I wrote a ton for the latest issue of Idea – approximately half of the issue.

I wrote a critical analysis and overview of Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft’s FUSE project – an experimental type foundry and magazine that ran for 18 issues and was recently compiled in a book published by Phaidon.

An excerpt:

The inclusion of star designers, notably Sagmeister and Barnbrook, will undoubtedly help sales along, though the more important point of intention that initially propelled Fuse: graphic designers can also design type, has since become moot. The bulk of individuals designing type in the year 2012 do not have the acumen, skills or craftsmanship that made type design such a specialized area of production prior to the digital age, yet we are awash in fonts created by non-specialists. A quick perusal of the world’s largest type distribution website, MyFonts, is enough to convince anyone of this.

 Specialization is important in the contemporary age – so much digital type is profoundly poorly made that we must make distinctions between quality and quirkiness. Much of what Fuse provided in terms of actual text type was reliant on stylizing previously existing typefaces or creating crude modular fonts. 

 However, the speculative, odd and conceptual typefaces that were included in Fuse helped push graphic design and type design thinking along through the 1990s – a close look at the projects within the Fuse catalog chart unique inquiries and modes of thinking will help designers young and old to loosen up strategic thought and evaluation. The research in writing this article – a close look at the collection of issues of Fuse and cracking open the actual typefaces in Fontlab to inspect the actual product – revealed much more than the bookstand experience. It is a journey that becomes sensory in a way that mere reading cannot be, and for that I am grateful. 

 As a graphic designer cum type designer who started working professionally in the early 2000s, the Fuse project resolved a number of issues prior. Graphic designers can and do design type. It is up to the individual whether to design type well. If one is to design type, it must be with a seriousness of intention in terms of craft and conceptual approach. This is Fuse’s gift to the world of graphic design and typography: one of perspective.

I also wrote and designed a feature on the work of type designer, sign painter, gilder, artist, writer & critic John Downer.

Akira Kobayashi contributed an excellent introduction to John’s work, House Industries contributed their amazing portraits, and I wrote an exhaustive essay on the dearth of hand-based craft in contemporary graphic design and how Downer’s work stacks up to so many in this moment when the design process has become increasingly digital in process and methodology.

Included are type specimens of never-before-published typefaces of Downer’s, copious photos of sign painting work and reproductions of his essays alongside Japanese translations.

This is all complemented by many examples of John’s logo design work and custom lettering, all folded into a restrained layout that is typographically poised and nuanced, the influence being a mix of high classical book design, turn-of-the-century commercial art manual design and PostModern ornamental magazine design.

Type specimens for Iowan Old Style (Bitstream); Paperback (House Industries); and his long-lost Simona (DesignLab) are featured. Designers of the specimens include Amber Withycombe, Tal Leming, and Sebastiano Castiglioni, respectively.

It was a real treat to write and design this issue. John is one of my absolute favorite designers in the world and a good friend. His work has never received the critical notice it deserves outside of type design circles, and it was great to introduce his body of work at length to the Japanese graphic design community.

His essay “Brush Tracks & Type Design” from the great vernacular graphic design book Lift & Separate is reproduced in its entirety.

It was translated into Japanese for the first time for Idea #356.

A specimen for his type family Paperback.

I also designed a specimen for his type family Bureau Roxy within, as well.

His amazing signage for supermarkets is featured at length.

Large reproductions of his sign painting abounds.

An excerpt:

Something extraordinary happened in the United States, specifically in the San Francisco Bay area, in 2003. On the surface, it all had to do with a name change, but moreover it had to do with the tide change in how Americans think about visual culture.

What happened? A university there changed its name. Having incorporated in 1907 as a university, the California College of Arts and Crafts decided to change its name to California College of Art. It makes sense in terms of branding in the contemporary context – why keep an old, fussy name that doesn’t speak so much of the work of the student populace and the goals of the college? The school is known for its Fine Art, Industrial Design and Graphic Design programs. It offers both an undergraduate BFA degree and a postgraduate MFA degree in Graphic Design studies. The graphic design program there is really good, run by passionate, interesting people. Lauded designers such as Jon Sueda, Martin Venezky and Lucille Tenazas have spent time teaching at the institution, both past and present.

It is significant that that CCA decided to get rid of the words ” and Crafts” in its title. The easiest definition of crafts is: an activity involving skill creating things by hand. With the more and more pronounced and rapid use of digital tools in graphic design as an area of cultural production, the institution decided to disavow the simultaneous and interwoven history of making things manually. Sure, the school has a letterpress studio, but what attracts the bulk of students is the institution’s focus on digital design.

For most denizens of Graphic Design culture, we have chosen to stray from a crafts-oriented way of working and concentrate on being designers. Often, design projects are digital from beginning to end in the current scheme. For example, a website may begin life as a text-based brief, and then take structural shape in black-and-white information architecture/wireframe form in one piece of software, yet later be given a stylistic “skin” in another piece of software, all prior to being executed in one or more programming languages. For many, this is the process of design today – one not reliant on sketching, using pencils, and utilizing hand skills.

This is all mentioned not simply to be nostalgic for “the good old days”. The processes of design have infinite forms and methodologies. To quote the author Norman Potter from his book What is a designer, “a design capability proceeds from a fusion of skills, knowledge, understanding, and imagination; consolidated by experience”. The overabundance of design in the digital environment is part of the evolution of culture. It is also the evolution of graphic design – an area of cultural production within the constraints of culture.

Nonetheless, the act of creating by hand will always be important. Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of type designer, graphic designer, sign painter and gilder John Downer.

Downer’s work is important not only for its omnipresence, but for the qualities behind the work. His typefaces are the outcome of thinking, researching, studying, comparing and simultaneously making. Their base references are infinite- from the structure of classical typefaces of Europe to commercial lettering from America’s past. They are all rooted in something more than analysis- his typefaces are nuanced in a way that is the result of decades of working with his hands. In even his most conservative designs, there is a slight exaggeration, liveliness and humanity – the cartoonish swell of a bowl of a lowercase “a”, the swagger of the tail of an uppercase “R” and the serpentine litheness of a lowercase “s”. Often, these elements help to infuse his designs with elements of interest and ambiguous complexity, though all are rendered immaculately.

They are the work of a craftsman. This synthesis of the hand and the mind is of utmost importance to the greater project of type design and applied typography.

A lot of the observations in this essay are personal in nature. I have known John Downer for eight years now. I first met him as a visiting lecturer when I was in graduate school, and he offered a lot of advice that helped inspire me. I was lucky enough to be tasked with ensuring John’s comfort at my school, so we got to spend a lot of time just hanging out and talking-about design and culture and life over both coffee and beer. His ideas were fundamental in helping me approach a synthesis of much of my research for my first book, an extension of my graduate school thesis.

I have been lucky to see John annually these past few years – voluntarily making the summertime trek from Tokyo to the United States for TypeCon, North America’s best typographic conference and convention. It’s always good to see him. He has a ready smile, a warm handshake and is good to talk to. I invite you to do the same – you’ll walk away having learned something, either about the design of lettering or what it is to be a good person.

Giant thanks to Kubo-san and Muroga-san at Idea for their constant support and faith. I am lucky to have such wonderful collaborators at Idea.