Concrete Poem

Long-time Letterology fan Rob Bowker of Typewriter Heaven, home of the Type-o-Matic, sent me this lettres trouvées link today which gave me a good laugh. He stumbled on this cap H on what passes for a hill in his part of the Typosphere. It could be an H for Hazard, or for Hill as he suggests. Or maybe it's just a minimalist concrete poem. 
     Bowker can frequently be found test-driving one of his many typewriters and tasting local beers (is this legal?) Occasionally he will post some great typewriter ephemera such as this recent gem he entitles Magic Fingers. It is a keyboard template from a Halda Portable Typewriter owner's manual.

Bowker recently shared some of his own keyboard handiwork at Typewriter Heaven, which he calls Spiralcast. It's a story about belt-driven turntables and typing, but I think it qualifies as a concrete poem. Since Bowker happens to be a member of The Society for the Ethical Treatment of Typewriters, I trust he wasn't drinking and driving when he put his Olivetti Lettera 32 through all of the tight curves. I can't even read it without getting dizzy.  

Peace, Love and Art

The Rainbow Box was a series of four small books written by Joseph Pintauro (1930 -) and beautifully illustrated and designed by Norman Laliberté (1925 -). They were published as a boxed set by Harper & Row in 1970 and came packaged with the fold-out "Peace Poster" seen below. Pintauro, who was a priest, poet and a playwright (A—My Name is Alice), was given leave from his parish to work in advertising at Young & Rubicam. In the late 60s he collaborated with Sister Corita Kent to write a trilogy of books about belief of Things, God and Man. His prose for The Rainbow Box series rose out of the 60s Peace and Love decade and the bitterness of the Viet Nam War. At times it is rather dark, and other times is very optimistic and revealing. The quartet was divided into the four seasons, each relating to themes of time, love, peace and magic, and are quite distinct from one another, revealing Laliberté's remarkable versatility as an artist. Some of the books are entirely hand-lettered in his signature style, while others rely on a liberal use of press type at times. The set of four books, consisting of The Peace Box, The Rabbit Box, The Magic Box and A Box of Sun, came nicely packaged in a square-cubed box. It was originally printed in an edition of 15,000 and sold for $15.95 when it was introduced in 1970. A short time later it earned Laliberté the AIGA Award for Design when it was selected for the Fifty Books of the Year exhibition in 1971. See more photos of the boxed set here.

With rabbits and the joyful signs of renewal in the air, I was reminded of the The Rabbit Box book, one of the four seasonal books in The Rainbow Box quartet. This book of Spring is the most simply-designed book in the boxed set. Perhaps an economic decision—it is printed just 2-color sepia tones to give it that mock nostalgia feel. Laliberté combined old found photos, bits of ephemera, and hand-shadow illustrations, with beautifully hand-lettered script for this entire book. The cover design using Palace Script, is an injustice however, and I wince every time I see it next to his lovely hand-lettered script inside the book.

Laliberté's brilliant artwork is always colorful, diverse and imaginative. Early in my career I  discovered his influential book 100 Ways to Have Fun With an Alligator, and it totally flipped on a switch in my head. Co-authored with Richey Kehl, it is an invitation to a party written with exercises and inspirational quotes for art education teachers, and playfully accompanied with Laliberté's lively illustrations. My own tattered paperback copy with loose pages and marginalia, still gets occasional use whenever I need to re-boot and do some serious problem solving. Although difficult to find, he co-authored numerous other books on art education in the 60s and 70s which are just as relevant today. A prolific artist, Laliberté has always explored a variety of styles and media, including stencil, woodcut, collage, pencil, watercolor, and papercuts to name just a few, and his work has continued to evolve in his later years. As the seasons change, I will continue to chronicle each of the other three books in The Rainbow Box series, as there is far too much design goodness to share in just this one post.
:: More stuff from the Letterology Library 

Stitched Stories

Valentine's Day is near and I thought I would share the love. This stitched loveletter is from the hand of British lettering artist Rosalind Wyatt. She stitched a Sanskrit / Indian love poem onto a lacy linen cloth. Wyatt claims her work is about words. "The 'sound' of them, the 'feel' of them and the forming of letters. The choice of tool is uninhibited and relevant to the content of the text—therefore my range of writing tools has expanded from nib, through brush and now to needle." She prefers to think of her work as storytelling or "writing with a needle". She brings stories to life by stitching the handwriting of a letter writer onto a garment. You can listen to Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, reciting this heartfelt poem to his wife here. 

Text Appeal

Readers, writers, typographers, and printers take note. The 6th annual Text Ball—the lettered stepchild of Portland, Oregon's annual literary Wordstock Festival—will take place on October 1st at p:ear Gallery. The theme this year is In Poetic Fashion and it is a benefit for the non-profit Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland which promotes literacy through DIY publishing. There will be live music by indie-folk heroine Laura Gibson and poetry readings, word games, giant crossword puzzles, dirty limerick challenges, a silent auction and more, including a parade of well-lettered fashions and prizes for the text-dressed. Come dressed as your favorite poem, book, letter, story, or word, enjoy the letterati and support a great cause. Advance tickets for $12 can be purchased here or $15 at the door.
      The photo above is last year's grand prize winner for Best Text, Erica Hijazi. She constructed a fashionable bow from a 1939 Williamette College newpaper she unearthed while picking up a VCR purchased on Craigslist. Soooo Portlandia! Her date wore a tie constructed from the same newspaper.

Mark Anen came dressed as a Government G-Man.

Aimee Pedretti's vision of Hell was Dante's Inferno.

Runner-up for Most Literary is writer and author Myrlin Hermes, featuring the entire text of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129: "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action..."
::All photos from the last year's text-dressed are taken by Georgia Perry.

A Fountain of Blackletter Text

A very unusual title page from a German text, dated 1676. It is said to be an early example of concrete typography, and it can be yours for only $450 on eBay. 

A Play With V

A seven act play about the letter V designed and printed by Jens Jorgen Hansen. He is a self-employed printer (bogtrykker in Danish) and designer in Denmark and has a nice letterpress studio. See his website for information on workshops and his Etsy store for more of his work for sale. But what about the V for Valentine?

Essay on Sculpture

Concrete poetry by Carl Andre. This appeared in the November 1965 issue of Art in America.
::Via Airform

Flakiness

Create a typographic snowflake from any word or your name with David Hunter's interactive flake generator, NameFlake. Enter another word in the Winter Wonderland, and you get an instant snowstorm on your desktop. Almost as much fun as the real thing. From David Hunter, a designer and developer based in London. Beware of avalanche danger.

Visual Storytelling

Publishers sell stories, yet they are seldom the topics of them. This is not the case of a new British publisher, Visual Editions, nicknamed VE. Visual Editions was born in 2009 out of a joint love for books, when owners Britt Iversen and Anna Gerber wondered why there was such a large divide between text-driven literary books and image-driven art and design books. They now edition beautiful, smart and well-crafted books which are nearly theatrical experiences. They consider this amalgam of text and image as visual writing, and see a rich literary heritage of this kind of writing. Their vision is to make great looking stories—where the words and pictures meld and the act of reading becomes an experience. Here is a glimpse of Tristram Shandy, their first editioned book.



You can also see some of their favorite examples of visual writing (including some of their own) in their Flickr group.

Take a look at a short video of some reactions to VEs second book, Tree of Codes, just released in the UK on November 15th:

Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer - Public Reactions from Visual Editions on Vimeo.

In Tree of Codes, author Jonathan Safran Foer uses an existing manuscript and carves out an entirely new story by die-cutting out portions of the text. The original book is one of his favorites—The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz and Foer claims it is a completely different story with a different arc and characters even. In the process of producing this unconventional book, Visual Editions got turned down by every printer they approached—the stock line being the book you want to make just cannot be made. Their luck turned when the Belgium printer, die Keure rose to the challenge of making a book with a different die-cut on every page. This book, or paper sculpture, defies all literary and design conventions, took over a year of writing, cutting and proto-typing and it was not without production perils. The book's designer is London-based Sara De Bondt Studio. De Bondt is also a teacher at The Royal College of Art who co-curated The Form of the Book conference at St. Bride Library in 2009. The paperback cover of Tree of Codes was designed by Jon Gray of Gray318. A remarkable acheivement all! I cannot wait to hold it in my own hands to experience the reading myself. Note to self...add to wish list. It will be available in the states soon!





Listen to what Jonathan Safran Foer has to say about the concept of his new book and the process of reading it:

Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer from Visual Editions on Vimeo.