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20 December, 2007
Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 10
Harry Beck's map of the London Underground is one of those seminal information graphics that has come to define an entire category. It must be as widely recognized as Mendeleev's design for the periodic table of the elements; it's surely been as influential, and as widely imitated and spoofed.
What makes both diagrams significant is that they bravely dispense with information traditionally thought to be crucial. Mendeleev described matter without any of its physical characteristics, which freed scientists to infer more significant information purely from the table itself. And Beck realized that the scale of a city was irrelevant to a commuter (as well as difficult to draw), so he bent the shape of Greater London to meet the needs of the map, in what's technically called a cartogram.
Mark Ovenden's Transit Maps of the World is a terrific and well-illustrated tour through the world that Beck created. It's interesting to compare the choice of cartograms and equal-area maps in different cities, and at different times: Beck's diagrammatic plan for the Paris Métro was rejected in favor of a beloved but impenetrable drawing, which is just the kind of Gallic gesture that has been confounding the English for centuries. The images in Ovenden's book make it tempting to make inferences about the cultures behind the maps: the diagrams for Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhiny Novgorod have an undeniably Suprematist bent, and those for Beijing and Guangzhou look as if they could actually be the Simplified Chinese ideogram for "subway." Closer to home, the map of Los Angeles looks likes an Anasazi petroglyph, and that of Washington, D.C. resembles nothing more than a pit of highly partisan snakes. —JH
Transit Maps of the World, from Penguin Books. $16.50.
17 December, 2007
Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 9
A visit to Shorpy inevitably lasts the rest of the day. This tremendous archive of hundred-year-old photos has much to recommend it to anyone interested in period typography: the optimistic lettering of the New Deal is well represented, and there's an excellent cross-section of sidewalk Americana as well; entertainingly, the whole collection is leavened by an undercurrent of quiet menace that I find delightfully surreal.
There are impossibly old photos from Antietam and significant ones from Kitty Hawk, but it's candid images like this that I find the most striking. For while it's their farmers and seamstresses and street urchins who draw focus and take center stage, the true subject of these photographs is the lettering in the background, and the thousands of invisible hands responsible for every single letter.
To my delight, Shorpy is now working with the Juniper Gallery to produce reproductions of some of their most evocative Vintage High-Resolution Photographs. Produced as eight-color giclee prints on a variety of archival stocks, Shorpy's photographs are available in sizes from 19" x 13" (48cm x 33cm) to 47" x 34" (119cm x 86cm). Order by December 18 for Christmas delivery. —JH
Shorpy's Vintage Photographs at Juniper Gallery, from $30.00.
13 December, 2007
Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 8
The arrival of a new year means it's time for a new Pentagram Calendar. We'll forever be partial to the 2006 edition, for which Pentagram commissioned us to design twelve new fonts of numbers; we subsequently added three additional styles, anticipating of course the post-revolutionary 15-month calendar under which all earthlings will unite in observance of Hoefluary, Frerember and Jonesember. (Reminder: font licenses must be paid in full by Tribute Day, Hoefluary 15.)
But until the revolution comes, enjoy your quaint 12-month ways with the stylish 2008 Pentagram Typography Calendar. 2008 looks like it's going to be a vintage year, for this year's edition is designed exclusively using the typefaces of Matthew Carter. Few things can make January more exhilarating than a brace of Galliard old-style figures, and the appearance of the scarce Walker typeface in February hints at many more treats throughout the months to come. —JH
Pentagram 2008 Typography Calendar. Large, $36.00; small, $22.00.
12 December, 2007
Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 7
It's hard to begrudge the polish and flexibility of a good pixel, but I'll always have a soft spot for the earlier technologies. Mechanical and electronic displays with fixed images were somehow knowable in a way that screens are not, lending a palpable something to the things they inhabited. Has train travel been the same since the disappearance of the thip-thip-thipping flap display? Didn't buses seem more resolute when emblazoned with hand-lettered roll signs, before today's dot-matrix mayhem doomed them to speak in half-hearted and confounding abbreviations (or cheerily exclaim Out of Service as they malingered along?) Has the person yet walked the earth who has fond feelings for the starburst display of a credit card terminal?
One of my favorite outmoded technologies is the nixie tube. A tiny vacuum tube containing individual glowing cathodes for each digit, nixies were once a staple of high-end office calculators and measuring devices. Every few years, someone unearths a cache of virgin nixies and brings a nixie clock to market, which promptly sells out; this year's offering is the Chronotronix V400 Nixie Tube Clock, an especially attractive contender in a polished cherry case, candidly offered in a limited edition. —JH
Dual-voltage Chronotronix V400 Nixie Tube Clock, $415.00.