I contain multitudes

[imomus]

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.

Comments

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

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.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Nice personal responses, seminar!