[design] Return To OryCon: The OryCon 37 Souvenir Program

3446.

I return to revisiting my program design work for OryCon with the design for OryCon 37. Coming away from its dark period, I re-entered the fray with a con that had a SF, adventure-y feel: The Quest For The Ultimate Artifact.

Tanya Huff was the Author GoH, and Alan M. Clark was the Artist GoH. As anyone who's seen Alan's work weill recognize, there's an atmospheric quality to it as he lets some of his materials play a chaos game in the background while he lets intelligence guide the foreground. The combination usually imparts a near-incomparable air of mystery to all his works, be they SF, horror, fantasy, or anything else he does.

The cover illustration, Buckets of Bad Weather, is a thing to get lost in:

The steampunk-y construction is inscrutable, it keeps its own counsel; it appears to be siphoning something off and sending it somewhere else, but while it's guessable, it's unclear what or where or why. It may be an unwelcome thing, taking from the local environment but giving little or nothing in return, and you might think otherwise, but the title has a sinister note to it. Also, it seems rather ancient; the parchment revealed seems to imply that but it, like the construction, holds its secrets well.

The portrait of Alan illustrates the sense of mystery, stress, wonder, and tension which seems to be his main art materials.

The idea of a quest inspired me to find a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style font, and that may seem an uninspired, perhaps even lazy choice, but the type used for that movie is a brand that connotes intriguing, mind-expanding, crazy and just-dangerous-enough-to-be-interesting exploration. The Creation Station people really went to the wall with that one.

It's an example of type supporting the message, and again, the type and the art merged to create an atmosphere and feeling for the rest of the book.

[SF] The OryCon 33 Souvenir Program Design: Horror Has a Jape

3432.

With OryCon 33, in 2011, the dark theme continued, script flipped to the side: the them was The Lighter Side of Horror. With Author GoH E. E. Knight, author of Vampire Earth, that premise was delivered on. The other side of the look'n'feel coin was, of course, and as always, the art.

Jim Pavelec brought his dark and disturbing vision to OryCon's Art Show and Souvenir Program and it cast a spell to good effect. I still can't look at the images for very long without feeling more than a little out-of-synch and wanting to see things in reality that aren't there … or are there, but shouldn't be.

If that cover illo don't make you kind of illo, I'll check you for a pulse, kiddo.

That's Jim's dark design. From his Artist's Statement at http://www.jimpavelec.com/artists-statement/:

I built up a body of work, at first consisting mainly of twisted figures that I simply called demons. I needed to call them something familiar as a jumping off point for the viewer. I wanted them to be iconic; modern day visions of godlike beings that existed in my imagination.  I pushed myself to incorporate jagged structures and impossible atmospheres which these demons would call home, thus fleshing out the world that had been in the recesses of my mind since my youth.

Most people and artists recognize their dark sides and incorporate them into their outlook and art. Jim saw his dark side at an early age and decided that when he grew up, he'd build a summer home there. He lets it drive him. This is the sort of art that, as Chekhov is said to have said, "break the ice within one, as a brick" (I paraphrase).

Disturbing? Yeah, you bet. Difficult to view? Definitely. Valuable? Totally, after taking a further look through his Artist's Statement, which dwells a moment on Jung's thesis that humans needed symbol and ritual, to arrive at an iconoclasmic statement of its own:

Through the work I am doing now I mean to create new symbols for others to cherish. I hope that people will take what I have given them and use them, as the word says, symbolically. In other words, use them as a spring board for independent thought. Use them as a marker for their frustrations with the status quo. Use them to strip the meaning and power from the old symbols.

Interpret that as one wills, but I see the idea of looking in as a way of looking back out and re-evaluating what one is certain of. The reassignment of symbol and creation of new as needed.

Iconoclasm.

Now, like I said, this was the 'lighter' side of horror, and there was more than a little whimsy there. The work Zombei Atack, which I used as the back cover, is a great example of that:

It takes a zombie schoolgirl to really drive home how demons and grotesqueries can be funny and memorable.

The rest of the publication took the by-now-usual path. I drew unification by extending the type into the heads and subheads:

… and at this point I must point out that, despite my endless bagging on Papyrus, there are times that it works. The problem with such fonts isn't that they are used, it's that they are overused, thoughtlessly. Not every publication is going to be that important, so one may see my p.o.v. as rather overweening. Still, a second's thought can turn a document that is forgettable because the designer went with a fad or fashion or just accepted the default (a designer worth the term never accepts the default) into one that has a voice of basic good taste and a modicum of thoughtfulness. Type carries weight both visual and emotional; think of someone who formats a serious warning sign in that perennial villain, Comic Sans. Are you thinking of the warning, or are you thinking what kind of mind would joke around with a font like that?

But in this case, Papyrus, though overused it be, also struck the right note and, like The Dude's rug, tied the thing together.

Also, I'd like to point out one other thing. If you're likely (or hopefully-to-someday) to be invited to a convention, have at least one good promo portrait. E.E. Knight's was properly authorly and friendly, and Jim Pavelec's was well, well, done, I thought. The pose in front of the pagoda? Well composed and full of visual interest and intrigue.

Really, it would take you no time at all. If you think you might ever be a GoH at a convention, do this thing.

This would prove to be the last time I would do a OryCon program set. I can't remember what prompted me to let go, but I guess that I had figured that I had brought all I could to the form; not only that, after hoping only to do one, I'd managed to do not one, two, or three, but four consecutively. Not too bad, I thought.

I had a good experience and had delivered a labor of love for a thing I adored times four. I didn't think I'd ever be in the position to do this again.

Life, as they say, had other plans. 

[SF] OryCon 32 Souvenir Program Design: OryCon Works Dark

3430.

The next year, OryCon 32,  I was back as publications again, and this was the first of two years when the theme went 'dark', as they say.

The Author GoH was P.N.Elrod, creator of The Vampire Files: the Art GoH was Chad Savage, macabre artist extraordinaire. What better them than The Dark Side of Fantasy?

This program was a bit of a new experience because, whereas the previous ComCons were content with my decisions on everything from headline fonts to layout, this year the remit included a bit of art direction via the con chair. She had a definite idea as to fonts for headers and headlines, and was obviously quite sensitive to the visual and emotional weight that the fonts transmitted to the content.

The GoH's, page, backed with a screened-back bit of his art, cast a certain mood. This was the first time I attempted this, and I thought it worked quite well.

The spread showing off the GoH along with a snazzy little ad for WorldCon 2013.

I must admit this was a challenge for me in more ways than one. The art directing, while minimal, was a factor I hadn't contended with in the previous two publications and it was a new experience, and a welcome one. The big up here was, as previously mentioned, the Con Chair clearly understood that thoughtful choice in cover design and typography is an essential starting-point to a successful overall design. She pointed me in a good direction and, as every solid graphic designer knows, when it's not necessarily your vision, it's your duty and job unify everything so it supports the client's look-and-feel. This succeeded very well on that level, and was a real creative workout for me.

The other part was ... well, in saying this, I don't want anyone to think that Chad Savage's art is bad. I don't. I think it's splendidly-done, and if I were 10 times the draughter I am now I'd be, at most, 1/100th the artist he is. That he has talent and vision cannot be gainsaid. The crux is that I don't find dark themes pleasant; they don't speak to me so much. So this really opened my mind to listening to an artistic voice that didn't quite transmit on my wavelength, and that was a real workout, and a valuable one, too.

I'd suggest that a good way to expand your design chops and your visual repertoire, as a publications designer, is work with edgy art that's not exactly to one's taste. I'm still not one with the macabre art, but I can hear the voice it speaks in and help it communicate when it must, and that's something else an effective designer does. 

Push ones' own envelope from time to time. After all, art shouldn't always stroke your happy place. A diet of art that doesn't sometimes disturb is just as stultifying to the visual health as eating the same thing is to the physical. 

The other notable thing about OryCon 32 was the loss of one of the granddaddies of the OryCon/PorSFiS community. John Andrews, a regular and one of the maintaining forces of the original OryCon crews, passed away at an extremely untimely age.

One of the ironies of my life is that my nocturnal-by-necessity nature means that I see some people in my own tribe, who live in the same city as myself, only once-a-year; necessity has made of me rather a recluse. But one of the signals that this was indeed OryCon was meeting John Andrews at the pre-reg table; as long as there was a John Andrews helping hold things up, everything was aright. 

He left us a legacy of a scholarship fund that sends a fan to WorldCon in his memory. We should all be so lucky as to inspire such a mark in Con history.

John only made it to age 48. The community he helped build continues with a newer generation every year, it seems: a posterity anyone would be thrilled to leave behind. 

[SF] The Orycon 31 Souvenir Program Design

3426.

The year after my triumphant debut as OryCon publications, I managed to finagle another go at it. OryCon 31's Guests of Honor included urban fantasy author Patricia Briggs and mononomial artist Lubov. Lubov specializes in fantasy and SF painting and illustration but seems to have a heavy accent on the whimsical, softer side of fantasy. Her paintings were a fresh revelation to me and seemed to call for a similarly whimsical typeface. I found one which I loved, a font which looked sketched and chaotic yet compelling called 'karabinE.' And, as the whimsy got itself into the thinking, it asked that I arrange the type vertically, like so:

This is the full wraparound of the cover, of course; the front cover to the right of center, back cover to the left. Doesn't the idea of a parade with flying sharks make you feel king of antic inside? It did, me. Fanciful, whimsical, romantic, fun. The use of a gradient on the right and left gave me the space I needed to make the type readable but also to bridge the gap between the white space and the illustration, unifying all the parts.

This spread demonstrates how the type announcing the GoH's names allows more than one GoH's bio and info to spread across the spread and live together while still remaining separate:

The type dominating near the artist head-shot sets up a strong relationship, even when it appears, contra-expectation, to the right of the artist's info, rather than the left.

The above gelled, of course, after the cover and the TOC page (below) were hammered out, suggesting again how the them developed organically, like roots finding their way in the soil. Even now I remember how satisfying it was to watch it develop front of me, almost like a living thing that had something of a mind of its own.

[SF] The OryCon 30 Souvenir Program Design

3424.

Starting with this post, I'm going to do a little look back. The centerpiece of our year is OryCon, Oregon's premier SF and F convention. All the people I've known and loved over my years of living as a Portlander come together each year to throw the best party ever thrown and continue to do so. 2016 saw OryCon 38, and 2017 will see OryCon 39. I've attended since Orycon IX.

Wife goes me one better. She hit OryCon VIII.

After I learned graphic design and got layout skills, I wanted to contribute in the way that spoke the most to me: creating the program guides. OryCon standardly puts out two: the Pocket Program, which has all the tough details about who's going to be where and doing what and what panels and where and such, and the Souvenir Program. So far, I've designed the main publications for OryCons 30, 31, 32, 33, 37 and 38. Six of the last nine. That may or may not be more than any one person has done in the history of the 'con, at least as far as I know. The fact may be a little different.

In 2007-2008, I finally got my chance. I seemed to find myself on a tabula rasa, of sorts; there wasn't anything but inspiration and a little organizational memory to go on. The Guests of Honor that year were author Harry Turtledove and artist Jeff Fennel, amongst the others, and I took a little spiritual inspiration from both, though it clearly was the artist that influenced the tone … as well as the theme, Days of Future Past. Looking at the future through the lens of what we thought it would look like during the salad days is a base SF tends to touch on a semi-regular basis and it's got a powerful pull.

Here's the cover of the OryCon 30 Souvenir Book, which is centered on a particularly beautiful example of Fennel's retro-futurist style:

The idea of retro-future influenced the type chosen: Futura Condensed seemed a natural choice. And here's where the influence of the art translated into visual theme: somehow it occurred to me that setting half the name in Futura Condensed Medium and half in Futura Condensed Bold would be visually complex while retaining a simplicity, visually playful without losing its earnestness. A perfect encapsulation of the innocent, antic yet serious hope the past had for the future.

An epiphany quickly followed, one step in front of the last, in which I realized how the half-and-half type approach would lend itself to a certain unifying treatment; putting one work in Medium in a black block at the ear of the page, forming an ready anchor point to let the rest of the page 'hang' from. Here's how it worked on the bio page for the Author GoH, Harry Turtledove:

The black block nicely defines the vertical space in which I could tuck a photograph of just about any size (sometimes you get very small graphics and have to make do with them) and provides a reference point that I can hang the rest of the page design from. The eye goes right to the black block and since the bold type outside the block is on the same baseline as that within, the unity is provided, and one's vision falls naturally down to where the text begins.

I had great fun coming up with this design and idea. It went over very well, as I recall.

One other page I want to show off: The table of contents:

I think it was on this page that I really hammered out how the type was going to play together and I just let the snowball run on out from here.

Note in the upper left-hand part of the page. The blue disk with the red swallowtail and the green Oregon shape with Portland picked out by a particularly bold star was a one-off; part of the 'Days of Future Passed' theme involved getting NASA photos from the 70s and 80s as illustrations (along with Jeff Fennel's art); I even found one where the Star Trek original series actors posed along with Roddenberry at the rollout of the Enterprise STS glide-test vehicle. It inspired me to come up with a sort of mission patch for OryCon 30 based on the NASA designs I've known (notice how the margin of the design (pictured right) is full of details, including the GoH names arranged as though they were a crew on a manned space mission. This is proud bit of inspiration; the simplified mark (with just the words OryCon at the 12 o'clock position and Portland, OR at the 6) appears to have been informally adopted as a logo/icon for OryCon*, a bit of indirect flattery which I'll cherish as long as I have memory to.

The logo of the 2017 edition of OryCon at http://39.orycon.org

It was a coming of age as a ComCon member and a demonstration to myself that I could take on a big project and make it work and succeed. And it was finally contributing in a real way to something in my life that I love very very much to this day.

I would go on to do it, so far, five more times unto the present day. Of which, more to come.

* IMPORTANT NOTE: The author does not speak for nor represent the views of OryCon and any views I have on the adoption of the 'mission patch' design as OryCon's logo are strictly my own impression and not to be construed as a statement of OryCon policy.

[design] OryCon 38 Souvenir Book: The 'Why' Of The Cover

3421.

When I first got the chance to come up with a design for the OryCon 38 program books, the rationale pretty much wrapped itself up for me and gifted itself to me on a silver Manticorean platter.

The real challenge to designing an SFF Con's program book is finding the one key thing that will blossom into a theme. Once you have that, everything else falls into place pretty quickly, and it's just a matter of making everything fit. The theme idea inspires the cover, the typographical approach to headings and display pages through out. It's a catalyst thing.

The reason it came so easy this year is because the Honorverse books of David Weber and the art of David Mattingly combine almost organically to present a certain gestalt from which a handle on the feel and form can easily be grasped. Once I saw the motifs I knew that an approach calling to mind the covers of the Honor Harrington books was demanded. This is this year's cover:

The choice of font was easy too, as Friz Quadrata is a font used in several of the Weber novels' covers. They were filled with a dramatic gradation to evoke the feeling of the type on those covers, and the star title ORYCON 38 was set in a black cartouche to evoke the feeling of the heavy-line framing used on many of them. The illustration involved, David Mattingly's Honor Amongst Enemies, seemed a natural; the right line drawn between complex depiction and simple composition to show off the richness of the art and the incredibly seductive detail of Mattingly's tech depictions and space vistas and still work well with the bold type.

Honor's steady, gimlet gaze looking out at the reader gives the theme a very personal punch.

A theme is born. The inspirations that brought this together cascaded through the document to anoint page headings and subheadings and headlines, like a catalyst.

The result is a satisfyingly laid out document and one which, once again, I'm proud to say I did.

[pdx] Meet The New "Fun-Size" Oregonian

3045.

Welcome to the new era. The Oregonian has gone post-newspaper.

They still publish one, mind, in a sense of the word. Newsprint is reeled off rolls, run through presses, and ink deposited in patters resembling letters, words, pictures, and such, in parseable array.

I had an idea of what I was in for when The Wife™ and myself stopped by the Jackson's Shell station at 122nd and Division before our weekly bout of Library time (you should all have a weekly Library day, by the way. Some sort of intellectual life. It's free. It won't kill you). Seeing those little The Sunday Oregonian early editions had generated an emotion that I don't think I'll ever be able to put into words.

Finally arriving out our branch and setting up for an afternoon of browsing, reading, and writing, we found several of The New Breed racked up where the should be. And, actually, that was rather odd. Since we no longer (for a bunch of reasons both practical and intellectual) subscribe to the pape, we catch up over the week at the Library. Typically, it was tough to find the week's editions; they were out around the building, all being read. Today, they were all in position, with no competition for reading them.

"They're all there," Wife™ says. "Nobody else is reading them."

And that is strange. Maybe it isn't a thing. Time will tell.

Left: a traditional broadsheet. Right: The Oregonian, "Fun-Size" edition.

 To be honest, I was having trouble visualizing such a small paper. The tabloid "Fun-Size" format has been identified with newspapers that are thought of as newspapers because they can't adequately be described as something else (e.g., National Enquirer), or major city dailies who were redesigned by people who were more interested in money than news (the post-Murdoch Chicago Sun-Times comes to mind).

Well, on the upside, my brain didn't burst into flames and I didn't cry and die inside when looking at this stunted little thing. World didn't halt spinning on its axis and career into the Sun. So, there's that.

But I do note that the Fun-Size edition debuted on the 2nd of April. I can only conclude that this is because if they rolled it out on the 1st, they would send the mother of all mixed messages.

The difference in layout is striking. The pre-April 2nd Oregonian carried the classic banner black-letter announcing the paper's title, a touch this old-fashioned mind always liked. In the stripe below the title, the wording Always On Oregonlive.com can be seen. There was a time they boasted of the Pulitzer they won there. We've come so far.

The current version shrinks the proud title to a minisculeness above the new-look Oregonian Media Group logo, a redesign which amounted to filling in the right side of the blackletter capital O.

The section heading. 'Memba when you could get the Living section or the Opinion section? Not no more, chum. Takes a sharp eye to deduce where one section takes up and the other leaves off.

The new Fun Size's section are all stapled together, a practice they are most proud of, ciding that they are the only daily in America to use stapled sections. They do it Europe, you know. The Fun Size's sections are nested within one another. The above it Saturdays. Tuesday, April 2nd's, was arranged thusly:

If you didn't pay attention to the table of contents, here's how you know you've stumbled into the Metro section of Saturday's paper, which is subsumed into the Main section:

The comics are all in color. This is a mixed blessing. Yay, because color comics, but, you know, some of the more richly-colored comics tend to look muddy when printed on newsprint. So, points for style here, but I actually preferred them in black and white a little more.

I will concede points for solid, sensible design as far as it goes, though. This Business section front page is a good example. Each new section has a signature color, and the front page's upper left ear is a square of that color. The boundaries of this square, extended out, give solid spines along which to organize and arrange the rest of the content. If the page layout of the Fun Size edition is based on modules, I'm betting that the single modular unit is the size of that square. So, solid layout logic, good.

Like I said, they redesigned The Oregonian,  and the world didn't end. Still, after watching the trajectory of the paper since the changes at the top, I can't say I'm encouraged.

Change doesn't happen in a vacuum. The Oregonian, a paper that once promised everyone who worked at it their jobs for life as long as they continued to do them well, has been hollowing itself out from the inside, as far as I'm concerned. The massive layoffs last year were just an inflection point in a path that began when the paper decided that on Mondays, Opinion would no longer be a separate section, and went through points on the curve that included Jack Ohman's departure for the Sacramento Bee, where he shines just as fiercely and funnily as he ever did here in Oregon, and the recently released news about compensation and performance standards that accentuate posting stories to OregonLive.com over everything else suggest that the West's largest daily is going to a place where I, bluntly, don't think we're going to be well-served from.

It doesn't signify, to me, courage in changing our idea of what a newspaper is and can do so much as it signifies, in the final view, a narrowing of perspective, and a stunting of horizons. Finding itself under too much pressure to aspire to greatness, The Oregonian is willing to settle for chasing clicks on a computer, web impressions on a smartphone.

The Fun-Size O's managment call it a 'digital-first' policy.

That's also the same policy my doctor has for prostate exams. 

[design] Quite Possibly The Only Handwritten Newspaper On The Planet

2634.In Chennai, India, there's a 4-page newspaper with a circulation of about 22,000. It's in Urdu, and its layout engine is pen and ink.

Called The Musalman (which, if I understand correctly, kind-of translates to "the Mohammedan" or maybe "the Muslim"), is a general-interest paper with local and international news. It's an evening daily paper.

In a corner of a rather small office, four calligraphers or katibs work about four hours each to turn out the four pages every day. The office employs Hindu as well as Muslim creeds and men as well as women. This is a 10-minute mini-documentary about it that shows the staff in action, ink flowing for the love of the art, and the passion for a news paper that serves and cares for all its audience:

 

The most inspiring word was said by the current editor, who explains that they could perhaps go computerized like their competition, but the heart of The Musalman is the calligraphy, and without the heart, what would be the point?

There is a great gallery mounted by Wired magazine here: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2007/07/gallery_calligraphers as well Wikipedia's article about it here. Also, if you do an image search on Musalman you'll get this display.

All very passionate and very, very elegant. Very human. 

Technorati Tags: Musalman, Print_design, Calligraphy

[design] The Award for Awkward Layout Of The Year Goes To ... The Portland Tribune

2443.

... not for this front page of the 17 June edition, which is pretty much faultless. Heading up the flag page is another story on the Kyron Horman ongoing tragedy, examining an the issue from the effect it will have on Portland Public Schools policy:

Boy's case adds to PPS woes. The Kyron Horman case means something to just about every one of us, moreso to PPS who will have to deal with the aftermath in terms of security and policy.

I've always been a fan of PTrib layout. Like the approach in type, the colorful masthead; always though it was a winner.

But times are tough for print, and you've got to sell ad space any way you can, and one way to do it is to have a gate-flap, overlaying the front page on the right side - sort of the opposite of the spadea that The Big O had such a time with during the election season.

Layout, in my opinion, is about half art, half science. One has to look at where things are and where other things will wind up laying, because juxtaposition can cause amazingly awkward things. Let's fold over that ad flap on the right and find out just what can occur ...

Now, instead of adding to Portland Public School's woes, Boy's case adds to Boatloads of Fun.

Ahh ... huh.

Now, I'll add real quickly that they doubtlessly had no choice but to run the ad, and the buyer bought the front page for a reason. Layout problems may be easier solved by the armchair layout artist after the fact than in reality. I certainly don't think that PTrib was in any way shape or form trying to make any light of the issue or do anything more than just live up to the ad obligation.

Still, though, I wasn't at the layout of this issue, but I wish I was ... or at least been a fly on the wall when the layout artist was attacking this one. I did at one time apply to Community Newspapers for a layout job.

Never heard from them.

Pity, really.

Regardless of what anyone things of this or my opinion of it, you've got to admit, I think, that when you come up to a paper box like this:

... you're going to have an authentic Whiskey-tango-foxtrot moment.

And in complete fairness, knowing I tend to look more critically at layout than most everyone I know, I took it around to several friends and a few co-workers.

Each one of them saw what I saw. I didn't have to prompt them.

I wonder if I would have been able to make it come out any differently if I'd had a chance to do that layout. Would've loved the chance.

Technorati Tags: Portland Tribune, layout, awkward layout, Kyron Horman

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[design] XTC's Go 2: Another Cover Where The Type Is The Art

2348.

Referred to me by Ben Lukoff after peeping the Chumbawamba cover two postings back, is this, the RECORD COVER for XTC's 1978 Album, XTC's Go 2:



The text, in full, reads as follows:

This is a RECORD COVER. This writing is the DESIGN upon the record cover. The DESIGN is to help SELL the record. We hope to draw your attention to it and encourage you to pick it up. When you have done that maybe you'll be persuaded to listen to the music - in this case XTC's Go 2 album. Then we want you to BUY it. The idea being that the more of you that buy this record the more money Virgin, the manager Ian Reid and XTC themselves will make. To the aforementioned this is known as PLEASURE. A good cover DESIGN is one that attracts more buyers and gives more pleasure. This writing is trying to pull you in much like an eye-catching picture. It is designed to get you to READ IT. This is called luring the VICTIM, and you are the VICTIM. But if you have a free mind you should STOP READING NOW! because all we are attempting to do is to get you to read on. Yet this is a DOUBLE BIND because if you indeed stop you'll be doing what we tell you, and if you read on you'll be doing what we've wanted all along. And the more you read on the more you're falling for this simple device of telling you exactly how a good commercial design works. They're TRICKS and this is the worst TRICK of all since it's describing the TRICK whilst trying to TRICK you, and if you've read this far then you're TRICKED but you wouldn't have known this unless you'd read this far. At least we're telling you directly instead of seducing you with a beautiful or haunting visual that may never tell you. We're letting you know that you ought to buy this [place album format here] because in essence it's a PRODUCT and PRODUCTS are to be consumed and you are a consumer and this is a good PRODUCT. We could have written the band's name in special lettering so that it stood out and you'd see it before you'd read any of this writing and possibly have bought it anyway. What we are really suggesting is that you are FOOLISH to buy or not buy an album merely as a consequence of the design on its cover. This is a con because if you agree then you'll probably like this writing - which is the cover design - and hence the album inside. But we've just warned you against that. The con is a con. A good cover design could be considered as one that gets you to buy the [album format], but that never actually happens to YOU because YOU know it's just a design for the cover. And this is the RECORD COVER.

Isn't that delicious? They get you with the wit, mess with your head a little, and go out on the same note they went in on … kind of like Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren, only much shorter and with a lot less surrealism.

Are they having you on or having the laugh of you or letting you in on the joke? And how can you be sure either way?

But the design point comes in when your eyes course over the typewriter font (which, in 1978, probably was done by a typewriter) and the stark white on black. The message goes up the side of your head with a two-by-four … a somewhat pretentious and sarcastic two-by-four, but a two-by, none the less. And the type carries the artistic impression of a bare, direct message.

This could have come out of any modern 'zine, so, doubleplusgood there.

Unlike Chumbawamba's album, though, the block text is not the entire title, which is XTC's Go 2 only.

Technorati Tags: XTC, XTC's Go 2, album cover design, graphic design, typography

[design] Making A Business Card In Photoshop

2341.

You can think of a million reasons to have a business card and a million situations to have one. You could also find out the figures you need to make it or … Tutttoaster has a nifty perspective on the basic-basic of the business card workflow that you can peruse. The tutoral file (included at the end of the posting) contains all the layers that were in the tute: The front looks like this:

And the back looks like this:

It's a nice design, but why not download it and come up with your own variations – if you're a designer, you shouldn't be satisfied with what you get handed, anyway. Never be satisfied with the default!

It's a fine foundation to build all sorts of business cards in, including your own, and with cheap business card services proliferating by the day, it's a fine file to have in your collection, or alter to your own workflow.

If you're any sort of designer, even if your an unsuccessful one like me, you'll want to do that.

• Visit and Download: Tutorial at Tuttoaster: http://www.tuttoaster.com/design-a-print-ready-business-card-in-photoshop/
  

Technorati Tags: business card design, tutorials, photoshop tutorials, design, print design, graphic design

[type] Georgia And Arial Are Finally Getting That Print Polish

2210.Verdana and Georgia are two fonts everyone has seen. They're all over the web, literally; MSFT dubbed them part of the set of core fonts for the web, and every computer with a commercially-produced OS likely haz them. They tend to occasionally – well, more than occasionally – find their way into print.

Most notably (and somewhat hilariously), the chain IKEA caused a stir – mostly amongst us typeophiles and graphic designers – when they decided to ditch their long-time variant on Futura, sometimes called IKEA Sans, for Verdana. To most designers, this is like showing up for an important client meeting in one of those suits that come in a wrapper. Declasse? You bet. Might as well just use Comic Sans up in there (which, maybe not coincidentally, is also a core font for the web).

The primary objection to using Georgia and Verdana for anything other than Web design is just that – they were intended for the web. Designing something to be visible on-screen, by its very term, means that you're disregarding any consideration that would make it appropriate for print:

To make the fonts look good at small screen sizes, they were designed with large x-heights, open counters, high bold contrast, extra spacing, and exaggerated features to help distinguish commonly confused letterforms (like the number 1, the lowercase L and the uppercase I)—which is why the text starts to feel awkward at large sizes.

This is apparently in the act of being rectified now:

The Ascender, Carter & Cone and Font Bureau project intends to optimize the Verdana and Georgia fonts for many new applications, including extended text formatting on websites and in print. The Georgia/Verdana project will provide a variety of enhancements to these fonts including:

• New weights and widths beyond the original four fonts in each family
• Extensions to the character sets
• Extensions to the kerning
• OpenType typographic features for enhanced typography

“Verdana and Georgia were commissioned by Microsoft to provide the basic necessities of type on screen: sanserif and serif, in regular and bold weights with italics, designed for maximum legibility.” said Matthew Carter of Carter & Cone Type Inc. “The new additions to the font families are a natural and timely progression; they offer a wider range of typographic versatility, both on screen and in print, while remaining consistent with the originals.”

The Core Fonts for the Web initiative is actually a thing of the past now; Verdana and Georgia are very widely distributed however, and if people are going to use them for print as well as Web, we may as well have good clean versions of them for that.

I'll still choose Myriad over Verdana, though. Nothing personal, Verdana.

(via idsgn)

Technorati Tags: Verdana, Georgia, Web Fonts, Print design, print fonts

A New Magazine For Oregon: 1859:Oregon's Magazine

2089.Because I love print and I love Oregon I note that there's a new magazine coming up very soon (if it hasn't already), produced by Deschutes Media, called 1859: Oregon's Magazine.

It promises a quarterly look at the real Oregon. If the Flash intro to the magazine's website is any indication, the photography is going to be nifty.

Kevin Max of Deschutes Media says this about it:

I describe 1859 as a National Geographic merged with a Condé Nast Traveler, but all done for our own Oregon

Sounds like it's going to be pretty charming.

Go here: 1859: Oregon's Magazine home page

And read a press release about it here.

Technorati Tags: Oregon, Oregoniana, 1859: Oregon's Magazine, Print design, Oregon media