Joemus font challenge!

[imomus]

The JOEMUS as slab boys! appeal here on Click Opera ten days ago got some really good responses. In the end we decided to go with a young artist, Stefan Sadler of Famicon Collective. As tends to be the way with these things, the original idea of making a John Byrne pastiche has been replaced by something much more interesting. Here's an early, rough (and delightfully gay-looking!) sketch Stefan's come up with:



The odd splash lettering (I picked the words at random, but apparently "coniglio sacca" means "rabbit bag"!) is my work. Basically -- and this brings me to today's appeal / challenge -- I saw some hand-drawn signs in a restaurant window in Trento last week that I really liked, both for the letter forms themselves and for the form of the paper they were on:



Now, since I know Click Opera is read by some extremely talented graphic designers, I wondered if someone could make a font of this lettering, or something derived from it? Ideally the font would be called Joemus, and would be made specifically for the Joemus album (which I've decided is just going to be called "Momus: Joemus"). There would be a bold face for the front lettering and a light face for use on the back -- something the song titles and credits could be set in.

You could retain copyright on your own font and distribute it however you liked, but you'd make it available to us for use on the album. You'd be free to interpret, alter, clean up, mess up, or change the letter forms. I think we need caps only, and numbers. Ultimately, I suppose there could be only one Joemus font (well, two: Joemus Bold and Joemus Light), so we'd have to decide in the comments section -- within the next 24 hours, basically -- who was officially doing it. If you're interested, point us in the direction of fonts you've designed. In fact, do that even if you're not interested, because we're interested!

Comments

Re: fonts

[imomus.livejournal.com]

there is a new program i've heard about that makes it very easy to convert images to a typefaces, people seem to be loving it (normally you would need to create it from an outline vector path). i can't remember the name off hand, but i'll ask somebody who will know...

Ah, interesting development, thanks!

Re: fonts

[akabe.livejournal.com]

if i recall the old fontographer used to do that last time i loked at it in the 90s but i'm more concerned about credits and royalties not going to the ice cream fellow , the true designer. you seem to agree this year that post-modern pillage is over.

Re: fonts

[(Anonymous)]

yes, you can do it in fontographer. but its not that straight forward, you have to save each letter individually after you've vector traced it in a very very old version of illustrator, then there's all the fontographer technical stuff to deal with once you have it all in there.

this new program i'm thinking of makes it much easier for people who don't really know much about typeface design (as far as i can remember) it brings typeface design to the people.

on the subject of handmade signs, Postalco have a very nice handmade SIGNS book: http://www.postalco.net/library.html#

lee

Re: fonts

[akabe.livejournal.com]

yes yes - the inbetween step was adobe steamroller (or something like that) for me

Re: fonts

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Which is more over, pillage or property? The concept of "pillage" depends, after all, on the concept of property, its sanctity.

Personally, I think, of the two, it's property -- and the parallel pakuri pillocks -- which is in crisis. There can be no "pillage" when things flow freely from context to context. But if you want a property-related justification, I'd say:

A font is quite a different cultural product than a hand-drawn paper plate in a restaurant window. It has quite a different raison d'etre, and quite a different commercial structure. The (wo)man who made the paper plate didn't sign it, didn't expect to commercialize it, and expected to capitalize on it via plates of rabbit stew sold and paid for by rabbit-stew-eating customers. In that context, the anonymous crafts(wo)man's work is already amortized in its own commercial ecosystem.

In the transition to a new medium and a new function (as a font for an album sleeve), the letterforms would undoubtedly evolve into something quite different.

I know people who wouldn't get this logic at all -- one of them has a name beginning with M -- but pretty much any working artist works by millions and millions of mini-appropriations which, at a certain point, make the magical jump to that thing we call "originality". Appropriation is all about adverbs; it's the way you tell 'em, the way you borrow. When you start to follow the "who invented" or the "who owns" or the "who stole" line, it's an endlessly receding chain of backbiting, accusation, bitterness, and attempts to profit.

I dare say the maker of the sign borrowed her signwriting style from someone else in the region, and in the trade. Does she pay that person too? Give her "credits and royalties"? Put a little thank you note on the back of each plate in the restaurant window? Do we set up a micropayments system for paper plates, managed by PayPal (or "PlatePal")?

Re: fonts

[imomus.livejournal.com]

And where we get with that line is to the question: "What kind of world is it where more and more things are defined as intellectual property, and more and more people insist that the thing they made with the help of others is credited to them alone?"

One thing's for sure: lawyers and banks do well in that world. Artists, though, have their liberty curtailed and are set up for endless tedious fights with each other -- fights not necessarily won by who's right -- whatever that means in this context -- but by who has the heaviest, meanest lawyers.

Re: fonts

[akabe.livejournal.com]

my comment was basically a joke though the larger subject is something i do care about. the artist borrowing from the vernacular doesn't compare whatsoever with one shop borrowing from another.

to put it in some sort of lame lacanian the artist/designer is placing, crystalizing the thing into the 'symbolic order' (the name of the father , power and money etc - in a totally different way and calibre to the way the vernacular sign might relate to good business and ultimately money and power) . to be honest from what i know about your respect and praise of the folksey , communism etc i'd be happier to see you energetically and passionately and making a case of it, borrowing fonts from a brian eno album (a horizontal borrowing, potentially radical for the arts which are still defined by vertical sublimation) though i'm not unhappy with what i see here

Re: fonts

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Re: fonts

[akabe.livejournal.com]

::-))

Re: fonts

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

the saxons are still paying royalties on their vocabulary