Marineland

Speaking of Helvetica—I was at the Point Vicente lighthouse yesterday and stumbled across an awe-inspiring, dilapidated sign/map that used to belong to Marineland of the Pacific, a sort of 1950s Sea World that used to inhabit the Palos Verdes peninsula. The park was apparently designed by William L. Pereira, a very notable modernist architect who later went on to design the Transamerica building in San Francisco, and was one of the designers responsible for the ridiculously cool, “Googie” style “Theme Building” at LAX airport. It’s difficult to be sure exactly when this sign panel was created, since Marineland was open from 1954 to 1987. But with Helvetica being born (as Die Neue Haas Grotesk) in 1957, the illustration style, and the level of decay, I’d imagine that this was probably crafted during the typeface’s early 1960s heyday¹.

[View with PicLens]

 

I’m considering making some of these into higher-resolution desktop wallpaper—if anybody’s interested, leave a comment.

1. See the comments for the answer to this mystery; turns out I was off by about ten years. [↩]

Tags: California, font, Helvetica, retro, typography, vintage

Neutraface is the new Helvetica

Anybody who knows me well will know that I have a major soft spot for House Industries, designers and purveyors of some of the finest typefaces and associated graphic-designery merchandise out there.

Back in 2002, House released Christian Schwartz’s Neutraface, a family of fonts based on the architectural lettering specified by Richard Neutra in his gorgeous, modern architectural designs. It was epic. The type appeals to me on so many levels. In fact, architectural lettering was one of the factors most exciting to me about moving to Los Angeles several years ago. I even put together a small “photo essay” (I’m so pretentious) of local apartment building lettering examples.

So let’s get one thing straight—I’m not knocking Neutraface.

But it occurred to me yesterday when looking at my junk mail (the physical kind that arrives in your mail box) that Neutraface is now everywhere. It’s an epidemic. It’s managed to find its way into all sorts of unlikely and inappropriate places—in my opinion, it’s somehow jumped the gap from highbrow to lowbrow better than any of House’s fonts that were intended to be lowbrow, like their Street Van, bowling-inspired, and punk rock Flyer Fonts, among others. I find myself pointing and saying “there’s Neutraface!” several times a day to whomever may be beside me. I’ve even trained Don, my future father-in-law and three steps ahead account manager, to spot it on his own—and he sees it all over the place.

I’m tempted to put together a comprehensive exhibit of examples, both bad and good, but I do have projects to work on, so here’s a short list of the first few real-world examples I could think of offhand:

• All of the environmental signage at the new section of the Del Amo Fashion Center here in Torrance, California (1, 2, 3)*
• Wendy’s website/advertising (mostly uses the italic face, but plenty of other weights too; see the embedded video for further detail)
• The identity for 007 film The Quantum of Solace

As I say, it’s not always a bad thing to use Neutraface. There are plenty of great examples of Neutraface in use on House’s website. I just feel like it’s becoming a bit indiscriminately used, like Helvetica. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the film Helvetica is partially responsible for Neutra’s more recent propagation—once you see just how populist a typeface has become, it’s almost embarassing to perpetuate it. But such is the case with all trends. When the bubble bursts, and enough time passes, and everybody else has moved on, it will again be cool to use Neutraface. And I’ll be waiting in vain for the moment to arrive.

Am I just living in a Southern California Neutraface bubble, or are you also seeing it often in your neck of the woods? Feel free to comment.

Tags: architecture, Christian Schwartz, font, House Industries, Neutraface, typeface, typography

Speaking of campaigns…

Barbara Boxer campaign poster

Out of the blue, my lovely fiancée received an email this morning from Barbara Boxer, a US Senator from California. Her campaign is running a design competition to create a new campaign poster for her 2010 reelection bid.

PriceWatch.com t-shirt design contest winner

Now first of all, I rarely participate in contests. It’s risky business, to say the least. Years ago I won a t-shirt design contest for Pricewatch.com [shown at right], but since then I’ve been of the mindset that lightning does not strike twice. But competitions do have some merit—they may not necessarily properly compensate a designer for their time, expertise, or ideas, but they can offer a growing experience for designers of all levels. They’re especially good for design students or those who are not yet established, as they sometimes offer realistic design briefs that can help a designer build a portfolio. And, with a win, a designer can at least get their name out there.

In this instance, as soon as I read the brief, I had a clear visual concept in my head. And I’d just posted earlier today about another political campaign design. Politics aside, I wanted to make this thing, whether or not I entered the contest. I’d posted some time ago about Wordles, which are essentially frequency maps that help attractively visualize how often certain words get used. For this one, I used Senator Boxer’s RSS feed to generate the words, and with some Illustrator trickery, masked the whole thing with an outline of the shape of California. Simple and effective, I hope, and it’s certainly in keeping with her existing yellow/black aesthetic. I’d also come up with a few alternative color schemes, which I might post here for the sake of it sometime soon. (It’s weird designing without being able to get direct feedback from the client!)

So we’ll see what happens—either way, I’m glad I did this.

Tags: campaign, contest, politics, typography

Creative campaigning

Monopoly Sheriff Campaign

While digging through my “archives” the other day, I came across a “business card” design draft I had created for a gentleman running for sheriff’s office. The project was an offshoot of a collaboration with my friend Scott Kidder—either he or the client had originally come up with the concept of using modified versions of Monopoly’s “Get Out of Jail Free” cards as a provocative souvenir for his campaign. Before the designs could be sent to press, though, the client dropped out of the race, and so these designs may have never seen the light of day. And to some extent I was a bit nervous about posting them, given the blatant rip-off of Parker Brothers’ intellectual property. But I’ve convinced myself at least that writing about them qualifies as editorial/academic/journalistic “fair use,” and that the cards were a parody to begin with, which also falls under fair use. But, just in case, ahem: I formally thank Parker Brothers in advance for its cooperation, and congratulate them on the excellent use of Avant Garde in their wordmark. [Grin.]

I thought at the time—and still think—that the design concept was a good one, since the goal in creating any sort of advertising campaign is to spark interest in those who see it. Regardless of how original it is to parody “Chance” and “Community Chest” cards, the idea is still a conversation starter. Isn’t that the point of graphic design altogether? To disseminate ideas in an effective and attractive way? I admit it was also a blast to try to replicate the rather utilitarian, 1930s metal typography used on the original Monopoly cards. It appeals to my eternal quest to capture the authentic, typographic zeitgeist of any chronological period that my design work references, but that’s a topic for another post. I’m also happy with the “Tom Lindsay for Sheriff” logotype, even when taken completely out of the Monopoly context. It feels iconic, I think, and certainly would have beaten the pants off of any other would-be-Sheriff’s campaign design. And this was back in the Dark Ages of 2006—eons before it was socially acceptable for American political campaigns to dabble with good design.

Parody, derivative work, and tooting-my-own-horn aside, I find that the most effective designs are the ones that feel inspired and thought-about. It’s easy to tell when a graphic design has some intellectual thought in it… when a designer is not thinking solely about aesthetics, but is using those tools at our disposal as a vehicle for driving a message. For that reason, it pays to plan—it pays to leave enough time in the creation of a design to think about what should be said. When the message itself is strong enough, good design follows.

Tags: 1930s, campaign, font, identity, logo, Monopoly, retro, typography, wordmark