Observed on Design Observer today:
At least we know someone got one of the specimen booklets we sent out. Thanks for the shout-out!
Temporary separation
People are always surprised to hear that I haven’t been homesick all year. Although there are lots of things — and certainly lots of people — that I miss, I was really ready to leave the States, and in particular to leave New York. I’m notoriously nomadic and it’s certainly possible that I’ll feel like settling in New York again, but it will be a while.
Last night I heard this LCD Soundsystem song that put its finger on some of what drove me away:
LCD Soundsystem — New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down (buy it)
Busy Bee
Progress on my dissertation has been an uphill battle against two very demanding design projects I’ve been plowing through at the same time. One, thankfully, is on its way to turning out very well after a few hiccups on press preceded by lots and lots and lots of passionate input from the authors/clients. It’s been a lot of work, but the end result is very exciting for us all. (I hope. Oh god, I hope we’re all equally excited at this point.)
The other is a horrorshow of trying to polish a turd for a client who doesn’t quite know what they want, can’t quite agree about what they’re trying to do, wouldn’t give me any time to help them figure it out, and has reduced the budget to just about a bag of peanuts and a glass of tap water. But I care, so I can’t just let myself blow them off.
Meanwhile, there’s still a ways to go on my acutely insightful analysis of typefaces for mathematics that I need to finish so I can graduate.
The Matter of Anti-Matter
Oh, and in my free time time this year I designed a book, too. It’s also my first design project to get its own MySpace page, since it’s about indy music stuff and the music folks apparently use the MySpace once in a while. It’s by my good friend Norm, and you should buy it.
Seriously, though, it’s a fantastic read, especially if you have any interest at all in hardcore and post-punk bands of the ’90s. (If you do, you probably know who Norm is anyway.) Anti-Matter was a zine he published that featured these amazing, insightful, totally natural interviews with a bunch of great bands. Norm had (well, still has) an amazing ability to get past the party line and get people to really talk to him, and that honesty is what makes these collected interviews so engaging, even if — like me — you might only be familiar with a few of the bigger names included.
And the photography! I haven’t seen the book in print yet, but if they reproduced the photos well then this is even more of a must-have for anyone into that era’s scene. Seriously, just buy it.
Surprise!
My pal Dave moans all the time about how dull and unoriginal he is. The truth is, he’s amazing and always has been — even when I first met him 19 years ago, when he still had a mullet and acid-wash jeans — and it’s totally in character for him to pull off a caper like this. Mazel tov, my trusty sidekick!
14 Faces
…but enough about me. You should check out what my obscenely talented classmates have been up to this year. 14 dazzling type families that cover scripts like Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Gujurati, and Tamil — and we’re all just getting started. It’s hard not to bubble over with pride right now.
Introducing Gina
Another deadline finished! We turned in our typeface files last week, and I just turned in the specimen booklet this morning. Next it’s an essay on the development and production of the typefaces, and after that it’s on to my research dissertation. Needless to say, there’s no Summer vacation for me this year.
Even with the other deadlines looming, it’s an incredible feeling to have finally “finished” the typeface. (I use the quotes because there are still problems to address, and I’ll probably spend a lot more time fleshing out a real family of fonts instead of the two I have now.) This was an entirely new undertaking for me, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I look forward to getting better as time goes by, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done so far, and pretty grateful to everyone who helped it come together.
Before I spend the next week or so writing about the typefaces themselves, I’d really like to take a moment to say something about their namesake — my old friend/boss/mentor/inspiration Gina Brandt-Fall.
Gina was an extraordinary woman who passed away in April 2001. Although she had been having an ugly, all-out battle with breast cancer for the previous two years, and knew her days were running out, I don’t think she was prepared for the sudden liver failure that claimed her in the end. I know I wasn’t. Gina, who I worked with for years, moved to California a few months prior, planning to start a new life in the wake of the cancer that she fought so aggressively. Her doctors discovered more cancer, though, burrowed further into her chest and lungs where they couldn’t get to it without major surgery that would have left Gina in excruciating pain for her last months. She opted for more chemotherapy instead, so she could have a few good weeks out of each of those last months — time to enjoy the sun, to be with her friends, to be able to pull together the fragments of the wonderful book she had been working on for so long. Even during her illness, Gina was incredibly vibrant, emotionally and intellectually engaged, empathic, thoughtful, insightful. Gone, just like that.
Gina and I took to one another immediately went I first interviewed with her for some freelance typesetting work in about 1996 or so. From the very first day, I was taken by her enthusiasm, humor, and quick mind as our conversation went from typesetting to typography to books to literature to life, and that spark never faded during all the years we worked side-by-side. I learned an incredible amount of new things from her, and I was actively encouraged by her to take those new ideas to new levels, and to always leave myself the energy to do what I love. And I laughed with her. Oh my, how we laughed when we were together! Even when we started out bitching and moaning about the workplace and the larger world, we were able to put things in perspective and mix joy in with the righteous indignation. She was not only a friend and a colleague and a teacher, but also an inspiration. That’s cliché, I know, but true: I aspire to her level of passionate interest in life.
Once I knew I was going to set aside life as I knew it to follow a dream, it seemed like the perfect tribute to Gina to dedicate a part of that dream to her. Not only was she the one who made me learn how to typeset math (or rather, she was the one who made me realize how fascinating it could be, and who encouraged me to keep learning as much as I could), but she was the one who showed me that it’s good to hang onto your dreams and jump at them when you have the chance.
Ride in the Sky
A couple of months ago I spotted those awesome rooftop tube trains and figured there had to be a story behind them. Sure enough, there is. An organization called Village Underground snapped up some old tube cars and installed them on top of an old Victorian warehouse for conversion into “affordable workspace for creatives”. (I put that in quotes not just because it’s a quote, but thinking about the cost of space in London and what happened to all that affordable space for creative types in Williamsburg over the years I’m forced to wonder how affordable that really is, or will be.) Naturally, I desperately want office space in an old tube car.
Greek Relics
A week later, and I’ve finally had a chance to unpack from my trip to Θεσσαλονίκη. (I’m procrastinating on the typeface, naturally.) I brought back some lovely souvenirs to remind me of my Greek adventure:
Candy is essential for keeping drowsiness at bay during a long conference. These weren’t the tastiest, but they have embedded Greek letters, and that’s cool.
A pasty Irishmen like me would burst into flames if I tried to face a Mediterranean heat wave without protection. When I went to the pharmacy to grab some sunscreen, I had to wade through labels in Greek, French, and Spanish but not English. I selected a nice, strong cream, but the lady at the counter was very adamant that I buy men’s sunscreen. I tried to explain that it wasn’t a big deal, but she finally convinced me that the men’s version was better for the top of the head. (To her credit, there were no signs of pink on my bald pate after a week in the sun.) Mostly,she just seemed a little embarrassed that I might get something packaged for women.
A certain culture of assumed machismo was all over the place in Greece. I was sharing a hotel room with my flatmate Rob, like I usually do, but this is the first time I’ve ever checked into a hotel room and had the clerk automatically assume that sharing a room with another guy was proof enough that we absolutely need a room with two beds. It was the truth in this case, but it caught me off guard that it seemed so urgent to him that no female roommate meant no double bed. Luckily, we got a roomy triple all to ourselves, even if it wasn’t especially chic:
There are newsstands all over the city, and while making one of my many stops for bottled water I picked up some comic books published for the Greek market:
I had to come all the way to Greece to finally find a book that dared to use upper- and lowercase lettering. See how nicely that works? I wish they’d try it in English one of these days.
I especially love that even sound effects were translated into Greek. I would have assumed translations were only done using the layer with the black inks, but obviously they reprint the whole thing with the translations. That would have been a lot more expensive before the days of digital prepress.
The Bionic Nun
There are so many reasons why The Bionic Woman is an all-time favorite of mine. And that was before I remembered there was an episode where Jaime poses as a nun to uncover a diamand-and-heroin smuggling ring operating out of the winery at a convent.
TV in the seventies wasn’t better, really, but it was certainly simpler.
Of course, if you have any memories of the show at all, you were probably traumatized by the same images that have haunted me all these years…