Am I right, or am I right…

Just caught wind of this video posted two days ago on YouTube—a simultaneous parody of Lady Gaga and the font-of-the-decade, Neutraface.

Nevermind the comedians’ unenlightened pronunciation¹; it certainly proves that Neutraface has ascended to a cult status almost comparable to that of Helvetica.

Thanks to Angela of Normal Modes for pointing me towards this.

1. It should be spoken Germanic style, “NOY-truh,” since the typeface was named after the Austrian-born architect, Richard Neutra. Same rule applies to Krautrock pioneers NEU! and Swiss watchmakers TAG Heuer. [↩]

Tags: House Industries, humor, Neutraface, typeface, typography

Metal architectural lettering

One of my favorite aspects of living in Southern California is the local architecture and its accompanying signage. Many of the schools in my area were built in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and lots of them utilize gorgeous, low x-height, geometric titling faces like the ones on which Neutraface is based. The Southern California Regional Occupation Center, circa 1969, has some particularly nice signage adorning its sturdy, imposing Battersea-esque industrial architecture.

Tags: 1960s, architecture, font, House Industries, lettering, mid-century, Neutraface, retro, sign, signage, type, typeface, typography, vintage

Harmonographs: Drawings of the Future

Harmonographs: Drawings of the Future

My path to discovering the world of “harmonographs” is slightly convoluted. It all began when House Industries announced that it would be digitizing and selling selections from the Photo-Lettering, Inc. type collection. Now, besides the fact that this will allow digital designers such as myself to take advantage of the analog type of yesteryear, House plans to sell the fonts in a more affordable way—one headline at a time. Just like Photo-Lettering did back some decades ago, House will allow designers to specify headlines for typesetting and then order only the glyphs that are necessary for the job. This keeps the cost to the designer/client down, and will hopefully stimulate volume sales. It’s revolutionary. I can’t wait.

House 3009 Catalog Cover

So how does this relate to harmonographs? Well, after hearing about House Industries’ plans, Grain Edit recently posted some photos of the Photo-Lettering, Inc. Alphabet Thesaurus, Volume 2. One page in the type specimen catalog includes these amazingly retro Spirograph-like images called “cosmographs.” I’d remembered seeing similar imagery gracing the cover of the House Industries “House 3009″ type catalog, in all its Space-Age glory. Also, when I recently visited House for their Tag Sale, I picked up a 12″ vinyl LP called “Fantastica: Music from Outer Space by Russ Garcia.” It too features a cosmograph-like image on the cover, again evocative of that whole 1950s/1960s film-and-television sci-fi zeitgeist.

So, Google to the rescue, and I came across Cosmographs.com; not a terribly functional or attractive site, but fascinating nonetheless. I put two and two together and saw that the site credits Edward J. Lias, the same fellow mentioned on the Cosmographs page of the Photo-Lettering catalog (“Recorded by Edward Lias”). Looks like I am on to something, I thought. I tried his email address to no avail; my message bounced. A Whois lookup of his domain name leads only to his hosting provider. Dead end—sigh. Wikipedia time! I looked up information on Spirographs, those fun pen-and-ink toys I used to play with in school, and as Wikiing often allows, I eventually found the harmonograph, another variant of a pendulum-like line graph¹ . Great, of course, but I wanted so badly just to be able to make them myself! Luckily, related links at the bottom sent me to subblue, an extraordinarily amazing site where one can actually create harmonographs (as well as guillochés, fractals, and mind-blowing M.C. Escher-esque graphics). The icing on the cake is that with a simple right-click and access to a PDF printer (I recommend CutePDF writer, by the way), the files can be saved, and voila. Vector harmonographs.

1. UPDATE: After acquiring my own copy of the Alphabet Thesaurus, Volume 2, I learned a bit more about “Cosmographs.” Check my newer post for more information. [↩]

Tags: 1950s, 1960s, fonts, harmonographs, House Industries, math, mid-century, Photo-Lettering, retro, sci-fi, technique, type, typography

My visit to House Industries

Josh Korwin at House Industries.
Photo: Ben Kiel

Last week, I was lucky enough to pay a visit to House Industries in Yorklyn, Delaware, my favoritest type design studio ever. On Friday, they held the first day of their “tag sale,” but I first stopped by a day early to scope everything out and meet the team. It was an absolute pleasure to talk with everybody there and to see how the company works. And before I left, I was stocked up on goodies; some were House Industries products and others were items they had laying around the office, presumably used as inspiration for past font releases.

Even better, I ended up on their “Show and Tell” blog!

You’re probably wondering to yourself, “what’s in the bag?” Well, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I can allow you to take a peek inside of that attractive (and eco-friendly) ampersand tote to see the gifts I bought myself inside.

[View with PicLens]

 

Tags: Delaware, East Coast, font, House Industries, typeface, typography

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