Agreeable Letters

I have spent much of today reviewing student proposals for their client work assignments. These are considered to be legal agreements for design services provided by the student designer, for their individual clients. Each agreement must document the scope of work, outline a set of milestones, a timeline and provide terms and conditions specific to their individual assignment. It is like reality tv for emerging young designers where they each have to acquire a real client and perform design services for pay, trade or public service. I unfortunately am in Donald Trump's role I think, (but at least I'm not wearing a mobius strip on my head).

       Now recommending legal advice is beyond my pay scale and job description, but I feel it is critical for students to have some professional practice. I judge their agreements based not only on content, but on their typographical layout and design, as this best represents their skills. Often it may be the only sample of work a client sees initially, so it better damn well look good (or they're fired). Suitable font selections, hierarchy, and grids all play essential roles and even spelling and grammar counts. All of these details and considerations are dizzying to review, but it is refreshing to see the occasional contract that is nicely designed and refreshing to read. This might mean it is written from the voice of the student, not remixed legalese or textbook jargon with bullet points. I try to encourage students to find a balance between creating a watertight agreement while remaining cordial and professional. Otherwise one risks appearing litigious and this only sets the tone for an adversarial working relationship. It's a difficult balance for all of us. 

       It was by happy coincidence that I stumbled across this old legal document from France today in my files. It is actually a beautifully hand-scribed four-page legal contract from 1738 written on cotton paper and secured with some sort of a natural fiber, and has an official stamp of the provincial authority I presume. With not a misspelled word or error, and hierarchy imposed by variation in size and a heavier hand in some cases—it would be a pleasure to read in any language. This sort of contract may be impractical for most client proposals, but give me that client who would appreciate a letter of agreement like this. I just wish I could scribe such a lovely work myself!

:: From the Letterology Archives

Typographic Alchemy

It's no surprise that my student Joe of The Viatorium Press, discovered the brilliant work of Kristen Haff. He is a big fan of alchemic texts and typography and does his research. I am grateful for the introduction.

Kristen is a recent design graduate from the San Francisco Academy of Art and acquired her first job as a Junior Designer for Viking and Penguin imprints with the Penguin Group in New York City. Included in her portfolio of work is a series of four typography posters titled The Typographer's Stone which she produced several years ago as a school project. The assignment was to reinterpret the text from Robin Williams book, The Mac is Not a Typewriter and visually translate them into spreads. Kristen imagined Williams' text as a series of golden rules for any designer and was granted special permission to produce them as a set of posters for her assignment. Her teacher then suggested she treat them like sacred texts and to consider using different languages in order to give them a more cryptic feel. This inspired her approach of styling them after old alchemy diagrams which often contained vast amounts of information within elaborate structures. (The printers and designers of these old charts and diagrams were the original visual information designers). It is difficult for me to read and authenticate her presentation of the four different diagrams, however they are very beautiful visual displays of typographic hierarchy nonetheless. This is a very difficult and challenging exercise to distill such a vast topic as rules of typographic ettiquette into categories and hierarchies of information and I think Kristen did an amazing performance with visually displaying it all. If she were to revisit them again someday, she tells me she would like to give them each an aged, worn feel. I do hope she considers publishing them as posters or even a fold-out compendium of some kind as I suspect there would be a great deal of interest among information designers and typographers. Kristen has a very bright future ahead of her now in the publishing world and I look forward to seeing more of her book design work in the future. Below is a glimpse of her portfolio of student work.

Spreading the Love

My former student Hiroko Ebizaki, has produced this design to honor Japan's agonizing struggle for recovery. She is living in Seattle now and claims her family and friends at her home in Japan are safe, but exhausted and frightened. We all share with her the heartbreak and hope that relief comes to them very quickly.

The Story of Paper

This is a book from 1955 about the story of paper designed, illustrated and all handwritten in the kind of cursive penmanship once taught in public schools. It includes 3 pages of tipped-in swatches of paper and is a handbound, one-of-a-kind book made by young Joe Obzina of Seattle using a traditional Japanese stab binding. Joe created his book for a 5th grade assignment at John Hay grade school, according to his title page, and I hope he got an A on it. He took great care to follow the traditional structure of the book and included a formal handwritten title page and table of contents. He does a fine job keeping it informative by highlighting a few keynote dates, but occasionally glosses over a few centuries as if reciting directly from the Encyclopedia Britannica—the Google of its' day. Chapter VI, with his tipped-in paper swatches, especially appeals to me just to see what specialty use papers were available during the mid-50s. Bogus paper? Feco Engine paper? I never heard of these. And he lists 25 Northwest paper mills, which to my knowledge only one—the Longview Fibre Company even still exists, some 56 years later. 

I have several of these sort of handmade children's books which I will share on occasion as I find them absolutely charming. The format and structure of the printed book was—and I hope still is—such an important method to display knowledge. Imagining a young child recreating a model of an eBook report to portray their work, is so impersonal. No doubt a very useful skill, but just simply not the same.

The World According to Jobs

Click above to read article.
Study your Ps & Qs people.

:: Via aut0mat0n

Good Citizenship and The Mighty Printing Press

Finding this little ephemeral card about the printing press brings me to a little history lesson about it's origination. It is called a Reward of Merit card, and I believe it could be considered the first historic example of a marketing incentive program. First introduced in the early 18th century as a device to inspire loyalty and discipline, good conduct, punctuality and attendance in Sunday schools, they later became prized tokens of good citizenship for all students. They originated in America and were initially printed one color with a decorative engraving or woodcut with space to write in the student's name and date. During the Victorian era, the printing and design became much more ornate using decorative typography, borders and illustrations and were often printed using chromolithography—usually with some sort of moral text or pious verse in addition to an illustration. According to Maurice Rickard's, indespensible Encyclopedia of Ephermera, some of them took the form of bookmarks, available in collectible sets, and featured letters of the alphabet. The cards were all considered greatly cherished tokens and preserved in scrap albums which helped to popularize the scrapbooking craft at the time and probably kept the little heathens out of trouble. Who knew good citizenship and the Reward of Merit was the archtype of today's brand loyalty and incentive programs?  

So I had to laugh when I first saw this Reward of Merit card about the printing press. Was it given to a pressman for having no spelling errors? Maybe they were rewarded for the tightest color registration? It's quite charming and you must click on it to read the entire text celebrating the mighty printing press—a very curious machine.

Given to Kyle Van Horn by a friend who found it in their grandparent's house. It measures 2.5 x 4" and is dated February 4th 1870, nearly 141 years ago to the day. 

Students Making Books

Do a quick read about my student, Joe Brokken and the production of his book project for this quarter's class assignment. The book he has chosen to reformat and design is Letters on an Elk Hunt, a 1917 memoir of the woman homesteader, Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Joe recently made a trip to Special Collections at the Seattle Public Library to do some research on books of that era with the intention of styling his own book project with a similar pastiche. You go Joe!

Seattle Central Creative Academy Class of 2010

The ink is dry on the portfolios and the websites launched. And this 2010 class of design graduates are about to venture off into the design wilderness to launch their own careers. They come prepared with maps, field guides and fancy old and new technology skills. They will be greatly missed! Hire them, won't you?