Here you go; Idea magazine, for March 2007, volume 55, issue 2, no. 321. The green sticker is actually the price tag. Features the Works of Jan Tschichold from 1902 – 1974. With essays by Christopter Burke (who also authored Active Literature, another Tschichold book focusing on earlier works), Robin Kinross, John D. Berry, Jean-François Porchez on a little bit of insights on Sabon Next, etc. It also features his Penguin years, which is pretty insightful and serves as a good addition to geeks who dig the Penguin design history (read Penguin by Design by Phil Baines for more insights).
The “In’ tray on my desk is full of stuff. Means I should be pretty stress up by now with all that work that’s coming in. But the stuff below made me pretty excited:
Taken from one of the six amazing stories on We tell stories by Penguin. (Theres a PDF download to it!) Read more about these elsewhere here & here.
Have been working late lately. Leaving the studio at about 3.45am is certainly not a very healthy thing to do often. Waking up after about 4 hours of sleep adds salt to it. What more a long hectic day of picking up phone calls and coordination.
When I was a student, I was told to grab this book, How to be a Graphic Designer without loosing your soul before entering the industry. Hoping that it will help. For some strange unidentifiable reason, I never did bought the book. Why? Maybe I haven’t lost my soul (I guess).
Other than that, since using the word passion is a little bit of a cliché in this context, lets just say there are more interesting things that constitutes over graphic design. I find these things absolutely interesting. Example: Just take a look at the faces of people when you tell them you’re a graphic designer.
Also, it’s just kind of cool to be a designer.
* This books has a glorious display of typography!
Over the past few years, we see Penguin Books coming up with covers that create significance in the world of design. One example is the cover design for Meditations, taken from the Great Ideas Series 1, designed by Phil Baines that swept neat a D&AD award. From the Great Ideas Series 1 & 2, down to the newly released Penguin Celebrations.
As shown below, stunningly beautiful, dressed up with Jan Tschichold’s legendary 3 stripes design. Orange for fiction, Pink for distant lands, Purple for viewpoints, Dark Blue for real lives, Light blue for great ideas and green for mystery. This amazing collection features some of the best books of that kind such as The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski for adventure & travel, How to be Good by Nick Hornby for fiction together with Sue Townsend’s Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, etc. Check out their beautiful website here.
Another highlight thats worth to be displayed on the book shelf is definitely the Great Ideas Series 1 & Series 2 that has actually created a lot of attention in the design and type industry. I am a proud owner of about 22 copies out of the 40 copies of the entire series, just to share. Below are some take outs from series 2:
Moving on, we witness the Great Journeys series (which will trigger the ‘Marco Polo’ & ‘Christopher Columbus’ in us!). We here observe the beauty of duplication & repetition:
Then, the really beautiful & delicate touch on the front covers of the Great Loves series. Very elegant use of color and typeface. Using natural elements of mother nature with David Person’s traditional approach in creating the abstraction of the covers (scroll down here for the interview). I spotted this series in MPH at Mid Valley, amazingly stunning when viewed physically.
We also see the really interesting covers for Penguin Epics. This time, displaying mythical cliques and taking them to the next level by adding abstraction via modern approaches of graphic elements in the designs. Pay a little attention and you might realize that these designs are actually influenced by interpretations of each respective culture which concerns about the stories. I enjoyed the expressive type treatment.
All the books above are gloriously sized at 111 x 181mm, the ultimate.
(Also the ultimate 700 Penguins book covers for devoted Penguin cover hunters)
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This time, we enter the 1950′s of the Penguin era. Most of the books shown here were printed back then.
We can see that the horizontal grid, devised by Edward Young in about 1935 still stays. It used to be with the ever popular Bodoni Ultra Bold on the publishers name and the two alternatives of Gill Sans for the book title and authors name. The grid was later redrawn by Jan Tschichold in 1948 which did not introduce a new look but a modification/improvisation of the current.Tschichold also added a fine thin line as a border to the orange panels.
Well, I guess I am lucky enough to get one of the early 1950′s redesigned Pelicans. The frame, introduced also by Tschichold in about 1949. Eventough I don’t own one of those covers with illustrations on it, I do find the typeface, Gill Sans pleasing and easy on the eye on this one. Also, the rather bold idea of extracting some text describing its contents on its cover.
The Penguin Poets series, first appeared in 1941 featuring the italic Garamond for its authors name. The design was done by Jan Tschichold again back in 1954. (Seen on “Browning”)
“The Art of Marriage” & “Successful Living”, both covers designed by David Gentleman. Distinctive illustrations commissioned to fill the border space of the cover. Again, we notice the use of Gill Sans & extracts on what the book contains on the covers.
I have actually left all my Penguin Books in the office. I guess BOSS won’t mind if you guys pop in during our less busy periods to take a good look at them.
I bought this book for a pretty decent RM184. I thought I would never get a chance to even browse through it. Lucky enough to have a book like this. I don’t mind reading the articles repetitively.
Designers have their own pet ideas about typography for sure. We stick to one idea about it that we have read or heard or maybe taught of from various sources. My typography teacher once had a written test done after every class to ensure we get something out of his lessons. Back then, all I heard of is Arial and Times New Roman, to be set in 12 point, double spacing, with bold headlines. We were told in secondary school the same. Who cares about typography, you don’t need to kern alphabets to pass your papers.
Anyway, this book brings out many perspectives about the issue. Some are in nature, radical while some purists. Separated by thought and interpretation but joint together in the coolest type library in the world.
While reading through, you will find that each FontFonttypeface has its own unique identity. A very personalized history behind it. Carved deep in detail by its respective designers. FF Bau for example, is a revival of the Grotesk typeface Schelter Grostek. In creating FF Cocon and FF Balance, Evert Bloemsma stated this really interesting statement:
“Typography is full of traditions, and is therefore a field full of designer pitfalls. Before getting to work, you must be aware of all those conventions passed down to us, otherwise, you won’t succeed in adding something substantial.”
On the other hand, Hans Reichel, a musician by profession, playing regularly in jazz concerts, drew inspiration to name his typeface FF Dax from a Daxophone and had no idea about the fact that his typefaces were back then also digitized to work on a Macintosh. Martin Majoor strongly believes that you have to start from the alphabet ‘a (lower-case)’ when starting to design a typeface and follows a strict discipline of only moving to the italics and bold later on. Ole Schafer broke the record by creating 247 fonts for FF Fago, crafting it on the same baseline regardless of whether it is heavier or thinner in stroke. Amazing!
It also showcases stunning images of how and where FontFont typefaces have been use. Spawning a large collection of its entire type library, almost every FontFont typeface is covered in various sections throughout. Not all typefaces are covered in detail but generally, a handful of selected ones go beyond just the back pages of showcasing them being applied skillfully.
Out-takes were also featured such as both computer and hand sketches. Some were actually drawn of tissue papers or on newspapers. Seria, by Martin Majoor for example was drawn on a napkin.
One funny thing about this book is that “Serious” typefaces were actually referring to typefaces which have more typographic features (oldstyle, ligatures, mostly built on the purpose for book typography, e.g. FF Clifford, FF Nexus by Akira Kobayashi and Martin Majoor respectively). Meanwhile, “Radical” and “Functionalism” were referring to typefaces such as FF Scratch, FF Fudoni, both by Max Kisman. I thought it was genius to use that term next time.
You can read a little more about it here from FontFont’s official website. Or you can get a sneak preview of how it looks like in PDF form here.
Lastly, there are still many interesting facts not mentioned by me here about this book. Go read it if you can. Or buy it. If you have been studying Bringhurst’sideas (which are awesome), maybe you might want to go less traditional and head other ways.
Oh, I’m so inspired to create my own typeface. Even if I could made one based on my own pet idea’s about the subject, it will be great. Well, I’m just a crappie designer making crappie things.
