FullBleed

This 29th Annual was published by Collins Design, an imprint of HarpersCollinsPublishers.

If you love typography, then Typography 29 is a must for your collection of design/typography books!

Inside are more than 360 pages of superior handling of type in the world of design. All forms of the printed word using type as the key element are represented here. Each piece of design has its own page.

This is the 29th year of the TDC using the book format. Yesteryear, 29 years ago, the club produced as many pages as needed to insert in one issue of the magazine “Art Direction.” (If anyone is interested in seeing the other 28 volumes, call me at 202.338.0962 for an appointment and come over to my studio and blow your mind!)

This volume has a section in the back that shows projects from their 5th annual (the 5th annual BEFORE THE FIRST OF THE 29 BOOK YEARS) which was published in 1959.

I have listed some of the objectives of the TDC below:

• To raise the standards of typography and related fields of the graphic arts.

• To provide the means for inspiration, stimulation and research in typography.

This 12” square book contains 50 subjects’ personal bits of wisdom. Its 216 pages are handsome and well designed. The photos are by Andrew Zuckerman, photographer and filmmaker.

The cover has an almost full-bleed photo of one of those wise people. All 50 names are listed on the outside back cover. (The book itself was designed by PQ Blackwell Limited Images and published by Abrams.) The interior consists of a short piece of wisdom with text and Helvetica heading (wisdom thoughts) and large photos of each person. A real coffee table book!

To quote from part of the text on the first flap:

Inspired by the idea that one of the greatest gifts one generation can give to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience.

The book has a DVD of the film that documents the photographing of the project. Take a look at andrewzuckerman.com for an enjoyable handful of minutes.

by Gabriel Bauret, published by Assouline.

This book is a smaller version of a 5-1/2” x 7” reprint of a 10” x 13” book that I loaned to one of my design students years ago. It was never returned, and, of course, I didn’t write down who, what, when, etc. (If the person who has my book would return it, I’ll put you on my Christmas list!)

Alexey Brodovitch was the god of magazine art directors in the 1930s-50s. He was art director for Harper’s Bazaar and only used the best photographers and artists of his day. Bodoni was his choice typeface. ONLY BODONI! Both for text and heads.

Brodovitch was the father of the photographic spread. His covers made him and his photographers and artists famous! He said to his creatives, “Astonish me!” By that, he meant: go do your thing and come back with your best work to date.

They did.

Brodovitch, along with M.F. Agha over at Vogue magazine, were two art directors who didn’t just lay out an article with art and text supplied to them; they would talk to their editors about the article, then hire the artist or photographer, go to the shoot with them, then finally design the pages.

In the book, Brodovitch has one of his spreads in layout form — full size with photostats of all the art in place plus lines ruled at the correct width he wanted. Later, Bodoni type would replace his hand-drawn design. Text was set on the linotype machine and the heads set by hand. His assistants would paste all the elements in their proper place based on the dummy spread. All pages would then be pinned to a wall so he and his editor could see the flow and design of the issue. Along with his editor, Carmel Snow, they made magazine history!

You can see from the pages in Alexey Brodovitch that his photographers and artists did indeed ASTONISH him!

More than 400 outstanding marks by this multi-design firm gives the reader the idea that they design only logotypes, symbols, and marks. NOT TRUE! Pentagram does it all. Graphic design, architectural design, interior design, etc., etc. You can see their work at www.pentagram.com.

Back to the book…This 5” by 7” book is 1-1/2” thick. It has a white cover wrap, about half the height of the book, explaining what the book is all about. All marks are produced in black ink with an explanation at the bottom of the page. Think about it, 400 marks are a helluva lot of marks, logotypes, and symbols.

“Pentagram Marks” is only one of many books by and about Pentagram. They also produce a series of books called, “Pentagram Papers.” The series publishes examples of curious, entertaining, and occasionally controversial points of view.

If you design logos, symbols or marks for a living, then this book is a must for your library!

Available at: amazon.com

Don’t throw anything away. Recycle it to Ivan Chermayeff!

The catalog, Ivan Chermayeff Collages 1982-1995, truly shows off his skill as an artist.

Mr. C started his graphic design career back in the late 1950’s along with Tom Geismar. They are responsible for many famous logos: Mobil, Chase Manhattan Bank, Xerox (why, oh why, did Xerox change its logo?), Crane & Co., and PBS, to name a few.

To quote from David Levy, then president and director of the Corcoran, “Over the past two decades, Ivan Chermayeff and I have worked together on many projects. His intellectual depth, his sheer delight in the creative process, and the force of his talent have always made our collaborations an adventure of learning and discovery. As this exhibition eloquently demonstrates, Chermayeff is a unique star in America’s creative constellation.”

This catalog might still be available at the Corcoran gift shop, in downtown DC.

Do you know fine typography when you see it? Poetry magazine is filled with wonderful words and wonderful typography. It’s designed by Winterhouse Studio in Connecticut.

A six-issue yearly subscription at $35.00 is a steal. This 5 3/4 x 9 publication is edited and designed with loving care. Highgrade book paper, perfect binding, an interior printed in black ink, and a deceptively simple four-color cover. The cover art is always an illustration, sometimes playing with the title.

ADCMW has a few designers who pay attention to typography in their work; Stephen Kraft, Antonio Alcala, and Robert Wiser come to mind, as well as the late and sadly missed Tom Suzuki.

Trust me, people who read can spot visual design errors from a mile away. So, if you are in doubt about how your typography looks, buy a copy of Poetry, which is published by Poetry Foundation, PO Box 575, Mount Morris, IL 61054.

$3.75 per copy at better bookstores.

Embossed on the cover board of Beware Wet Paint by Alan Fletcher is the following paragraph:

“A marketing manager, resentful of being told by the Chairman that he had to see me, made his position absolutely clear. ‘I know nothing about design,’ he said; ‘furthermore I don’t want anything to do with it.’ He was kitted out in a chalk-stripe brown suit, a distressed-patterned tie, wore glasses the color of stewed glue, sat behind a tacky reproduction antique desk, and worked in a bureaucrat’s office to match. I believed him…and left!”

This anecdote will give you an idea of what famous graphic designers go through with some clients. Just like us! And from the Preface:

“Marcel Duchamp used the phrase ‘Beware Wet Paint’ to remind us that it takes time to judge the worth of work. This book looks at thirty-five years of Fletcher’s work: some of the most recent may not yet be dry.”

Fletcher, along with Bob Gill and Colin Forbes, started Pentagram in Britain in 1965. He is as close to being a graphic design god as you can get. This man was a true thinker and artist. He died on September 21, 2006, at 74.
To quote Steven Heller, “For Mr. Fletcher, nothing was as important as the idea.”

Beware Wet Paint is published by Phaidon.

This 5″ x 7″ book is one of the cleverest ideas to come down the pike in years. Logo R.I.P by the Stone Twins, carries the subhead, “A Commemoration of Dead Logotypes.”

This book has obituaries and headstone photos of more than 48 dead logotypes — from the NASA worm, to NeXT’s black cube to the Time Warner eye/ear hieroglyph. All are well-written and beg the question, why didn’t these logos last?

I believe the majority of the CEO’s of these companies should have been fired on the spot for changing the designs in the first place! Shame on the business world and its leaders!

It’s interesting to look at these logos from the past vs. logos in general of today’s marketing madness. Today’s logos are basically produced and designed on the computer. Some end up looking cold compared to the pencil doodles and final hand art of yesterday.