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.

I’m always looking for innovative ways to set text, and in the process of creating this postcard, I thought I’d give 3D lettering a try. I wanted to use a three-dimensional “ribbon” to mimic the movement of the pen or brush in the process of cursive writing. I also wanted to reinforce the feeling of papercraft in this piece, inspired by sophisticated pop-up books, especially given the recurring theme of Gallatin’s Alumni Day activities, “Return to the Great Books.”

While the process was somewhat laborious, it was interesting to play with 3D tools to create lettering in a somewhat unconventional way. It allowed me to direct the stroke through loops, and to tie knots inside of letters. There’s something rather Tron-like about it. Perhaps I’ll try “light cycle” lettering next time, or experiment with the smoke trails left by skywriting airplanes.

3D ribbon lettering, before red color was added

The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile came to a parking lot near me today, and I was fortunate enough to sneak in a PictureBubble° panorama (click to view) before it headed off to spread joy and hot dogs to other parts of America.

[Via PictureBubbles°]

I was fortunate to be asked to provide some design and layout for Eef Barzelay and Clem Snide’s forthcoming album, The Meat of Life, due out on February 23. The painting was done by my very talented friend Jen Uman, who has also posted some information about her process on her blog. The album is fantastic too—check it out when it’s available.

Souvenir platter from the Century 21 Exhibition / 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, scored on eBay.

[View with PicLens]

 

The Graphic Artists Guild LA Area Meet & Greet went swimmingly, thanks to everybody who attended! I’ve created a Flickr group for Graphic Artists Guild events:

Akio Matsumoto, commercial artist. Photo by Ansel Adams.

After I posted my article about the Manzanar War Relocation Center’s entrance sign, I received this email:

Josh:

I ran across your Dec 24 entry regarding the Manzanar relocation sign. My father, who was interned there, painted the sign.  He passed away four years ago but was a graphic artist who did a lot calligraphic work (even before being relocated).  Ansel Adams took several pictures of him (see this link).

He had many books containing various fonts. I donated many of them to the Cerritos Library when he passed away.  However, I don’t think that the font he used for the Manzanar sign was in them since he wasn’t able to take much with him to the relocation center.

FYI:  Another person who worked in the Manzanar sign shop was Jack Hirose (see this link).

Regards,
Mark

So this information, frankly, changes a lot about what I had originally hypothesized. For one, unless Mr. Matsumoto was told to use a specific lettering style, it was probably his choice to use the blackletter face. And if so, it’s more likely that it was an effort towards beautification, rather than propaganda. Many of those who were forced to live at Manzanar had created gardens, murals, and other creative works to improve the look and feel of what was otherwise a barren and austere place. I suppose then that the “Alpine Resort” feel could have been closer to what the artist was going for, not for propaganda, but in a “making-the-best-of-it” sort of way.

Thanks very much to Mark Matsumoto for sharing his father’s story.

Click to download a print-friendly PDF of this flyer!

On Friday, January 8, 2010, at 7:00PM, the Graphic Artists Guild is holding a Los Angeles Area Graphic Artists Meet & Greet at Dinah’s Family Restaurant¹ near LAX. Guild membership is not required; in fact we’d love to have graphic artists of all kinds attend. A round of complimentary appetizers and non-alcoholic drinks will be provided. Additional food and beverages (including booze) are available for purchase, since Dinah’s is, after all, a restaurant.

Location information and directions:

Dinah’s Family Restaurant
6521 South Sepulveda Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90045-1592
(310) 645-0456
Google Maps Link

If you have any questions, leave a comment!

1. Some of you may remember Dinah’s from the “lingonberry pancakes” scene in The Big Lebowski.

Manzanar War Relocation Center Sign (close up)

Update (January 5, 2010): After posting this article, I received an email from Mark Matsumoto, whose father, Akio Matsumoto, was a commercial artist interned at Manzanar during the War. According to Mark, Akio Matsumoto was the person who painted the sign. Needless to say, this information drastically affects my original theories about the sign’s lettering! I’ve posted a follow-up with more information.

I just returned from a brief vacation to Mammoth Mountain, and on the way back down to Los Angeles we stopped at the Manzanar National Historic Site, former home to the Manzanar “War Relocation Center,” an American concentration camp for thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Despite Manzanar’s picturesque location, the site is a haunting reminder of just how bad things can become when the U.S. ignores its constitution.

Many comparisons have been made between the Americans’ use of concentration camps and those used by the Nazis. With this in mind, I was struck by the lettering used on the Manzanar entrance sign, which bears resemblance to the blackletter styles appropriated by the Nazis during the first years of the second World War. The Nazi party’s use of these blackletter forms was very much a purposeful message (for more information on the topic I would recommend reading Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State by Steven Heller). It seems odd that, at the same time as the United States was at war with Germany, and even detaining German-Americans at camps like Manzanar, the US government would use lettering evocative of the Third Reich. I decided to do some surface-level research to find out more about this lettering decision.

First, I wanted to determine the origin of the lettering style. It appears to be a simplified blackletter, more contemporary than traditional, a modernist version of a Rotunda. After searching through many, many fonts online, I could not find an exact match in digitized form. But perhaps I was using the wrong sign.

Manzanar War Relocation Center Sign

Apparently, the sign that stands at Manzanar today is a fairly faithful replica of the original, which was photographed by Ansel Adams in 1943:

Manzanar sign, photo by Ansel Adams

However, upon closer comparison between the replica and the original, I’ve noticed a few subtle differences:

• The “M” has a bit of a downward slope in the replica which is not present in the original.
• The letter spacing was somewhat tighter on the original, with the exception of “CENTER,” which is more generously spaced in the original than in the replica.
• The shape of the “R” is wider in the original, and appears condensed in the replica.

Seidelburg Heavy (Photo-Lettering)

I then checked my Photo-Lettering Alphabet Thesaurus, Vol. 2, and found a very close match to the original sign’s lettering in “Seidelburg Heavy” (at right). In Life with Letters, Ed Rondthaler of Photo-Lettering, Inc. provides evidence that his company’s letterforms were used extensively by the U.S. government and military during World War II. In fact, their flagship typeface, Murray Hill Gothic, was used in countless propaganda posters and solicitations for war bonds. It wouldn’t be a stretch, then, to think that perhaps the lettering for the Manzanar sign was chosen out of Photo-Lettering’s offerings and subsequently hand carved in wood. Any irregularities, therefore, could have been artistic choices on the part of the signmaker.

So that is my hypothesis. But then why choose a typeface loaded with Germanic connotations at the same time as America was at war with the Germans? And if the U.S. government was trying to lighten the public perception of what Manzanar was, by using euphemisms like “resettlement” and “relocation” rather than “concentration” or “internment,” it would be counterproductive for them to use signage that resembled that of the enemy.

It’s possible, though, that they just didn’t get it. After all, the U.S. didn’t enter German territory until after D-Day, and so perhaps the connection was not yet made when Manzanar was constructed. It’s also strange that they used a blackletter face in all caps; it’s still legible, but it’s not really in line with how the Nazis usually typeset their blackletter headlines (with the exception of acronyms, e.g. “NSDAP”). But there’s also the possibility that the government wanted to draw a non-political connection between Manzanar’s Alpinesque landscape and that of Northern Europe. Perhaps, in a more sinister way, they wanted to dress up Manzanar as a resort destination, rather than a detainment camp. Playful Gothic lettering is frequently found in period restaurant signage, hotels, ski resorts, and pretty much anywhere that an “Old World” feel is sought. So with that in mind, the Manzanar sign could have been subtle propaganda.

The lettering might have also felt en vogue. The lettering face used also shares a lot in common, geometrically, with some of the faces popular during the 1940s. Here are some images from the Smithsonian’s A More Perfect Union online exhibit, from Camp Amache (another detainment camp like Manzanar):

Amache Midsummer Carnival sign

Resettlement Handbook cover, Granada / Amache

Amache Sign

While the sans-serif lettering styles used in these examples are distinctly 1940s in their appearance, their forms and all-caps presentation share similarities with the simplified blackletter of Seidelburg Heavy. Note the unicase “M”s and “N”s, as well as the parallel legs of the “A”s. Maybe the modernized blackletter simply appeared to be of the times.

Lettering carries meaning. It’s not simply a transparent way of communicating words. I think it’s important that we as designers carefully consider the lettering and type styles that we use, especially in historical context, as their educated use can be far more meaningful than their haphazard and casual application.

As always, I’d be happy to hear from anybody who has more insight into this than my hasty research has unearthed. I’ll gladly update this article with corrections or as I learn more¹².

1. I’ve added a post on the PictureBubbles° Blog with a spherical panorama of Manzanar Cemetery.
2. As mentioned above, a reader has updated me with further information; please see the follow-up post here.

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!