Ragtag grab-bag
While I’m on the subject of Indian lettering, I should give a shout to this exquisite collection of book covers posted to Flickr by Quinn Dombrowski. The range of lettering and illustration styles shown in these covers will blow your mind, I hope, and show a little something about the richness of the lettering tradition in those scripts. And dig those rich lithography colors!
It’s been a treat to see Hanif Kureshi‘s completely awesome HandPaintedType project getting a lot of attention and praise during the last month or so. I met Hanif back in March, at Typography Day in Ahmedabad, and immediately took a shine to the painted lettering he put on display, and it’s no suprise that I was all for the idea of documenting and supporting the efforts of those artists. Hanif showed this short film he made as an introduction to the situation that inspired this project:
Handpainted Type is a project that is dedicated to preserving the typographic practice of street painters around India. These painters, with the advent of local DTP (Desktop Publishers) shops, are rapidly going out of business with many businesses and shops switching to the quicker, cheaper but uglier vinyls. Many painters have given up their practice altogether.
The project involves documenting the typefaces of road side painters across India, digitizing it and archiving it for future generations.
I had a lot of discussions about the sign painters with a lot of designers while I was in India. It’s a difficult bind for the artisans whose livelihood is giving way to the production of cheap digital signage. They can’t match digital sign shops in terms of price or speed, but the work they do is both more charming and more likely to last for a long time. Of course, style and longevity are probably low priorities for customers who are also trying to eke out a living in a difficult economy.
I think the key to survival for the sign-painters may lie in the hand of designers and other tastemakers who not only appreciate the work, but are also more likely to have the market savvy to shift the perception of the lettering trade from being “just” a trade to acknowledging the artistry. A similar thing has been going on in the West with the explosion of interest in crafts and the handmade object, and I think it could certainly happen in India, where everyone seems so quick to see the vibrancy of the handmade letter in comparison to the glut of poor typography. The fonts will improve, though, and what then of the lettering artists (and the art of lettering itself) if they can’t find a place for themselves elsewhere in the culture?
This is relevant to a variety of my interests. [via From Beyond the Unknown]
Guns are fun!
For a while now, I’ve been joining some pals for a monthly movie night and last night we had a selection of mine, the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. Every time I come back to this film, I love it just as much as the first time, and it strikes me as more and more poignant as time goes on. It captures a moment, but the further we get from that moment it’s easy to see how much of an impact the whole ball culture has had as it leaked out into pop culture at large. As well-received as this was at the time, its success was a bit of a bitter pill for the subjects of the story, who weren’t able to share in as much of that success as they thought they would. Time has secured a legend for them outside the world of the balls, but the outcome only reinforces what many of them say in the film about their lot in life.
Pink Mince #5, obvs. All the Tumblr attention isn’t that much of a surprise (there was a certain shameless pandering to my art direction for that article), but I wish all the visibility would lead to a few more sales. It’s hard running a small press, yo.
But I am delighted to see my associate Mr Moore’s exquisite Leyton getting a little extra attention as a result of that image. Maybe super-black typefaces with a dash of swing will become the rage of the bear community! That’s why I made the {BEAR HUG!} t-shirt, just in case.
Although it’s not the most thrilling clip, it’s cool to see this version of the Madison Time from Baltimore’s Buddy Deane Show, the inspiration for Hairspray’s Corny Collins Show. (And it’s worth looking for other Buddy Deane clips to get a better idea of where the Hairspray aesthetic came from. The hair looks a little flat in this one.) The dance is done with a little more pep in the film:
The Madison sequence has always been a favorite moment in the film. It’s not the funniest or the craziest, but it’s warm and sweet, and a pivotal moment in the story. Really, it’s the part that exposes the sentimental streak that underlies the film. It always catches me off-guard to get a reminder that it was a huge smash with a life of its own outside the John Waters bubble.
The quality of this clip is awful, but here’s the second version of the Madison I ever saw, when it was played on a reel of old music clips between shows at the Somerville Theater some time in the early 90s. I never figured out the context at the time. Most of the other clips turned out to be Scopitone films, and perhaps this was as well, even though it’s not specifically French. It’s the Ray Bryant Combo doing their version, set in a bowling alley:
Thirty years ago, on June 5, 1981, AIDS was first acknowledged in print.
The article from the Centers for Disease Control wasn’t widely read, and it didn’t give a name to the disease. (It would be another year before scientists found one that fit, after giving several a try, including the terrible GRID, for “gay-related immune deficiency”.)
The paper certainly didn’t talk about HIV, since the virus wasn’t discovered until later. In fact, the article was mostly about the unusual appearance of Pneumocystis pneumonia in five young, gay men in Los Angeles. For all scientists knew, they were dealing with a superstrain of Pneumocystis that could eventually threaten the entire planet.
Well, they were half right.
At first, HIV and AIDS were a major setback for the burgeoning gay rights movement. Things had been moving swiftly for the community until then: the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of diseases in 1974 — just five years after Stonewall — and we were being treated more fairly in the media. We were even featured on popular TV shows like Dynasty and Soap, and although those representations weren’t perfect, they were far better than the psychopathic killers and suicidal maniacs we’d played before.
AIDS took the lives of many who campaigned for those achievements, and even people who weren’t ill were dumbstruck for a time. But grief is an unparalleled motivator, and soon, the LGBT community and its allies had formed sophisticated, efficient activist groups, pushing for treatment and prevention programs, destigmatization, and equal rights. We did as the ACT UP slogan said and turned our sadness into rage.
Over the course of the epidemic, roughly 30,000,000 people around the world have died from AIDS, and another 32,000,000 live with HIV/AIDS today. Treatment has gotten much easier and more bearable for those living with HIV, and there have especially promising developments in recent years, particularly in the area of stem cells and genetic therapy. But there is still no cure.
Take a moment today to think of your friends, family members, and neighbors who have died from AIDS or who are living with HIV/AIDS. Renew your commitment to wiping out this disease. Contribute to a local hospice, sign up for a charity walk, send a letter to your elected officials — whatever fits your style.
Everyone thought that AIDS would be cured by now. Let’s make certain that happens within the next 30 years — or hopefully, far sooner.
[Reposted from the lovely Sturtle. For those who have time, here is the original article from June 5, 1981 (or on the CDC website).]
Continue reading “First Mention Of AIDS In Print: 30 Years Ago Today”
Quite a bargain on Balls Pond Road, Dalston
