I organized an exhibition at VCFA called “Plenty For All: Recent Work from CalArts” in April. The exhibition consisted of printed matter and posters from CalArts including both printed posters from the past few years and the printed booklets and ephemera that comprised the results of my and Kiyonori Muroga’s recent workshop with the BFA4 and MFA students at CalArts.

The exhibition was very well-received. The students, faculty, administration and general public truly enjoyed the exhibition.

Exhibition participants:

MFA2: Izaak Berenson  Nate Blowers   Kat Dickinson  Christine Do   Amanda Gartman   Stefano Giustiniani   Sarah Faith Gottesdiener   Tom Kracauer   Catherine Lee   Thea Lorentzen   Alex Pines   Tara Tannenbaum   Ben Woodlock

MFA1: Edwin Alvarenga  Kat Catmur  SoYun Cho  Colomba Cruz  Ryan Hines  Juyoung Kim  David Robinson  Calvin Rye  Sajad Salehi  Sarah Shoemake

PMFA: Cassandra Cisneros  Jacob Halpern  Sarah Honeth  Jessica Kao  Dili Osuhor  Jenny Song

BFA4: Pierre Nguyen Sally Alvarado Dasom Kim Jenee Jernigan Dawoon Jeung  Nikki Lee Edvin Lynch Christina Rodriguez Chris Burnett Hyunsoo Kim Bijan Berahimi  Pedro Lavin Armando Martinez Celis David M. Davis  Taylor Giali Mitch Cox Crystal Yi Nathalie Sehee Kim Hyoseon Kim

Faculty member Ed Fella also contributed a large number of his legendary posters to the exhibition.

Thanks to all of the workshop participants who donated posters and printed ephemera to the exhibition, as well as the workshop participants. Special thanks to Aaron Winters, Silas Munro, Rachel Ramsay, Troy Patterson, Randy Nakamura, Thea Lorentzen, David Matthew Davis, Michael Worthington, Lorraine Wild, Jeff Keedy, Ed Fella, Gail Swanlund and Caryn Aono.

Simultaneously, I put together a mini-book exhibition titled “Small Books from Small Countries: A Vaguely Impromptu Exhibition” at VCFA. The criteria for work included was that the books were small in scale and that the countries that the books were from was fairly small in terms of land mass. Each book was accompanied by a text description, as many of the books were not in English. The term “book” is used loosely in the exhibition, as the corpus of works included design journals, magazines, type specimens alongisde actual bound books.

Descriptions of the books:

文字のカ | The Persistence of Letterforms
平野甲 | Kouga Hirano
Kouga Hirano is a Japanese graphic designer who is known for creating book designs using his unique handwritten letters. Since the 1960s, he has designed more than 6,000 books and worked consistently and closely with an assortment of publishers.  This book is an overview of his highly unique approach to creating custom lettering.

円盤物語 |  Hi-story of the Flying Objects
松田行正 | Matsuda Yukimasa
Matsuda’s Yukimasa is a graphic designer, publisher and writer. He runs the small publishing house Ushiwakamaru, dedicated to publishing his own editorial initiatives. This book is a document of assorted shapes of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) from individual sightings, group sightings and popular culture.

眼球譚 | 月球譚 | Tales of omniscient eyes and moonshining
松田行正 | Matsuda Yukimasa
An index of all-seeing eyes from works of art from history.

et
松田行正 | Matsuda Yukimasa
An examination of assorted symbols, analphabetic characters and alphabetic characters. Includes physical and historical analyses.

Zerro
松田行正 | Matsuda Yukimasa
A compendium of dead languages, mythic languages, ciphers, attempts at orthographic reform, codes and utopian symbologies. (Incidentally, my favorite book in the world.)

千社札 | Senjyafuda
Anonymous
Senjyafuda are stickers or scraps of paper posted on the gates of shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan. The stickers bear the name of the worshipper, and can be purchased pre-printed with common names at temples and shrines throughout Japan, as well as at stationery stores and video game centres. Senjyafuda were originally made from wooden slats, but have been made of paper since the Edo period. Senjyafuda are made from printed paper and are rarely made traditional by wood block prints or ukiyo-e.

This book is an excellent overview of senjyafuda from history, notably the use of color (contemporary ones tends to be monochromatic).

Typographic Suite
白井敬尚 | Yoshihisa Shirai
Acting art directors and designers of Idea Magazine, Shirai Yoshihisa’s studio team are typographically rigorous, formally evocative, and gentle in treatment of ornament. Projects for Robundo, Ryobi, Seibundo Shinkosha and many other private concerns make up their body of work, celebrated in the recent booklet Typography Suite and the accompanying exhibition of the past two decades of graphic design work. Shirai is faculty at Musashino Art University.

바른지원체 | The Making of a Hangul Typeface: Barun Jiwon
이지원 | Jiwon Lee
Korean design educator Jiwon Lee published this booklet about Barun Jiwon, his attempt at resolving the relationship between Korean Myung Jo structural typefaces and Western humanist typefaces. The resulting type specimen book shows Lee’s  adventurous spirit in attempting to infuse the Korean visual orthography with increased readability and legibility, simultaneously creating the world’s first truly humanist Korean typeface.

CCArt Sans
Eiichi Kono & Hilary Knight
Eiichi Kono is the designer of Johnston Underground Sans, the official typeface used for the iconic identity of London Transport. Within the CCArt Sans project, Kono extends his years of study of the lettering and typefaces and Edward Johnston and Eric Gill and balances them with the formal weight and poise of Meiryo, a typeface designed by Kono for Microsoft in conjunction with Matthew Carter. This specimen book shows the full range of Latin characters for CCArt Sans, the house typeface of the Center for Contemporary Art in Kitakyushu, Japan.

The Working Practices of Barney Bubbles
Paul Gorman
A look into the pre-digital design realm of Barney Bubbles (nee Colin Fulcher), one of the graphic designers who helped craft the aesthetic of British psychedelia, pub rock, proto-punk, punk and post-punk. A look into Bubbles’ melancholy world.

The National Grid #6, 7 & 8
Luke Wood & Jonty Valentine
Three issues of the self-published contemporary New Zealand graphic design journal The National Grid. Within, issues of Modernism, sovereignty, national identity, design history, design criticism and graphic design education research are neatly examined and discussed from a personal point of view. The National Grid is writing the history of New Zealand graphic design and is an immensely important publication.

UIデザインの手引 | University Identity Design Guide
東京農業大学(農大) | Tokyo University of Agriculture (Nodai)
A goofy booklet showing the wildly disparate identity of the renowned Tokyo University of Agriculture. Wonky, yet charming.

If It Could Love
Chris Ro
A self-published exhibition catalog/poetic text that examines the culture of self using expressive typography and an exploration space. Within are two double-sided posters that explore these notions further. Vital, sad and ruminating, Ro, a Korean American graphic designer and design educator, examines our collective obsession with representation in society today.

 Typographics Ti: #263 | Type Trip to Seoul
A small independent publication from Tokyo, this issue is an overview of typographic work from Seoul, Korea.

온돌 | A Few Warm Stones (Ondol) #1 & #2
Better Days Institute
Led by Chris Ro, Ondol is a contemporary examination of Korean graphic design culture in journal form. The writers, designer and editors are students of Kookmin University in Seoul. The Ondol team is helping to write the history of Korean graphic design, as well as how contemporary Korean design practice is taking form.

Too Much: Magazine of Romantic Geography #2
Yoshi Tsujimura, Audrey Fondecave & Cameron McKean
Too Much is a publication dedicated to exploring contemporary notions of fine art, design and architecture. It is odd, as it is a small-run magazine from Tokyo published in English.

The text descriptions were accompanied by a number of essays by and about assorted publications included in the exhibition.

Cern is a family of 40 weights of neutral, yet formally nuanced grotesk typefaces that takes inspiration from Helvetica, Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers and the original metal types from Switzerland, yet had a slightly larger x-height for more pronounced legibility.

Each weight is designed to be highly readable in print and on-screen. The italic variations are true italics, having a single-storied italic a and have been designed for smooth, fluid reading and text-setting. Lovingly spaced and kerned, the Cern family works equally well for text typesetting and for display design work.

Sans serif fonts, no matter how neutral they feel, are ultimately formally nuanced. I wanted to add to this legacy, but bring in elements of the grotesks of the Stephenson Blake foundry to add humanizing features, creating a formal and conceptual interplay to delight the senses.

Cern is the second family of typefaces that explores notions of nuanced neutrality and a Barthesian exploration of a fictional Switzerland that pervades contemporary design, disconnecting sign, symbol and meaning. Cern is the second family of typefaces in this larger project, following the release of the Vaud family.

The entire Cern family, 40 fonts, is available for a limited time for $49.00 from Wordshape and Creative Market.

I edited an interview with Dutch designer and design educator Karel Martens for issue #359 of Idea.

The feature has a swank halftone pattern printed on transparent mylar overlaying another halftone pattern printed on the paper underneath, creating a dynamic, tactile moiré pattern.

Gabe Rucker, Lauren and Andy Fortgang and Meredith Erickson of Le Pigeon have a new cookbook coming out on Ten Speed Press, the cover of which bears the logo I designed for them nearly a decade ago.

Our 40 member sans serif family Vaud is on sale for the next month over at Creative Market – all 40 fonts for $49!

I gave a presentation at PechaKucha Night in Tokyo last week about the amazing educational setting and experiences at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  It is now online over at the PeckaKucha website.

I have an essay in Slanted #21 about Cuba and Cuban graphic design, as well as a feature of Cuban street photography by myself and Andrea Tinnes shot in Havana and Trinidad. It is called “The Human Memory Machine”.

An excerpt:

Like most humans, I have forgotten far more than I will ever remember. Our memories are akin to series of short films or a highlight reel – tedium has to be tremendous in scale for us to recall it. We are probably lucky for this – the hours lost to bureaucracy, waiting in lines, waiting in traffic, waiting on others, et al. We retain only the highlights of our lives – the first kisses, the extreme violence, the romance, the pain and the embarrassing.

In December of 2011, my wife and I took a belated honeymoon in Cuba and Mexico, a week in Cancún with a week in Cuba sandwiched smack dab in the middle. Like all vacations, I retain only glimpses of my time in Cuba – a few hundred memorable scenes hard-cut together. If I were to catalog this time, it’d include these key scenes by way of example:

– Visa anxiety as I waited to go through customs in Mexico. Americans still aren’t allowed to go to Cuba, other than by obtaining a special visa for educational or relief purposes. I’d paid a tariff to have an extra signature of pages put into my passport so that no Cuba immigration stamp would land in my passport.

– The anticipation of fuselage smoke in the Cuba Air shuttle plane that never emerged.

– A sign outside a Havana discotheque which read “Tourists will be assaulted here” in Spanish.

– Strolling through a warehouse full of vegetables, fruits and tubers from organopónicos, urban organic farming stations that criss-cross Cuban cities – the gardens an answer to the lack of support from the fallen Soviet Union in the new century.

– A dog gnawing the skull of another dog in Trinidad.

– Sitting on a beach chair sipping rum next to the ocean in Playa Ancon tapping out an essay for Slanted on my phone while my wife, clad in a turquoise and salmon-colored bikini, takes hundreds of photos of the reflected surface of the ocean in a vain attempt to capture the beauty of the fish nibbling at the dead skin in her feet.

– Being asked for money by new Cuban acquaintances and complying.

– Being asked for money by new Cuban acquaintances and refusing.

– Being sick of being asked for money and instead asking new Cuban acquaintances for money, cutting them off at the pass.

– Chatting with a guard outside of a Havana cigar factory, plumbing the depths of my high school Spanish language education.

– Meeting a farmer who is the spitting image of Ronald Reagan on the side of a highway, a package of cane sugar candy in his outstretched palm crawling with fire ants.

– An extra-malty bottle of beer with a polar bear on the label downed while walking Havana’s back streets, it hitting the spot in a way that few drinks do.

– An unofficial taxi driver telling I and the three other tourists in the car from Havana to Trinidad how much more money he makes on these quasi-legal trips than pursuing his regular work as an emergency room surgeon.

– Chatting with a young man with a PhD in finance and who was fluent in English, German, French and Mandarin about his most rewarding employment option: working in his grandfather’s gift shop selling wicker knick-knacks.

– Illicitly watching some members of the Buena Vista Social Club make their way through their repertoire of music on-stage through the window of a nightclub from the street. 

– Days of walking across Havana, taking in the general streetscape, photographing signage as we traversed the city. 

This particular scene is the one that will have the most resonance with Slanted readers – documenting vernacular signage has become a collective pastime for designers over the past number of years, codified as much in print (Ed Fella’s Letters on America) as on-screen (Instagram). Designers shoot photo after photo of sign after sign, but often take little notice of the socioeconomic environment that brings may examples of signage to life. This is what makes the signage of Cuba such an amazing repository of inspiration – the years of economic embargo, an economy flooded with products from Soviet-allied nations and a dearth of American brands, complemented by an economy that limped along in the 1990s. The Cuban experience is so utterly singular in the contemporary global scheme that it must be noted, particularly in the realm of graphic design…

I wrote and designed a monograph about the work of graffiti writer/fine artist Jerry Inscoe, also known as Joker, a number of years ago, though it never saw print. What follows is an essay about his work from 2002 that was meant to kick off the book.

Graphic Transcendence

Jerry Inscoe’s work is rigorous, intelligent, poised, and assured — the evidence of extensive formal exercise. It’s obvious that he has been working away at what he does for a long time, much of it under the graffiti nom de plume Joker. He flattens the ordered rationality of extruded volumetric masses, inverting architectonic norms for his own graphic purposes. Inscoe works in pop color schemes, twinning them with fields of neutral colors, alluding to the emotionlessness and anonymity of the mechanical as contrasted with the bright-hued green-yellows and magentas he often brings into play. His work is a model for cross-media practice, each channel encouraging interchange between the assorted aspects of his work. Inscoe’s explorations are studies of structures in tension, exploiting the relationship between line and mass. A constantly evolving vocabulary of geometric form balances elegance with heroism. This inquiry into the collision of the facade and the void calls into question concrete expressions and functions- complex and simplified contour lines interweave and contain one another in unpredictable variants. The work is imbued with a nonlinear, yet defined sense of place- visual orthography gone haywire and transformed into a there. His darker pieces are akin to witnessing a great transgression or to a purifying, boundary-exploding ascendance.

Inscoe was a Washington D.C. graffiti pioneer. His early work is well documented in Roger Gastman’s Free Agents: A History of Washington DC Graffiti. Skateboarding was what initially sparked his romance with graffiti, a Powell Peralta ad setting the earliest of stylistic models until he came across copies of the classics Subway Art and Spraycan Art shortly thereafter. He incorporated these influences and was soon one of the ten people actively writing graffiti in D.C. in the late 80s. After high school, Inscoe moved almost annually due to school and work, with stops in Fort Lauderdale, Pittsburgh, Tulsa, Livermore, California, San Diego, and Berkeley. His travels stopped in 1995 when he settled in Portland, Oregon, his current home.

As Inscoe moved from city to city, his work evolved and matured, shifting from the early New York-influenced models to a more abstract and idealistic take on what graffiti could be. He synthesized aspects of his undergraduate design education and influence from myriad influences into his work. Collaborative drawings with San Francisco’s Raevyn were a big point of departure. Their projects were undertaken under the premise of image-making and abstraction, approaching the work from a vantage point opposite of graffiti done for graffiti’s sake. The pair would blindly scribble on paper, and then trade scrawls, with the intention of making paintable pieces out of the scribbles, or alter electrical engineering plans to construct lettering. These exercises, as well as trading outlines for pieces with New York legend Phase Two (originator of both the graffiti bubble letter and the use of decorative ornamental arrows alongside graffiti lettering) and Transcend co-founder Karl123 infused Inscoe with the desire to create highly original work that did not conform to the aesthetic standards of traditional graffiti.

Deconstructivist architecture was a giant influence, in particular, the drawings and renderings of Iranian-born British architect Zaha Hadid. Inscoe’s work is itself a formal extension of the Deconstructivist outpouring of the last twenty years- a reaction to more typical graffiti artwork in which three-dimensional lettering is rendered. Reacting to the work of writers like Erni, Delta, Zedz, and Daim, Inscoe inverts, decompiles, and reassembles three-dimensional space, reducing and abstracting: lines and arcs massing and converging with gothic insidiousness, defying isometric and axonometric mores, postmodern typographic elements, tribal angularity, and more typical NY-influenced wildstyle lettering with the occasional droopy-eyed character come into play in Inscoe’s work, as well, though they often take the back seat to his spatial constructions.

As Inscoe’s work has evolved, he has simultaneously worked in numerous fields outside of writing. He has created best-selling apparel graphics for companies such as Nike, Tribal, Upper Playground, Osiris, Scion, Fity24SF, and others. Inscoe designed a signature Joker shoe model for Savier shoes and those designs are presented here for the first time. Inscoe collaborated with designer Cody Hudson/Struggle Inc on an expressive line of snowboards for Burton that feel straight out of his sketchbook, meshing ink drawings and watercolor fills.

Inscoe has also collaborated with the type foundry Handselecta to create a family of typefaces derived from his handstyle– inspired by architectural and comic book lettering. Using copious writing samples provided by Inscoe, type designer Christian Acker digitized and regulated Inscoe’s handstyle into light, medium, and bold weight typefaces. These fonts were produced in three formats- a regular weight utilizable for default typesetting and two swash options that include numerous alternate characters.

Along the way, Inscoe has always had a strong group of collaborators. One of his crews, BA (Burning America) was started by his old friend Jase, a writer from Baltimore infamous for his enormous output of graffiti on freight train cars (to date over 40,000 pieces painted). BA is one of the most innovative and formidable crews in the world. The roll call is a who’s who of graffiti veterans: Sope, Felon, Misk, Are2, Rust, Atom, Blis, Cha, Myth, Insight, Take5, Con, Wild, Apex, Neon, Giant, Cycle, and twelve others. It is precisely that because the crew is geographically disparate and stylistically so very diverse that makes them such an interesting group. More than a few of the individuals involved have made the leap from street art to gallery art, as well. Writers like Rust, Misk, Cycle, and Mike Giant exhibit internationally on a regular basis.

Another of his crews, Transcend, is an idealistic attempt to abandon the traditional graffiti crew and return to the model of the artistic collective. Traditionally, crews are organized groups of graffiti writers linked by geography and/or stylistic similarity who work collectively. Painting, sketching, obtaining supplies, and other graffiti-centric activities are often done as a group. Crew activity tends to be aimed at promotion and propagation of writing among peers, but does not extend into other realms of visual expression. Transcend veers from this path in it’s past and present inclusion of non-writers, as well as the group’s collective and individual forays into other media, as well. Members whose focus lies in different fields have included an architect, a poet, and a designer in the past. Currently, Anna, a photographer, is the only non-writer involved. As far as writers go, Inscoe’s longtime collaborator Persue, is a shoe designer for Osiris Footwear, as well as a graphic designer, illustrator, and owner of the BunnyKitty line of products. Kema works as a graphic designer, and SheOne does logo work for Ninja Tune Records, as well as other companies. The collective works together on commercial projects, exhibitions, and book projects.

Inscoe’s collaborative zine with Mike Giant, Snothatch, is a mix of collaborative drawings done by the two writers published via the Skullz Press imprint. Giant and Joker utilize only a Sharpie marker for a whole volume, with no penciling to guide them. The zine is an inquiry into the exploration of the blackbook, not sketches for future murals. The volume is of an exquisite corpse-nature and is done with a sense of humor, play and collaboration. Giant’s lettering is homage to classic NYC graffiti form, with a Los Angeles slickness to it. Giant’s work is rooted in constant references to older forms of lettering– barrio calligraphy, sign painting scripts, and grunge typography are all recontextualized. The bubbly shapes of his lettering suggest old supermarket window lettering and American commercial art. Giant worked for years as a graphic designer for assorted skateboard companies, and his familiarity with type is obvious. He currently works as a tattoo artist and many seek out his lettering work out, as it is formally elegant and balanced. Giant’s work is steeped in Americana, and pointedly so. It makes for an interesting counterpoint to Inscoe’s angular, severe, and more clinical work- as if one of Frank Gehry’s seemingly chaotic and massive exploded spaceship hulls were to make an emergency crash landing in a bordertown.

Where Inscoe is headed is unknown- his work is continually being published as well as exhibited internationally. It is assured that he will keep alive the process of discovery in new works, as well as explorations in other media. His subversion of conventional perception of space will no doubt further and deepen. As for others’ perception of Inscoe, with luck, that will expand, as well.

This great book just came out which uses Kirimomi Swash Italic for the cover and display titling.

Scratching the Tiger’s Belly is published by Eberhardt Press, one of our favorite printing companies and publishers, situated in lovely Portland, Oregon!

Speaking of Portland, we are pleased to announce that Ian Lynam Design is one of the sponsors for this year’s TypeCon, America’s biggest and most fun typography and type design conference. The conference will be help in Portland from August 21st to 25th this year. With luck, we’ll see you there!

We just finished up a hybrid poster/publication for SideCore, a series of fine art exhibitions curated by Egaitsu Hiroshi for Young Art Taipei, on sale at the festival now.

Also hot off the press is a redux of an old poster for KnowYourCity and the Portland Art Museum.

We just launched the new website for The Vine, a Tokyo-based wine importer and distributor. No mere website, The Vine’s new system is bilingual, handles inventory, shipping, ordering, invoicing and a ton of other fancy stuff under the hood!

More projects for The Vine are underway and will be appearing on shelves of Japan’s finest wine shops shortly!

Finally, I will be speaking at PechaKucha Night Tokyo next week. Details here! I’ll be speaking about design education now. Like, right now. (I’m also going to be doing my usual schtick of giving away a ton of free stuff.)

There will be a launch exhibition and lecture regarding the new issue of Slanted at Paris’ Centre Pompidou on Saturday April 13th at 4pm.

Further info:
Librairie Flammarion
Centre Pompidou
19, rue Beaubourg
75004 Paris

I have a new essay in Slanted #21 about Cuba and Cuban graphic design, as well as a feature of Cuban street photography by myself and Andrea Tinnes shot in Havana and Trinidad.

We just released the new Vaud family of typefaces.

Vaud is a family of 40 weights of neutral, yet formally nuanced grotesk typefaces that takes inspiration from Helvetica, Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers and the original metal types from Switzerland, yet had a slightly larger x-height for more pronounced legibility.

Each weight is designed to be highly readable in print and on-screen. The italic variations are true italics, having a single-storied italic a and have been designed for smooth, fluid reading and text-setting. Lovingly spaced and kerned, the Vaud family works equally well for text typesetting and for display design work.

For a limited time, the entire family of typefaces is available for $49 via YouWorkForThem.

The entire family is comprised of a range of weights and a matching display family that features rounded terminals for large-scale display work.

Sans serif fonts, no matter how neutral they feel, are ultimately formally nuanced. I wanted to add to this legacy, but bring in elements of the grotesks of the Stephenson Blake foundry to add humanizing features, creating a formal and conceptual interplay to delight the senses.

Vaud appears neutral in tone, has an enlarged x-height, works great on-screen and in print.

The lighter weights are slightly slimmer than the regular and bold weights to give the typeface more of a vertical feel, inviting readers’ to rapidly read typeset text with a maximum of contrast and a minimum of optical dazzle.

The entire family was given rigorous testing using Craig Mod’s Bibliotype html-based book layout system for on-screen rendering checks and innumerable print proofs using actual text (not Greek) in InDesign.

The Vaud family is hugely diverse and will work well in a variety of contexts and media.

The complete family is on sale now at YouWorkForThem.

There’s been a date, time and location change:
Idea Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Kiyonori Muroga and I will be giving a lecture and week-long workshop at CalArts. The lecture will be on Thursday April 11th at 7pm in the C-Art classroom.