Posts by Scott

Thanks to Jared who identified the font in the last post as Hellenic Wide. Check out the comments in the original post for some modern digital reproductions.

You see this typeface a lot in the concert poster world but it was also very popular with mid-century designers as illustrated by this Blue Note cover from the Vanguard Archive. Bonus: Name the modern day variants. Comment on this post

Here are some more covers from that great Blue Note Cover Archive that Amy Stoddard sent in a while back. Scanning through the archive you’ll find some periods of absolute greatness; these four were culled from the mid-60’s period when modernism was in full swing and someone over at the Blue Note design dept. seriously knew what they were doing. I selected these particular covers to illustrate the sort of continuity that seemed to pervade this period of releases. I really appreciate that from record labels, it’s not always the best policy, but there are times when I would sacrifice variety for a continuous visual message that flows through a series of records.

The other thing that really stands out to me about these is something that the original designer(s) probably didn’t intend: the lack of true white. Something about the off-white / cream in the place of white always makes an image feel more human to me, more tangible. That’s why white hasn’t been included in any of my design work since some of my earliest stuff from around 2001. I am not saying it doesn’t have it’s place in design or that it can’t be used effectively, I just don’t prefer it. 

The minimalist color ethic in these pieces is employed successfully to such a degree that only a maximalist could truly appreciate. These images are literally exploding off the page, it almost hurts to look at them, yet they’re only two colors and relatively empty, full of negative space. True, a couple of them have leveraged photography to provide some depth, but try to imagine them without the photos; they would still stand on their own and that’s a testament to not only the designer but the power of typography itself. Note that aside from the oval and rectangle of the Blue Note logo the only shapes and lines are formed solely by type. To me that’s the ultimate expression of design, the information is the image, or, as a sort of anagram of Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote; the message is the medium.

What also strikes me about these is how timeless they are. This is not nostalgia, this is graphic design at its apex. If you compare these to the visually entertaining, yet decidedly dated, selections in my last Blue Note post, you might see how comparatively well these designs have stood up compared to say, this. The later Blue Note covers scream "late 60’s-70’s", the Carson stuff screams "1990’s", while these simply scream "DESIGN". Just as many have proclaimed Helvetica to be the purest expression of modernism through typography (which is an interesting concept in and of itself), I sometimes think that design as a whole reached some sort of zenith somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. That’s not to say there isn’t more to be done, new paths to be forged; but I feel like perhaps the perfect balance was struck during that era and all we can do now is explore all of the not-so-perfect alternatives. I know many will disagree with me, they’ll invoke Sagmeister and his ilk, but I’ve never been a fan of post-modernism, I think it is flawed. It is sometimes beautiful, thought provoking, and can be used to great effect, but at the end of the day it doesn’t go as far to accomplish the goals of communication and graphic design. True, graphic design is an ever-evolving form that mirrors the society it is employed to convey it’s message to, but the basic set of requirements that govern the neccessary function of that conveyance do not change…..That is, until we all mutate and read with thought waves and our eyes remain only as vestigial lumps mounted on the front of some sort of hyper-evolved super-brain. But that’s besides the point.

So that’s the long and the very long of it, my opinion only. As I’ve betrayed many times before, I am a lowly uneducated philistine so please set me straight, I would love to hear your opinions and the masochist in me eagerly anticipates the verbal thrashing I am sure to receive from the collective rebuttal superpower that is: The Innernette.

A very nice collection of alternative Saul Bass works is up at Citrinitas. I say "alternative" because every time I try to find new images by him, all the same old stuff comes up but there are a few here that I hadn’t previously seen as well as that large version of the Saint Joan poster which I wasn’t able to find until now. One thing’s for certain, the man knew how to use orange. Via DMOGHI from a very nice feature on inspirational poster designs.

The new Tycho single "Adrift / From Home" is now available direct from the MP3 shop in DRM-Free 320Kbps MP3 format. It was previously available exclusively through iTunes but can now be purchased at the new Tychomusic Shop and all other major digital music retailers. You can also purchase all the other Tycho releases at the Shop.

If you had previously purchased MP3s direct through the old system you may know that it was far from perfect. The new shop has been rebuilt from the ground up and functions far better than the previous system with instant downloads and full user account control.

In case you missed it the first time around, below are some clips of the songs from the new single. You can hear the full version of Adrift at the Tycho Myspace page.

Tycho – Adrift (clip)

[audio:adrift_clip.mp3]

Tycho – From Home (clip)

[audio:home_clip.mp3]

Via Grain Edit: "Dutch Type specimen sheet from Lettergieterij in the Netherlands. Most likely from the late 1950s / early 1960s."
Another example of great Dutch design, loving these colors

This Otl Aicher-designed Olympic poster is from Blanka. I see them linked on FFFFOUND all the time but I really don’t know what they’re  all about. At first I thought they were an agency but now I think they’re just some sort of design shop with all sorts of cool stuff that is never in stock. At any rate, it’s fun to look at the pictures; they have an extensive archive of vintage poster prints.

I’ve been locked in the studio for a while preparing to record some new tracks for the upcoming Tycho album. I reconfigured my whole setup and it’s finally all coming together. I’ve finally added a true analog mixing console and it’s really changed the workflow, been saving a lot of time. Above is a partial shot of the studio in it’s current form, still a ways to go with the acoustics, but I’ve been making do. 

On a side note, I temporarily moved back to Windows XP32 since they don’t make the software I use to record (Sonar) for Mac. I installed Photoshop and it’s been running so bad, crashing all the time. Meanwhile, on the Mac side, solid as a rock. I really wish I could just work inside of OS X full time, but Logic and Pro Tools just can’t hang with Sonar in my book. Oh well, here’s hoping for a solid Windows 9.

Matt Maust is the Bassist for Cold War Kids and a great designer as well. Their album Robbers & Cowards has really been a sleeper hit for me. I first became aware of them a while back but sort of thought Hospital Beds was cool and left it at that. But lately I’ve been working to the record and really enjoying it as a whole.

Today I checked on their site to see what they were all about and was greeted by the lovely image you see above. Once inside it just gets better. I’m always a sucker for the big-gothic-type-on-photographs motif, and here it’s done very well. Even with the most talented designers, a lot of the time you can see through to the fact that the artwork for a band was project / money driven. In the case of an outfit like Cold War Kids, I think the (literally) DIY design ethic shines through to great effect. But at the end of the day, it’s not how you look as a band, it’s how you sound.

Cold War Kids – Hang Me Out To Dry

For those of you that view this blog with a Flash-Enabled browser you may have noticed that the post titles are laid out in Trade Gothic LT Std Extended. This is done using a ridiculously complicated method of swapping out the HTML text and rendering it in Flash. The system that does this is called sIFR, it’s a huge jumble of Javascript and Flash that I really couldn’t make heads or tails of for a long time. As a result, the titles were not clickable, meaning you couldn’t actually click them to get through to the permanent home of the given post. Well after my recent plea for web help, Karl Peterson stepped up and answered the challenge. He made short work of the sIFR problem and so now, as you can see (or click), the titles are finally working flawlessly. Thanks Karl!

Karl Peterson is a designer / developer out of Bellingham, WA. You can view his portfolio at sidearmdesign.com.