In a rare and intimate one-night event, apparel/book/font designer, publisher, and manufacturer of design objects, Andy Cruz of House Industries will speak about his work and House’s most recent collaboration with the estate of Charles and Ray Eames.

As a partner in the cutting edge design phenomenon House Industries, Andy has helped steer the course of visual culture over the past fifteen years, creating design work with toes dipped liberally in fine art, Modern design, vernacular commercial art, and brand-oriented graphic design. See the past and the future collide and how the aesthetic of tomorrow will emerge!

Friday, September 17 2010
Doors Open: 19:00
Presentation / Q&A: 19:30 – 20:00
Dinner: 20:00

Oakwood Premier Tokyo Midtown
Address: Akasaka Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052
Map: Click here.
Telephone: 03-5412-3131
Fee: ¥3,500 (Advance) ¥4,500 (Door)
Includes presentation, light buffet dinner, drink, limited edition publication and limited edition print.
Language: English with Japanese Interpretation

RSVP NECESSARY
Email info@nonaca.net before Friday, Sept 10. 6pm.
Advance payment can be made here:

More: nonaca.net

I’m super-amped to announce the public release of Eli Carrico’s Black-Out Stencil typeface via Wordshape/MyFonts.

Black-Out was used for the cover and interior of the Barbara Bestor book, Bohemian Modern, designed by Eli and Michael Worthington a few years ago over at Counterspace, a stunning book about L.A. architecture and interiors. Since then, it’s seen super-limited use by a select few folks, but Eli decided (with a little prodding) that the time was nigh for public release.

A chunky mix of geometric stencil, system-based slab serif, and a unique feel that falls somewhere between 1967 and the year 3000, Black-Out will sock you in the privates and run off with your money. Or something.

Do you remember me? Culture-bound syndrome Ⅴ

Yamazaki Ryoichi
Nakaochiai Gallery

Sat, May 15 – Sat, June 5
Gallery hours: Thursday / Friday 12:00 – 6:00 pm – Saturday 12:00 – 5:00 pm

Ryoichi Yamazaki’s sculptures, worked in plaster, glass and paint, explore the theme of a cultural phenomenon specific to Japan – hikikomori or “withdrawal syndrome”, a relatively modern psychological disorder. Affecting mostly adolescent males, it manifests itself as withdrawal from family and society, often to the point of complete isolation. Though Yamazaki’s sculptures, with uniform white hooded tops and remote look, suggest a sense of disengagement, they unnervingly also appear kawaii or cute, like popular Japanese characters.

This solo exhibition of new works of sculpture and drawing from Yamazaki, is an installation site specific to the Nakaochiai Gallery and a continuation of the hikikomori series. For the first time since it opened in 2004, the gallery — situated in a wooden house on what was once a traditional Tokyo shotengai or “shopping street” — is being used in it’s entirety, with works being shown throughout the building.

I’m excited to announce my new signature keitai kisekae/cellphone theme for WKTokyoLab’s mobile device shop. Kisekae are sets of images that users can download to create a holistic theme for their phone.

The theme I created for the TokyoLab music label is called “Utopia” and is based on a music video that I did in collaboration with the Lab folks for NHK a few years ago. It is an animated modular pictorial utopian vision of Tokyo in the future.

The theme is completely animated, with custom-designed icons for battery power and signal strength, a smart display that analyzes the time of day and generates one of four different appropriate images (morning, afternoon, evening, night), mail sending screen, mail receiving screen, incoming and outgoing call screens, typographically considered menus, and a ton more stuff.

In Japan, you can use your phone to browse to this address and download the theme.

Many thanks to Bruce, Yoko, and the WKTokyoLab team for making such a cool project happen!

First, a new feature for the latest issue of Idea Magazine (issue #340) called Forms of Practice, interviewing young designers, is on newsstands now.

Second, the foreword for a new book from Sandu Media called Mini Graphics, an exploration of small-scale graphic design projects.

A worthwhile cause, and some rad options should you choose to back the project.

The digital debut of Oz Cooper’s “Moderne” Broadway-esque titling typeface, Boul Mich, available now from MyFonts!

1927 was a discouraging year for Oswald Bruce Cooper, having to devote his time to developing faddish display typefaces based on others’ designs in lieu of truly original work.

Though he sidestepped blame in his essay On Cooper Type Faces, Barnhart Bros. & Spindler’s General Manager Richard N. McArthur was the one responsible for assigning Cooper busywork. McArthur put together a sampling of Broadway-esque hand lettering from assorted advertisements, suggesting a very specific incising treatment.

Cooper drew the basic forms of the letters, leaving the bulk of the work to the pattern makers at BB&S, but provided the framework from which the typeface was drawn. The typeface was named Boul Mich, after Michigan Boulevard, Chicago’s mix of carriage trade shops, elegant residences, artists’ studios, and Bohemian side streets. While not a design of Cooper’s choosing, this modern typeface is a paean to the flexibility of Cooper’s skill.

Cooper Initials are offered in their original capital alphabet form in this digital version, with no supplementary characters.

The release of these two typefaces coincides with the publication of the definitive Oswald Bruce Cooper biography by Ian Lynam, published in Japan’s Idea Magazine issue #339. Cooper’s biography is delivered in English and Japanese with numerous full-color illustrations of never-before-published work.

Boul Mich has been lovingly redrawn from Oswald Bruce Cooper’s original drawings and mechanical proofs. It is comprised of a capital letter alphabet, full European character set, figures, and full range of diacritics.

Boul Mich is available now via MyFonts.

New typeface set out now via MyFonts: Cooper Text.

Cooper Text is a comprised of two fonts- Cooper OldStyle and Cooper Initials. Cooper OldStyle is a round-serifed text typeface, while Cooper Initials are ornamental capitals designed for use as complementary drop caps.

Cooper OldStyle has been lovingly redrawn from Oswald Bruce Cooper’s original drawings and mechanical proofs while Cooper Initials have been drawn from a sample in the seminal monograph of Cooper’s work, The Book of Oz.
Cooper OldStyle was originally released as a non-kerning typeface, which offered limited use for text setting. Oz Cooper was never quite happy with the copious amount of “air” around the typeface’s characters, so this definitive version has been painstakingly spaced and kerned for even text-setting.

Cooper Initials is a set of three typefaces:
- Cooper Initials, the base form derived from Cooper’s original design
- Cooper Ground, blocks of solid color that match the proportions of the Initials and which can be used to add a background color to the typefaces through layering
- Cooper Capitals, the lone letterforms within the initials, which can be layered to add highlight color to the letterform component of the set

These typefaces can be paired with Cooper Italic Complete for setting long lengths of text.

The history of these typefaces:

Cooper OldStyle is the result of Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry representatives Richard N. McArthur and Charles R. Murray having met with Oswald Cooper and his business partner Fred Bertsch in 1917. Due to other commercial design firms adopting Cooper’s style of lettering throughout the Midwest, both companies came to an agreement to create a family of types based on Cooper’s advertising lettering. McArthur and Murray saw the biggest potential in the super-bold advertising lettering that would become Cooper Black, but agreed that a roman weight old style should be executed first, the logical progenitor to a family or related types.

The foundry requested that the roman have rounded serifs so as to more specifically correlate to the planned bold. This was the first of many tactical strategies in type design between type designer and foundry, most specifically McArthur and Cooper, whose back-and-forth relationship in designing, critiquing, and modifying letterforms was integral in shaping the oeuvre of type designs credited to Cooper. While it was Cooper’s sheer talent in shaping appealing and useful alphabets that made his work so popular, McArthur’s role as critic and editor has gone largely un-noted in the slim amount of writing of length about Cooper’s work.

Cooper and McArthur went back and forth over the design of the roman face for nearly two years with Cooper, constantly redrawing and revising the typeface to get it to a castable state. The capitals were successively redrawn by Cooper, with particular care paid to the “B” and “R” to make them relate formally. The lowercase was redrawn numerous times, as were experiments in shaping the punctuation. McArthur requested a pair of dingbats to accompany the typeface, along with a decorative four leaf clover ornament “for luck”.

Cooper included a slightly iconoclastic, cartoonish paragraph mark, as well as decorative end elements, a centered period, and brackets with a hand-drawn feel.

The final typeface is a lively, bouncy conglomeration whose rounded forms dazzle and move the eye. Originally called merely “Cooper” in early showings, the name was later revised to “Cooper Oldstyle”. The typeface met with a warm reception upon release in 1919, the public favoring its advertising-friendly, tightly-spaced appearance. Sales were moderate, and the face was considered a success.

Cooper originally drew the figures the same width as the “M” of the font, but revised them to the width of the “N” at the request of McArthur. Early versions of drawings of the slimmer figures are noted as “cruel stuff” in accompanying notes by Cooper, though they were versioned out into far more elegant numerals than the earlier stout figures. Both versions of the numerals are included in the digital release, as are the ornamental elements.

In 1925, McArthur and Murray requested a set of ornamental initials. Cooper designed the initials open-faced on a square ground surrounded by organic ornament. The initials were “intended to be nearly even in ‘color value’ with that of normal text type”. The letterforms themselves are a medium-bold variation on the Cooper OldStyle theme, lacking the balance of Cooper’s text faces, but charming nonetheless.

Cooper Initials are offered in their original capital alphabet form in this digital version, with no supplementary characters.

The release of these two typefaces coincides with the publication of the definitive Oswald Bruce Cooper biography, published in Japan’s Idea Magazine issue #339. Cooper’s biography is delivered in English and Japanese with numerous full-color illustrations of never-before-published work.

Available now via MyFonts.

Brand new Cooper revival out as of 5 minutes ago!

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/wordshape/cooper-highlight/

Cooper Hilite Complete is a complementary set of two fonts- Cooper Black and Cooper Hilite. Either typeface can be used alone, or as a stackable, multi-colored set.

 The history of these typefaces:

Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior designer (iPod, iPad, iTouch, et al) likes the YACHT logo so much that he and the Apple design team dropped some free custom laser-engraved iPods on the YACHT team last week.

I wrote a 10,000 word essay called “Heft, Gravy, and Swing: The Life and Times of Oswald Cooper” for the latest issue of Idea. The essay serves as the definitive biography of the Chicago type and lettering designer, famed for his Cooper Black typeface.

The essay is the result of a long-dreamed of trip to Chicago to sift through Cooper’s original drawings, scarce writings, and working papers. Copiously illustrated with proofs of Cooper’s work, unpublished typefaces, and photographs of rare design work, his legacy is brought into contemporary focus. New biographical information about Cooper, his work, and his associates is discussed within.

An excerpt:

Bertsch & Cooper was a visionary commercial art service. They were one of the first shops in Chicago that offered to create layouts, compose artwork, and typeset text all under one roof. They continually added staff, resulting in a scattershot assortment of illustrators, draftsmen, and compositors peppered throughout the same building in a variety of rooms. At their first location, Bertsch was famous for his “inter-office communication system” which consisted of yelling upstairs and down from the inner balcony of the building to professional associates. Cooper was ensconced in the “bull pen”- a room with a half dozen or so other commercial artists scratching away at the jobs of the day. Cooper was renowned for his “filing system”- a towering, dusty, haphazardly curved pile of layouts, proofs, notes, and other assorted papers that loomed over his desk, each day’s ephemera separated by a newspaper from that date.

This pile grew in relation with Bertsch & Cooper’s increasing roster of clients, which included a number of local Chicago businesses including doctors’ offices, legal firms, coffee shops, and banks, New York’s Marchbanks Press, the department store Marshall Fields, Strathmore Papers, Red Book Magazine, American Printer Magazine, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Cooper’s distinctive lettering can be found on a series of public service announcements for the United States government’s Food Administration, exhorting the public to eat less and conserve rations during World War One.

The article was jointly designed by myself and the Shirai Design Office, the esteemed designers of Idea. It contains the first public showing of Cooper Italic Complete.

Oh, and it’s in both English and Japanese.