A Link to the Past

NYU Gallatin AlumniLink Mentor Program Brochure

I’ve been on a bit of a “ribbon lettering” kick lately. For this brochure/identity design, I was heavily inspired by a number of different sources, both old and new.

I wanted to conjure the notion of “link,” without using a cliché chain illustration in the process. The idea of roads and paths intersecting felt apropos to the concept of mentorship, and after doing some Wikimedia Commons research on such structures, I came up with a lettering style based on the look and feel of junctions or interchanges.

"Link" lettering, process

I wanted the composition of the piece to be simple and adaptable. For inspiration, I perused my copy of Meggs’ A History of Graphic Design (best textbook ever), and came across a simple-yet-gorgeous modernist poster by Lester Beall designed in 1937 for the Rural Electrification Administration. According to Philip Meggs, the poster was intended to be “understandable by illiterate and semi literate audiences,” and although my derivation was a bit more complex, I figured it would probably get the point across fairly easily to very literate university students.

After the basic concept was designed and approved, my brother Devin Korwin helped out with some last-minute Cassandresque shading, just as he had for the “Listening to Wine” poster.

Tags: 1930s, A.M. Cassandre, Devin Korwin, font, Gallatin, identity, Lester Beall, lettering, logo, mid-century, New York, NYU, paper, Philip Meggs, poster, type, typeface, typography, vintage, wordmark

Holiday present: A.M. Cassandre Photoshop Airbrush Tutorial

A reader wrote to me today to find out more about how the airbrush effects were achieved in the Gallatin “Listening to Wine” poster design. The design had been based on the feel of many wonderful posters by Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, whose dramatic shading effects defined an era of 20th century advertising posters. As a holiday present to all who may stumble upon this post, here’s a quick and dirty tutorial to help you experiment with the stippled airbrush texture effect made possible by Photoshop’s dissolve blending mode:

1. Start with a new Photoshop document, with a blank white layer as the background.
2. Create a new transparent layer on which you will use your “airbrush.” (It’s a best practice to create layers instead of destructively airbrushing directly on the background.)
3. On the new, transparent layer, create a circular selection using the Elliptical Marquee tool.
4. On the Layers palette, click the “Add layer mask” button (looks like a shaded rectangle with a white circle inside). This will create a layer mask from your circular selection, allowing you to work on the layer without having to worry about losing the original selection shape.
5. Click on the Layer 1 thumbnail to make sure that the layer itself is selected and not the layer mask. It’s sometimes difficult to tell which is currently “active.”
6. Select the Brush tool from the tool bar (or press “B” on your keyboard).
7. From the Brush palette, select a brush that is soft, round, and large. The exact size will depend on the application, but you can use the [ and ] keys on your keyboard to scale the brush up or down while you’re using it.
8. Also from the Brush palette, use the Mode drop-down menu to change the brush’s blending mode to Dissolve.
9. Make sure that the Foreground Color is set to something other than white (black is a great color to practice with), and then click and drag your brush tool across the canvas. You should see a speckled effect on the feathered edges of the brush. If you were using the “Normal” blending mode instead of dissolve, the feathered edges would be soft and clean and would lack the texture that “Dissolve” offers.
10. You can vary the effect by changing the brush size and also by altering the Brush palette’s Opacity or Flow settings. Experiment in order to find the effect that works best for your application.
11. Use additional layers and layer masks just as you would use vellum and stencils in the real world. Layer mask “stencils” help to define the boundaries of the shading effect, but the brush itself defines the look. Another advantage to using layer masks, rather than simple selections, is that the “overspray” is accessible if the mask needs to be moved at any point in the future. It’s like having a stencil that can travel through time!

Tags: 1930s, A.M. Cassandre, font, Mostra, paper, poster, retro, technique, tutorial, typeface, typography, vintage

More vintage matchbooks

After the last treasure trove of matchbooks I came across, the idea of starting a collection of my own has been on my radar. I found a few on eBay that were from Torrance, California, the current location of three steps ahead and a subject of particular interest to me. The same seller had a bunch of interesting ones, so I figured I’d scoop up as many as I could.

[View with PicLens]

 

Tags: 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, lettering, matchbooks, mid-century, packaging, paper, printing, Torrance, typography

The Connie Dial Web Presence

A few months ago I posted a teaser image from a project I was not yet ready to announce. The project has actually been complete for a little while now, so I can finally go into detail about it, as I am wont to do.

Connie Dial is author living in Los Angeles county, and spent 27 years with the LAPD. Her experience as a detective and working undercover gave her plenty of inspiration to write. With the release of her first big novel, she wanted to promote her work on the web. We built her site entirely in WordPress so that every aspect of it is easy to edit and manage.

Visually, it was decided early on that we would pursue a sort of “film noir and Art Deco meets Los Angeles Police Department” look. I gathered a collection of images that were on point; these included images from Dragnet, photos of building signage (including the iconic Broadway Hollywood sign), shots of the LA courthouse, and a selection of vintage police ephemera. I liked the wispy, foggy, “diffuse glow”  feel; it lends itself well to the lighting and lens choices of old Hollywood films, and also to the smoggy feeling of how Los Angeles used to be (it’s actually not as bad anymore, save for all the brush fires we have here lately). In looking for commonalities amongst the images I gathered, I found a tendency toward the architectural detail of parallel lines and three-dimensional surfaces—the “streamline” look. It occurs also on the Beretta 9mm pistol—another cop tie-in. There’s also the motif of the sunburst, prominently used on the LAPD badge. Typographically, I drew inspiration from said badge, as well as vintage signage and newspaper design.

After presenting a slew of sketches, Connie selected a sketch that was derivative of a combination of an old Brown Derby menu and the Broadway Hollywood sign. I decided it would be well-worth the effort to create the logo as a 3D model of a rooftop sign, and to use the model as an element of a virtual landscape evocative of the zeitgeist I endeavored to recreate. In the process, I may have become a bit carried away, as I created a pretty realistic neon light system connected to the extruded letterforms. I wanted it to look as convincing as possible, and so I crafted the tubes in such a way that they could actually be manufactured—at least according to my extremely naïve knowledge of neon light design. It’s hard to tell from the resolution on the website, but when rendered up close with a glass material on the tubes, it looks pretty neat. This is why I blog about our projects—some of this stuff would never see the light of day otherwise.

Interesting note: in researching The Broadway Hollywood and its signage, I found that they had recently created a pretty nice looking website, including a slightly revamped version of their building’s roof logo. Even better: further research uncovered a new, custom typeface that was developed specifically for the building’s new branding. I love when businesses appreciate what they have, rather than trying to erase their history altogether. This is a terrific example of how things should be done—drawing direct inspiration from the building’s history and iconic visual motifs. Kudos.

Visit Connie Dial’s site at www.conniedial.com, and see this entry on the three steps ahead portfolio.

Tags: 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 3D, architecture, art deco, author, font, identity, lettering, logo, Los Angeles, neon, render, retro, sign, signage, streamline, typeface, typography, vintage, website, wordmark, WordPress, zeitgeist

Devin’s Debut

Gallatin Listening to Wine poster, first draft, straight out of Illustrator, and before Devin's Magic

For a recent NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study poster design, my brother Devin Korwin contributed his Wacom tablet skills and helped make a good poster design great. We were inspired by the gritty-yet-soft shading techniques used by advertising poster artists such as Adolphe Mouron Cassandre in the earlier half of the 20th century. After designing the layout, the illustration, and typesetting the copy (in Alternate Gothic and Mark Simonson’s Mostra), I handed my file over to Devin for him to add his artistic touch. The shading alone adds so much depth and interest to the design, but the aged paper texture puts the icing on the cake.

Whereas Cassandre must have got messy with stencils and airbrushes, we digital cheaters can achieve a pretty decent looking analog using Photoshop’s “dissolve” blending mode.*

I’m finding it really cool that I get to work with my brothers on occasion. My other brother, Zach, has been helping out with Wordpress sites, most recently including donzukas.com (which I still have to make a portfolio entry about!)

Tags: 1930s, A.M. Cassandre, font, Mostra, paper, poster, retro, technique, typeface, typography, vintage

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