Joemus bold

[imomus]

In late August, when I was thinking about the artwork for the Momus album, I happened to be in Trento, in northern Italy. Something about some funky fat lettering in a restaurant window appealed to me, and I shot some photos of it.

When I got back to Berlin I issued an appeal for some "extremely talented graphic designer" to turn these snaps into a font called Joemus. It looked for a while as if Hugo Timm of Studio Julia, creator of the Serious Sans typeface I wrote about in the New York Times, might make the Joemus face. But Hugo had to go to South America for a while, and we were keen to get the artwork done immediately.



That's when Stijn Segers of Belgian practice Werkmannen stepped in. With amazing speed, Stijn -- who specializes in making fonts from hand-lettered sources -- made a font based on my snaps. We agreed at the time that when the album came out, we'd make his font available here and on the Werkmannen site, so here it is:

Joemus Bold (PostScript OpenType font)

At about the same time as the font appeal was issued, we were casting around for an artist to do the sleeve artwork for the Joemus album. That job eventually went to Stefan Sadler, who did us proud, but an interesting sketch by Mehmet Ulusahin has now gone up on his website. Here it is:



If we're "bold" in the font, we're positively ferocious in Mehmet's drawing!

PS: 30-second sound clips of every track on the Joemus album can now be heard via this Billboard page.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I honestly can't wait for Joemus to be released on emusic. I'm low on money this month, so buying the album in its physical incarnation is not an option until it's december on the calendar.

What played a (probably big) part in my huge liking of Ocky Milk is that it was the first album you released while I read your blog. I felt - sort of - personally connected to the album, having witnessed its long development over months. I don't have feelings like this towards Joemus, so this will at least be something new, ergo interesting!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.emusic.com/artist/Momus-MP3-Download/11607048.html) is the Emusic Momus page (a bit scary how they refer to me in the past tense there). Not sure when Joemus goes up there, but it should be pretty imminent.

FYI, Momus, you were quoted on Pitchfork today

[(Anonymous)]

In their review for I'm From Barcelona's new disc "Who Killed Harry Houdini." See the last paragraph. It links you here.

Re: FYI, Momus, you were quoted on Pitchfork today

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yay, I am an authority on "the invention of childhood" today, I see.

I'm looking forward to the Pitchfork Joemus review! It's the review from "the paper of records".

Come Obama Rasta

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the font. Following the last few posts i can't resist mentioning the Cocoa Tea Obama song: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NPIMkDjzAlc which is annoyingly stuck in my head.

(also pleasing is the Fela Flute praise song: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eDxku3tdZ-0 first heard blasting out in Peckham. It makes me happy.)

Re: FYI, Momus, you were quoted on Pitchfork today

[(Anonymous)]

"Childhood, the invention of adults, reflects adult needs and adult fears as much as it signifies the absence of adulthood."

- The Invention of Childhood in Victorian Autobiography, LuAnn Walther, 1978

Re: Come Obama Rasta

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Fela Flute song is by far the nicest of all those Obama praise songs. There are some pretty ropey ones out there.

[(Anonymous)]

Looks like an older, out of the closet Harry Potter, and his lover, the zombie-momus.

And Jah wise is easily the equal of twanky, probably better. Nice rasta cum montovani (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sWOcG4vnME) feel to it. And hats off to Joe Howe for that sneaky, 1981 video-game/camel walk/ bubble-up production. I remember, just before dancehall took over and ruined everything, there was a kind of "vampire" movement in reggae, an emerging theme I attributed to the fact that harder drugs had infiltrated the scene, and the once blissed out potheads with heavenly harmonies and demon-haunted rhythms, were now becoming paranoid madmen, still preaching their crazy rasta gnosticism, but now with an added edge of coke fueled mania. Lee Perry mentioned vampires often, usually as a simile for global credit and corrupt banking systems, and Peter Tosh said that he once got so gikked on coke at Keith Richard's house in Jamaica -- a house he tried to occupy with some of his posse when Keith was not on the island, threatening machine guns if he tried to take it back -- that he saw vampires coming out of the walls. This story, while amazing, is still not as cool as this song.