Tuesday March 13, 2012
Filed under:
Technique
Recent Work
Pangrammer Helper, RoboFont Style
Almost ten years ago, I made a little program called Pangrammer Helper. It’s a little tool to help compose pangrams, which are sentences containing every letter of the alphabet. It was built in Flash and was designed to run in a web browser.
Type designers are especially enamored of pangrams, as you can imagine. Fellow type geek and friend, Craig Eliason, has been using it for several years to compose entries for his Daily Pangram site.
Recently, a new font editing app called RoboFont was released, and I’ve been starting to use it in my work. One of the neat things about it is that it’s fully extendable—that is, if you are willing to do a little Python programming, you can add features to it.
Last week, the Robothon 2012 conference was held in The Hague. It was all about type design and technology. I wasn’t able to attend, but videos of most of the talks have been made available on Vimeo, and I’ve been watching them the last couple days. Two of them in particular, one by Tal Lemming about Building Stuff and another by Frederick Berlaen introducing RoboFont, inspired me to rewrite my Pangrammer Helper in Python so it could work inside RoboFont.
It took less than a day to do it, and it works great. You can use it by itself, and it works a lot like the old Flash version (a bit simplified), or, if you have RoboFont’s “Space Center” window open (the window were you work on your font’s spacing), the text also appears there as you compose it.
If you happen to be a RoboFont user, you can download the script here. Just drop it into your scripts folder and you can run it right from the Extensions menu.
Monday March 5, 2012
Filed under:
Son of Typecasting
The Artist vs. The Lettering Artist
The Artist won this year’s Oscar for Best Picture about a week ago. It seems to say something about the state of movies today that a black and white, silent picture—not even wide screen—wins the big prize. I’ve seen it, and it’s good, but I confess that I had to force myself to ignore most of the type in it in order to enjoy it.
The Artist mimics the look and feel of a late 1920s silent film. The sets, the costumes, the makeup, the lighting, the camera work, the acting—even the way it’s written—makes you almost believe you are watching a classic of the silent era. Of course, you know it’s not. After all, there are recognizable modern actors in it, like John Goodman and James Cromwell. And, for me, there was the type.
Most of the fonts they used looked more or less right for the 1920s, although quite a few were badly made free fonts (or badly made commercial fonts—those exist, too). Others are not quite from the era or were applied in an anachronistic way—for example, using negative line spacing, which is impractical to do with metal type.
But the real problem was that they used type at all. Except for things like newspapers, a few other small props, and the intertitles (more on these later), type would not have been used. Movie posters, signs, magazine covers, movie titles and credits—back in the 1920s and 1930s, that kind of thing was almost always lettered by hand. Type—and it would have been metal type, back then—was not up to the job. There were too few styles, too few sizes. It just wasn’t as flexible as someone skilled with a brush. Things that are so easy for us to do with type today were practically impossible back then, which provided plenty of work for letterers.
If you’re careful, it is possible to get close to the look of lettering with modern fonts. Some are even made to look that way (I’ve made a few myself). But for all the attention they paid to other period details, there is something slap-dash about the way this stuff was handled in The Artist.
The opening titles are okay, but not great. The font may be custom. I don’t recognize it. Nice quote marks:
I can’t decide if this custom font works or not. It’s not lettering, so that’s wrong, especially since it makes it look more uniform than it should be. It has an appropriately Art Deco feel, but there’s something not quite period about it that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe it’s the little hook on the lowercase “l” or the tilt of the uppercase “C” that feels more 1970s than 1920s to me:
Here is a title from the 1946 film Étoile Sans Lumere, which has a similar style, for comparison:
This may be what they were inspired by, but as you may be able to see, it was hand lettered, and much more charming because of that.
In general, the intertitles—the text used in silent movies to convey dialogue—look right. Two fonts were used. The first is in the movie-within-a-movie near the beginning, a quaint roman face that I wasn’t able to identify. It looks the part, but seems a little too wonky. The right kind of quote marks are used, but they seem to be from a different font:
One small thing here as well: Putting a space before the exclamation point is a French convention. Ironically out of place? Some kind of very subtle foreshadowing? A clue to the nationality of the production designer?
The second face, used throughout the film for (nearly) all the dialog is Silentina, a modern font based on Pastel, a typeface that was actually used a lot in silent movies:
The only problem with these are the “straight quotes.” This kind of quote mark is a hallmark of the digital age. You have to be paying attention to avoid it when setting type on a computer. Silentina’s proper quote marks capture the authentic look:
…but were not used, unfortunately.
The Kinograph Studios logo shows up a few times. It appears to be set in Hermes with an envelope effect applied to fit the letters into an arch shape. Needless to say, you could not set type this big or distort it like this back in the twenties. Even so, it looks plausible, style-wise:
Fonts are used for the title and credit screens in the movies-within-the-movie. The choice of Victorian fonts feels wrong, and these should be hand lettered anyway. So, wrong on two counts:
This one is a font, too, but the style looks appropriate for the twenties:
Fonts are used on the slates, too. In this case an old German typeface called Berliner Grotesk. Again, this would have been lettered with a brush, not typeset. You can see it in this one in the small print:
Berliner Grotesk does look a bit like careful hand lettering of the period, but it definitely shouldn’t have been used the way it was in the next one, where the production info should have been handwritten in chalk like the first one:
Using fonts in the newspaper props is appropriate, but there are some missteps here as well. The font Albertus, which was released a bit later than when this movie takes place (late thirties), is used several times, but has rarely been used in real newspapers, as far as I know. Not only that, the type is set with negative leading, practically impossible for metal type:
Variety traditionally used either Cheltenham or Franklin Gothic for its headlines. Definitely not this, whatever it is:
And, look, there’s ITC Benguiat (1975):
These stock-market crash banner headlines are more like it:
The typography in the magazines and posters is all over the place. I see Goudy Bold (1915), which is okay for the period, but not okay for Variety. I also see some sort of slanted Garamond on the Variety cover, implausible and wrong:
…Plaza (oops—1975), Marker Felt (oops—1992):
…Desdemona (c. 1900—okay), ITC Anna (oops—1991):
…and a lot of random, probably-recent, ’20s-style fonts I can’t place. Some of these work, as far as it goes. But, again, most of this would not be type, it would be lettering. This poster has the right feel, but the fonts are badly drawn, and “October 25th” would have been some kind of wood type instead of what they used here:
This is probably a font, but a good example of how a font can be used successfully to mimic a hand-painted sign:
There are some awful fonts in the next example, a classic “show card.” “Auction” is set in a really horrible version of a 1936 typeface called Arabella, and “George Valentin” is set in a poorly digitized version of the 1980s Letraset font Alexei Copperplate:
Next, we see more fonts used, this time for large outdoor signs, which would have been made by sign painters, not typesetters. I’m not going to try to identify all of these, except to point out Futura Extra Bold Condensed and Binner in the first one:
This film leader graphic is perfect, probably from an actual historical film:
But the custom part is clearly fake, and the type is the giveaway—Broadway (1929) and Ariston (1933). Again, it’s not that the typefaces are wrong for the period, but that type would not have been used. Aside from that, both fonts have been distorted to fit, impossible to do with metal type, and a big reason for using lettering on things like this back then:
There were two “The End” titles in the movie. Christian Annyas, of The Movie Stills Collection points out that this one is (appropriately) swiped from Laurel & Hardy films from the same era (1927-1930):
The second one is swiped from much later R.K.O. films (1947-1952). It’s not very well traced, either:
In conclusion, the typography in The Artist wasn’t way off the mark—it does seem that some effort was made. And I’m sure that, for 99.999 percent of the movie-going public, it was more than sufficient effort. But it would have been great to see the typography get the same high degree of attention that the other period details in the film got.
Thanks to Christian Annyas, of The Movie Stills Collection for suggesting this article and providing stills.
Saturday March 3, 2012
Filed under:
Font Sightings
Bookmania Baby
I got this birth announcement in the mail (all the way from Belgium!) that features Bookmania prominently. Designed by Yves Peters (of The FontFeed and elsewhere). Nice!
Tuesday February 28, 2012
Filed under:
Type & Lettering
Seed
Seen in Bellingham, Washington, on June 23, 2011.
Monday February 27, 2012
Filed under:
Roving Photographer
Cars
There’s something Lee Friedlander-esque about this shot I snapped in a parking lot last September in St. Paul. Don’t remember what I was thinking when I shot it.
Friday February 24, 2012
Filed under:
Personal Archaeology
MST3K Tales, Part III: The Final Installment
I don’t have any more MST3K stories to share, but I thought it would be fun to do “remastered” versions of my mock “redesign” covers that I sent to Best Brains. Without too much trouble (yeah, right), I was able to find all but one of the freeze-frames I shot with my Polaroid camera back in 1991 on the DVD collections of the show. (Yes, I have most of them. Are you surprised?) I had to work with my original Polaroid for the “Byte” cover. As a final touch, I added typical color schemes for each magazine. Maybe things would have turned out differently if they’d seen these in color…
Nah.
For those of you who could care less about Mystery Science Whatever It Is, and wish I would post more design-related things, I apologize. Back to regular programming tomorrow.
My mock “redesigns” of MST’s fan newsletter, Satellite News (Formerly The Binding Polymer), left to right, top to bottom: The original, as Business Week, as Scientific American, as Popular Science, as Popular Mechanics, as Byte, as Vanity Fair, as Utne Reader, and as The New York Post. (Click on the thumbnail images to enbiggen.)
Thursday February 23, 2012
Filed under:
Personal Archaeology
MST3K Tales, Part II: The Wrath of Mallon
In yesterday’s installment, I got into the unseemly details of my close encounters with the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This was nothing.
Best Brains, Inc. (BBI), the production company that made Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), was located in an industrial park in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a fact that Pat and I confirmed (surreptitiously) one Sunday afternoon in 1991. (I will neither confirm or deny that we peered into the windows.)
As a graphic designer, I was appalled by the design of the official MST3K fan newsletter, Satellite News (Formerly The Binding Polymer). It was obviously not done by a professional designer. I decided to offer my services—for free, even—to take on design and production of the newsletter. Once they saw what I could do, it would be a slam-dunk. To demonstrate, with the help of a few tapes of the show, an SX-70 camera, an HP ScanJet, Photoshop and Illustrator, and a PostScript laser printer, I did a set of mock “redesigns” of the newsletter. I sent them, along with a cover letter, to Best Brains at the end of October, 1991.
My mock “redesigns” of MST’s fan newsletter, Satellite News (Formerly The Binding Polymer), left to right, top to bottom: The original, as Business Week, as Scientific American, as Popular Science, as Popular Mechanics, as Byte, as Vanity Fair, as Utne Reader, and as The New York Post. (Click on the thumbnail images to enbiggen.)
A day or so later, the phone rang. It was Jim Mallon, producer of MST3K! He wasn’t interested in me doing the newsletter, especially for free—that would taking advantage of me. But he loved the “redesigns” and they might have some work for me. He invited me down to the Best Brains offices to talk. I was very excited. Pat was very jealous.
The next day, I showed up at BBI, along with some samples of my work. There must have been some sort of mix up because I had to wait almost an hour. People kept coming up to me to ask if I had an appointment. While I was waiting, I could hear someone editing promo spots for the first of their yearly “Turkey Day” marathons.
At last, Jim Mallon appeared and started off by giving me a tour of the facilities. Along the way, I got to meet most of the people who worked on the show—Frank Conniff, Mike Nelson (who was head writer at the time), Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy, tool master Jeff Maynard (the guy who made the props), Mary Jo Pehl, and Paul Chaplin. Joel Hodgson was out, and I had the impression that he wasn’t often in.
Among the things I saw on the tour:
- The writing room, which had big comfy couches and chairs, a small table with a Mac SE for transcribing ad libs, and a big-screen tv (not very big by modern standards, though).
- Writers’ offices—I remember Trace had the puppets from the KTMA incarnation of the show in his.
- The workshop, where all the props and stuff were made. Among the things I saw in the workshop was the big “Mystery Science Theater 3000” planet seen in the opening credits, which is about three feet tall, and was originally a prop from the Guthrie Theater, repurposed with a bit of hot glue and styrofoam. Also, multiple “trick” Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot puppets made for special effects, like when they needed Tom Servo’s head to blow up or something.
- The main production studio, a large warehouse-like room with the Satellite of Love “command deck” set on one end, and the “Deep 13” set off to one side. The “theater” area was opposite the S.O.L. set and consisted of the theater seat silhouettes (big cut-outs made of plywood) set in front of a large “green screen”. The performers would actually be watching the movie on a small tv monitor out of sight from the home audience. The S.O.L. set was actually raised up about three feet to make room for the performers who worked with puppets.
After the tour, I met with Jim, Trace, and Kevin, showing them some of my work. It seemed to go okay. They told me they were working on some tapes to sell to fans, the first of which was a collection of musical skits from the show called, “Play MST for Me.” I was suddenly in some sort of brainstorming session, and they kept looking at me, maybe hoping for me to be as funny as them. I felt a little ambushed. They were the funny guys. I was a designer. Given the situation, I saw myself (potentially) as what Michael Gross was to the National Lampoon. He never claimed to be a “funny” guy, but he knew how to use design to serve “funny”. In any case, I agreed to come up with some concepts, and I left feeling like I was starting a new page in my career.
When I got home, Kevin Murphy faxed me the copy for the package and I earnestly went to work, arriving at my first concept: Fairly straightforward type with a very long “funny” disclaimer, which I wrote. I faxed it over and waited. This didn’t go over very well—they weren’t expecting me to write copy. I considered what I wrote to be “dummy” text—that they would rewrite it. That didn’t matter, they didn’t like it.
I did a second concept: A parody of a cheesy, sentimental, as-seen-on-tv kind of shlocky record album cover—complete with swash headline type for the title. They didn’t like this one either. It was a design joke and I guess they didn’t get it.
I did a third concept: A record on a turntable, seen from above, with the letters of the title flying off the disc as it spins, a sort of slapstick approach. This one didn’t seem to grab them either, but I don’t remember why.
At this point, the project seemed to be stalled. I thought the ideas I sent them had potential, and could be developed further, but I wasn’t getting much feedback. It seemed almost as if they expected me to “wow” them with a fully-formed idea. I was expecting more back and forth. After a week went by, I called Jim Mallon to find out what was going on. He seemed surprised that I was calling—basically saying “don’t call us, we’ll call you”, and I never heard from them again.
One theory I have is that Trace Beaulieu had been doing all the “design” work, liked doing it, and wasn’t really interested in having anyone else do it. Or maybe they just didn’t like what I did. Or maybe I should have been more proactive, educating them about how to work with a designer. Who knows.
The important thing is, I got a personal tour of Best Brains. I think Pat is still jealous about that.
Wednesday February 22, 2012
Filed under:
Personal Archaeology
MST3K Tales, Part I: The Fandom Menace
Joel Hodgson and the bots on KTMA in 1988
I accidentally discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its initial run on local Twin Cities channel KTMA-23 in 1988. It was very strange—and funny. Some guys seemed to be talking—cracking jokes—during some awful movie. You could see their silhouettes at the bottom of the screen.
This was in the early days of my relationship with my partner, Pat. We were the kind of couple who went to a Rocky & Bullwinkle film festival on our first date. This show was made for us. We were soon tuning in every Sunday night to watch it. It was the funniest thing we’d ever seen. We became members of the fan club.
But it didn’t last long. Before we knew it, the show was cancelled. As a thank-you to the fans, they put on a live show in 1989 at the Comedy Gallery in Minneapolis.
A photo of the audience at the Comedy Gallery event that appeared in the MST 3000 Satellite News, Vol. 1, No. 2. You can see me and Pat on the left.
The show was great and featured clips from the show’s pilot, plus cast members/writers Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, and Josh Weinstein performing their comedy acts. During a question and answer session near the end, Pat got to ask a silly question about the Tom Servo puppet. She wanted to know how the mouth (beak?) worked. It was kind of complicated. When it was over, we got to meet and shake hands with everyone on the show, and that was that—so it seemed.
Josh Weinstein, on the cover of the Minnesota Daily’s arts section, around the time he performed at the U of M’s student union.
Later that year, we saw Josh Weinstein do his stand-up act at the University of Minnesota student union (he was still an undergrad there), and at the end of it, he revealed that talks were ongoing with HBO to bring Mystery Science Theater to cable tv. Our hopes to see the show again were dashed, however. Our cable company carried HA!, but MST’s new home was on The Comedy Channel, which they didn’t carry.
We missed the first season, but by the second the two rival comedy channels merged to become Comedy Central, and—more importantly—we got to see our favorite show again. By this time, Josh was off the show, replaced by a new guy, Frank “TV’s Frank” Conniff. And this is were things get a little weird.
At the time, we were living in the Whittier neighborhood in South Minneapolis. MST was a national show, but it was produced out in a Minneapolis suburb, Eden Prairie. But some of the guys on the show must have lived in our neighborhood because we started seeing them. One day, while driving down Hennepin Avenue, we both did a double take—TV’s Frank was walking down the street. Maybe a week later, we saw him come out of our neighborhood convenience store. Another time, I went to my usual coffee shop, and Trace Beaulieu was behind me in line. This encounter was stranger still when I think about it: The woman who served us coffee was someone Pat and I knew, Kristen Pfaff, who would later become the bass player in Hole (Courtney Love’s band) and die of a drug overdose.
The most awkward encounter happened sometime around 1991 at Calhoun Square, a shopping mall in Minneapolis’s Uptown area. I spotted Joel Hodgson (wearing sunglasses) seated outside a restaurant near the bookstore we were headed for. I whispered to Pat, “It’s Joel.” She didn’t see him, and said aloud, “What? Where?” By now we had passed him and I whispered, “He’s right behind us.” He must have heard us, because when we looked he was looking back at us. We walked quickly into the bookstore. I pretended to look at some books. When I looked up, Hodgson was standing near the entrance, peering around the corner over his sunglasses, like he was spying on us. Pat had disappeared. I was so embarrassed, I didn’t look up again for a while. The whole thing was very weird and silly.
In 1992, we saw them all again, but this time as part of a live performance of Mystery Science Theater at the Uptown Theater. It was one thing to see it on television, but seeing it performed live with 600 other people was incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life.
Me and Pat, visible in the background during a Comedy Central video interview outside the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis, waiting in line to see Mystery Science Theater Alive!
Tomorrow: How I almost became a designer for Mystery Science Theater.
Tuesday February 21, 2012
Filed under:
Personal Archaeology
Up Next: Tales of MST3K
After last night’s geeky Star Trek post, fellow type designer Jackson Cavanaugh suggested on Twitter that I share some of my stories about Mystery Science Theater 3000, the cult comedy tv show from the nineties (and slightly earlier). Great suggestion, Jackson!
I was going to start tonight, but I was busy attending a Type Tuesday event this evening. (Type Tuesday is a monthly get-together of type aficionados in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.)
In the mean time, above is something from my scrapbook: A ticket stub from the first MST3K live show, performed at the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis in 1992. All I will say about it is, my face ached from laughing.
More tomorrow.
Monday February 20, 2012
Filed under:
Personal Archaeology
Star Trek, The Movies
Warning: If you don’t like or care about Star Trek, I understand. Feel free to skip this.
It all started about two months ago, when the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie (2009) rose to the top of my NetFlix queue. (I wrote about this movie for using one of my fonts back when it was in theaters.) I’ve become somewhat of a Blu Ray fan and thought this would be a fun movie to watch in that format. I was right. I think I like it even more now than when I first saw it.
One thing led to another and before I knew it, I had purchased the two sets of Star Trek movies on Blu Ray. For some reason, I was never really that interested in watching these on DVD. I tried watching the first one (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) once, but couldn’t get through the first 20 minutes. The picture and sound were just horrible. I think it must have been an early DVD release, the kind where it’s not optimized for wide screen viewing.
I’d seen both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home more than once (both considered among the best of the series). The rest I only saw in the theater, except for Star Trek: Nemesis, which I’d never seen at all.
So, with some trepidation, I subjected myself to a Star Trek movie marathon over the last couple of weeks. It was interesting. The movies were both better and worse than I remembered.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This is my least favorite of the entire series. It was a disappointment when I saw it in the theater in 1979. Slow, overblown, ridiculous and terrible in so many ways. You get the feeling that the special “V’GER” effects were expected to carry the movie by themselves, but it just looks like self-indulgent nonsense, and adds little to the story. If anything, this movie was worse than I remembered. The titles are dull and feature that goofy Star Trek Movie font. I didn’t like then, and I don’t like now.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Considered by most to be the best Star Trek movie ever. I don’t really disagree with that, but I don’t think it has aged well. It was one of the earliest movies to feature computer graphics, and it looks it. The whole production feels kind of like a disco nightmare, but the chemistry of the characters and the story make it really entertaining.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Better then I remembered. Very cheesy special effects and preposterous story. Worth watching just to see Kirk and friends blow up the Enterprise and steal a Klingon ship.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Cool because they still have the Klingon ship and—even better—take it back in time to the 1986 San Francisco. Funniest of all the Star Trek movies, but, again, the story is a little preposterous. Getting a little repetitious: Big mysterious thing threatens Earth, just like the first movie.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. On second thought, maybe this is my least favorite. Most preposterous story of all, but it looks better than any of the previous films. The center of the galaxy is much smaller than I expected. Silliest and most forgettable of the series.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Better than I remembered. The story is not bad: The incident that leads to peace with the Klingons. Some nice zero-gravity effects. A little too much Shakespeare from the Klingon played by Christopher Plummer.
Star Trek: Generations. This is not considered one of the best, but I like it. The production values are higher than the earlier films. I also think the Next Generation cast are, on average better, actors than the earlier cast. At least Stewart is. I love the scene in which, after narrowly winning a battle with a Klingon ship, they are forced to crash land the Enterprise. And then the planet blows up, killing everyone. This can only mean another time travel plot. This one also has the most tastefully-done titles in the series, in spite of being set in ITC Benguiat.
Star Trek: First Contact. This is generally considered to be the best of the Next Generation movies, but it was not as good as I remembered. Good: It has The Borg. Bad: More time travel, and James Cromwell as the guy who invents “warp drive”. I usually like Cromwell, but he seems mis-cast in this. Titles use Benguiat again, but look terrible.
Star Trek: Insurrection. Last one I saw in the theaters before the re-boot. I couldn’t have told you what it was about until seeing it again. Not very good, but not really terrible either. Would have made a good two-part episode on the tv show. Worst titles of the series—very cheap looking.
Star Trek: Nemesis. This is the one I’d never seen before. It is supposed to be one of the worst of the series, so I expected not to like it. But I actually kind of liked it. Some of it is goofy, but that’s par for the course in the Star Trek universe. The battle at the end was pretty good. The dune buggy scenes were inexplicable, but fun. The titles were set in Exocet, I think. Seemed very dated.
Sunday February 19, 2012
Filed under:
Roving Photographer
And
Seen in front of my house in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on June 8, 2011.
Saturday February 18, 2012
Filed under:
Type & Lettering
Clock
Seen in Seattle, Washington, on June 18, 2011.
Friday February 17, 2012
Filed under:
Type & Lettering
Hotpoint
Seen in Brattleboro, Vermont, on July 12, 2011.
Thursday February 16, 2012
Filed under:
Type & Lettering
Nice Numbers
I saw this while on a brain-frying four-hour hike around Atlanta with Paul Shaw to help him scout locations for his upcoming TypeCon Type Tour. Photo taken July 15, 2009.
Wednesday February 15, 2012
Filed under:
Type & Lettering
Nash Metropolitan
Seen in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on June 20, 2009.
Tuesday February 14, 2012
Filed under:
Personal Archaeology
The History of My Commute
1976: One hour by bus from Osseo (an outer-ring suburb) into downtown Minneapolis.
1977: Half hour by car from Osseo into downtown Minneapolis.
1977: Twenty minutes by bus from Saint Louis Park (an inner-ring suburb) into downtown Minneapolis.
1979: Fifteen minutes by car from Saint Louis Park to Saint Paul.
1981: Twelve minutes by car from South Minneapolis to downtown Saint Paul.
1985: Ten minutes by car from South Minneapolis to South Minneapolis.
1992: Five minutes by car from Saint Paul to Saint Paul.
2000: Under one minute on foot (working at home).
I don’t understand why people put up with long commutes.
Monday February 13, 2012
Filed under:
Roving Photographer
Type & Lettering
Citicar
Spotted this curious little car in an amazing place called M. Schettl outside of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, back in 2009. It’s a Citicar, an all-electric vehicle made back in the seventies.
Not long after I saw this relic, I happened to be watching the television movie adaptation of Ursula LeGuin’s science fiction novel, The Lathe of Heaven, starring Bruce Davidson. It was made in 1980 and was set in the (then) near future. Of course, they needed some futuristic looking cars, and I guess the Citicar fit the bill. They used several of them for the film. I wouldn’t have known what they were if I hadn’t just seen this one in Oshkosh.
There’s something forlorn about seeing this little car rusting away among the other antiques they had there. The future is never quite what people think it will be.
Check out the logo on the dashboard and over the rear bumber: Amelia—the erstwhile number-one choice when you wanted to say “future” with a font.
Sunday February 12, 2012
Filed under:
Type & Lettering
Otis
Seen on the floor of an elevator in Madison, Wisconsin, on March 21, 2011.
Saturday February 11, 2012
Filed under:
Personal Archaeology
My First Real Computers
This entry is probably going to date me quite a bit. What I consider to be my first real computer was the Atari 400, which I bought in 1982. Around a year later, I got an Atari 800, mainly so I could type on a real keyboard. (The 400 had a cheaper “membrane” keyboard, which gave little tactile feedback. To make up for this, you would hear an audible “click” from the speaker. Not very different from modern touch-screen keyboards, now that I think of it.)
I still had both of them until about a year ago when I donated them to a local Atari dealer. Yes—they still exist! Not only that, one of the local Atari user groups that was around back in the early eighties (S.P.A.C.E.: Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts) still meets once a month less than a mile from my home!
Anyway, before I unloaded them, I took some photos. Here is the 400, with its membrane keyboard:
It sported a 2mhz 6502 processor, the same kind that was in the Apple II. Unlike the Apple II, it had a dedicated graphics processor and built-in sound chip, and four joystick ports, so it was a lot better for games. (A few years later, the guy who designed these computers designed the Amiga, which had a similar hardware concept.) Many programs (especially games) came on cartridges that you inserted into a slot under the access door on top. It had 16k of RAM, but I upgraded mine to 48k.
I also got a cassette “program recorder” so I could save and load files. I got the home computer bug really bad so it wasn’t long before I upgraded to a floppy disk drive and then the Atari 800 model, which had a real keyboard, easier memory expansion, a composite video port, and a second cartridge slot (which I never needed):
In spite of the fact that it had a real keyboard, it still did the fake “click” sound from the speaker when you typed. This lead me to do my one and only hardware hack on it: I added a small switch underneath which cut out the speaker. If it got too annoying, I could switch off the sound.
These were the days before the internet and—really—almost everything we use computers for now. So, what did I use my Atari for? Mostly, I played games (Star Raiders was amazing, but also a lot of Defender, Joust, and some of the early Lucasfilm games) and typed in BASIC programs from computer magazines. I also wrote an article for a magazine on it and did some “computer” illustrations that were published in real magazines. Learning about programming was the most useful thing about it in the long run—a very good thing to know when making fonts.
Just for fun, I took a photo of one of my current computers, a MacBook Air, next to the Atari 800:
The Air is about 1000 times as fast, has about 100,000 times as much RAM, can store as much data as 1.3 million Atari 90k disks, a built-in flat display with 21 times the pixel density, can display a million times as many colors, has high-speed wireless networking connected to millions of other computers around the world, can run for 10 hours on its built-in rechargeable battery, and is a tiny fraction of the 800’s size and weight, including the display. Not bad for 30 years progress. On the other hand, it’s conceptually not very different from the first Mac I bought a year later, in 1984.
Saturday February 11, 2012
Filed under:
Type & Lettering
Spoof
Seen in Galesville, Wisconsin, on July 28, 2011.
Thursday February 9, 2012
Filed under:
Type & Lettering
Crazy "g"
Saw this at Mystic Blue Signs in New Orleans last summer during TypeCon. It was in a big old French book about lettering and engraving. I wish I’d written down some information about it. I think it was from around 1880. Heard from someone that it is from 1859.
The alphabet on this particular page was very unexpected. It looks almost like Avant Garde in some ways. And dig that crazy “g”! Way ahead of its time.