The Snowman Species

Source: Letterology Archives

Snowmen are on the march with increasing frequency these days—protesting polluters and demanding we change our wasteful ways.

Source: Darling & Co. via Vintage Cottage Home

This isn't the only thing which threatens their endangerment however. The affable snowman also has a long history of character assassination and trademark infringement. In an advertisement by Esso oil in the 1960s, the snowman was rebranded as their mascot, Happy, the oil droplet. Oh the irony.

Source: Xray Delta One Flickrstream via Grand Prix

Source: Atomic Western

In the mid-40s, he had to suffer the indignities of pimping for Thermo anti-freeze.

Source: MadsLucky13

And he's been deflated with a name of "Snowman Sam", and stuffed into plastic bags for longer shelf-life. 

Source: Froggyboggler

 Frosty has even been put into the deep freeze for preservation.

Source: Letterology Archives

Ten years ago now, I took up my own personal crusade to save the endangered snowman. In a bid to wipe out global warming, I designed and silkscreen-printed a couple hundred of these typographically-illustrated pop-up snowman sponges. Instructions were simple: Just add water.

To package the sponge, I also silkscreened the glassine envelopes, and penned a couple of 5-line stanzas to accompany my holiday mailer.

 

Got to love and protect the snowman.

A Benevolent Skull

The annual Mexican fiesta Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, has crossed many borders over the years, and rightly so. To celebrate the memory of those we have loved and lost is a reunion of benevolent souls and keeps them with us for a time. Beginning the first day of November, this welcomed holiday tradition has come to be symbolized by skeletons and skulls (known as calaveras), which we owe to one of Mexico's finest artist and printmakers, José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913), who died 100 years ago. Posada is best known for his satirical wood engravings of dancing skeletons in colorful costume. (Find more Letterology postings on Posada here and here.) Surely he has many dancing on his own grave today.

The Day of the Dead lives on

Posada would probably be quite proud to see the many modern day adaptations of his calveras. Being a letterpress printer, I'm certain he would particularly favor this typographical skull, which was born of a collaboration of three skilled printers, Jamie Murphy, Justin Knopp, and Robert Pratley. The two-color Dia de los Muertos broadside was printed at Knopp's Typoretum Press in North Essex, England. It is built of two distinct layers—one of metal type and ornaments, and the other of wood ornaments, which fittingly glows in the dark. The wood layer was inspired by Aztec motifs, while the metal ornament design was influenced by the contemporary decorations of the Dia de los Muertos' masks. (And a wonderful likeness of someone I once knew ;)   

Jamie Murphy of The Salvage Press in Dublin tells me that the wood layer was hand-inked and printed on an 1851 Albion press. For the glow-in-the-dark ink, he hand-mixed phosphorescent powder with a matt varnish in various measures until arriving at the perfect printable consistency. Constructing the metal layer with the many small ornaments presented the biggest challenge, Murphy claims—though it appears to be an impressive lock-up in the image below. It was printed on a 1960s Farley proof press with a split fountain process combining two hand-mixed fluorescent inks.  

The broadside was printed on a 250gsm (110 lb.) Somerset Velvet 100% cotton paper in an edition of 100, and measures 297 x 420 (approximately 12 x 17"). Signed and numbered copies of this adorable benevolent skull can be ordered directly from either The Salvage Press or Typoretum. 

A Trip to Typewriter Town

American poet William Jay Smith learned to type at Brown's Business School in 1935 and later began playing with typewriter illustrations (often referred to as ascii art) to amuse his young children. In 1968 he was appointed the 19th Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress and wrote over ten collections of poetry, of which two went on to be nominated for the National Book Award. He published over twenty books of children's verse during his career, illustrated by many such distinguished artists as Caldecott winner Roger Duvoisin and AIGA medalist Ivan Chermayeff. In 1960 he wrote the children's book of verse, Typewriter Town, peppered with his own keyboarded typewriter illustrations. It is a visit to a world filled with monospaced glyphs and characters of every sort.   

::Images via Arthur Van Kruining's Flickrstream and the yhanblr tumblr.

The 1952 Typewriter Type Issue

In June 1952, Print magazine devoted an entire issue to the typewriter, "a machine to supersede the pen." The front cover, designed by George A. Shealy, cleverly illustrates the concept of an "imprint" from the artwork on the back cover. The endsheets are a nice pattern of alphabetical U&lc typewriter text. The design and layout of the remaining interior pages are far less interesting, but the content compensates for this shortfall. It begins with a short historical background of the typewriter, including an amusing letter Mark Twain typed for his brother in 1874, about "this new fangled writing machine." Historical sidenote: Twain's letter was typed just prior to his investment in the Paige Compositor, an early keyboard-operated typesetting machine that was soon overshadowed by the Linotype machine.

Because of the variable widths of the letters in our Roman alphabet, monospaced typewriter fonts have always had their limitations. I thought it was interesting to learn that the Crandall Typewriter Company was working on a proportionately spaced typewriter as early as 1881, but it was over fifty years later before even a modest success was achieved. In 1941, the legendary type designer W.A. Dwiggins spelled out some of his own challenges in designing new faces for the modern typewriter. He acknowledged the typewriter was for writing letters and not for composing books, and therefore shouldn't parody them. 

   

Companies could choose to have their trademark assigned to a customized key on their keyboard. Is that a real trademark, or the first smiley face emoticon above?

Ornamental typewriting was "used as training practice for aspiring stenographers." Had I known that artistic stenography was part of their job description, I might have considered this vocation. I do especially love the decorative borders created by the overlapping characters.

Remington Rand developed The Dual-Rite attachment to apply the first bold-weight strokes to specific typewriter characters, giving seniors everywhere even more an incentive to type everything in boldface ALL CAPS.

The Justowriter adopted the use of code for aligning text on a page, a complex maneuver at the time.

Inspector Remington here had the envious job as a poison pen typewriter sleuth. Below is a vast range of showings of the many faces designed for Remington and IBM typewriters.

No Limitations to Creativity

If you are someone who has faced personal challenges and limitations in life, then artist Phil Hansen wants to hear your story. Phil has faced his own personal challenges as an artist when he began to experience numbness and tremors in his hands after years of repetitive motions. When he was told he had permanent nerve damage in his hands from years of making pointillist illustrations, he soon chose to quit art school. 
     In a defining moment, a neurologist later encouraged him to "embrace the shake". Then it dawned on him that he could look at his limitation as the source of his creativity rather than the end of it. By embracing his limitation, he soon found liberation, and has since pursued a variety of accomplished artwork in the interim.

Soon after telling his personal story at a TED talk this last February, he had many people willing to share their own accounts of struggle and success. For the last month, Hansen has been sharing these narratives of personal struggle in a 9 x 13 foot artwork created entirely of text with his sharpie. He is also soliciting more stories by phone and on his website, and in a Kickstarter campaign to fund this artwork. With less than 3 days left to go, his Kickstarter campaign has been fully funded, but you may still contribute and show your support. And take in his TED talk and be inspired. As Hansen so elegantly reminds us, "limitation can also be liberation." It's just how you look at it.
  

Corn Lettering From Space

In 2002 French architect Edouard Francois designed Labyrinthus, in collaboration with Luc Vincent as part of an invitational corn maze design. It was a tribute to French author Victor Hugo. With the aid of digital mapping, corn mazes have become a cash crop for farmers. With a simple image search for corn maze, dozens of mazes will pop up there. Most are giant sports team mazes or political candidates; mazes with sponsorship from local car dealerships; and Star Wars. There is even an Oprah maze and a giant fingerprint. Much of the lettering is what I would call a Corn Gothic, with an occasional italic tossed in for emphasis I guess. And the navigation of corn typography certainly takes on a different role than text does in print or on screen. I know mazes require a wayfinding path between letters most often, but would it kill the designer to use a script font now and then? Readability from space people! For some real topographical typography, get a fine lettering artist to do the job. Even the directionally challenged might better be able to find their way out then...provided they can spell. From seeds of great lettering artists, grand designs can grow. Do plant soon however.

Labyrinthus by Edoardo Francois and Luc Vincent. Just below, the Fritzler Family Farms offers up Peyton Manning and the US Department of Defense. Must be in defense of corn mazes?

The Kraay Family Farm in Alberta established the Guinness world's record for the largest QR code. Just below are two mazes (found here and here) from the Jonamac Orchard Farm. The Boy Scouts were probably required to use a compass to find their way out of their maze.

In hopes that you find your way, the Willamette Valley Fruit Co. grew a 13 acre corn maze. And Batman leaves Gotham long enough to stand guard as the Maze Crusader at the Basse's Farm. 

You will never get out of this one alive. From the makers of high fructose corn syrup via NBC News.