COOPER BLACK | It's Back!

Fashion’s affairs with typefaces have been many – from the Didone styles of Vogue to the sans serifs favored by Chanel, Commes des Garçons and Fendi. But Cooper Black doesn’t have the sleek lines or sophistication you might expect from a sartorial squeeze. 

So where did this font surface from? And why has mainstream fashion gone so mad for it?

Paul McNeil, a typographic designer at MuirMcNeil and a senior lecturer in typography at the London College of Communication, thinks it has an “unexpected affability and liveliness … due partly to its bulbous serifs, its large, lower-case letters and its tiny, gleaming white counter forms.” 

It could well be its brand of familiar charm that is helping it win fashion’s favor now. It is all about retro nostalgia – it just says ‘1970s’ the minute you look at it.

It was created by Chicago-based typographer, illustrator and commercial artist Oswald “Oz” Cooper in 1922. It quickly became ubiquitous in advertising. It's foundry declared it to be the “world’s bestselling typeface in 1927”. It was marketed by the foundry’s sales manager Richard N McArthur as “the selling type supreme … it made big advertisements out of little ones”. But in the 60s, its gregarious characters fell slightly out of favor with the ad world.

Nevertheless, it has become visual shorthand for the late 60s and early 70s because it was in that era that it was brought out of adland and into the popular culture mainstream on a wave of west coast harmonies, appearing on the cover of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds in 1966 before going on to be the typeface of choice on the Doors’ LA Woman in 1971 and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust in 1972. It was the typeface of The Garfield Show and M*A*S*H.

It was also in this era that it kicked off another meaningful relationship: with hip-hop. Breakdancing crews used iron-on transfers of the letters on their T-shirts and it later appeared on albums and merchandise. More recently, in nods to the earlier DIY days of hip-hop, it has been used by Odd Future, on Tyler the Creator solo albums and Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange.

In a way, it was never out of fashion – it is something of an American street-culture classic. So when mainstream fashion chooses to adorn T-shirts with Cooper Black, it is subliminally referencing all these things – hip-hop, the 70s, sitcoms and now, Louis CK.

It is all of these cultural anchors that lead to another tenet of its popularity. With a sense of authenticity Cooper Black has a cheery gaucheness that makes it look untutored and uncontrived.

PIET ZWART | Everything Must Change

A fascinating documentary about Piet Zwart (1885-1977), an idiosyncratic and stubborn designer, who lived for innovation and prepared the way for the international success that is now known as Dutch Design. Piet Zwart worked as an interior and industrial designer, commercial typographer, photographer, critic and lecturer, playing a key role in defining the design climate in the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century. He is especially known for designing the famous ‘Piet Zwart’ kitchen for the Dutch company Bruynzeel: a kitchen that could be easily produced and consisted of standardized elements. His versatility and influence on present-day designers led the Association of Dutch Designers to award him the title of “Designer of the Century” in 2000.

Piet Zwart is counted among the international avant-garde without any reservations. His work reflects the work of artists such as Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jan Tschichold, but always retains its own authenticity. His work corresponded with similar experiments at the Bauhaus, where Piet Zwart was a teacher.

This documentary enters the mind of the artist Piet Zwart with his almost obsessive urge to innovate.

TYRSA x LIBERTÉ | Le Tyrsamisu

The arts of pastry-making and typography came together at LIBERTÉ patisserie in Paris to present a touch of sweetness engraved with dark chocolate tones: the TYRSAMISU. 

Pastry chef Benoit Castel, in collaboration with the famous Parisian graphic artist Alexis Taieb aka Tyrsa reinterpreted the famous Italian tiramisu with three different recipes that are as savory as they are graphical. 

Watch the process of the two art forms slowly coming together creating and exquisite dessert combining two of my favourite things...pastry-making and typography.

If you're feeling inspired, here’s an easy Tiramisu recipe, minus the typography.

PINK FLOYD RECORDS | New Visual Identity

Design consultancy firm Pentagram has created a new identity for Pink Floyd Records, the label established to put out the recent Pink Floyd: the Early Years boxset.

The project saw the team, led by partner Harry Pearce, take the original lettering from the Animals album and extend it into an entire alphabet.

“Pink Floyd’s impact on music is immeasurable, and is only seconded by their impact of visual culture. Famed by their relationship with the design collective Hipgnosis, their LP covers are part of the cultural consciousness, creating moments of shared experience for millions of people around the world,” says Pentagram.

Harry worked closely with Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis to create the visual identity for the label. Taking inspiration from the original lettering on 1977’s Animals record cover, Harry and team build a complete alphabet based on the album’s stencilled lettering in both outline and solid form. This lettering has been used to make a unique mark and headline font for the band and business.

The box set, which features previously unreleased material including the band’s first recording, you will find original artworks by John Whitely have been used on the CD booklet covers. “The box sets follow a simple one column grid and uses typewriter-esque typography to create an archival aesthetic, which is built upon through the careful arrangement of historical photographs of the band,” says Pentagram.

HOW TO PRONOUNCE | Helvetica

Just for fun.

SEXY TYPE | The Classics

Can type be sexy? Erotic art has existed since prehistoric man started painting on cave walls. The first

erotic alphabets appeared soon after the invention of printing in the mid-15th century, yet these were illustrations rather than type, with copulating human bodies creating the letter forms. 

However, for one decade – from the early 1970s to the early-to-mid 1980s – erotic art and commercial art converged during the Golden Age of Porn. Recurring typefaces on adult film posters of the porno chic period were characterised by soft and voluptuous letter forms, curvacious shapes with swirling swashes and ligatures, big ball terminals and liquid loops. 

The fonts below feature the classic sexy faces from the 70s.

CASLON GRAPHIQUE

The extreme contrast and generous forms in Caslon Graphique make its character shapes particularly voluptuous, with enticing pear-shaped terminals.

DIDONI

Not only are the ball terminals in this extra bold modern face exceptionally big, Didoni also sports one of the sexiest ampersands.

TANGO

Colin Brignall designed the Tango typeface in 1974. A groovy swirl of a font, Tango looks like disco party ready to lift off. Tango is one of many fonts that have come to symbolize the party music of the 1970s, familiar forms can be found on countless album covers from that era. Tango is a child of it's times - flashy, lively, and fun!

COOPER BT

When looking from up close the reader can imagine the shape of the female body in the rounded serifs and sensuous curves of Oswald Cooper’s eponymous display face.

EF STILLA

If you are in need of sensual curves and big balls you need not look any further than this high-contrast French buxom beauty.

LAZYBONES

The neo-script Lazybones entices the reader with bulging reverse-contrast curves and thick, meaty swashes on its soft slab serif capitals.

​RYMAN ECO | The Alphabet Poster Project​

Ryman Eco is a beautiful, free, sustainable font that uses one third less ink than standard fonts and 27% less ink than the leading sustainable font. The font is cleverly designed to capitalize on the ink bleed and toner spill that occurs on home and office printers.​

It is 

estimated that if everyone used the font while printing, more than 490 million ink cartridges could be saved every year.

​ ​

However, no typeface has ever entered widespread use without first engaging and being embraced by the design community. Helvetica, Futura and Century Gothic, for example, were all developed and adopted by designers long before they established themselves as popular, everyday fonts.

To highlight Ryman Eco’s credentials as a credible and aesthetically pleasing design tool, creative agency Grey London has enlisted the help of some of the UK’s most respected design practitioners.

The Alphabet Poster Project  handpicked 

​26 ​

typographers, designers and art directors 

​to create

 a unique poster featuring one letter from the Ryman Eco Alphabet.

The brief was two words long: ‘beautifully sustainable’, and the result is an visually eclectic, stimulating ‘alphabet’, celebrating the beauty of the font and serving as a reminder of its environmentally-friendly purpose.

Only a single prototype of each poster was printed. They were photographed and will be displayed in a digital gallery where people can explore them in detail, download and share them. All without using a single drop of ink.

Ryman Eco was created by Monotype’s Dan Rhatigan and creative agency Grey London on behalf of Stationery retailer, Ryman. 

WATCH | Ryman Eco - the world's most beautiful, sustainable font

SEE ALL 26 POSTERS | 

http://rymaneco.co.uk/poster-a.html

Gastrotypographicalassemblage | The Designs of Lou Dorfsman

Louis "Lou" Dorfsman was a graphic designer who oversaw almost every aspect of the advertising and corporate identity for the Columbia Broadcasting System in his 40 years with the network.

Dorfsman was renowned for his graphic achievements that gave CBS its corporate identity. He saw the value of integrating graphic with interior, on-air motion, and animation design. In addition to creating sets for Walter Cronkite’s evening news show and the CBS Morning News, he oversaw every visual detail of the CBS headquarters building, selecting type for the numerals on the wall clocks, the elevator buttons, and even the elevator-inspection stickers. He also implemented a custom-made typeface for all CBS graphic design called CBS Didot, which is still used today.

He was in at the birth of television in the USA and throughout the sixties set a benchmark of excellence for future designers to aspire to. His advertising work for CBS in particular has that authentic ‘Mad Men’ feel about it and he was helped by having the perfect designer/client relationship with Dr. Frank Stanton, the president of the channel.

It is the 35 foot wide by 8.5 foot tall typographical artwork he designed with the typographic legends Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase for the building’s cafeteria which he titled “Gastrotypographicalassemblage”—the Great Wall of CBS—that he was most proud of.

Dorfsman considered this massive frieze of custom-milled woodtype spelling out foods and food groups—from lamb chops to hasenpfeffer—his magnum opus, “his gift to the world.”

It was composed of 1,650 letters, carved from pine or poplar and lacquered white, that were glued or nailed to a plywood background. These were interspersed with actual vessels and utensils, as well as foods reproduced in plastic or plaster.

Perfectly suited to the ’60s, when New York embraced Pop Art and fondue, the mural survived the 1980s, even as “suki yaki,” “hot tamale” and “Tom & Jerry” grew quaint, and spellings like “catsup,” “cumquat,” “gefülte fish” and “pasta fazole” grew outmoded.

When Laurence Tisch became CEO of CBS in 1986, he started cutting costs everywhere from the mailroom to the newsroom. Even the cafeteria wasn’t safe. Tisch didn’t seem that interested in typographic nuance or learning to say “Gastrotypographicalassemblage.” 

The work was saved from corporate-mandated oblivion by the sculptural illustrator and 3D designer Nick Fasciano, who originally worked on the piece. Once in his possession, he stored it in his basement for 23 years as the ravages of time sent the piece into disrepair. Adhesives from the ‘60s that were used to secure the letters in place gave way, and many of the letters cracked off as soon as they were touched. The wall also contained 65 three-dimensional food objects that either deteriorated or were aged beyond repair. 

Shortly after Dorfsman’s death in 2008, it was announced that The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, would fund the restoration and display it on their campus. 

Rarely do works of typography earn such celebratory attention, but after what it’s been through in the past few decades, some good news for the Gastrotypographicalassemblage is certainly overdue.

WATCH | Gastrotypographicalassemblage 

BIG | Alphabet of Light

Danish firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) has created a modular lighting system that can be rearranged to form different letters of a bespoke typeface.

Italian lighting company Artemide worked with architect Bjarke Ingels of BIG to create the ‘Alphabet of Light’ lamps. The alphabet series evolved from BIG’s creation of a new typeface that was translated and manifested as lighting modules that can be utilized either in straight or curved formats. The series use precise geometric proportions with elements of LED strip lights joined together by magnets that can be combined to build countless light structures, both essential and complex.

GRAPHIC MEANS | Before Design was Digital

It’s been roughly 30 years since the desktop computer revolutionized the way the graphic design industry works. For decades before that, it was the hands of industrious workers, and various ingenious machines and tools that brought type and image together on meticulously prepared paste-up boards, before they were sent to the printer.

The documentary, Graphic Means explores graphic design production of the 1950s through the 1990s—from linecaster to photocomposition, and from paste-up to PDF. 

WATCH TRAILER | Graphic Means

THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY

In the 1920s and 1930s, The New Typography movement brought graphics and information design to the forefront of the artistic avant-garde in Central Europe.

Letterforms were recognized by supporters of The New Typography as having formal properties alongside their linguistic function. From this simple observation, they created a system of graphic design that operated on abstract principles yet opened up limitless possibilities for layout, artistic expression, and clarity of communication. Rejecting superfluous elements and the traditional arrangement of type in symmetrical columns, designers organized the printed page and poster as blank fields in which blocks of type, bold colors (in many cases, the printed items were 2-color), and illustrations - frequently in the form of photomontage - could be arranged in strikingly asymmetrical yet harmonious compositions. With an emphasis on simplicity and directness of communication, this new movement embraced and circulated the message of modernism around the world.

Taking his lead from currents in Soviet Russia and at the Weimar Bauhaus, the designer Jan Tschichold codified the movement with accessible guidelines in his landmark book Die Neue Typographie (1928). Almost overnight, typographers and printers adapted this way of working for a huge range of printed matter, from business cards and brochures to magazines, books, and advertisements. 

Although young designers are still inspired by The New Typography movement today, working in a simple direct way like that, it’s not as easy as it looks.

KERN TYPE | A Kerning Game

The art of spacing is one of the most difficult aspects of working with letters. But anyone who works with letters extensively knows that good spacing is often more important than good letters. Jan Tschichold, Master Typographer says, “Good lettering demands three things:—(1) Good letters. A beautiful letterform must be selected which is appropriate to the purpose it is to serve and to the lettering technique to be used.—(2) Good design in all details. This calls for well balanced and sensitive letter spacing and word spacing, which takes the letter spacing into account.—(3) A good layout. A harmonious and logical arrangement of lines is essential. None of these three demands can be neglected. Good lettering requires as much skill as good painting or good sculpture.” He goes on to demonstrate “good and bad letters” and how to properly space capitals and lowercase letters. “Letter spacing should not be mechanically equal but must achieve equal optical space. The letters must be separated by even and adequate white areas”. Easier said than done. It is that balance of the inner and outer that makes for ideal letter spacing.

KernType is a game to practice your kerning. Your mission is simple: achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters. Typographers call this activity kerning. Your solution will be compared to typographer’s solution, and you will be given a score depending on how close you nailed it. Good luck!

PLAY | http://type.method.ac/

THE BEAUTY OF HANGEUL | The Korean Alphabet

King Sejong the Great invented the Korean alphabet in the 15th century, but two key typeface designers from the modern era shaped it into what it looks like today.

Designers Choi Jeong-ho and Choi Jeong-soon created a blueprint for the Hangeul typeface that's still in use in the present-day, and their creations have made the alphabet more functional and artistically valuable. They designed fonts like Batang Che, which are now essential in the lives of Koreans.

The designers worked out of a sense of duty, as creating fonts did little to alleviate the hardships they would have faced at the time.

The National Hangeul Museum is holding an exhibition of their artifacts and achievements celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the two designers.

WATCH | ​

National Hangeul Museum - Hangeul Learning Center

​WIM CROUWEL | New Alphabet & Joy Division

The career of Dutch designer Wim Crouwel spans six decades and covers an extraordinary journey from designer, teacher, curator to museum director.

Based on modernist principles, Crouwel's lucid and systematic approach to design is underpinned by a grid-based methodology. His process​ ​distils a subject down to its absolute essence and in doing so he achieves great impact and purpose in both his exhibition and print design. Through his long and productive career he has produced exemplary work in exhibition design, and designed posters, calendars, typefaces, trademarks and stamps.

In the infancy of digital typography—as lead type, set by hand in heavy lead blocks or by machines that generated lines of metal type, was giving way to text set on screens—Crouwel saw an opportunity for an interesting experiment. Early computer screens—cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors—rendered images in fairly large pixels, making traditional curvilinear letterforms difficult to reconstruct, and so Crouwel set out to redesign the alphabet using only horizontal lines. NEW ALPHABET is, in Crouwel's words, "over-the-top and never meant to be really used," a statement on the impact of new technologies on centuries of typographic tradition. 

In 1988, however, Peter Saville Associates used a stylized version of the font on the cover of Substance, an album for the band Joy Division. NEW ALPHABET was digitized for contemporary use in 1997 by Freda Sack and David Quay of The Foundry, closely based on Crouwel's original studies.

WIM CROUWEL | Talking About Swiss Style 

https://youtu.be/eQCZuN1khPk

ARMIN HOFMANN | Swiss Design Visionary

Armin Hofmann has been described as one of the most outstanding personalities in Swiss graphic design history. Along with the more well known Josef Müller Brockmann, Emil Ruder and Max Bill, Hofmann helped shape modernist-inspired graphic design beyond recognition. Without ‘The International Typographic Style’, also known as the Swiss Style of design, contemporary graphic design would be almost unrecognizable. The readability and cleanliness of the style as well as its asymmetric layouts, use of a grids and sans-serif typefaces have helped define how we design today. Designers today are still taking the best elements from this era of design to create a whole new contemporary, visual aesthetic.

Hofmann was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1920. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Zurich, then worked as a lithographer in Basel and Bern. He then went on to open his own studio in Basel. In 1947 he began teaching at the Basel School of Arts and Crafts after he met Emil Ruder on a train and learned that the school was looking for a new teacher. Hofmann remained there for 40 years and eventually replaced Emil Ruder as the head of the school.

Hofmann felt that one of the best and most efficient forms of communication was the poster and he spent much of his career designing posters, in particular for the Basel Stadt Theater. Just as Joseph Müller-Brockmann and Emil Ruder had done previously, Hofmann also wrote a book outlining his practices and philosophies. His ‘Graphic Design Manual’ was, and still is, an excellent reference book for graphic designers.

The style of design that Hofmann and Ruder created aspired to communication above all else. It showed new techniques of photo-montage, photo-typesetting, experimental composition in general and of course heavily favoured sans-serif typography. It could be said that Hofmann devoted his entire professional life to bringing a creative and artistic integrity to the world of graphic design.

“As a human being he is simple and unassuming. As a teacher, he has few equals. As a practitioner, he ranks among the best” “…He is a rare bird, a daredevil driver, a mountain climber, a teacher par excellence, and a guru. Yet it is difficult, really, to pin him down.”– Paul Rand of Hofmann

Hofmann’s work, especially his poster designs, always seemed to emphasize an economical and efficient use of colour and typefaces. This was in reaction to what Hofmann called the “trivialization of colour.” His posters have been exhibited as works of art in major galleries all around the world, including the New York Museum of Modern Art. He retired in 1987 but his legacy lives on in his hugely influential body of work.

WATCH | Armin Hofmann: AIGA Medalist​  https://youtu.be/pSrNGbwVKQs

HERB LUBALIN | Typographer Extraordinaire

Most people recognize the name Herb Lubalin in association with the typeface Avant Garde. He was the typographer and designer behind its creation.  With the success of Avant Garde Magazine and its typographic logo he became a constant boundary breaker on both a visual and social level, but his career spanned a much wider scope than that. One of the people behind culture-shocking magazines Avant-Garde, Eros and Fact, he was also part of the founding team of the International Typeface Corporation (ITC). It was hard to escape the reach of Herb during the 1960s and 70s. 

His constant search for something new and a passion for inventiveness made him one of the most successful art directors of the 20th century.  Constantly working and achieving much success throughout his career, at the age of 59 he proclaimed "I have just completed my internship."

His influence on typeface and magazine design can still be seen to this day and whilst his name is not widely known his styles and ideas are around for all of us to see.

WATCH | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2Olb1JsZg

STEFAN SAGMEISTER | The Happy Film

Watching designer Stefan Sagmeister’s autobiographical documentary, The Happy Film, will not leave you significantly happier afterward. But the fast-paced, painfully honest, stressfully contemplative movie will trigger rushes of insight, empathy and voyeuristic pleasure.

In the film, Sagmeister—the prominent graphic designer known for environmental performance typography and whose work appears in museums like MoMA—sets out to analyze, define and capture happiness as a concept, emotion and commodity. He spends most of the film showing how interpersonal minefields, notably his inability to find and stay in love, impede his ability to achieve happiness. From this discordance emerges a highly entertaining confessional that is as much a reality show as experimental art piece.

The Happy Film started as part of a conceptual design project that includes “The Happy Show,” a museum-exhibition-cum-carnival-midway. Its global tour has attracted more than 350,000 people. But while the exhibit encourages visitors to reflect on their own happiness, the film is infinitely more personal; documentary filmmakers often are characters in their own films, but they’re rarely so candid. Sagmeister’s project captures his signature chutzpah, sure, but hinges on an intensely personal search for love and happiness that provides poignant insights into his struggle to make lasting personal commitments beyond his professional life.

Sagmeister derives happiness from upending the status quo with his work. He once gained 30 pounds in one month to document, through daily photographs, what a strict diet of junk food does to an otherwise fit body. In one of his more eccentric pieces, Sagmeister used a razor blade to carve details from one of his many design lectures into his torso, and used a photograph of his scabs in a promotional poster. The Happy Film is like carving into his inner self. He is both investigator and the investigated. And though the movie meant to be autobiographical, “I did not see a lot of things coming during the shooting,” Sagmeister says.

The Happy Film is divided into three sections, each following Sagmeister for one month as he pursues happiness along one of three paths: Meditation. Talk therapy. Prescription drug therapy. The beautifully photographed meditation scenes are in large part set in Bali, where, after various failed attempts to reach nirvana, Sagmeister falls in love with a former student. Happiness at last. But the relationship quickly deteriorates and sadness sets in. The therapy section records him in sessions with a psychotherapist who questions his ability to commit, despite his recently ending an 11-year relationship. This leads him to renew a relationship with a long-lost love in Austria. That relationship fails too, and depression ensues. In the drug section, a pharmacological therapist monitors his intake of mood elevators. “I love pharma,” he notes in the film. Ignoring a warning against making radical life changes until his meds stabilize, Sagmeister immediately falls for and becomes engaged to a woman who allows him to document the rise and fall of their relationship. Those scenes are among the film’s most emotionally taxing and uncomfortable to watch. Happiness is when love hits hard and sadness, invariably, follows.

THE FONTS OF FASHION | Helvetica and Futura

All designers use pretty much the same font families.

Using, the particularly favoured, Helvetica and Futura font variations, high fashion designers and brands stumbled on a way to make clear visual statements.

The preference for Helvetica and Futura is all over the ad industry, and with good reason—they’re clean, readable, and versatile. Saint Laurent’s logo in Helvetica Neue Bold, for example, looks as sophisticated stitched on the side of a purse as it does on a jacket label. Nike’s oblique Futura logo validates the quality of a pair of running shoes and authenticates a basic hoodie as a classic.

While the minimal Chanel emblem makes as much sense on the perfume bottle in your grandma’s bathroom as it does the backpack of a brand-obsessed tween.

If you want your fashion label to have longevity and versatility, give it some classic type.

NEUTRA HOUSE NUMBERS | Honoring an Architectural Icon

When you love clean, modern design it applies to every part of your life, including typography. Neutra, a very popular typeface from the 1930s, was specified by the famous mid-century architect Richard Neutra for his projects and is still favored, especially in metal, by many architects of new contemporary homes. 

Designed by Christian Schwartz for House Industries, the typeface family Neutraface "the most typographically complete geometric sans serif family ever", was based on Richard Neutra's architecture and design principles. Richard Neutra — One of the most influential architects of the twentieth century helped define modernism in Southern California and around the world.  His notable projects include the Kaufmann House (1947) in Palm Springs, the Lovell Health House (1929) in Los Angeles and the Kronish House (1955) in Beverly Hills, among others. 

The Neutra collection is open and unobtrusive....offering functionality and timeless California aesthetic. You don’t need to own a Neutra home in order to enjoy a piece of Neutra history.

ED BENGUIAT | Drummer, Designer, Typographic Icon

The man who designed ITC Benguiat is considered one of the type industry’s greats – and one of its longest-living. Ed Benguiat has created more than 600 fonts, and has designed some of the most iconic logos and movie titles of the 20th century.

By his own admission, Benguiat’s career has been one made of happy accidents. He says that the only thing he didn’t teach during his 50-year career at the School of Visual Arts was a course in being in the right place at the right time.

Benguiat grew up in Brooklyn, New York. The kind of kid who “was a smart ass and thought I could do anything”. He had a career as a jazz percussionist, playing the drums in the big bands of Stan Kenton and Woody Herman, after his father set him up with a drum kit when he was 10 and he took lessons.

Benguiat was interested in art from boyhood. It was a straightforward ambition that landed him in art school: “I didn’t know anything about it I just wanted to paint naked ladies.” It didn’t entirely work out: “My instructor said I better hurry up and get out of the art industry before I destroyed it because I couldn’t draw anything.” But, Benguiat realised, “if it was technical, I could draw it.”

The female form, however, dominated his first job. “Everybody laughs at this, but it’s true: I had to remove the cleavage from photographs of women.” Benguiat worked as a paste-up boy for magazines such as Photoplay, Movie Life and Movie Stars Parade. Under the draconian censorship laws of the Motion Picture Production Code, known in the industry as the Hays Code after its president, “licentious or suggestive nudity” and “excessive or lustful kissing” had to be removed from films - and film magazines.

“The magazines weren’t permitted to show the cleavage of a woman because Hay’s Office said it wasn’t proper,” Benguiat adds. “So I’d use an airbrush and re-touch it, or use a doily or something. I did that for two years.”

Typography had been in Benguiat’s family. His father was the display director of Bloomingdales, so he had access to his brushes and pens. After designing a logo for a company, he was asked to create an alphabet to match. It was his first foray into graphic design and corporate identity.

It was when Benguiat started working as a designer for Photo-Lettering, Inc - known in the trade as PLINC, a company that set headlines and advertising text - that he first started to see that royalty penny drop: “They sold the alphabets as words from the fonts I did, so that was the beginning for me."

Benguiat didn’t stop at fonts and typefaces. He made whole new fonts for films such as The Planet of the Apes and Super Fly and David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks. He was nearly involved in the film adaptation of one of Stephen King’s novels, but production companies and the road accident which nearly left the author an amputee got in the way.

But, much as it was a logo that got him into the industry, it is logos which remain Benguiat’s most-prized work. “I’ve done the logo for The New York Times, I’ve done the logo for New York Magazine. For Sports Illustrated. The logo for Ford Cars.

“They’re my keepsakes in my mind so when I walk down the street I can say, ‘Hey, I did that.’ You know. I’m very proud of it. When I see the New York Times on a building on a wall, I can look up and say, ‘That’s my logo.’ So that’s my contribution to society.”

Benguiat continues to work, designing the odd logo, “sketching and drawing and doodling. But I don’t look forward to it because it’s a lot of work.” He prefers to keep up a weekly lunch date with the rest of graphic design’s old guard. Benguiat’s aware of the impact of the internet on typeface design, but, as someone who innovated the industry himself, doesn’t appear fearful.

HOMELESSFONTS | Arrels Foundation

Homelessfonts is an Arrels Foundation initiative which consists of creating a collection of typefaces based on the handwriting of homeless. The idea behind these typefaces is for people and brands to use them in their announcements. All profits are intended to help the 1400 people supported by the Arrels Foundation.

http://www.arrelsfundacio.org/

TRAINSPOTTING’S FILM POSTER CAMPAIGN | 21 years on

With Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting sequel T2 Trainspotting to be released in the UK this Friday and in the U.S. March 17...The designers of its iconic, often copied, Helvetica-sporting posters, Mark Blamire and Rob O’Connor, talk about working on the project and how they arrived at the designs for the film’s poster campaign with Creative Review.

CR | The posters for Trainspotting were so unusual when they came out especially the campaign around the characters with one poster introducing each one. What was your inspiration for this? How did the campaign come about?

Rob O’Connor | Irving Welsh’s novel, from which the movie had been adapted, was written from the multiple points of view and in the voices of each of the main characters, and we felt it was important to stress the individuality of those personalities.

Mark Blamire | We had been initially given a still by the film distributors, PolyGram, from the film Backbeat, as a kind of visual guide for creating the Trainspotting poster campaign. But we hated the image and wanted to come up with something better. The film company had approved the idea of the individual shots for a character-based teaser campaign but the main image for the final poster was to be a group shot of the actors in a tight huddle. It wasn’t until we tried to get the actors into the group shots that the friction started. It was at this point that we realised that whilst the characters from the story were in a gang, they were by no means friends who could implicitly trust each other or want to be seen in a tight huddle-style group photo all hugging and being chummy in the manner that was initially planned. 

We were working on the main poster – and struggling – and also the individual character posters, which came together almost instantly, and seemed to be the only solution worthy of presenting to the client. We had also taken a literary device from the Trainspotting book by Irvine Welsh to introduce the numbering system [in the book it originally starts at number 63 which was confusing for the poster so it got changed to #1 though to #5].

RO’C | The numbering used throughout the campaign was a nod to the recurring device used by Welsh in the Trainspotting book – Junk Dilemma #63 – and so on.

MB | It was at this stage that we threw away the idea of the group shot and tried to make a combined version of the individual shots to make the main poster using a grid and boxes to contain each character. We introduced the device of a train station departure board (actually inspired by a British airport’s brand identity guidelines from the 70’s which used a yellowy orange colour for its cover) and added the caption ‘this film is expected to arrive 02:96 –  to continue the theme of the departure board. 

CR | The colour scheme – the black and white photography on white ground with bold orange Helvetica. It’s so strong. How did you settle on that? What was the thinking?

RO’C | Black and white photography, we felt, could be powerful without glamorising what we felt was a tricky subject – what with the abuse of heroin being at the forefront of the storyline. It has a gritty realism, and a Richard Avedon credibility and the slight wide angle lens captured a little humour in the characters. However, it needed an accent colour to make the campaign more memorable – orange was a strong option for this without opting for the average client’s ubiquitous favourite colour, red. The choice of orange referred subliminally to warning messages and the visual communication of British Rail – high visibility jackets, signage and so on. The arrow also referred to wayfinding signage. The clear, direct, information-style typography referred to the same visual language, as well as that of warnings found on pharmaceutical packaging.

CR | PolyGram gave you some initial ideas in the form of an image from the Backbeat film – but how much freedom did they give you once you got stuck into the job?

MB | Trainspotting was Danny Boyle’s second film and all the actors were relatively unknown, so the film didn’t come with any of the contractual baggage that you usually have to deal with when doing a film poster. The other great thing about how it all came about is we were given access to the actors and we were briefed about the poster when the film was still being made. Usually by the time the poster designer gets involved, the film is in the can and the actors have all gone home, and you are delivered a folder full of production stills which you have to try and work your magic on to make a good poster. So the film company had been very forward-thinking by giving us time to come up with a solution – and, crucially, the time with the actors to deliver that solution.

The other amazing thing which probably worked in our favour, was that we never got to see the finished film until after the poster was designed, approved and sent to print so again this was very liberating not to take on somebody else’s visual direction of how they wanted their film to look. I think if we had seen the film first and then started designing the poster, we would probably have never have gone for the clean approach that we inevitably took for the final poster.

WATCH | T2 Trainspotting Trailer