Time flies.....

...when you're having fun.

Why talk politics when everyone else is doing it so much better than I ever could?

The revolving door to the White House has kept everyone on their toes while we ourselves tiptoe going on with life as usual. Fighting off the angst has turned commonplace. We'll breathe easier someday.

DSH has moved forward. No room for cynicism here. Two pieces are now for screen delivery; the tussle with my ego has made at least one bigger in size.

The morphing of the letterform is taking up my brain space. An E turning into an e. Or, an e turning into an E.

E Pluribus Unum.

Research shows that it has a few possible origins, from Cicero to a masthead item on a Revolutionary War period men's magazine. The idea was that one--a unity--could be crafted from many. Rather elegant for the time--far more than now, as we are caught wallowing in xenophobia.

But more simply, it's the makeup of all matter and endeavor. Out of many cells, one body. Out of many words, a statement. It's more than a building block; it's building blocks that unify into a structure.

None of this "every man for himself" stuff.

As I work on the e, 6H pencils and French curves build the pathway that I'll then import into Animate (or Premiere or Aftereffects--not sure which yet) and the motion will be built through one of the filters.

The hand work is needed for a smooth transition. Lowercase e turning into E is much harder than the other way around. I'll keep you posted.

From the pencil sketch, vector drawing.

Frederick Douglass

I had written this months ago; only posting it now. Sorry.

The president is ruining my blog.

Really. I'd been working diligently on my post about Frederick Douglass for a while--researching it to make sure there would be no fake news on it--and he goes out and proclaims him living. 

He should have boned up on Black history before slapping his name on the lease at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  But he's not entirely to blame.

Growing up in a decidedly white neighborhood in Queens--one the other side of the tracks from where DJT was born--the name Frederick Douglass didn't enter my life as a child or teenager.  In the last three decades, sleepy Richmond Hill transformed itself into a more diverse neighborhood but back then, I knew about black people, slavery, and discrimination academically--through white history books. The singular discourse I can recollect from a TEACHER was a mere sentence: "You know, the only job black people could get until very recently was as maintenance workers." It impressed me greatly but bounced off my classmates. I still don't think we understand what that means. And, she uttered the phrase in the late 1970's. In New York City.

Until high school, many of my neighborhood friends had never spoken to an African American; 
as far as they were concerned, were taking away their jobs, neighborhoods, their very way of life and replacing it with one of riots, drugs, poverty and violence. 

My outlook was framed differently since I often visited my with father's sister, who lived and worked as a nurse in hospitals throughout upper Manhattan and the South Bronx. My earliest recollection of a purely African American experience was going with her to a dance recital somewhere in Harlem where she and I were the only non-African Americans there. I noticed it; I was intrigued. 

Back to Frederick Douglass. 

Frederick Douglass Circle sits at the gate of Harlem: The Northwestern tip of Central Park. West 110th Street and Central Park West, turns into the boulevard bearing his name and travels north to where it ends around West 155th Street and the Harlem River Drive. 

The circle sits in the baking sun; unshielded by the swanky apartment buildings lining the semi circle, but it doesn't matter. A life-size statue of Fred himself faces Harlem, his back turned to the rest of Manhattan. 

When I started this project, I felt Frederick Douglass would be the central figure on which to focus my search for a phrase applicable to DEMOCRACY SPOKEN HERE. Over the years it's become a well known face that he, an escaped slave from Maryland, was a best-selling writer, orator, and abolisher; that he campaigned for equality not only for African Americans' rights but for women's rights and suffrage. He was friends with Abraham Lincoln, etc., etc., etc. But what I find most fascinating were his writings and speeches about PHOTOGRAPHY!

He writes: Our age gets very little credit for poetry of music or indeed art in any of its branches. It is commonly and often scornfully denominated the age of money, merchandise and politics, a metallic, utilitarian, dollar-worshipping age--nothing in the waterfall but mill power, nothing in the landscape but cotton, corn and cattle; dead alike to the poetic charms both of nature and of art.

Ehem.

Not camera shy, he was the most photographed black man of the 19th century. He believed, and rightly so, that the camera was the greatest democratic testaments: a camera could easily record the face of a king as it could a young black servant; a photo booth could exist at a country crossroad gas station or on the fabulous boulevards of Paris. One side of the world could behold the other--and, without the blink of an eye, cast an opinion of the true state of the human condition from which he came, free of demeaning depictions or sensational writings

Trumpian Spoken Here

This extra bold version loses its charm with the lower case f
though it does sit nicely with the squat bold Futura. I didn't
doctor any fonts. This came right off the shelf.

How can I resist?

Being out of town with a computer void of design software, I found a funky consumer design program. A little heavy handed, but hey, it's on FB.

It's from an internet app called Canva.com, and a series of templates are set up for a variety of purposes, both print and screen. This is a repurposed wedding invitation; my only reason for choosing it is its use of Clarendon, though, with some exploration, I'm sure I could use a font of my choice, which would be a less clunky form of Clarendon.

The color variety is also up for exploration; a palette is offered, however in the list of options I saw the rainbow of alternatives. The application offers free design options but charges at various scales upon download.

Slowly I turned...Step by Step....

...Inch by inch...

and this administration is going off

NIAGRA FALLS!

But, luckily, Clarendon is doing fine. I see it everywhere.

Nifty little article about the font used in numbering the yardage on football fields. Of course it's an official standard; I just didn't pay attention to the font until now.

https://fontsinuse.com/uses/7507/nfl-field-markings

The author points out, however, that for the 50th anniversary of the Super Bowl Century was used, not Clarendon but I disagree. What gives it away is that Century's thicks and thins are more streamlined than Clarendon's. The curly flag on the 2 gives it away. Clarendon is also fuller (less condensed) than Century, making it even more playful than the typeface I grew up on in Sally, Dick and Jane.

Found a few new hits on the Internet using this beautiful font, and I came up with a few ideas of my own.

I'm always talking about offset printing, since, it was in a small shop on 101st Avenue and 120th Street in Richmond Hill (Queens!) that I got my first job job. Baby sitting, guitar lessons and paper routes kind of count, but not really. Here I had a boss! A REAL boss!

Anyway, that's where I learned about color separations and 4-color printing. I had been exposed to it, as I wrote earlier, by my dad, who showed me color pictures through a magnifying glass. But here I learned the mechanics of it and loved it.
With this in mind, I set out to design a new entry, E Pluribus Unum.  The type treatment is still in the works, since I'm designing the piece with a variety of capital and lower case letters of different weights; to the right is what's good enough to show so far.

At first I envisioned every piece executed in black ink on paper, but as time goes on, and with the versatility of the face, I'm thinking more and more that I'm going to add color to the entire project; most especially this piece. That's where 4-color printing comes in, as do the evil workings of the much despised Registration Gremlin of the pressroom. I'll report back soon.

Poor Little Rich Boy

It's sad to see the leader of the free world flail his way onto the stage of comedy skits. I read--and this might be fake news--that some of DJT's advisors had advised him against holding a press conference last week.

But instead, the poor thing came out and delivered a 77-minute gash on everything that's bothering him--as if in primal scream therapy. He didn't even let the orthodox Jewish guy--a Trump supporter--finish his question about the administration's response to hate crimes that have been aimed at synagogues and Jewish centers around the country since he's been in office.

OK, OK, you're not anti-Semitic, Mr. President, but that's not the question. It's legitimate--democratic--to ask if our government stands in support against bigotry and is ready to stop it--regardless of who is being offended.
The true picture of this administration was painted in one fat brushstroke: What's meant and what's said are two different entities; yet another manifestation of not having time (or desire, evidently) to be politically correct?

Remember when print used to be DJT's friend? Stacks and stacks of ink on paper sat atop consoles proved he was once loved. What went wrong?

Let's face it: Democracy is a drag; people won't readily sign non-disclosure statements; and those who ask questions can't be thrown in the fire. All presidents, all over the world have to box with the press. Even deeply loved ones.

Dad should have taught you better. Maybe he didn't know himself.

The Printing

Here's the part many have been waiting for.

All the research, history, design...What about the goods?

Democracy Spoken Here is a type art piece using a group of phrases from famous quotes of people from American history. They spoke of a true democracy, where every person really does count--regardless of their color, gender, race, belief--and now, very significantly, identification.

Whoa! Not so fast with those facts!

With the advent of what I call mutable media, we're stuck in a perpetual 1984: a recombinant jumble of events kluged into "alternative facts" of the day.
Proof of events is refuted because the once-unrefutable truth beheld by the cold eye of the photograph can now be manipulated to "delegitimize a president".

Fully aware of and capitalizing on the lack of digital savvy many have, the current administration has painted a picture of itself as a technological underdog at the mercy of those who attempt to deliver the facts. Calling reality into question seems to always have been America's real pastime.

Which is why print media remains so significant, even as huge printing plants fade as a romantic memory and consolidates into corrals of brokers. There's a wall to scale here: I wrote a few weeks ago that a nice portion of NYC earned its living in the print shops on Canal Street--and that erosion of jobs started in the early 1990's with the final and decisive blow to it in 2008 with the event of the tiny portable computer--the phone. What could take its place?

IT is one consideration. Still predominantly male, a quick certification gets you a job hooking people up to their ethernet ports. Some ascend the sales and design ladder, depending on the attitude toward innovation (read: education). So, is that where the meat-and-potatoes crowd went?

OK, no more snide remarks. I enjoy a good burger once or twice a year myself.

The idea behind Democracy Spoken Here is a resurrection of the art and craft of printing while resurrecting the art and craft of rebellion. A few words in black ink on a white piece of paper, printed just enough times to classify it as evidence go a long way to remind people that differences among people do not signify inferiority or failure.

We take for granted that many of the struggles of the marginalized have given us what we treasure today--starting with something as simple as the eight-hour work day.

What's under the lens here is authenticity. A few words might seem fairly straightforward to execute as genuine. Designing the typography and selecting the finest print medium that reflects their times is, though an art form, merely mechanical. The words are what stand as a testament to truthfulness and accuracy that we so cherish in this country, and which is so imperiled at this time.

Printing--Conversation II

The first known cover of
my high school mag-
azine. When the new
building got rid of its dome,
name of the magazine changed
to DOME.

In high school, I became art editor of my school's magazine, DOME in my sophomore year. Although my public high school wasn't much to talk about, and still maintains its mediocre status in NYC's DOE roster, it came from the grand tradition of having both a monthly newspaper and a twice-yearly magazine.

Both publications had their own offices and DOMINO, the school newspaper, talked about pertinent events like school sports, academic achievements and the occasional music review (of which my brother wrote a few) while DOME was the art and literary magazine and featured the more fine art side of the school.

And, both were printed in their own representative style: DOMINO was black ink on newsprint, and DOME was black ink on coated paper stock with a 2-color Kromekote cover. Kromekote is a beautiful white-clay-coated paper used for offset--and now digital--printing. Sadly, it yellows and is not archival, but the surface is smooth as glass and lends itself well to hand lettering destined for print reproduction.

Designing the layout of the magazine was also my entry into print production, since every aspect of the magazine had to be handled by the students--all the way to the doorstep of the printer. We even had an advertising and budget staff--with some very tenacious individuals--one of whom sells TV ad time for the Super Bowl to this day. Just about everyone else on my staff entered the magazine art, design or writing industry one way or another. I spent most of my education years longing to become an art director or photographer for magazines. That's how intoxicating magazine life can be and sadly,  careers in it are often for the very affluent.

Which is to say, no one with a trust fund was ever found working in a press room.

The print-on-demand kiosk at
MoMA. No longer do pillars
of unsold catalogs linger at
their bookstore. Not a sheet
wasted.

I loved printing and publishing; ink on paper was the way to express everything from Happy Birthday to an incite to riot. I devoured everything I could find about printed materials: the wonderful Constructivist movie posters, magazines from the 1950s forward, the giant movie posters wheat-pasted in the subways--yes, they were offset printed as late as 1998. I just wasn't wild about printed illustrated books. That permanence didn't resonate with me, even though my first job out of art school was to work as an assistant in the Studio Books division at Viking Press.

I believed--as I do now--the print medium, is meant for immediate consumption; immediately disposed of the next day. Its preservation in an archive is perfectly acceptable and necessary; however its manufacture to a more permanent intent makes books seem pretentious and outdated as they come off the press, even before they're bound.

That's why I love the museum catalog digitally printed on demand from a kiosk. But, alas, it's also a symptom of a developing American disease: Fact Amnesia.

We tend to forget anything we've said or done by the next news cycle, and pin its reporting on the dreaded media.

A permutation of American Exceptionalism? Ask Vladimir Putin--or as our new president would say: I don't know, you tell me.