imomus | I contain multitudes

I contain multitudes

In my new piece for the AIGA Voice, Letraset as Aleph, I manage to sound like a 65 year-old graphic designer misty-eyed for the 1970s Letraset catalogue (and verging on some sort of Jewish mysticism with his vision of the dry transfer lettering system as a sort of "aleph", the magical point from which everything in the world can be seen simultaneously). Well, if I can pull off the 25 year-old Williamsburg brat voice in my pieces for Vice, why can't I be a 65 year-old designer for AIGA? I contain multitudes, you know.

Sorry I don't have anything more exciting for you today... I'm finishing off my Thames and Hudson photoblogging book, setting up a summer art show in New York, and preparing a piece for tomorrow's Design Observer. It's just as well I contain multitudes, because otherwise all this stuff just wouldn't get done. This multiple personality disorder thing is productive. Why don't we tell Nick that he's not a chicken? Because we need the eggs.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Nice article! I too was obsessed by an old Letraset catalogue.

Also, my Cementimental (http://www.cementimental.com) logo was actually made from scans of a sheet of 'Block Up'!

Wow, grooby!

A Letraset ziggurat would be ze bomb diggity.

Two things led to my career in graphic design. Letraset catalogs, and the pictogram signs at the airport, which were always accompanied by Helvetica. The first font distinction I ever remember making was between the Futura they taught us to print at school, with no hook over the small 'a', and the hook-top over the 'a' in helvetica on the signs at the airport and on the highway and the serifed a on a typewriter. I was amazed that 'small a' could look different and still be the same letter.

When I was a kid, letraset was leaving the professional sphere and dropping rapidly in price. I remember one time in an electronics surplus store when I was about 15, finding a huge stockpile of Letraset in all kinds of groovy fonts for $1/sheet. My school projects and book reports had the best typography ever. Motter Tektura (http://www.paratype.com/pstore/fonts/Motter-Tektura.htm) was the inspiration for an entire city design in Urban Geo that won an award in grade 11. :)

When I went into television I started as a Chyron operator, designing the credits and name titles for public-access cable TV shows on an aging 1981-era character generator that had 8 fonts and 256 colors, but I managed to hack it to make gradient-filled letters.

More recently, in 2002 I started doing letterpress, going way back to the roots of typography, arranging letterforms in trays and pressing them on a Vandercook roller press on thick, handmade paper. And truly learning what a genius Jan Tschischold really was.

Alphabets have always embodied potential and mystery to me.

Nice personal responses, seminar!

More warnings of the coming post-industrial dark age:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

See you on the farm.

I spent a lot of my childhood in my parents' architectural studio developing a fetish for stationery products (which I eventually replaced with a powerbook, a moleskine, and a muji 01 pen). Letraset (and Mecanorma) catalogs featured heavily in the context of boring summer mornings, probably since age 7. I used to leaf through and pick the typefaces I'd like to have in my arsenal: one serif (Times), one sans (Helvetica), one slab (was it Rockwell?), one script (Mistral), one gothic script (Fraktur), several others (Broadway, Arnold Böcklin, Copperplate, Optima, Cooper black). The letterpress architectural symbols were an excellent source of entertainment too. They had Citroën DSs, trees drawn in various styles, and toilet fixings, all in plan and elevation... And I fondly remember the amazing illustration style they used to showcase their Pantone colour markers. Days upon days of fun.

You don't have to be 65 to appreciate Letraset catalogs.

Momus, a summer art show!
when, where, how????????????????????????????

All will be revealed soon!

Nothing to do with yr post (maybe speaking of multitude?) Anywho I found wedding pic of Zizek and his bride (ex-lingerie model / daughter of Lacanian psychoanalysts). http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2005/03/tabloid_psychoa.html

It makes me happy and terrified in same time.

Taku

He looks like the classic "trophy husband"!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I contain multitudes

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I have something exciting for you today

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Newly wed Zizek

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