House Industries, the well-known type foundry in Delaware, has developed an online phototypesetting service that allows the designer to pick his font, set it, customize it and buy it as vector art for a very reasonable price. This concept really brings me back to my former typesetting days. Their online service is great for designers who don’t need the entire font but just need the large impact headline. House industries has purchased and converted the entire Photolettering, Inc. library into an online font library. I wish I would have thought of that. I do know that it shows what quality and craftsmanship there was in those days of handsetting and phototypesetting type.

Designers are coveting old type specimen books looking for classic and rarely seen fonts from the 40′s, 50′s, 60′s and 70′s. In the late seventies I was setting headlines by cutting each character out of a contact sheet made from an original negative of an exclusive font provided to us by Headliners International. The cutout characters were then place on a blue line board that was covered with rubber cement (please, no acetone comments, I’m already on a cancer watch…). Using a tweezers and my artist eye (no snickers), I would handset the headline, kerning each character until I had assembled an entire headline. That blue line board would be photographed into a paper negative photo stat which I would touch up with a brush using black opaque. The finished negative would then be photographed again into a paper positive that was the final galley which was sent to the client along with the galleys of the body copy that was set at our partner company Dahl & Curry. By the time I left Headliners we were using phototypsetters to create most of our headlines. Still, assembly was a tedious labor intensive process but the results spoke for themselves.

When Jim Fredericks and I joined up with P&H Photocomposition and started Letterworx we used phototypesetters and all our fonts were on plastic reels. We had over 3000 fonts. It was a great time to be in the type industry. We were setting headlines and creating artwork for some of the best agencies in the Twin Cities. If you ever need to see some good examples of our Letterworx typesetting skills, get a copy of the coffee table book “The Work: 25 Years of Fallon”. My partner Jim Fredericks and I set most of those headlines (with a big nod to Bob Blewett, Fallon’s type director) in the ads featured in the book. We were very fortunate to be a great partner and vendor for Fallon in their first 25 years doing award-winning advertising. I will always be proud of that.

Don’t misunderstand me when I swoon and gush about those days. The process was very labor intensive and the toxic chemical exposure as well as the second-hand cigarette smoke from my partner Jim (3 packs a day, 2 packs of Winston’s, 1 Pack of Kool’s). I won’t even go over the process for special effects like type on a curve or the diminishing “Star Wars” effect that became popular in 1977. I’ll save that one for a later blog. I focus on the quality and uniqueness of the fonts that were exclusive and licensed by specific companies back in the 50′s and 60′s. I would rather set type on computer today but I do embrace and still think there is a place for the hand drawn design, then interpreted and put into digital form. I sure don’t miss inhaling acetone all day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/fashion/31Noticed.html?_r=1

Everyone came to this event with different expectations but I believe it was best summed up by the panel whose basic message was “This is not a fad. The tools may change but Social Networking is a practical way to market, enhance and promote your brand.”

I was most interested in a comment that Arik Hanson made when asked about new opportunities and where social networking can have an impact. Arik seems to think there is a great opportunity with B2B companies. I agree with him. Retailers seemed to have jumped on board and tapped into Social Networking to promote and sell their product and are doing a good job of it. B2B companies are just starting to find ways to utilize Social Networking to do things such as recruit qualified employees, create social networks for their business customers, clients, and vendors. Estimates are that B2B companies have already accelerated their spending to an excess of 200 million dollars in advertising to the business audience on sites such as LinkedIn and even on Facebook.* There will be opportunities and I think you will be seeing more B2B Social Networking startegies developed and marketing companies that are strictly B2B Social Networking experts.

I believe we have only scratched the surface of Social Networking. Twitter may not be around in five years but you can bet Social Networking as a legitimate marketing platform will be.

* http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080828/FREE/808289991/1078#seenit

After attending the lecture, reception and the subsequent gallery opening of Hatch Design’s work in the College of Visual Arts Gallery, I came away energized about our business. The style and direction of the work makes me realize why I got into this crazy business known as design. Most of the pieces have a heavy emphasis on typography (oh, yeah) and color. The use of colorful line art illustration is refreshing rather than the over use and dependence on 4-color imagery.  Hatch’s solutions were elegant and had wonderful color palettes. Every project was an outstanding visual solution to some particular challenging design projects. Joel and Hatch Design’s approach is based on the belief that the best design is honest, hands-on, and human.

If you are interested in excellent brand design, get over to the the College of Visual Arts Gallery and check it out.

The Hatch Design show runs until October 9th.

For more information on Hatch Design and Joel Templin go to:

http://www.cva.edu/gallery/detail.php?ID=68

“Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking.”

— Chris Pullman

“Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

— Steve Jobs

Typography holds a special place in my life as a graphics professional. My earliest memories about typography were from visiting the Pioneer Press newspaper office on the weekends when my father was working either the copy or city editors desk. He would take me down to the press room and I was immediately drawn to the Linotype operators. The noise and the heat were brutal but it was fascinating to a seven year old to watch the lead type slugs come out. The operators would give me individual lead character slugs and show me how they would job case and layout an article. I fell in love with type from that moment on. If you want to really fall in love with typography or really understand it’s importance in design and culture, I suggest you watch the documentary movie titled “Helvetica”. Here is the link:  http://www.helveticafilm.com/

“A man who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep.”

— Frederic Goudy

Oh yes, the “other fare” is about everything else that surrounds design from a business, cultural and just a human point of view.

Welcome and I hope to provide something of interest for you and stimulate some wonderful conversation.