modern Architecture 101 work above from the guys over at TheAllNighter the other day, reminded me of a font design based upon architectural icons created by my former student, Shinya Iwaki. I posted about it two years ago along with a crowd of other wonderful experimental fonts, all designed for my xType class, but this one really deserves far more attention. It is called Cityscape and it is populated by 26 architectural wonders. Students were each tasked with an assignment to design a font of their own choice of any media and Shin chose to design one based upon buildings. He spent many hours pouring through architecture books at the library and researching online for buildings that vaguely simulated each letter of the alphabet. He illustrated, (or hand-built) each building in the context of a letter it most closely resembled. Each letter consists of a real construction and he has included the name of the building, the city and the date each was completed. Shin's Cityscape was originally produced as a poster and much later as an impressive deck of 26 letterpressed cards in an edition of 100. He is now living in Brooklyn and I don't know if posters or the cards are for sale, but with enough encouragement, maybe we can persuade him to print a 2nd edition! 

If you haven't yet seen my student's work from the past two xType xHibits, I highly recommend it to you. View some from the 2009 class and 2010, and take time to watch the videos too, as they are each amazing. Oh, and one more unforgettable font here which you should not miss! I wish I had more of this kind of work to show you for 2011, but the xType class was cancelled this year }: - ( I may now have to take it on the road somewhere, some day. Hmm...xType hits the road. I like the sound of this!

Update: I received a note from Shin just 2 days after the earthquake in Japan. Shin tells me he has recently returned to live in Japan and he is okay. I hope he continues to do well as Japan recovers from this disaster. He is interested in selling some of his decks of the Cityscape alphabet, and if you are interested he can be contacted here.

Men of Letters

This short trailer for the classic 1978 documentary, Final Marks: The Art of the Carved Letter, is about the John Stevens Shop, a stone lettercutting shop in Newport RI. It chronicles the work of John ‘Fud’ Benson—then the owner and principal designer, and, arguably, one of the most accomplished lettercutters in the world. Established in 1705, the John Stevens Shop was the oldest business in the United States still in continuous operation in the same colonial building at the time this film was made. Benson's father began the family stonecutting business when he acquired the John Stevens Shop in the 1920s.

The entire Final Marks: The Art of the Carved Letter 49 minute film, begins with a review of some of their most demanding works of monumental inscriptions at the National Gallery in Washington and John F. Kennedy's gravesite at Arlington Cemetery, which Benson completed at the young age of 26. We next see Benson's step-by-step creation of celebrated typographer, Michael Bixler's Alphabet Stone and later see the beautiful stonework in an 18th C New England common burying ground through Benson's eyes. The enduring stone inscriptions on the gravestones are the final marks of these early colonist' biographies and remain a lasting reminder of the perpetuity of the stonecutter's artful work.




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Postscript

Upon my further research, I learned there were many more layers to this family story. I learned that Nicholas Benson, the son of John 'Fud' Benson, and third-generation stonecutter, carved his own stone lettering niche when he took the reins of the family business in Newport RI in 1993. His father John, had clocked 35 years in the family business and wanted to devote more time to his monument inscription projects such as the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial which was under construction in DC at the time.

This story only gets better. This past October, John's son, Nicholas, joined the rarified fellowship of another venerable typographer, Matthew Carter, when he was also awarded a prestigious MacArthur genius grant at the age of 46, for his uncompromising craftsmanship and beauty in form and line. His inscriptions and decorative reliefs can be seen on family memorials and buildings throughout the United States, including the National Gallery of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the National World War II Memorial in Washington. When I began this post, I had no clue about Benson's MacArthur award, but it is a sure reminder to me that both craftmanship and passion for work has it's own rewards. And 2010 will be noted in the annals of typographic record as the year type and letters are celebrated by far more than the men and women of letters who design them. Both Carter and Benson are living proof of this.

Early Book Marketing

The first italic type design originated in Venice, Italy when this edition of Virgil was published in 1501 by Aldus Manutius of the Aldine Press. Aldus actually commissioned type designer, Francesco Griffo to punchcut the first italic typeface for his book. I believe Aldus also originated one of the earliest creative marketing plans at this time as well. He cleverly chose to base the italic upon a popular form of cursive handwriting which was quite fashionable amongst his many educated customers. He also was the inventor of the semi-colon which I have reported upon previously on Letterology. One thing Aldus might have overlooked however; it appears he was so busy marketing his book, he forgot to add a decorative drop cap on the verso page.
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Doh! Update alert!
Being a Renaissance guy, I couldn't believe Aldus could just overlook adding initial caps in Virgil. It then dawned on me that of course he printed a placeholder cap—For Placement Only—and had it in mind to add the beautiful hand-painted ornamental drop caps post printing. I did further investigations and found a few images of the book in the archives of the British Library and there is even an illuminated border. The physical description of this book actually reads: 8vo, 228 leaves, on vellum. With illuminated initials and illuminated border to the first page of text. (Meaning just the front matter?) No credit to the artist who created all of the page illuminations however. Typical!

Bling-Bling

In his visual essay, Iced Up and Platinum Plus, graphic designer Ryan Molloy wittingly references traditional art nouveau and art deco ornamental forms and fuses them with bling-inspired designs of hubcaps, gold teeth and other diamond-encrusted accessories from hip-hop culture. Like a hip-hop DJ, I integrate these older forms with my newly designed bling-inspired ornaments he claims. To demonstrate this, Molloy deliberately borrows a page from traditional book design and creates beautiful decorative borders. I do wish Molloy would release his Bling-Bling font, so the rest of us could do some sampling too.

Tiny vs. Zepto

If I could, I would output this in 2 pt Tiny font (with expanded options for the aged and visually-challenged surely). Google are you listening? There is a licensing opportunity here. About 3 days ago I wrote the post Honey, I've Shrunk The Declaration of Independence, about the design of the Tiny font and today I've received notice from Makezine there is a teeny imposter of the Tiny font by the name of Zepto, available for free on MyFonts. Teeny font = teeny price! Perlin's font on the other hand is not for sale at this time.

Look closely at the images above for comparison. Zepto is similar in size to Ken Perlin's font, Tiny, but it is made of black pixels only. Tiny is created with differently-colored pixels, which are not entirely identical. (Check out the o's and n's.) One could say Zepto is slightly more readable than Tiny at the enlarged size shown above, however just the opposite is true when printed in the 2 pt. range. In this battle of the fonts, I'd say Tiny scores BIG.

Honey, I've Shrunk The Declaration of Independence

Ken Perlin, Professor of Computer Science at NYU Media Research Lab, claims to have developed the smallest readable screen font, called Tiny, which is designed specifically for LCD screens. As an experiment, Perlin reduced our 500 word Declaration of Independence to fit a small 320 x 240 pixel QVGA display using his closely-leaded 2 pt. Tiny font with a justified setting. Surprisingly, it is still somewhat readable. The circular magnification inside Perlin's example below provides some hint of Tiny's resolution, however I would dare him to try and letterspace this text any tighter! At best, he would have to answer to the Type Police. And does he have any clue what the Tea Party crowd might do to him when they see how our Declaration of Independence is being further reduced? Just sayin'...














Via Makezine

Lettergami

British designer, Tim Fishlock created his wonderful Alphabet Relief poster as a three-dimensional alphabet of folded paper and then litho printed it onto premium paper. Posters are hand embossed, signed and numbered in an edition of 300. Order a copy here.

Thumb's up for Fishlock's screenprint poster Typeseat, but it's sold out.

An Abecedarian Elegy

I love script fonts that read well and have always admired the original International Typeface Corporation's hand-lettered logo of Ed Benguiat's design from 1970. It has beautiful capitals with lovely flourishes and word spacing accompanied by smartly designed ligatures and lowercase letters. Forty years later, it has now been beautifully transformed by type designer, Jim Wasco into the OpenType font, Elegy. Named so, as a tribute to Aaron Burns, the original director of ITC who was a driving force in the early days of the company. (Burns also authored the book, Typography in 1961 which I highly recommend. You can still find it on used book sites). Because of Elegy's fine hairline strokes and nuanced qualitites, it performs best above 18pt, according to ITC's website.

The limited-edition broadside celebrating the release of Elegy was commissioned to Patrick Reagh Printers and is printed in 70pt text on Mohawk Superfine. Patrick Reagh is a good friend I met a lifetime ago in Los Angeles when he did some printing for me at the time. He was a very skilled pressman and typographer even then, and continues to produce some of the most elegantly designed books for prestigious libraries, institutions and private patrons in California. He now lives and works in lovely Sebastopol CA where he is a printer/farmer with a barn full of metal type, presses and a rich archive of work to his name. His printed Elegy broadside was actually written by another old friend and clever wordsmith, Alyson Kuhn, who writes witty and newsworthy posts on the wonderful Felt and Wire blog. And Ilene Strizver of The Type Studio (who I don't know, but wish I did) typeset this delightful work. Those lucky souls attending the upcoming TypeCon 2010 in Los Angeles will each receive a copy of this work. Kudos to all!