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 As tends to be the way with these things, the original idea of making a John Byrne pastiche has been replaced by something much more interesting.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

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Wish I could help, Nick, but I'm swamped (and swamping) at the moment.

Mind that old rabbit bag of yours!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I could do with a rabbit bag -- the little pest is biting at my ankles right now!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

You really have to get that odious little critter a chew toy. Perhaps a mannequin's foot?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

No, he's a rockist rabbit, he'd never swallow an artificial foot!

[crop-marks.livejournal.com]

You're probably better off hand-drawing the text, unless you want to set whole essays in it, to preserve the handmade quality of the original…

fonts

[(Anonymous)]

if i wasn't so busy i might, but for a whole font there's more than a days work there. its a bit of a slow monotonous process designing typefaces, then you've got the kerning, spacing etc. etc.

but.. 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...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It is a handmade look, isn't it? It's also very much to do with the energy of the white space, the interplay between the letters and the shape of the background. In my snaps, the first two work much better than the last three in terms of their feng shui.

Nevertheless, I like the idea -- the tension, the contrast -- that some of that energy could make it through standardization. Or that -- as happened with the cover image -- something entirely new and unexpected could come about. No try-ses, no surprises.

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

[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")?

[(Anonymous)]

Can't help with th font, but think the album title is delightfully Jewish.

Miles

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.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

I approve of this gaymosexual sketch. They'll need to keep the nakeditude in the eventual art.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I can just see the reviews:

Momus? Joemus?? SCHMOMUS!!!

(Actually, Joe is Jewish.)

[(Anonymous)]

just use comic sans.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a brillant idea -- that or Serious Sans (http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/the-post-materialist-design-gets-serious/)!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Re: fonts

[akabe.livejournal.com]

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

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

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"Peggy Sue-ooh, ow, ahhhhh!"

[viceanglais.livejournal.com]

Ian Curtis might be alive today - if he'd only used Jokerman.

Re: fonts

[imomus.livejournal.com]

[(Anonymous)]

That really is an amazing font! The i's in particular are beautiful. I would love to help but ive never done fonts before and im sure there is someone with a real font background that will do an ace job.

Adam B

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Alive, maybe, but he'd surely be
As obscure as me!

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

that font reminds me of [url=http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Q4RPJMVDL._SL500_AA240_.jpg] this album cover[/url]

Re: fonts

[akabe.livejournal.com]

::-))

[mistresshellena.livejournal.com]

Serious Sans! Yes!

That lettering in the photos you took kind of reminds me of the font wac-wak-ooops (http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/agfa/wac-wak-ooops/)

[mistresshellena.livejournal.com]

I love how that font picks up the texture of the plants in the sculpture!!!! :P

[akabe.livejournal.com]

i'd like to know ,as someone already posed the question above, why you'd actually want to make it into a 'font' as such. is it simply naivete , assuming that if you're designing you need a font when clearly vector or even raster graphics would do just fine ?? then actually author the font; even skipping the ethical issue i mention above , what use would it be ?? is anyone using the depeche mode , def leppard etc fonts floating around (ironic acde maybe) ?? or, (since black sabbath didn't actually release their own fonts), are you assuming that you are minor enough as musicians to consider an alternative carrer as fontographers ?? ::: i am genuinely at a loss trying to understand this but whatever it may be i think the coolest (if not also most ethical) thing to do is to leave the font unnamed , even uncreated, but do have a small line in the credits saying 'font inspired by so and so'

guess i'm getting hot about this because it touches on one of the things that irritates me most these days which is creative greed or the greed of the creatives these days. (i tend to get rather political about it unless i ignore it.) surely no-one will question your ability as musicians on the album - or if they do it will be in a positive way, even if the criticism might be negative. -- and of course the cover does have to look good and/or interesting

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I can see what you mean, but I wouldn't be caught dead with Wac-Wak-Ooops on my album sleeve! It looks like it should be on a kid's birthday card. (Though it wouldn't be if I designed kids' birthday cards.)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I prefer the term "appetite" to the term "greed". I think it's tremendously important to see (or hear) and covet something. Not necessarily to possess it physically, but perhaps just to do something with its digital ghost, based on that moment of appetite you felt. Art created with that kind of desire crackles with sex and joie de vivre, with positivity and happiness and energy. Preserved in such work you can hear and see the moment when someone wanted and desired something. That appetite is life-giving.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

fair enough though i'm not sure we're talking about the exact same thing

[(Anonymous)]

my guess is, the hand lettering was probably appropriated from an already existing font, which may itself have been taken from a sign-writers work perhaps?

have a look, you might even find the original, although you won't get the freestyle flavour.

[mistresshellena.livejournal.com]

Not surprised by your response at all, but decided to share anyway. It is a bit more Dr. Seuss-y feeling for sure.

Good luck! I'm in the throes of designing documentation of a performance I haven't done yet...would be a clever idea and fun exercise if it weren't for the fact that it's being done this way round for a university assessment.

Oh, and no Wac Wak ooops in sight. Just boring, reliable old Univers. ;)

[drywbach.livejournal.com]

I wondered about the same thing. Couldn't find any plausible hits in http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
I don't know what other resources there might be, though...

[(Anonymous)]

I think this should really be just a headline/display font; basically a one off logo. That way it will be straightforward to create as a vector graphic.

I think as a font for the credits, a lighter version might prove hard to read unless that is the intention. It reminds me a little of this pseudo-Chinese style font which seems appropriate for you: http://www.linotype.com/89941/mandarin-family.html.

Richard

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

too late and circuitous to try tracking down the sign maker?

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

If you really like the rabbit-stew-peddling font I still think your fifth poster's suggestion that you just hand-draw the font is the best - and most practical - solution.
I like the proposed album title, it effectively circumvents Cherry Red's insistence that the artist credit must go to Momus alone.
It's nice that you also want to make Joe a font Star Forever.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of something I did a few months ago:

http://community.livejournal.com/postpunklolz/7304.html

At a beach house...

[(Anonymous)]

scrunches up momus site and regrettably wipes bum with it because nothing else is at hand...

EH !

EH !?

SEE THAT NICK ! I FUCKIN PWNZORED YE ! EH !

[(Anonymous)]

Perfect idea, truly the best possible solution...not only use the font someone has created themselves, but literally use them instead of ripping them off. No lossed edges in that concept from second thought tracings.
love,
John Flesh

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Re: fonts

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

the saxons are still paying royalties on their vocabulary

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

http://tinyurl.com/5n9oju

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Update: it looks as though Studio Julia (the new practice by Hugo Timm and his colleagues, new graduates from the RCA and designers of Serious Sans (http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/the-post-materialist-design-gets-serious/)) will be working on the Joemus font in September. Exciting!

Joemus Font

[(Anonymous)]

hej momus!

i just finished a font for a cultural centre in an old cement factory in Maastricht (Netherlands) based upon the writings on the wall from the factory workers. i made a complete caps font and used it as signing throughout the building and as font for the titles of some flyers and posters. this was fun to do, mainly because you see an old human product coming back to life. becoming a cement factory worker...

i made a short project page on http://www.werkmannen.be/ainsi

when do you need the font, i want to do it!

stijn@werkmannen.be

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

What a shame! It would have been amazing to get the original designer on-board for a small fee. Oh, well; when might the album be released?

Simon