davidthedesigner

this made me smile #54

If you've ever wondered what the 52 fonts that you should never use instead of Helvetica, I'm sure you'll find them all - and more - over at comicraft.

Don't tell them I sent you, though.

here's a treat

I was noodling around the internet (as you do) - in fact, I think I was looking for a suitable image to illustrate Univers in that last post. And I came across the work of Anton Stankowski (who, as you can see, often used Univers).

And here's a site dedicated to his life and work.

u-turn

If I had to choose just one font (instead of the 52) that I could use instead of Helvetica, then I think that would really have to be Univers. I love it. And I love it because it's so damn difficult to use. In my view, it's the one font that sorts the men from the boys.

It's arguably one of the greatest typographic achievements of the second half of the 20th century. The family has the advantage of having a variety of weights and styles, which, even when combined, give an impression of steadiness and homogeneity. In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. Adrian Frutiger, the foundry's art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. He wanted to instead make a new font that would, above all, be suitable for the typesetting of longer texts - quite an exciting challenge for a sans-serif font at that time. Starting with his old sketches from his student days at the School for the Applied Arts in Zurich, he created the Univers type family. In 1957, the family was released by Deberny & Piegnot, and afterwards, it was produced by Linotype. The Deberny & Peignot type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas, and the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) was folded into the D. Stempel AG/Linotype collection in 1985/1989. In 1997, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed a large joint project of completely re-designing and updating the Univers family.

And now to a new discovery (for me at least) - which is the way of this little series: it makes me go out and hunt things down when I get to particular letters and nothing obvious springs to mind.

It's Utopia. It was designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe in 1992, and was intended to solve a number of typographic problems related to office correspondence. This demanded versatility, so Slimbach created a font family with cuts for text, for titles, extra bold for headlines, small caps, all caps with numerals, old face numerals, fractions, ligatures and scientific markings.

this made me smile #53

Found on Rampant Horse Street:*

(*Actually, I found it here.)

enough penguins, already

So I'm going to wrap up this week with just a couple more covers - otherwise this blog is going to turn into something that it's not intended to be (whatever that is). And I felt that I had to escape from the penguins. But it's not been easy. I've had to search high and low through my bookshelves to find anything that I was prepared to post up here.

This is quite charming, isn't it? Complete with its tea cup stain. But it comes from another age - 1960 to be exact (that was before sexual intercourse began, according to Philip Larkin). Because we had loftier ideals then: educating Johnny foreigner (and no, not that one). Here's what it says in the introduction:

"English books are written for the English, who have spoken English since they began to speak, and have read English since they began to read. They are not written for the foreigner.

In every school in the world in which foreigners are learning English, the teacher is crying out for books that will bring to the foreigner who is learning English some of the pleasure that the English classics bring to the English boy and girl."

Still, never mind, the summer of love would be coming along soon. And speaking of love, here's another cover from 1960:

With a wrapper designed by Adrian Bailey, it's "the story of a boy's physical infatuation with a girl whom he does not love".

And thus an empire was lost (if my father was to be believed).

poetry please

Here's the little gem that I told you about yesterday: a Penguin Poets cover. It's so lovely that I was inspired to photograph it in the AceJet 170 style. But, sadly, my diddy digital camera wasn't up to the job.

So here it is full frontal, instead:

This one was published in 1958, so the cover was probably designed by Stephen Russ, although it's not attributed in the book itself. And here's the equally lovely back cover:

But I'm only scratching the surface here: if you really want to know all about The Penguin Poets series of covers, you need to head on over to Richard's collection. And you can find out more about Stephen Russ from Graham Day.

three more penguins

When I started with the book covers on Monday I thought I was embarking upon a purely random choice from my bookshelves. But now I see that the first six covers I've chosen (in fact seven, because I've got a little treat for you tomorrow) have all been Penguins. And it's not a coincidence, as I see when I go back to the first book I plucked from the shelf: The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck, the 3rd edition published by Pan Books in 1967. And the cover's awful. So dreadful in fact that I'm not going to show you. So well done Penguin for supporting designers and good design over the last 70 years and more (as if you need me to tell you that).

So three more covers from the "it's what you leave out that's important, not what you put in" school of design:

Nice and subtle this one: the book's all about a world paralysed by genetic mutation. This one published in 1965, and with a cover illustration by John Griffiths (and I can't find out anything about him, I'm afraid).

Next is this from 1970, with a cover design by Minale/Tattersfield/Provinciali (who have subsequently become mintat in our url-important world). It must be many a year since Penguin could afford their fees, I'm guessing.

And here's simplicity taken to the extreme, with this cover design by Derek Birdsall from 1973.

two for the price of one

It's not in the same league as the Billy Liar cover, but here's another by Tony Meeuwissen that I thought you might like to see. This one's from 1971 and the back cover blurb describes it thus: "In unravelling the facts behind his father's duplicity - which include an odd relationship as a trooper with a mysterious Count de Gallatin and eccentric entry into the banana business - Ackerley also reveals much of himself".

Hence the two bananas.

But 1974 was clearly a vintage year for Penguin covers, because look at this little beauty. Designed by David King, with an ink drawing by Ernst Neizvestny (who, among other things, designed  Khrushchev's tomb).

ch ch ch ch ch changes

Once bitten, twice shy: last time I tried altering the structure of this blog it all ended in TypePad managing to lose all of my images. But another year's gone by and it can't go on like this. I know that I need a way to pull together the 26 or so posts that will eventually complete the '52 fonts you could use instead of Helvetica' series. And with over 18 months of blogging under my belt, I can see from my statistics that there's some buried treasure that's no longer seeing the light of day. So, as a tentative step, I've put some new headings over there on the right.

First up is a link to my website: because when I'm not davidthedesigner I'm mr celsius - and I'd like some more work, please. So if you know someone who's after a good designer, do me a favour and point them in my direction.

Next, I'd like to remind you of the golden rules of dealing with text when you're getting it ready for typesetting. Just some plain, straightforward advice on how to go about things. It's taken me thirty years to learn that little lot - and now it's your's for free.

And then there's that lovely set of old enamel signs that I photographed at the Beaulieu International Autojumble last September. They don't deserve to be buried away, do they?

Which brings me on to my next challenge: getting to grips with Flickr. I won't bore you with details, but I've had log-in problems which have always beaten me. But I won't be beaten no more. And so, dear friends, I've gone and managed to set up a Flickr account which will be coming to your screens soon. But first, some content: and so I've decided to open the doors on my book collection and show you some ace cover designs. This is the first:

Designed by Tony Meeuwissen in the early 70s (this edition was published in 1974). A clever chap Tony Meeuwissen - you can read more about him over on the D&AD site.

This design was a pastiche of the Wills Woodbines cigarette packaging - and a pretty close copy, as you can see from this:

Interesting that in 1974, a cigarette pack can be referenced in this way, and that everyone at the time got it. It illustrates the power and influence of design, I guess.

But, actually, one of the main reasons why I think this is an ace cover is that the back is as well considered as the front:

 

Another cover tomorrow. Be sure to come back, won't you?

the great fedex favicon debate

The answer has to be:

Surely?