Did you miss our conversation with Jon Key? Register here to watch the recording of this thought-provoking of the PRINT Book Club.

“The [design] canon is exclusionary,” as Jon Key says, so the impetus for his research for Black, Queer, & Untold came from what “echoed from the silence.” Key admits that as a queer, Black designer, the book was born as a selfish project—to see what he could bring up for himself.

I can’t tell you my future, so I’ll tell you my past.

Jon Key

And, oh what treasures he surfaced! Key tells the story through his search for lost, forgotten, and ignored artifacts of Black, queer design history, a process he calls both personal and pedagogical. “This represents me and it’s also something I can learn from.”

Our discussion with Key wound from the depth of his research to a discussion of some of the people and objects he uncovered during the four years of writing and compiling this book. Key talked about his search for the origin of the word “gay,” to the first Black gay design he ever saw. Key also touched on his personal history, as a child in an art-encouraged household (even if it came with a little “glitter trauma”) and his initial want to go to Georgetown to study psychology.

Being a designer is a visual expression of [psychology] in many ways. Working with clients, digging into ‘why.’

Jon Key

And, of course, we also discussed Key’s partner in life and work, Wael Morcos, and the work they do at their award-winning Brooklyn studio, Morcos Key.

Register here to watch the recording and buy your copy of Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, and Trailblazers.

Header: screenshot from PRINT Book Club with Jon Key (top left), Steven Heller (top right), and Debbie Millman (bottom).

The post ‘Echoes From the Silence,’ Book Club Recap with Jon Key appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

I had forgotten about having contributed to the book, but was happy I had the good sense to agree to do it a few years back. MXWX is an exciting collection by this key figure from LA’s rock epoch. For those who don’t know, in 1980 he directed many of the first music videos; his editorial illustration appeared in most national magazines; he was a founding partner of various design groups, including Art Attack (1975), Neo Plastics (1980) and Brains (1994); he served as art director at Virgin Records (1992) and Warner Music (2001).

To celebrate his forthcoming publication, below is the text that I wrote for MXWX, alongside an interview with Haggerty.

It was the late 1960s. I had the good fortune to be mixed up with some bad fortune but in the good sense of the word. I was the art director of a few underground newspapers. I had the good sense to take advantage of the times while it was good to be bad. One of the good things about working on the bad underground porn weekly called SCREW, was that I could ask good, indeed great, artists and designers to work with me. By employing good illustration I could have these wonderful artists make me look good. But enough about me. Let’s get to Mick Haggerty.

I badly wanted him to work on SCREW. So, as was my habit, whenever I saw some printed or unprinted work that struck my fancy, I’d write a letter on SCREW letterhead, suggesting (actually begging in a nuanced grovel) that the recipient do a cover or two. Do enough covers in a year and an artist could put a down payment on a inflatable sex doll. Do only one or two and an artist could tell their friends (or not, as the case may be) that they’d done one or two SCREW covers (status?), and take them out for a moderately priced dinner on the fee they received.

At that time in the late 1960s/early 1970s, we had no immediate forms of communication, especially from New York to London, other than Telex (which SCREW could not afford) or Special Delivery (which SCREW could not afford). So regular airmail was the best. A letter to Mick took two weeks to arrive, and depending on how keen he was on answering, it could take a minimum of two weeks for the return post. It was always a gamble. I’d usually give up hope if I didn’t hear anything back for three or four months—sometimes a year. I don’t recall how long it took for Mick to respond. But respond he did. And not just in a letter saying “are you kidding me?” or “I have more self-respect than to work for your rag” or “may you stew in the hell of your own making.” He agreed to do a cover and sent along a sketch, too. I didn’t even look at the sketch before sending back my airmail response: “Do it.” The result is in this very volume.

That is pretty much my memory of our interaction. I feel we met at some point, but no records exist. But I know without doubt that I continued to follow his work. And the piece of his I still adore (which my filmmaker son, now 30, fell in love with too) is Mondrian Mickey. This image of a lopsided DeStjil grid painting pouring primary color paint onto the floor in the form (and color) of a Mickey Mouse melt is the most hilariously genius commentary on the marriage of fine and popular art ever produced in the 20th century. Take that, Mr. Warhol.

When Mick asked me to write this essay, in addition to my own story, I took the opportunity to ask him about his (well, it is his book!). And the first question I had to ask was about Mondrian Mickey.

Seems to me that your most familiar work is the Mondrian melting into Mickey Mouse. What do you believe is your most iconic work? 
Yes, Mickey Mondrian is it. I’ve spent my whole life on that wall between those two.

Is there an origin story?
It was done for Takenobu Igarashi at Idea Magazine … at the time I was fascinated by the plasticity of objects, and was making lots of drawings that showed extreme movement and transformation. (Pablo and George get a lot of well-deserved credit for deconstructing form in space, but the comic strip was invented a decade before Cubism, and those artists never get a look in). I of course considered Piet Mondrian the High Priest, the king of black outline and flat color, but the cultural appropriation of his work allowed me to also see him in a more kitschy, style king context. Looking through sketchbooks of that time I made many drawings of his paintings, some with lots of handles on transforming them into furniture, and even as melting swiss cheese. Once you melt and tilt the work, what else would it become?

Perhaps the work resonates with other graphic artists because it gets to the heart of the simple alchemy and reinvention that’s possible in our daily trade manipulating the same old well-worn images. For me it defines the exact spot I spent my life.

Since, I’m now in interview mode, when did you begin to publish?  
When I dropped out of college in 1972 I made a cold call on Island Records Office in London, hoping to be given a Bob Marley or even a ska cover. It was a few floors in a converted row house where all the employees sat together around a large white table covered in telephones, and after being invited in, and they had all looked though my portfolio, someone just said, “Give him Rosie?” I was of course happy to get my first job but too embarrassed to tell anyone I knew that I was doing a Fairport Convention “folkie” cover! Many years later I worked with Richard Thompson and he got good laugh out of it.

I recall, and my recollection is proven in this book, a lot of music design. Was music your initial focus?
Music was everything that mattered to me then. When I saw Bob Seidemann’s cover for Blind Faith, the earth shifted on its axis. That art somehow married to the power of music meant perhaps we could change the world. I always felt the best work had its own soundtrack. The Stenberg Brothers, arguably the first and the best [Soviet Russian Constructivist] graphic designers, made work that just screams. I was always drawn to images like that.

What was the illustration scene, world or milieu like when you started out?
I was trained in England as a graphic designer by purists in the Swiss mode like Anthony Froshaug. (He once cried in front of our class after confessing to having mixed Baskerville with Gill Sans on the same page.) I never picked up a pencil without a ruler, and drawing was viewed as a highly suspect activity. I had to travel 6,00 miles to L.A. and lock my door to even dare to attempt it. My impulse was to highly refine my drawings to remove any trace of the fact that I couldn’t draw. When I arrived on the West Coast, the favored style was airbrushed images that made everything look like shiny inflated balloons just begging to be burst.

You draw so damn well. Still, you have many styles. Why? And which approach is your preferred or favorite?
I am always driven by whatever the job at hand seems to require in order to be successful, and I try to confound people’s expectations. I always turned down any job where the client started by saying, “we want something like that drawing you did for …” My first love of course is flat colors inside black lines, reductive, impactful … perfect.

Many of these images were created prior to the computer. Was intricacy a fetish for you?
Most of them are way before digital vector tools, just ink on board, and yes, I broke into a cold sweat after making the perfect line. 

The Donald Trump image seems so out of stylistic place. Why?
It seems the perfect style to me. Gilbert Stuart’s famous painting of George Washington, the man who claimed “I couldn’t tell a lie.”

Speaking of guys with orange hair, how did the association with David Bowie come about?
United Artists Records called me in to work on Derek Boshier’s photograph for the cover of Let’s Dance, and it just grew from there. David and I were the same age and grew up just miles from each other. From the start it just felt comfortable; we had a good laugh whenever we got together.

There is everything from cartoon realism to abstract “adventurism” (my quotes) in your work. What triggers which approach?
I love “abstract adventurism” … not sure exactly what it means but sounds like me and I can’t wait to use it!

As my final question, given all you’ve done, is there another aesthetic transformation in the works?
There is only aesthetic transformation, isn’t there?

The post The Daily Heller: Mick Haggerty’s Multiple Personality Illustration appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“In a nutshell, our business started because we wanted to create the Blackest antiques store ever.”

Jannah Handy and Kiyanna Stewart’s love story is inextricably intertwined with the origin of their Brooklyn antique shop, Blk Mkt Vintage. The couple met while working on a college campus in the Student Affairs department, as a side hustle in vintage sourcing developed and bonded them together. In time, Blk Mkt Vintage was born, largely in response to filling a void. The pair saw a need for preserving and making accessible vintage objects that tell Black stories, so they began doing that passion-filled work. Now, just over a decade since the founding of Blk Mkt Vintage, they’ve published a book of the same name to document and share their mission even further.

The book’s introduction illustrates the couple’s side hustle turned passion:

“This book is the physical manifestation of our love for one another and for this history… We’ve been thinking about this book for almost a decade and knew that when the time came, we would write a book that placed us, two Black queer women from Brooklyn at the center, as a means to show how Black folks have been doing the work of archiving, collecting, and preserving for as long as we’ve existed. That our business, while doing important and fulfilling work, is the product of and response to generations of Black folks’ intimate relationship to memory work.”

Below, Handy and Stewart elaborate on their journey and drive. (Responses lightly edited for length and clarity.)

What is it about collecting and selling vintage items that excite you so much? Can you describe the feeling of finding an item that needs to come home with you?

What excites us the most is really twofold. First, for us, it’s all about the thrill of the hunt. Seeking out items that tell nuanced stories of Black history is akin to being on a treasure hunt. From Thailand to Amsterdam to Cuba, and more, no matter where we go, we are always on the hunt.

Seeking out items that tell nuanced stories of Black history is akin to being on a treasure hunt.

On the flip side, we started our business not only to collect but also to make available and accessible the items and stories we unearth. The “finding” is awesome, but the “sharing” allows our work to serve as a pebble in a pond and cause ripples that impact across wide swaths and along the time continuum.

Outside of the dopamine hit that occurs when hunting, the feeling is guttural. Sometimes there is language behind it and other times there isn’t. Having been in this industry for a decade we have come up with some questions we consider to make sure the vintage high doesn’t cloud our judgment completely:

• Have we seen the item before?
• Can we walk away from it?
• Do we need it?
• Does it serve a function?

As Black collectors, do you feel an added sense of responsibility or pressure to make sure critical elements of your heritage and culture aren’t lost? Can you share more about how your identities inform how and why you are in this industry?

We 100% feel that our work comes from a sense of duty, a sense of preservation of our collective American history. In the Introduction of the book, we tell a story about an encounter with vintage NAACP parade float signs that reinforce the fact that we save items from ending up in the landfill. 

We decided that it wasn’t up to someone else to amass the collection we wished we saw, it was up to us and Blk Mkt Vintage was born. 

Sparing the dramatics and hyperbole, we often are the last chance for items before they are discarded. This sense of duty was ingrained in us at the outset of our Blk Mkt journey 10 years ago, as we started this business out of a very personal need to be “seen,” As two Black, queer women, we rarely came across artifacts or ephemera that told our story or the stories of our ancestors who shared our identities. Digging through countless estate sales, flea markets, antique stores, and auctions, we had to tirelessly search for representation of ourselves. We decided that it wasn’t up to someone else to amass the collection we wished we saw; it was up to us and Blk Mkt Vintage was born.

What is the community of Black vintage sellers and collectors like, and how does it feel being a part of that? How does this work, in particular, bring you all together?

One aspect of the book process that was most rewarding was the opportunity to pass the mic and chop it up with our comrades in arms— fellow Black folks in the vintage industry. From collectors who have been with us since our e-commerce days on Etsy.com in 2015, to new collaborators we’ve met in our picking travels. 

The world of Black vintage is very robust and varied, a point driven home in our book in chapter X. Our conversations were not merely preaching to the choir; we were able to hear from world-renown artists who use vintage Black ephemera to inform their practice. A creator who examines the hood through the lens of mid-century architecture and design, and a collector who inherited his grandmother’s collection of 1960s Soul Publications, a Black music periodical that she started with her late husband.

There are countless points of entry in the vintage industry and just hearing how others came to the space might spark your own entry. 

Is there a particular item in your collection that most accurately represents your mission at BLK MKT Vintage, and/or why you got into this game in the first place?

Part of our weekly routine is frequenting early morning, outdoor vintage flea markets. Having been in this field for a while, we are regulars and have become friends or friendly with the other vendors and dealers who frequent the markets. One morning an older white woman, likely in her 80s, approached Jannah and said, “You buy Black stuff, right? Come to my car.” 

We’d only seen this woman at the market, never spoken or made a deal. Being that we were in public (and Jannah had a considerable size advantage), with some trepidation, Jannah followed her to her trunk and was shocked at what she saw. An original 1960s, large format photograph of Muhammad Ali (Cassisus Clay at the time of the photo) and his first wife that had noticeable singe marks around the edges. The woman explained that the photo was salvaged from the photographer’s studio that burned down. She had heard from another vendor that we buy Black antiques so she sought Jannah out. This story, photograph, and interaction all encapsulate the mission of Blk Mkt Vintage. If we were never looking, we would not have found.

Our story and approach is so much more than the physical object, it’s about the stories, the people and the serendipity that sometimes happens in a 80-year-old, white woman’s trunk! 

Our story and approach is so much more than the physical object, it’s about the stories, the people and the serendipity that sometimes happens in a 80-year-old, white woman’s trunk!

How does it feel to put a book together that encapsulates your work? What aspect of the book are you proudest of?

Even though the book has been out for three months now, it’s all still very surreal. Ten years ago, when dreaming up what our vintage hobby (at the time) could grow into, we knew a book was in the plans. We wanted to canonize or memorialize our work, approach, and community that we have engaged with for over a decade. On the most basic level, we wrote this book to be found. As pickers, we have collected, sold, and seen thousands of books in hundreds of collections. In five, 20, or 100 years in the future, we want our book to be found and explored in a completely new context.

We are proudest of this book being completed— it was no easy feat! We are proud that a dream we had 10 years ago came true through hard work, grit, and perseverance. At the end of the day, Blk Mkt Vintage is a love letter to Black people and Black history, and through this book, a lot more people can share that love.

The post Blk Mkt Vintage Documents its Mission to Preserve and Share Black History in New Book appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Usually, a book has a two- to four-year life expectancy. The official pub date provides time for promotion and lobbying for premium space in bookstore windows and other signing and display opportunities. After a few months, the sales are tallied to determine whether the book will remain on view or tucked away.

That tally also determines whether or not an author gets the fateful letter that, owing to low sales, “we have decided to put your [title] into remainder”—at which point large discounts are offered to booksellers and the author(s).

I’ve had many OP letters in my life. Even the envelope projects a vibe of finality. Often the reasoning is that the book has run its course and is no longer relevant. Most of the time, the book is one of the hundreds—or thousands—that annually are ignored for one of the following reasons:

1. The size of the audience was misjudged
2. It was poorly promoted
3. It received little to no critical recognition
4. It stinks.

If lucky, an OP book could achieve cult status and become available through used book dealers. In New York, the Strand is ground zero for OP books—and hard-to-get books that fell through the publishing industry cracks.

Today, I am listing a few of my OP titles that can be obtained through online services …

Click on caption or browse Google for availability and discounts.

The post The Daily Heller: What it Means to Be OP! appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Case in point: As part of the 1940 Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact, the USSR invaded and occupied Estonia and deported its “anti-Soviet-elements” to remote eastern areas deep inside Russia. When the pact was broken in 1941 with Hitler’s surprise invasion of the USSR, rather than “liberate” Estonia the Germans besieged and occupied it, imposing their own brand of terror. During the deadly match-up of battling armies, Estonian civilians were caught in the middle. In 1944 when the Red Army reconquered the Baltic states, including Estonia, Stalin’s terror ensued. Thousands of civilians fled the advancing troops, some escaped to Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, Canada, England and the USA.

Maria Spann is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose maternal grandparents fled to Sweden along with their two young children — Maria’s 5-year-old mother and 7-year-old uncle. In her youth Maria listened to her grandparents’ harrowing accounts and decided to delve deeper into this little known horror of the world war, of the Estonian exodus.

Her concept: To interview as many survivors as possible who were children then from her mother’s generation, photograph them now as older people along with one object that they saved from the journey. Her work has recently been compiled into the limited edition book Children of the 1944 Estonian Mass Flight, which Maria also handsomely designed and skillfully self-published. Each section begins with a compelling personal recollection on the first of two spreads (in English and Estonian) and a portrait on one page and the object on the opposite.

For this interview she talks about the process of tracking down the first 57 survivors, and recording their memories in what promises to be an ongoing discovery.

What triggered this emotional project?
I’m half Estonian. My mother lIme and uncle Jüri were born on a farm in Nautse on the small island of Muhu in Estonia. They were 5 and 7 years old when they were smuggled with their mother Siina onto the boat Juhan, which made nine journeys from Tallinn to Stockholm during the late summer and fall of 1944 (to transport ethnic Swedes from Estonia to their ancient homeland). Their father Georg made his way over a few weeks later in a small rowing boat with three other men.

During my childhood I heard the story of their escape mostly from an adult point of view, but always wondered what it was like for the children. Later on, when my grandparents had passed away and my mother and uncle were the only “real” Estonians left in our family with memories of Estonia and the escape from there, I became fascinated by how different their account of events was from the (very few) stories my grandparents had told us.

So, I decided to start a photographic project—I wanted to try to find more people who fled Estonia as children, just like my mother and uncle, and hear their accounts of the escape.

How often and for how long did you visit Estonia during the course of your research?
Not once! All my subjects still live outside of Estonia, apart from a few who have second homes there. Rather pleasingly though, the book was printed in Tallinn, and I went there to pass it on press this summer. 

How did you find the people in this diaspora? And where did many of them reside now?
I started with my mom and uncle, of course, as they were easily accessible to me in Sweden and it meant I had something of the project to show when reaching out to others. Then I contacted the Estonian Houses (centers of Estonian culture set up in various places across the world, many after the mass flight) in Stockholm, Gothenburg and New York City to explain my project and see if they might have possible candidates in their communities. 

In Sweden, news spread really fast by word of mouth—once I’d seen a couple of people, they recommended other friends and acquaintances and most were keen to take part. In New York, I attended the Estonian Cultural Days in 2018 to hand out flyers and spread news about the project. It took a little longer than in Sweden, but again, most people were eventually keen to take part. I also contacted the VEMU Estonian Museum in Toronto, where there is a huge Estonian community, and they put me in touch with an Estonian retirement home in the city.

The main 10 countries where the Estonian refugees ended up resettling were Sweden, UK, France, Belgium, Australia, USA, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil. My initial aim was to travel to all these countries to be able to include a chapter on each in the book. However, financial constraints as well as COVID got in my way and so I decided to focus on the countries I could easily get to in order to finish the book by the 80th anniversary of the flight this year. In early 2023, I contacted various Estonian Houses around the UK, and quickly found a group of willing Estonian refugee “children” who I met with during a week-long whirlwind tour of England. 

What was it that you wanted your subjects to provide to you? What is the significance of the objects that are shown?
I wanted to hear the stories of the escape from a child’s point of view. The adult accounts are mostly accurate in a factual sense, but for the children, it was more about strong sensory memories—the smell of the boat, the taste of the white bread or the sinking feeling in their stomach—than the actual events of the journey itself. Often my subjects would say something along the lines of, “Oh, but what do I know—I was just a small child. It’s not the real story!” But I think that’s exactly what it is. The objects were added as a way of making the project more visual and showing what a wide range of belongings different people hold onto from such a momentous life event. 

What were the lasting lessons you learned from talking to all of these people?
I have met with 57 people for the project, and I found it so interesting how what you remember as a 5-year-old differs greatly from what you remember as a 15-year-old. Most of the people who were aged between 3 to 9 years old when they fled remember feeling worried and didn’t really know what was happening, but were also safe in the knowledge that they were with their families. Quite a few 10- to 14-year-olds were excited to finally be traveling somewhere, as they hadn’t been able to do so since before the war. One lady who was 13 at the time of the escape was just extremely relieved that they couldn’t take their piano with them as she hated practicing. But many of the older teens I met were left much more traumatized and often didn’t really want to share too much. 

I also think these stories are hugely relevant today—nothing has really changed in terms of children being forced to flee persecution all over the world. Maybe sharing these now … can contribute to more empathy being shown towards today’s refugee children and their families. 

You produced and published the book yourself. How will you distribute it, and who do you want to have a copy?
Oh yes, the distribution and PR for the book is my least-favorite part! I managed to secure funding for the printing costs of the book from a few generous institutions in the Estonian diaspora, and in exchange I sent them copies of the finished book, which I hope will help spread the word. It is also being sold at the Vabamu Museum of Occupations in Tallinn and through the Estonian National Archives in Tartu. Everyone who contributed their story to the project has received a copy of the book. I’m also selling it through the project website. 

If I’m allowed to dream, I would love this project to eventually end up at the Fotografiska Museum in Tallinn—back home!

The post The Daily Heller: Memories of a Wartime Escape From Estonia appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Join us Thursday, January 16, at 4 p.m. ET

For our first PRINT Book Club of 2025, Jon Key will join Steven Heller and Debbie Millman to discuss his gorgeous and essential new book, Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, and Trailblazers.

From the publisher:

“Growing up in Seale, Alabama as a Black Queer kid, then attending the Rhode Island School of Design as an undergraduate, Jon Key hungered to see himself in the fields of Art and Design. But in lectures, critiques, and in the books he read, he struggled to see and learn about people who intersected with his identity or who got him. So he started asking himself questions:

What did it mean to be a graphic designer with his point of view? What did it mean to be a Black graphic designer? A Queer graphic designer? Someone from the South? Could his identity be communicated through a poster or a book? How could identity be archived in a design canon that has consistently erased contributions by designers who were not white, straight, and male?

In Black, Queer, & Untold, acclaimed designer and artist Jon Key delves into these questions and manifests a book he (and so many others) needed when they were coming up. Black, Queer & Untold pays tribute to the incredible designers, artists, and people who came before. Jon offers these stories an enduring, reverential stage – and in doing so, gifts us a book that immediately takes its place among the creative arts canon.”

Jon(athan) Key is an artist, designer, educator, and writer originally from Seale, Alabama. Key began his design career at Grey Advertising in NYC before moving on to work with HBO, Nickelodeon, and The Public Theater. He is co-founder of the Brooklyn–based design studio Morcos Key with Wael Morcos and currently teaches at Cooper Union and SVA. Key is also a co-founder and design director of Codify Art, a multidisciplinary collective dedicated to creating, producing, supporting, and showcasing work by artists of color, particularly women, queer, and trans artists. His work has been featured in Jeffery Deitch Gallery NYC, the Armory Show, The New York Times, and The Atlantic and his writing has been featured in publications such as The Washington Post, The Black Experience in Design, and AIGA.

Don’t miss our conversation with Jon Key on Thursday, January 16 at 4 PM ET. Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, and Trailblazers.

The post Jon Key’s ‘Black, Queer, & Untold’ Will Be Our First PRINT Book Club of 2025 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Sample books have a special place in the archives of graphic and type design. They are, at the same time, examples of letters and entire alphabets and examples of the way the respective typefaces can be used in real and speculative layouts. Many years ago, I stumbled across a rare bookshop in upstate New York that was selling the type specimen collection of author,designer, former editor of American Artist Fridolf Johnson, known for his popular Dover books on bookplates, vintage printing ephemera, and the prints of Rockwell Kent, among others, His collection included two large cardboard boxes with file folders organized by typeface and including a few hundred specimens from Bauer, ATF, Huxley, Barhardt and Spindler, Deberny & Peignot, and dozens more type foundries. Acquiring them was the trigger for various books and articles I edited and wrote.

In the stacks of the rich typographic legacy of Letterform Archive are many of these rare specimen books and brochures. The archive has chosen to publish facsimile editions of some of the choicest pieces by leading typeface designers, collected in portfolios ingeniously designed by Letterform Archive’s art director, Alice Chau.

These titles publish in the trade in early February but are available directly from Letterform during December and January. The first three-volume set is available here: Type By Lucian Bernhard; Type By Roger Excoffon; Type By Aldo Novarese. I also spoke with publisher Lucie Parker about the plans for future facsimiles in their Type By series.

What is your intention for the series?
Our intention with Type By is to present these marvels of marketing exactly as they were first produced: at full length, in full color, and in their original trim sizes, bound into individual booklets or folded into simple pamphlets. 

This is in part to share examples of foundries’ inventiveness in print during the first half of the twentieth century when such ephemera flourished, but also to present the complete original typefaces in all available styles and sizes—alternate glyphs and all—for type students and scholars. 

While in-use examples ultimately do so much to shape a typeface’s story, there’s something particularly special about seeing a typeface presented in its original specimen, which served as a sort of visual statement of purpose at the time of the type’s release. In their proposed use cases and choices in layout, format, and material, specimens give us a sense of what type designers and foundries envisioned for their typefaces and hint at the design ethos and ideas that led to the faces’ creation. 

Individual spreads of these specimens are often reproduced in publications, but we wanted type enthusiasts to have access to every page of the specimens’ rich and wonderful context and experience the physicality of their unique formats. As a cornerstone of Letterform Archive’s collection, we find these specimens just too delightful—colorful and dynamic, innovative and daring—to show only a handful of layouts. 

We’ve focused the first three on the output of individual designers to show their remarkable range, as well as the relationships between the various faces they designed.

Are you planning more in the series?
If there’s demand, we’d be thrilled to produce more titles in the series. We have a collection of more than 4,000 type specimens, and we’re eager to share them with our core audience of type lovers. First up, though, is Stephen Coles’s Modern Type, a mega volume on twentieth-century type told through the lens of type specimens, which will come out in 2026. So the next installment in the Type By series would likely be in early 2027.

Who and what else?
It’s very early days—we’re in the fun phase of looking at our collection materials and seeing what would make the most robust and visually splendid selections. But the team here is excited to research Adrian Frutiger, A. M. Cassandre, Rudolf Koch, and Imre Reiner as potential subjects for the next installment. 

The post The Daily Heller: Type Specimen Simulacra From Letterform Archive appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Over 700 creatives from around the globe contributed to this ambitious project. Each designer was paired with another, tasked with interpreting a specific date through opposing concepts. The result is a stunning visual exploration of duality, presented in two volumes: one dark, one light.

Designer collaborators include Katharina Saurer of Germany’s Heine Warnecke Design, Belgium-based book designer Tina de Souter, Mashael N. Alajmi of The Royal Institute of Traditional Arts (the first-ever Saudi participant), Margarida Rego from Lisbon’s Ilhas Studio, Q’s Magdalena Cardwell, and Aaron Levin out of Paris, as well as some of the below-quoted creatives.

The book is a work of art, printed lithographically in one special color (877 silver) to a variety of 28 different Fedrigoni papers. The tactile experience is as captivating as the visual, with each page inviting you to touch, feel, and appreciate the nuances of paper. The publication was printed and foiled by UK-printer Pressision with binding by Diamond Print Finishers.

My task was to represent the word “fix” using the number 26, a unique challenge since “fix” is hard to show without illustrating “break.” My solution: 26 ‘fixed’ to a wall, with a nod to the U.S. phone repair brand UBREAKIFIX. A fun exercise in the moderately absurd—thank you, Fedrigoni!

Naomi Usher, Studio Usher (NYC)

Sarah Bloor, account director at Pressision Creative Print & Packaging said the company was thrilled to collaborate with Fedrigoni on the 2025 Fedrigoni 365 project. “Printing on both the white and black paper ranges with silver ink showcases Pressision’s specialist printing capabilities and highlights the unique qualities of each material,” Bloor said. “It’s a privilege to help bring this project to life, blending innovation with craftsmanship to celebrate the creative potential of paper.”

This year, the theme of exploring opposites offered an intriguing challenge. I was fortunate to receive a thought-provoking word, which inspired me to take a fresh, more conceptual approach, breaking away slightly from my usual style. I’m excited to see how people interpret it!

David Sedgwick, Studio DBD (UK)

There’s something about the equation “calendar + paper + typography” that makes it one of those perfect design exercises on par with an LP record sleeve, a beverage can or a paperback book cover. So, I was thrilled to participate.

Aaron Levin (France)

Each designer had a unique process of homing in on their interpretation of their opposing concept. “When I discovered my word was “Universal”, I was very intimidated,” said Aaron Levin. “I thought, wow, that’s a pretty broad subject, how can I do something that screams out ‘universal’? In the end, I tried not to convey the theme but to think about it in terms of a universal language. I realised that even though what we call “Arabic” numerals are recognized throughout the world, they are far from universal. You have only to go to any market in Japan or Kuwait and you will see their own number system scrawled on cardboard price signs. Initially, I thought of sign language but, after researching it, saw that it was language-dependent. Braille, on the other hand, seemed to be consistent everywhere, so that ended up being the basis of my design.”

The designers knew they were working in two-person teams, but they didn’t know who in the world they were partnered with. “My unknown partner has to illustrate my opposite, “Particular”. That could turn out to be equally daunting,” Levin said of how this additional layer informed his process and thinking. “How do you make something look particular without comparing it to a set of “non-particulars”, or “other-particulars”? I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that it will be something pretty elaborate and odd, maybe even dissonant or provocative? But who knows! I’m eager to discover it!”

I was tasked with designing the 10th of February. The seed word “Stressed” inspired me to draw a distorted, stressed number 10 that visually conveys inner tension through typography.

Laura Markert, Büro Bungalow (Germany)

Positive and negative are simply frames of mind. Our artwork for the Fedrigoni 365 (black) brings this philosophy to life, using the block to communicate the beauty in contrast and balance.

Anup Agarwalla, Azure Communication Pvt. (India)

By showcasing the work of so many talented designers, Fedrigoni 365 2025 reminds us that creativity knows no bounds. It’s a testament to the power of design to inspire, challenge, and unite.

The post Opposites Attract: Fedrigoni 365 Explores Duality in Design appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Each and every letter is awesome. Some are dreamy. Others are electric. They can be jeweled, neon, or old-fashioned. They can be every color you imagine, even rainbow.

In a PRINT Book Club first, we had a read-along with our author. Jessica Hische, a self-proclaimed “fancy letter expert,” shared her newest book for children, My First Book of Fancy Letters, from cover to playful cover.

The book is perfect as an alphabet book for children learning letters for the first time with stick-figure qualities kids can latch onto. It’s also a book that one can appreciate at any age. There’s even a sweet how-to for readers, for when they find fancy letters they love out in the world.

My First Book of Fancy Letters is Hische’s fourth book (her third children’s book). When asked why children’s books, Hische admitted she didn’t understand how exciting it would be to make books for her own kids, but what she found when she started, was the excitement of “making books for my younger self.”

The famously generous and vulnerable polymath offered up insights into everything from the importance of self-promo to her recent diagnosis of ADHD to the ins and outs of retail shop ownership, technology,* and why she has a window from her store into her print shop. If all of this makes you want to take a breath, Hische also has something to teach us all about intention and balance.

On the technology front, the PRINT audience was first to hear of Hische’s newest initiative: a business management platform for creatives, called Studioworks. Designed to replace Quickbooks because, who uses more than a tenth of its capabilities? Tune in as she talks about her impetus for the new app.

Register here to watch the recording, grab your notebook and favorite pen, and get ready for a bounty of creative inspo and career wisdom.

Buy a copy of My First Book of Fancy Letters.

Mark your calendars for our first Book Club of 2025. On Thursday, January 16, Jon Key will join us to discuss his new book, Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, and Trailblazers.

The post On Big Swings & the Value of Printed Things: Book Club Recap With Jessica Hische appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Having mastered the art of graphic props and setting the gold standard for the industry, the Dublin-based Atkins recently decided to explore a new avenue: the wonderful world of children’s books.

Released in October and available now for the Christmas season, Atkins’ first-ever children’s book, Letters from the North Pole, is geared toward kids yet engaging for readers of all ages, due to her signature level of craft and keen design eye. The interactive hardcover book features gold foil embossing on the front cover, and five letters from Santa Claus inside that children are meant to pull out from envelop-pages to read and enjoy.

The concept of the book is perfectly suited for Atkins’ skillsets as a graphic prop designer, specifically tapping into her ability to make props for the letters from Santa. Atkins also has a background in writing, having previously published a book of poems and then a book about her practice as a prop designer, Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps, in 2020.

In this way, Atkins was precisely the person to envision and execute Letters from the North Pole. I spoke to Atkins to learn more about her background in prop design for film, how that informed her experience of writing and designing this book, and to glean more intimate details about the book itself. Our conversation is below, lightly edited for clarity and length.

As a sign painter myself, I’d love to hear more about the influence of sign painting on your work as a prop designer. You recently posted a lesson you’ve imparted at design conferences on your Instagram, which read: “How I stopped designing like a designer and started thinking like a mediocre sign painter in the rain.” Can you share more about this? 

I always think that one day, when I quit my job, I’m going to retrain as a sign painter. The reality is, I’m not a sign painter at all. I’m not really good at any one thing, I’m a little bit good at lots of different things. I copy sign painters, I copy lettering artists, I copy old typewriters. So much of my work in film is about being able to imitate a certain look, but not necessarily about being an expert in that area. I would love to do sign painting properly, but I never have done, actually. 

I love making lettering for film sets. The way I do it for film is I draw the lettering, either hand lettering or using type, and then I will hand those drawings over to professional sign painters, and then they paint it for me. Because I’ve done so much of that, I’ve really fallen in love with sign painting. 

A lot of the time, you don’t actually want it to look like it was painted by the best sign painter in town. It’s supposed to often look like it was painted by the guy who owns the shop or the person who’s made a handmade poster and stuck it up on the street. A lot of this stuff is supposed to look like it’s come from the vernacular rather than from professional experts. That’s really fun because you can play with that. You can do things that are supposed to look a little bit naïve and homemade, but they’re still supposed to feel pretty. We’re designing things for film, and you’re asking an audience to sit down in front of the cinema screen for two hours, so you want things to have a certain aesthetic appeal to them as well.

It’s like your work reflects the off-screen characters, who may not be visible in the film but still make up the movie’s universe. The character is only present through how you’ve portrayed their sign. That’s such a deep-seated layer of the details that go into a movie. 

You have to get into character for everything you make. Most of those things you’re making are not for characters in the movie. It’s for the people who own the shops in the background of the movie, the chemists who put the labels on their old poison bottles, that kind of thing.

Why did you want to go from this world of film graphic design to that of children’s books? 

I’ve been interested in children’s books for a long, long time because I loved them as a child, but also because we read so many of them now in the house with my two little kids— they’re three and eight. 

I had always been interested in making a children’s book, but I’m not an illustrator, I’m a graphic designer and a writer. It had never really occurred to me to make my own children’s book, but then Magic Cat came to me with this idea they’d had about a book about letters to Santa Claus, and they asked me if I would design the letters that Santa writes. Of course, that’s totally up my street because it’s the kind of thing I do for film all the time, so I was immediately interested. 

It also happened to be last year during the writers’ strike, so there wasn’t a lot of shooting going on, and I wasn’t on a movie at all for the first time in ages. So I had loads of time, and I really wanted to write the book as well, so that’s how it ended up coming about. I wrote the book and designed all the props and graphic bits and pieces, and then worked with the illustrator Fia Tobig who drew all of the beautiful pictures of the children.

What was the writing aspect of the book like for you? Was that also uncharted waters?

I have written quite a lot over the years in a kind of personal way. I wrote a book of non-fiction about graphic design in film a few years ago, and years and years ago, I wrote a personal blog and some poetry— I had a couple of poems published a decade ago. So, in a small sense, I had written quite a bit before, but I had never written for children, so that was a first. 

It was really fun because I had to write in Santa’s voice, and I decided that Santa Claus would always write in rhyme. So then I had to write rhyme in verse as well, which was a good, tricky experience.

Each of the children in the book has a different voice too, in how you’ve written their letters to Santa. 

I suppose I have experience in that from film work. When you make props in a movie, nobody is really writing the content for you. Sometimes, you can take a little bit from the script, but a lot of the time, graphic designers making film props have to create that content themselves. So I have written fake love letters, telegrams, little notes that characters have to pass between each other; all that stuff needs to be written. I had always really enjoyed that, I love writing content for things. 

You mentioned that you read all the time to your children, and grew up loving children’s books. What are some of your favorite titles and authors that maybe inspired you for elements of Letters from the North Pole? 

I drew heavily from Janet and Allan Ahlberg who wrote countless books. They wrote a book called The Jolly Postman, which this book borrows from quite a lot because it has all the pull-out letters. I always loved reading those books as a kid, and I read them now to my kids as well, because I love reading books that rhyme, and I think the kids love it as well. There’s just something really lovely about this wholly unexpected rhyme at the end of a sentence. 

I love Benji Davies books: The Storm Whale, all the Bizzy Bear books. I read loads and loads of Shirley Hughes as a kid, and, again, I read all of those books to my kids now. But those books are all quite old now, they’re like, 40 years old.

There’s something so beautiful about how children’s books can be so timeless because so many important themes and lessons about life in many children’s books transcend generations. I also love how the physical copies of the books we read as children we can read to our kids one day. We pass them down as a sort of heirloom. 

Absolutely, I did want to write something that felt timeless. I don’t think I was overly conscious of it, but certainly, all the books that we love here in the house feel timeless. 

Life has changed drastically for kids over the years, but certain bigger-picture ideas, like being a good person, that are often reflected in children’s books, remain the same. I think Santa is timeless, and the idea of sending letters to the North Pole is timeless. 

I really wanted to make a book that was like an introduction to Santa Claus, that kind of went back to basics. We only know so much about Santa. When I was a kid, I started questioning his existence, like, How does he get around the world in one night? Don’t his reindeer get tired? If I stay up late will I meet him? I remember my mother always had the same answer for me. She always said, “There’ve been a lot of books about Santa Claus, there’ve been a lot of songs written about Santa Claus, but the truth is, nobody knows what Santa looks like, because nobody has ever seen Santa in real life.” 

That was what I needed to keep the magic alive, it was the not knowing. So with the book, I really wanted to do that; to give the kids that are reading it just enough information so that they’d be hooked into the mystery of it all. When the kids ask the questions in the book, Santa just deftly bats away the questions with these answers. I think that sometimes the less you say, the more magic it is.

I think the rhyming is part of that too. There’s just something sort of magical about rhyming, in a way, and that ties into the Santa mystique you’ve created with his character.

When I was little, my grandfather used to write me letters; he typed them on his typewriter, and they always rhymed. Rhyming makes it more magical somehow. I suppose it’s a cover-up, too, isn’t it? Santa is actually just your parents, but if they make it a little more whimsical it’s less likely you’ll be like, Hang on a minute, that’s you!

I know your film graphic design work, a lot of the process involves tons of historical research; looking at old artifacts and archives to accurately recreate them. What kind of research went into the designed elements for this book, especially in terms of the letters, their postage, and the diagrams for the toys illustrated in them?

I went looking for loads of old vintage letters. At first, I was going to write Santa’s letters as handwriting, so I was looking for a kind of handwriting style that would feel like it came from this elderly gentleman in the North Pole, but it also had to be legible for children to be able to read it. In the end, I settled on a typewriter instead, because it felt right to me that Santa would have his own typewriter, and it also made it super legible. 

You get those ideas by looking at real things. I have a collection of old letters that I’ve found or bought over the years, and I’ll go through my boxes of stuff, and I’ll cherry-pick all the little bits that make sense. Handwriting varies so much from different people and different times. One of the things we run up against in film is legibility, because older handwriting, cursive handwriting, is actually very difficult to read now. I did do some handwriting in the book for the envelopes. I made that handwriting quite calligraphic and fancy for the envelopes that Santa had addressed to the kids. That felt like a good place to do it because there isn’t too much text there that needs to be read. 

Each of the gifts that the children are asking for in their letters to Santa are so unique, clever, and fun. How did you come up with those? 

I wanted them to be inventions that children think up. The children were going to think of their own toy invention that they wanted Santa to put into production in his workshop for them. So things like a detective’s briefcase that’s full of disguises, and a teddy cam, and fake nose and glasses so that kids could start their own private investigator business, a robot who tidies your bedroom— you couldn’t make a book like this without a bedroom-tidying robot, because that must be one of the most useful things you could have as a child.

The toy ideas in concept are so much more interesting than a doll or a football, but they also make for much more visually compelling illustrations. All of the diagrams and figures are so detailed and rich. The toy ideas invite much more exciting visual representation and exploration. 

Yeah, I wanted them to be inventions that Santa would then have to get one of his industrious elves in his workshop to draw up, and he would have to make a proper technical drawing of this invention, like a blueprint. 

These toy inventions and their production definitely add to that sense of magic you’re trying to capture throughout the book. They have a sort of magical realism to them. 

Exactly. When I first started coming up with this idea, I thought that the children would do drawings of their invention, but then it just felt more fun if the kids had the idea, and Santa had them drawn up. I thought that that would help spark the reason for imagination. I’m hoping that when a kid is reading this book, they’ll start thinking, Oh, what would I invent? If I was going to ask Santa to put something into production, what would I want?

When I was writing and designing this book, I was constantly thinking of the child that it was being read to, and what the kid would like, and what kind of drawings the kids would like, what kinds of toys they would like to think about.

Can you point to a favorite design detail or easter egg in the book that you’re particularly proud of? 

When I first started designing the book, one of the things that I was really thinking about was not wanting to give away too much about Santa to keep the mystery alive. So I decided that we wouldn’t show Santa in the book at all, except for in the postage stamps. Santa is someone who often appears on postage stamps, especially vintage ones, so I think it’s kind of nice that he’s just there on the stamps. I thought that was a nice way to show him without really showing him. It just keeps him that little bit enigmatic. You don’t actually see him anywhere else in the book until the very last page when you see him silhouetted in the doorway of the workshop, and then on the vignette you see him flying off in the distance with his reindeer. 

When working in film, you’re really just working to a script. You’re making everything that’s required of the film script. There is room for creativity there as well, you have to film in the gaps a lot of the time, but this felt very different to me. I had to think in a much more creative way for this, and it felt much more personal as well. 

The post Graphic Prop Designer Annie Atkins Takes her Talents to the World of Children’s Books appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

London-based Lucinda Rogers interprets and represents NYC and here she reports on why she does. And what fills her impressive new book of drawings, Lucinda Rogers New York.

What is the best part of drawing New York City?
The beauty inspires me; the combination of strong colors all around (red-brown and grey-blue for buildings, blue for the sky, signs red, cabs yellow, green subway ironwork and trees, black for night and water tanks); the enveloping feeling of Manhattan; the way you can see so far into the distance; the sun shining on the tops of tall buildings when you’re down below in the shadow. Seeing something to draw everywhere.

How long have you traversed NYC to find your subjects?
I’ve been going there regularly to draw since 1990 and, at the start, walked around different areas one by one. Some subjects I saw by chance while on the way somewhere else. Or I may go to a neighborhood on purpose to look for a subject. For example, Orchard Street, knowing it a bit in the 90s I went back in 2002 to see whether things were still the same and report on it. In 2018 I went to look for any remaining meat packing companies in the meat district and drew one from the High Line.

What part of town is the most interesting to draw? Why?
For a long time, I always returned to Canal Street; it’s the combination of human activity and buildings and being on the edge of different neighbourhoods. It used to be full of sellers on the street and plastics stores. The heavy traffic and giant trucks never put me off. I like it all the way along: the big solid buildings around Canal and Sixth Avenue, the edge of SoHo, the part of Broadway going south from Canal, Lafayette Street, Chinatown. The art store Pearl Paint was also on Canal Street, where I went regularly.

The book of drawings is more than a sketchbook, it has a documentary quality. What is your intent for the book and an entity or object?
Each drawing was done at a particular moment for its own reasons, but by putting the collection into a book that spans 30 years, my intent was to show aspects of New York over a period of time, to enable you to revisit parts of the city through the drawings, like time travel. They are mostly large – about 30 inches on the longer side is typical – and can take up to eight hours to draw, sitting in one place and not using photographs. I do not call them sketches, apart from my first short visit in 1988 when I drew in pencil in a very small student sketchbook.

[NB a reproduction of that sketchbook was published this year by Dashwood Books]

Have you ever been harassed while drawing people?
No, I find it’s the opposite! Drawing in the street is a form of communication that makes the big city feel friendly because most people are open to art, they readily accept drawing as a normal thing to be doing, along with everything else. The people whose actual portraits I have drawn were willing and often helped by standing still for a while. Sometimes people look out for me while I’m there, thinking the same, that I may be harassed.

There are a few artists who have drawn NYC and published what they’ve done (e,g, Joel Holland on storefronts, Jason Polan on people). Where do you see yourself as filling the gap?
Doing these drawings has been my own preoccupation, and I haven’t tried to fill a kind of gap, but I guess my drawings are more about the architecture, with wider-angle views of the streets than those two. The scope of the book is similar to that of street photography (I greatly admire many of those photographers, such as Robert Frank and Berenice Abbot), but I use the completely different medium of drawing, which has different results.

The post The Daily Heller: In NYC, Everywhere There Is Something to Draw appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

We’re at this great nexus of being able to return focus to the book as an object, as a form of expression, and figuring out ways to do that so that it’s relevant to a contemporary audience.

Arion Press has been manually printing books on centuries-old equipment in San Francisco for 50 years, yet they are currently embarking upon a new beginning. The last vertically integrated bookmaker in the country, Arion Press was established in 1974 and has most recently been housed in San Francisco’s Presidio neighborhood. They officially opened their new doors in the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in October—after moving over 49 tons of antique equipment—and will soon be releasing their second title of the year, Fables of Aesop.

Arion Press is composed of a production team of six people, split between three departments: the foundry, the press room, and the book bindery. They also work with local bookbinder John Demerritt, and have an additional seven employees on the administrative side of things who spearhead development and programming. Arion Press’s lead printer and creative director, Blake Riley, was hired back in 2001 originally as one of the imprint’s first apprentices. I recently spoke with Riley on the occasion of all of this excitement, to learn more about the history of Arion Press, Fables of Aesop, and keeping the art of bookmaking alive.

(Lightly edited for clarity and length.)

Take me back to the origin of Arion Press. How did it all begin? 

We trace our lineage back in San Francisco to the late teens when Edwin and Robert Grabhorn came out from Indiana. Curiously, Edwin had been primarily a printer of music scores, which is a very niche, phenomenal process that has fallen entirely by the wayside at this point. They set up shop in San Francisco in the late teens and established the Grabhorn Press, which became one of the premier American fine press operations for decades, through the 60s. After Edwin passed away, the younger brother, Robert, ultimately went into partnership with Andrew Hoyem. When Robert died, Andrew founded Arion as an imprint in 1974, which is why we’re claiming this year as our 50th anniversary celebration. 

I know you started out at Arion Press as an apprentice. Can you tell me a bit more about the apprenticeship program? 

With maybe only one exception, everyone who works in production here has come up through this apprenticeship program. It’s ongoing and is considered a fundamental part of the activity that happens here. 

This is one of those professions or trades that is especially unique because it relies very heavily on this oral transmission of skills. There is a certain amount of book learning you can do around this; you can learn technique by reading repair manuals and that kind of thing. But to really have a sense for the sounds of the presses and to be able to see how hands work in relation to bring it all together, there’s no way to simulate that experience. So the apprenticeships became really instrumental in that.

By now, we’ve easily had over three dozen apprentices. Obviously, not all of them have stayed, some of them have gone on to work in other areas of the book arts or for other book arts organizations, or to teach, some of them have moved on altogether, but it actually has proven to be a very successful, robust lifeline for the press and for letterpress printing as a whole. 

I think a lot of other old trades and handcrafts are similar. I’m a sign painter, and I took a two-year sign painting course at LA Trade Tech College that’s not an apprenticeship per se, but it does replicate certain aspects of what an apprenticeship would offer. I learned from two sign painters who’ve been doing it for decades and who took the course themselves. The knowledge that they have is invaluable, and so much of it is just in their heads, so you really have to be in the room with them for two years in order to even scrape the surface of understanding sign painting.

A lot of it, too, is that the people who have that knowledge aren’t natural-born teachers, so there’s a lot that they don’t have words for. Or until a certain problem arises, it wouldn’t occur to them to explain the fix, or how you go about creating a fix for a problem that’s never arisen, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of that kind of knowledge that gets transferred by osmosis. 

What’s your favorite aspect of what you and your team do at Arion Press? 

Writ large, what’s most exciting about the work is that it’s such a dynamic moment to be involved with the book because it’s going through these radical changes. There’s this interesting division that’s occurred between knowledge and information. When people say, the web is going to be the death knell of the book! it’s really the opposite. What the web has done quite brilliantly is wrangle information and remove all of that encyclopedic burden from the book, which frees it up to do all of these other things. Meanwhile, the technologies for construction and manufacturing are changing so quickly that they are offering these wild new opportunities for ways in which books can actually physically be constructed. So we’re at this great nexus of being able to return focus to the book as an object, as a form of expression, and figuring out ways to do that so that it’s relevant to a contemporary audience.

What the web has done, quite brilliantly, is wrangle information and remove all of that encyclopedic burden from the book, which frees it up to do all of these other things.

Part of that is incorporating new technologies, and figuring out how the book can embrace those. That’s the most exciting thing for us: this project of invention and discovery. What that means in the day-to-day that is especially motivating is that it requires this incredible collaboration between all of the creative people who are involved in a project. That’s the artists within the publishing program, then working with the book binders and the guys in the foundry, and being able to coordinate everyone’s expertise to bring them into alignment with the concept for the project, and hopefully ending up with something that surprises everybody. It’s almost always the case that we never know where we’re going to end up, because the process is so organic.

I’m mesmerized by the ancient printing equipment and techniques you all have preserved and use to create your books. What’s it like working with such special and historic machinery day in and day out? 

A significant portion of the type collection here, which is the largest standing collection of metal type outside of the Smithsonian Institution, goes back to San Francisco printers at the end of the 19th century. Plus, ours is still employed; it’s still making books and printing words; it’s not just a research collection. The collection began to be compiled by the Grabhorns, who were great collectors. All of that adds up to what has been described as this irreplaceable cultural treasure designation that we were bestowed.

When working with the historic type collection, we may have a certain design in mind or a certain look for the typography, but when we go to the case it may turn out that we only have a partial alphabet of that particular typeface. So there are instances like that that arise daily where we have to pivot and devise a new solution based on all of the physical realities and constraints of working with 100-year-old equipment. That really leads to this ongoing, continuous conversation and evolution of every project where one thing leads to the next so that by the time we end up with the book finished and bound, it’s something that no one really could have anticipated. There’s a real excitement, joy, and delight associated with that. 

What’s it like keeping an old press and these antique technologies thriving within the context of San Francisco, a place dominated by big tech and digital innovation? 

The most facile metaphor for it is the interplay and relationship between radio and television, and the ways in which television actually ended up leading to the renaissance of radio that we’ve seen in the last couple of decades. We are by no means tech-averse. The monotype casters, for example, which were invented at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution in the 1890s, were the first word processors; they were cutting-edge technology for their day. So when the foundry was set up here in the Bay Area in 1915, it was cutting-edge technology. 

We are by no means tech-averse.

Originally, the monotypes were a two-part system where there was a paper tape that was punched on a hydraulic keyboard, and then that tape was fed onto the typecaster. But then the paper tape became complicated for various reasons, and about 15 years ago this beautiful digital interface was engineered that replaced that whole process. So now what we have is this 21st-century digital interface connected to the 19th-century caster that allows us to download a text from anything that’s in the public domain, format it, and convert it to be cast. It was this beautiful way, much like television and radio, that the new technology has moved in and helped buoy the old one. 

Another example that came up recently was when we worked on the Edgar Allen Poe collection. In the process of building that project, we stumbled upon this pile of bricks that had been rescued when NYU demolished Poe’s house in lower Manhattan. Unbeknownst to anyone, they moved in and raised the house, but it seems as if perhaps a mea culpa, they preserved the bricks. So all of a sudden we had these bricks, and there was this question of how we could incorporate them somehow into the book and enliven the experience that much more. What we ended up doing with them was working with a colleague of ours here in the Bay, John Sullivan, who had gotten into paper making and 3D printing. He created 3D molds into which we could grind the bricks down like a mortar and pestle and use the brick dust as a pigmentation in the pulp paper, and then we packed the molds. We ended up creating these three-dimensional cameos of Poe’s visage, and those were then embedded in the covers of the books. The paper-making is relatively ancient, but being able to create these cameos was made possible by technology only available within the last ten years. 

We’re really invested in that exploring, in breaking down the barrier between those two things and helping ensure that it’s a two-way communication from the digital to the analog, and from the analog back to the digital. They all happily coexist. 

Can you tell me more about Arion Press’s 50th anniversary celebration this year, and the Fables of Aesop collection you’re releasing as part of the milestone? 

We wanted to create something that would appropriately commemorate the press at this inflection point, while also accommodating the move. A year and a half ago, we didn’t exactly know what the move would entail other than it would happen within a six-month period and be completely disruptive and unpredictable. So we had to design a project that could somehow be modular and flexible enough to absorb this unexpected future. 

Those two things came together in Aesop. It seemed appropriate not only for its longstanding role in the history of printing— I came across one comment that said, second to the Bible, Aesop’s fables is the most printed work in the Western world. This makes a lot of sense because, for various historical and technical reasons, the fables lent themselves to the capacities and technologies of the day once moveable type was created. This is in part because of their brevity, but especially because of how visual they’ve always been. That allowed for this incredibly rich body of work to be created around them, and constantly reinvented. 

As I began to dive into the history of Aesop’s fables primarily at the Huntington Library, one thing that rose to the surface was how these morals that we’ve all grown up with and maybe have even been used to affect our behavior one way or another, have evolved over time. Once we got a bead on that, the project became very interesting because there was an opportunity to approach this in a way that’s relevant to the 21st century; what do these morals look like now? 

Also, because the morals are each self-contained in their way structurally, that allowed us the freedom that we needed to treat them individually. We could be printing each individual folio, which is how we will be presenting them, so that if production was interrupted, we could finish that one folio, pack it aside, move the operation, and pick up with the next folio. It also separated the binding from the printing. Typically when we finish the printing of a book, we have another three months of hand book-binding before the book can be released. But issuing it in a box as a collection of individual folios gave us the elbow room we needed. 

So we had this splashy box and these morals, and both of those things were the anchors for the project. That’s what led us to invite Kiki Smith as the primary visual artist to create a sculptural multiple to define the experience of the box, and to invite Daniel Handler (whom you might know as Lemony Snicket) to reinterpret the morals. We then began to invite other artists that we had worked with in the past to each choose one fable to interpret and create one print that we would print here in the shop by traditional letterpress relief printing techniques. We ended up with 15 artists with Kiki being the 16th, and 41 fables. 

The project allowed us to celebrate our community, it gave us a way to make a statement relevant to a contemporary audience, it gave us the flexibility to dance around the move, and it promised to be a lot of fun in the process.

Featured image above: Nick Bruno/Courtesy of Arion Press

The post Arion Press Keeps the Art of Bookmaking Alive While Looking to the Future appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Hand-bound books, honest stories and photography as evidence – design and book-making studio Zone6 is putting narrative-driven documentary photography at the front of its print runs.

“Breaks are for wannabe writers. Time and time again, I hear the laments of the undisciplined crying out, ‘Oh, I need to clear my head.’ Ridiculous. You need to resist the siren song of temptation emanating from your bladder or the dog scratching at the backdoor or the pain radiating from your chronic carpal tunnel and get down to work.”

How to write 100,000 words per day, every day.

David Pearson has ‘grammed a fantastic selection of Spektrum books designed by Lothar Reher between 1968 and 1993 for the German publisher Volk und Welt. Never seen these before and now I want all of them.

“Rampant consumerism has consumed us” – how queuing for stuff became just as important as buying it.

Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker announces The Orchid synthesizer, a new songwriting tool, ideas machine and dust-gathering object of bleepy bloopy technolust.

Animauteur¹ Don Hertzfeldt on using Photoshop:

“You don’t know what you’re not allowed to do. I still don’t know, but I’ve felt better about myself because I have spoken to people who are in technical positions in cinema who are like, “Yeah, I don’t know what half this stuff does either.” I think it’s a sign of good software where you don’t need to. A sign of good software to me is it’s intuitive, and you can put your things in, and hopefully behave like an artist and make a mess and not break things. The downside is when you realize there’s something you could have done easier a long time ago.”

… from this excellent Slate interview

All the World’s a Stage, the new David Campany-curated retrospective of William Klein’s photography at Lisbon’s MAAT, looks wonderful.

If, like me, you’ve been given very clear instructions to not ask Santa for yet more books to arrange in neat piles around the house, Creative Boom’s annual gift guide is always a good place to look for alternative stocking fillers.

The Boom’s bluesky starter pack is also worth a click. Or you could just follow me.

That is all.

1. Yeah maybe don’t hold your breath waiting for that one to catch on, Daniel. ↩︎

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header image courtesy of the author.

The post Meanwhile No. 221 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

This isn’t just a book—it’s a time capsule. Inside, you’re presented with 1,000 symbols and logotypes crafted by Pentagram’s legendary partners since the firm’s founding in 1972. Each mark tells a story, capturing brands from all corners of the world, from grassroots nonprofits to multinational corporations to cultural institutions (there’s even a logo for a country). The beauty lies in their diversity: bold wordmarks, intricate symbols, and abstract designs—all stripped back to black and white, letting the forms take center stage.

Pentagram—founded by graphic designers Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, and Mervyn Kurlansky, architect Theo Crosby, and industrial designer Kenneth Grange—has always been about pushing boundaries. While the tools and trends of design have evolved, one thing hasn’t changed: the logo remains a keystone of identity design.

What struck me most while flipping through 1000 Marks is how timeless great design can feel. These marks aren’t just logos; they’re cultural symbols that connect us to brands and experiences. And for designers like me, this book is pure gold—equal parts inspiration and education.

Whether you’re a designer, a brand enthusiast, or just someone who appreciates good design, 1000 Marks is a reminder of why logos matter. They’re more than just pretty pictures; they’re visual ambassadors for ideas, values, and stories. And Pentagram’s collection shows us just how powerful a single mark can be.

The post A Journey Through Pentagram’s Legacy in Logo Design appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Documentarian, commercial director, and “Unofficial Talent Scout of NYC” Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico, joined Debbie Millman and Steven Heller last week to discuss his first book, New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

So, why a book? And why this topic?

One has to understand Heller’s origin story. Like many independence-seeking kids, even those born and raised in Manhattan with design celebrities for parents and whose nickname at three years old was “Major of 16th Street,” Heller wanted to spread his wings. That meant getting out of New York. First, it was Boston for college. Then, Heller went to Hollywood. After three failed driving tests and six months of no bookings, he returned to NYC without a plan and looking for his next step.

On a fateful walk through Union Square, Heller met a local street celebrity, Te’Devan, a “6-foot-7 freestyle-rapping Jew.” Heller made a five-minute documentary of the man, and he never looked back.

Author headshot: Jeremy Cohen

Heller spoke about how the pandemic cemented Heller’s focus on struggling mom-and-pop businesses across the city, his effort to raise money for Army Navy Bags in the Village, and his desire to help preserve what the city is starting to lose.

The most frequently asked question he gets asked by his audience is, “I’m going to be in New York; what should I do?” So, when he was approached about doing a book, he couldn’t turn it down. The book furthers his mission to document what New York is in danger of losing as it changes. Over a year and a half, Heller and a team consisting of a co-writer, photographers, and others traversed the boroughs to interview the proprietors of each of the 100 quaint, classic, small businesses included in the book, all places Heller loves.

It was the best experience of my life, and I want to keep making books.

Nicolas Heller

Register here to watch the recording and get the insiders’ take: Heller’s top five places to visit (one for each borough, yes, even Staten Island). There’s an East Village barber shop home to Big Mike’s art gallery, a nearly 200-year-old tavern (where parts of Goodfellas were filmed), a Sri Lankan restaurant, an old-school panini shop, and a Latin music store run by a 93-year-old man.

We learned of a Harlem man who collected items he found in the trash for 35 years and how he’s curated his private collection in the back of an active garage. The book taught his curious and NYC-knowledgeable father something, too.

Many other NYC gems are waiting to be discovered by you; buy your copy of New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

Coming up on Tuesday, December 10, PRINT Book Club will host designer, lettering artist, and retail shop owner Jessica Hische to talk about her latest book for kids. Learn more and register here.

The post NYC’s Endless Discovery: Book Club Recap with New York Nico appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

We’ll bet our December guest needs no introduction. Designer, lettering artist, bestselling author, and retail shop owner Jessica Hische will join Steven Heller and Debbie Millman at the next PRINT Book Club. The always-generous Hische will discuss life, craft, and her newest book, My First Book of Fancy Letters.

A bit from the publisher:

“From the New York Times best-selling creator of Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave comes a delightful spin on the traditional alphabet book, featuring creatively hand-lettered words from A to Z and an affirming message for young readers.

Did you know letters can be ATHLETIC, BUBBLY, or even CREEPY?

Using unique lettering styles to showcase a fun word for each letter of the alphabet, this inventive picture book by creator Jessica Hische highlights how letters can come in all shapes and sizes—and are awesome in their own ways.“

Ellen Shapiro sat down with Hische recently to discuss My First Book of Fancy Letters. Read the interview here.

Don’t miss our conversation with Jessica Hische on Tuesday, December 10 at 4 PM ET. Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of My First Book of Fancy Letters. (Psst. It makes a great gift!)

The post “J is for Jessica” Hische Talks Fancy Letters at our December PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Released earlier this month, the gorgeous photo book continues themes Cohen has already mined for years through Advanced Style, in regards to aging with vitality and how important love and connection are at any point in one’s life. As a lifelong animal lover, Cohen wanted to show how pets bring an added dimension of joy and beauty to his vivacious subjects’ worlds.

When I interviewed Cohen for PRINT two years ago, he mentioned Advanced Pets was in the works, and since then I’ve been eager to connect with Cohen again upon its completion. My conversation with the always generous Cohen about Advanced Pets is transcribed below.

(Lightly edited for clarity and length.)

Where did your idea for Advanced Pets originate? 

The common theme throughout my work is love and connection. Whether it’s personal expression which creates connection with other people, or, like in my last book, actual relationships between people, that kind of connection is key to growing older with vitality. I’ve been examining different ways that people stay vital throughout their lives. 

I’ve also loved animals my whole life; I’m a vegan and have had dogs since I was a little boy, so I thought it would be interesting to explore the relationships between the women that I photograph and their own animal companions. Then, because of COVID, I noticed that people got even closer to their animals, and I thought it would be a great time to really explore that. Also, as you get older, oftentimes, unfortunately, a lot of your friends aren’t around anymore, so pets and animals become your companions, company, friends, and family, especially when you’re in isolation.

Can you share more about your love of animals, the dogs you grew up with, your current dog, Vinnie, and how those connections helped fuel this book?

Dogs have been hugely important in my life— animals of all kinds have been, but mostly dogs. I’ve always liked to express myself differently than other people and dress up, and I gravitated toward things that maybe other kids didn’t (antiques, old music); I just always felt a little different. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, and I couldn’t wait to come home to the dogs in my life who were my friends, comforted me, and provided fun and joy. 

Throughout our lives, oftentimes people have difficulties connecting with other people or feeling seen or understood. In talking to the ladies and just in my own experience, my dogs have always understood and accepted me without judgment, and I think that’s a very special relationship to have, where it’s just pure love; I see that with the people I featured in this book, too. My dog, Vinnie, is my best friend, and I’ve noticed that same thing with the women that I photograph; how close these relationships are, and how they’re like our family members. They teach us so much about patience and care and provide so much at the same time. 

So much of what you’re saying resonates with me. I’m a single woman who has a lot of close friends, close relationships, and love in my life, but there’s nothing quite like the relationship I have with my cat, Joan Cusack. I’ve had her as long as I’ve lived in LA, about eight years, so she’s this embodiment of my life in LA, in a way, too. It’s hard to put into words. 

Exactly! It is hard to put into words! 

That’s why I think looking to the medium of photography, as you have, is the only way to come close to capturing that connection. 

Our pets are the closest things we have to us. These relationships are so intimate, in terms of the time we spend with them. Some of the ladies say that their pets see them in all their different stages, like as they’re trying on different outfits. Our pets see us in all these different ways that are so different from how other humans see us. 

Our pets see us in all these different ways that are so different from how other humans see us. 

Pets are (seemingly) incapable of judgment, and they see us so clearly in ways that a lot of humans can’t. I think that’s so special, especially for people like the women you’re photographing, who are so distinct and opinionated and unapologetically themselves. Animals, in particular, can accept those qualities in ways that maybe some of the greater public has a mental block about. 

The ladies are sort of outsiders, in a way, because of how they dress. Especially years ago. In their time and even now, they really were rebellious in the way that they were presenting themselves. 

On the photography side of things, how did you go about conceptualizing the photoshoots for the book? What was that process and experience like, especially working with animals as your subjects? 

My work is always a mix of street style and shoots that I do on location in people’s personal spaces or near their homes. For these photos, it was really about spending time to feel the connection between each animal and their person, and then also making space for the animal to be comfortable. 

Each one was very different. It was very similar to my process for making my last book, Advanced Love because I didn’t want to force a specific type of interaction or connection. Also, the animals obviously act differently when I’m there versus when I’m not there. It was always just about trying to capture a moment and love between a person and their pet.

When I was in Florida on a ranch with Sandra and Lucy, for example, cows don’t sit still, so it was a lot of walking around the ranch. Eventually, Lucy sat down, and then Sandra sat down next to her and she started singing to her. In that moment I was able to get my photo.

What about the fashion and styling side of things for the photoshoots? 

I told people to dress their most festive and to really celebrate advanced style. 

Your Advanced Style photos have always been so visually rich, due to the styling of these women and their energy and attitudes. Can you speak to the aesthetic power of pets, and how adding that dimension to your photos elevated them even further?  

When someone is holding their animal, all dressed up, it’s almost like they become a part of them. And through that, their pet becomes a part of what they’re trying to communicate visually. 

I’ve always loved photographs of people and their pets. I have this book called Elegance by the Seeberger brothers who were shooting socialites and rich people on the streets in the 1920s and 30s, and I loved seeing the women all dressed up in their vintage clothing with their dogs. There was this one photo of a woman dressed up in polka dots with her Dalmatian, and that was sort of an inspiration for me. 

There’s a picture of a woman named Rory and her dog Elsa in the book, and they have this connection that is a soul connection. She’s this very fashionable woman in New York and carrying her dog becomes part of the way she’s presenting herself to the world. These women are so visual, so their dogs are part of that. 

Of all of the women and their pets you photographed, is there one photo or pair that you think best encapsulates the Advanced Pets project? 

There are several, but Linda and Lil Buddy embody this project. Linda’s a very dear friend of mine who lives on an island in the northwest, and in spending time with her and Lil Buddy, I saw how their relationship is very similar to how I feel about animals.

I remember being in her garden, and she was holding Lil Buddy with the sun shining down in her arms, and she was just in complete bliss in her garden holding her baby. That was a very special moment of seeing that intimate connection, where the joy was emanating from them and I was able to capture it. That was the embodiment of the project for me. 

Usually I’m just establishing relationships with humans, but now I have all these new animal friends to be connected to.

What has been the most rewarding part of the Advanced Pet process?

It was great to not only get to know new women but also, these animals. Usually, I’m just establishing relationships with humans, but now I have all these new animal friends to be connected to.

In my last book, I was showing that you can find love at any age, and this book is also showing that. My friend Jackie in the book, is in her 70s and was never a dog person until she met Betty, who has brought so much more dimension to her life that she never even knew was possible. I think that’s also a special theme of this project: the possibility that you can have love and connection at any age. 

Header image: Valerie von Sobel

The post Ari Seth Cohen’s New Book Explores Aging with Vitality and Our Pets appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Other recent chopping-abouts on IG.

Rachel Cabitt on the technicolor influence of Kayōkyoku Records, where 1960s Japanese and Western cultures collide.

Loving Fred Aldous’ photobooth collection of goodies.

Director Bryan Woods on putting a “no generative AI was used in the making of this film” statement at the end of Heretic:

“We are in a time where I feel like creatively we’re in one of the big ethical battles, and the race is already ahead of us. The importance is to have these conversations before they force things in, just because it makes sense from a corporate structure. It’s incredibly dangerous. If there’s not people to throttle it, we’re going to find ourselves in five to ten years in a very dangerous situation. … AI is an amazing technology. Beautiful things will come of it, and it’s jaw-dropping. What is being created with generative AI and video … it’s amazing we could create that technology. Now let’s bury it underground with nuclear warheads, ‘cause it might kill us all.”

Could this become standard practice, please? To be posted alongside the “no animals were harmed” and “no this story isn’t real, honest” notices.

Artist and photographer Yasmin Masri’s Near 2,143 McDonald’s, documenting over 2,000 McDonald’s locations through Google Street View. Seen a few books and projects over the years use Street View as a source, but I’m unclear about how fair usage/public-domainy it is.

“For some reason, in July 1985, the Daily Mirror’s pseudo-saucy comic strip Jane ran a series of comics centered on – oh yes – Jane and boyfriend Chris hanging out with Sir Clive Sinclair.”

Kurt Cobain’s Youth Culture Scream Time.

Chris Ware on Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature:

“The thing is, “people” weren’t anywhere to be seen in Best Word Book Ever. Instead, the whole world was populated by animals: rabbits, bears, pigs, cats, foxes, dogs, raccoons, lions, mice, and more. Somehow, though, that made the book’s view of life feel more real and more welcoming. A dollhouse-like cutaway view of a rabbit family in their house getting ready for their day didn’t seem to just picture the things themselves—they were the things themselves, exuding a grounded warmth that said, “Yes, everywhere we live in houses and cook together and get dressed, just like you.”

One must never underestimate the power of anthropomorphism in normalising empathy and diversity for children. I grew up with countless Scarry titles (to this day Peasant Pig and the Terrible Dragon is one of my favourite books) and they definitely shaped my view of the world.

It’s November and therefore LEGO have thrown a massive chunk of dad-bait into the universe in time for Christmas. As if a 3000-brick model of Shackleton’s The Endurance wasn’t enough, you can also get an extra set with a minifig of expedition photographer Frank Hurley.

There’s absolutely no need for Suede’s Dog Man Star to be thirty. It’s just unseemly.

That is all.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header image courtesy of the author.

The post Meanwhile No. 219 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Ware is one of the most beloved comics artists of our time, and his recently published ACME Novelty Datebook Volume 3, spanning the years 2002–2023, is a must-have for fans like me who are mesmerized by how he does what he does. Drawn from the sketchbooks of the creator of Jimmy Corrigan, Building Stories and Rusty Brown, ACME offers a rare chance to get to know the artist behind such an incredible body of work.

Ware is one of the most important cartoonists of the past 75 years, a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the first cartoonist to win the Guardian First Book Award and the first American to win Europe’s highest prize for cartooning (the Grand Prix D’Angouleme).

Like R. Crumb’s famously intimate sketchbook series, ACME was not intended to be seen by his fans, but pulling back the curtain is a gift to all who worship at the altar of Ware. I recently had the good fortune to explore some of his thoughts about life, art and the new book.

Over three decades ago I was on the awards committee of The Swann Foundation of Caricature and Cartoon, and Art Spiegelman brought in a newspaper you had published with your early work. The board members were blown away—you were hands-down the winner. How do you feel when you look back at those early attempts at finding your visual language?
Well, you are very kind; thanks for the generous words. Honestly, I can’t look at any of my early stuff—or really too much of my recent stuff, either—without feeling frustrated by my drawing ability. With my early strips all I see are little bits and pieces I was thieving from other artists (nearly all of whom were published in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s RAW magazine, including Art himself) in my attempt to mash together some sort of something that I could somehow consider “mine.” In my twenties I went back and forth between improvising directly in ink or crafting images that were as iconographic and geometric as possible, then eventually combining the two in an attempt to capture contradictory feelings and sensations—or some such thing—but found that these experiments ultimately felt like what David Foster Wallace called “metafictional titty pinching.” I finally just gave up and tried to present my stories as clearly as possible with the occasional shift in approach whenever it still felt instinctually appropriate.

I presume you’re only showing what you take pride in showing, but can you detect a clear evolution—or did you zig and zag before becoming Chris Ware?
Even though Frank Lloyd Wright was one of America’s biggest jerks—an arrogant philanderer who designed a logo for himself and buried his initials in the name of one of his best-known designs (Falling Water)—he was also an indisputable genius who regularly reinvented himself and so avoided staleness and sterility. I think about his relentless “doing the opposite of what he’d done before” and I worry I don’t have the fortitude, intellect or self-confidence to follow his example—but I try. I doodled a little strip about this in this last datebook, including Scott Joplin and Beethoven in the list of artists who regularly re-thought themselves up to their final moments. Theirs is a tough model to follow.

I love seeing the ACME “brand” take form. Was this always meant to be your signature, or was it initially a stop along the way?
I titled my regular periodical “The ACME Novelty Library” so I indeed wouldn’t have to put my name on it, since drawing and publishing is really its own act of quiet arrogance. Also, I noticed that in single-page comics the artist’s signature frequently acted as a sort of punctuation mark—or worse, an advertisement—plus, I didn’t want it to contribute to the rhythm of reading, as it interfered with the sense of life I was trying to get at. So “The ACME Novelty” part of this book’s title is now completely vestigial, if not completely insane, since I haven’t done an issue of my comic book in over a decade. However, the thought of titling a book “Chris Ware’s Third Sketchbook” is way worse. (Though really, what’s the difference? I still essentially made a pretentious logo for myself, just like Frank Lloyd Wright did.)

ACME is such a classic comic/novelty title. What does it mean to you?
“Acme” was a fairly common commercial brand name in the 1910s and 1920s, nostalgically invoked by Chuck Jones in his Roadrunner cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s, and all of which I was also trying to play on in the 1990s when I started publishing my own comic book. At that time, underground/independent/experimental comics tended to have one-word “loud” names, and I wanted to make something that was harder to remember and awkward and, especially, uncool. Also, since I was trying to tell stories in each issue that were as emotionally moving and literary as I could muster, by hiding them within this fussy shell I felt sort of freed up to experiment and embarrass myself.

When you designed your rule-breaking cover for The New York Times Book Review, I was struck by your exceptional lettering acumen. How did type and image become your metier?
Comics drawing, aka cartooning, has more in common with typography than with traditional drawing: the drawings in comics are meant to be read, not just looked at. However, most of the drawings in this sketchbook, done from observation or direct memory, fall more into the latter category. Or, in other words, unlike in my comics fiction where I use a ruler and geometric simplification for the sake of artistic clarity and literary transparency, almost all of what is in this book is just plain old drawings and watercolors about life as lived.

Since I hate wasting time but am still startlingly good at it, when I’m on the phone I nearly always draw, and during the pandemic, like everyone, I spent a lot of time on the phone, so sometimes just for fun I would copy 19th-century and early 20th-century comics, typography or whatever compelled me into my sketchbook—the only rule being that I didn’t know why it compelled me. [It’s an] activity [that] goes back to all of the great books you did in the 1980s and 1990s, and to which I still look to find something unusual that captures that strange balance between the “looking at” and “reading of” typography.

Finally, since you asked, I tried to teach myself to handletter by looking at examples of 1920s original commercial art, specifically those done for the Valmor cosmetics company, original scraps of which were sold by the Chicago novelty store Uncle Fun and run by Ted Frankel, who had inherited the company’s entire back catalog. I learned more from looking at those old inked and whited-out boards than I did from all of the old instruction books I tried to puzzle out, which always seemed reluctant to give up their secrets. These Valmor originals, many of which were by African American artist Charles Dawson, also affected the way I ended up drawing comics, which was to work more typographically than drawing-ly, for lack of a better word.

When you see the three volumes of Date Book, do you have any regrets, second thoughts, nostalgia or other emotions?
Of course; life is full of regrets, and confoundingly, while some of my favorite books are facsimile notebooks and sketchbooks (especially the sketchbooks of Robert Crumb, which, along with Art Spiegelman’s encouragement, saved me in art school), I didn’t realize the effect that publishing my own might have. As I say in my introduction, the decision to publish a sketchbook—where a sketchbook should be a place where one feels absolutely free to humiliate and mortify oneself—torpedoes its basic utility. So almost immediately after printing the first volume I started keeping a separate daily comic strip diary into which I diverted all of the private unpublishable stuff. Now I have a thousand unpublishable pages of a private comic strip diary, which I still compulsively keep mostly for my daughter, as it covers her life more than anything.

In the meantime, I still tried to thoughtfully arrange these three sketchbooks (aka “datebooks”), culled down from 13, into something that hopefully still somehow captures the inevitable passage of time and life, as the books begin when I was a teenager learning to draw and end right when my teenage daughter leaves home—yet here I am, still learning how to draw.

What other alterations, if any, do you have in mind for your work?
Well, aside from simply trying to get better, I’m currently working on three graphic novels, as well as the occasional New Yorker cover, and continue to make sculptures and paintings; also, I’m helping to design the exhibitions for a traveling retrospective of my stuff that began in the Pompidou in 2022 and went through other European venues, which will end in Europe next year at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona and then, finally, at the Billy Ireland Museum in Columbus, OH, in 2026.

The post The Daily Heller: Chris Ware’s Favorite Wares appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Collage has been the subject of so many art books and scholarly treatises that the publication of more is barely met with any degree of excitement today. However, excitement is an apt response to the current volume Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage by Freya Gowrley (Princeton University Press). It is new and deep in its exploration of the “mode” (Gowrley states, “In this book collage is neither a medium nor genre, but a mode; a means of processing the world as it was encountered by individuals across cultures and geographies, who subsequently produced a creative response to that experience”). Throughout the text she explores its range from religious to folk to avant garde approaches—from anonymous Victorians to Faith Ringgold’s African American quilts—and a bit of DIY.

Below, Gowrley, a scholar and the author of Domestic Spaces in Britain, 1750–1849, talks to me about the origins of the “mode” in its spiritual and rebellious manifestations (with a pinch of AI too).

You say that most histories posit the Cubist papier collé as the invention of collage. What do you propose?
I think any statement of a definitive moment of invention is going to inevitably misrepresent a more complex reality, so I probably wouldn’t propose a single alternative for when collage was “invented.” I guess I’d propose multiple instances of creation, whether using paper, or found objects, or whatever, as contributing practices which culminate in the kind of form we recognize as collage today.

Religion has a hand in collage. What was the reason for pictorial assemblages?
The relationship between collage and the expression of devotion is absolutely at the heart of the book. This manifests in both the romantic and religious senses of the term, and we see manifestations of the latter from early Christianity onwards. As we see later on, this kind of collage becomes associated with rituals of religious devotion, such as pilgrimage, as part of which you might acquire images and relics associated with saints. Likewise, relics become a vital part of the liturgical furniture in the medieval period, so we see the emergence of a whole religious visual culture predicated on the display of these goods subsumed within elaborate and often very costly compositions.

How was collage perceived in painting? Was it an opportunity to fit many narratives into one frame?
One of the things that really fascinated me about this way of approaching collage as a form was the opportunity to bring multiple forms of visual and material culture from across distinct periods into dialogue. Still-life painting, in particular, has a really clear relationship with later papier collé, as the recent MET exhibition Cubism and the Trompe L’Oeil really reinforced. The show brought together Cubist works with early modern painting in this beautiful juxtaposition. As a painterly mode, the collagic absolutely encourages the presentation of multiple narratives, but also multiple moments, multiple perspectives, multiple ways of seeing, something which is absolutely echoed in later work.

Is there a fundamental distinction between collage and assemblage?
The traditional answer here would be to stress a distinction between the “flat” and the “fat,” that is, between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. I can absolutely see this as being an important way of distinguishing between forms, but for me, I’m interested in how these forms are united by a shared mode of creation through the various acts that combination encompasses. Both collage and assemblage are united by a series of material and visual gestures that include acquisition, selection and arrangement, and those are the compelling relations between these modes to me.

Hannah Hoch is one of my collage heroes. What made her work modern?
Hoch is actually super interesting in that she’s often cited as being directly inspired by earlier modes of the fragmentary, specifically homemade photomontages, so I actually wouldn’t emphasize too strong a distinction between her work and that which preceded it. Nevertheless, what I think makes her work so distinctly of its period is her presentation of the modern feminine subject. Using images from contemporary women’s magazines, Hoch is literally reconstituting what it is to be a woman at a time when the contours of this were shifting and being redrawn. It’s that perfect culmination of art and the time and place in which it was made.

You suggest that collage is a woman’s language of art. How so?
Here, I’m drawing heavily on Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer’s essay, published in the 1970s, titled “Waste Not, Want Not: An Inquiry Into What Women Saved and Assembled — Femmage.” This is an absolutely foundational text within the feminist art movement, and it’s one that strongly shaped my thinking about how the various kinds of crafts and art-making women engaged in throughout history might be thought of not only as a distinctively feminine mode, but one that stretches across time. I wouldn’t say that collage is necessarily a woman’s language of art, but I would say that it’s one that folk who have often been excluded from mainstream art history engaged in, and that’s significant.

Can you explain what a “collage intervention” is? With punk, collage appeared to be vernacular. Was there something other than a DIY aesthetic at work?
I think what is crucial in punk collage is the end to which that DIY aesthetic is employed, namely in the interrogation of the socio-cultural hegemony, whether that is thematically or in its mode of representation. The work of Linder Sterling really emphasizes this to me—her work doesn’t necessarily have a DIY aesthetic (no more than all collage does), but her work is employed by bands like the Buzzcocks precisely because in skewers the mores of the day in its subject and attitude. On Sterling’s cover of the single Orgasm Addict, for example, we see a nude woman, her head replaced with an iron, whose objectification is rendered in a literal form in her collage.

Where is collage situated in the continuum of art today?
This is a difficult question that I try to address in the conclusion. There are undoubtedly more collagists than ever before. As a form it continues to be highly accessible and so there is an implicit equitability in its undertaking. Thanks to the work of craftivists and socially engaged artists, it continues to be a power tool for critique. But what does the future of collage look like? I guess in order to answer this question, I’d say we should look to the past, and the mutability and transmedial vitality that collage has always had. The development of increasingly sophisticated AI generators will inevitably affect these forms, as it will across all genres of art, but I think this will only be one more transformation in a form that has such a long and varied history.

The post The Daily Heller: The College of Collage appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The Artifacts from the Eames Collection is a series of catalogs that comprehensively documents pieces from the Eames Institute collection, making these iconic designs more widely accessible to all, thus further advancing the legacy of 20th-century designers Ray and Charles Eames.

The Eames Institute has already offered themed virtual exhibitions and is thrilled to continue its growth into the physical print medium. Forty-thousand+ objects have been lovingly collected, preserved, restored, and documented by the Eames Institute so far, with Artifacts from the Eames Collection presenting curated selections from these objects in six thematically themed catalogs: Tables, Ray’s Hand, Eames Aluminum Group, Toys & Play, Steinberg Meets the Eames, and Postcards. (The first five have already been released, with the Postcards catalog coming soon.) Many of the objects featured in these editions have never been seen before, and all have been newly photographed to highlight design details.

Each catalog includes an introductory note from Llisa Demetrios, Chief Curator of the Eames Institute and granddaughter of Ray and Charles, and an essay written by a leading design expert. The catalogs also present a variety of archival material and photography from the Eames Office, Library of Congress, and the archives of Herman Miller and Vitra.

The catalogs are softcover with a short cover wrap and a special insert and range from 122–172 pages. They are available for purchase from the Eames Institute here.

The post All the Eames That’s Fit to Print appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

But, his political satire only scratches the surface of his full oeuvre.

Rodriguez’s work spans from painting and sculpture to film posters, portraiture, children’s book illustrations, and on and on. Steven Heller recently wrote about his illustrated book covers for two Cuban sci-fi titles in a recent The Daily Heller. He also wrote and illustrated his American experience in Worm, a graphic memoir that spans his fleeing from Castro’s Cuba as a young child on the Mariel boatlift to watching the insurrection unfold on January 6, 2021. If you missed our PRINT Book Club with Rodriguez about Worm, it’s definitely worth a watch.

Rodriguez is the subject of a new documentary, Freedom is a Verb, now screening at DOC NYC from Nov 13 through Dec 1, and airing on PBS in the coming months. Directed by Adrienne Hall and Mecky Creus, the film explores the reckless pursuit of freedom inherent in all of Rodriguez’s work. Watch the trailer here.

With the election decided, Rodriguez’s work takes on layers of prophetic meaning. We look forward to Edel Rodriguez’s truth-telling in the near future, reminding us of the power of artists and creatives in times of chaos and despair.

Below, we’ve highlighted some of his stellar work over the last few years.

Left: Latino voter engagement illustration for The Washington Post; Latino vote 2024 poster

Covers for Stern (Germany, two at top left), La Croix (France, top middle), and Time (US, top right and bottom two).

Imagery courtesy of Edel Rodriguez.

The post Four More Years! (…of Edel Rodriguez) appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Together, James Sturm, co-founder of CCS and co-author with Emil Wilson, lead cartoonist of the new volume, discuss the need for this helpful guide to personal fortitude. A free copy is available from The Center for Cartoon Studies.

What was your goal in creating this guide to creative work?
We imagine our goals with Art & Courage were similar to Ted Orland and David Bayles’s with Art & Fear: to offer fellow or aspiring artists a few insights that might help them persevere. Creating art is often a mental game, and we hope this comic gives artists a reassuring pat on the back—a way to say “we understand,” along with a reminder that every artist encounters moments of fear or lack of motivation to push forward in their work.

You list such disciplines as photography, collage, writing, songwriting, etc. How does a reader really know which area to pursue?
Most likely through a process of elimination. It’s usually a bit of a journey for any artist to figure out what medium best suits them. Many also combine mediums, blending techniques in ways that blur distinctions. We’re hoping that the book speaks to all artists, whether they have one discipline or dabble in several. 

How does it compare to the previous volume, Art & Fear?
Art & Courage distills the main themes of the original book, updated for challenges facing today’s artists, such as navigating social media—an influence that didn’t exist when Art & Fear was first published. The comic also has a stronger focus on mental health. Plus, our book is filled with visuals to bring these insights to life.

Where do fear and courage ultimately fit into the equation?
They seem like two sides of the same coin, and all artists use both. Sometimes an artist must courageously leap before they look, and other times fear could help them be appropriately cautious and sensitive.

If we all have some creativity in our DNA, as I believe we do, how does one get it out of the body and into the world?
For some, it’s a necessary part of life, as essential as eating. For most people it’s profoundly challenging. Having basic needs met (housing, proper medical care, living wage) is a good starting place to be in a position to create and share art. But even then, there’s all kinds of cultural stigmas that discourage people from making art. The specter of the “starving artist” warns that investing too much in creative pursuits can lead to ruin. Yet, when you manage to silence the negative voices—whether they’re real or imagined—it becomes far easier to summon the courage needed to bring your work to life.

You have a page on “What Makes Art Good Or Bad?” Is not all creativity created equal?
For artists, being preoccupied with whether one’s art is good or bad is profoundly unhelpful. How we assess work is constantly changing depending on shifting cultural trends or one’s current blood sugar levels. Plus there’s the fact that in order to make good art you have to make a lot of not-so-good art. Art isn’t like mathematics, where one answer is correct and accepted. One person’s masterpiece is another’s junk store donation. And that’s what makes art so special, so alluring, so exciting. There are so many different kinds of art that shock or feel unfamiliar, made by artists who see the world uniquely but maybe don’t have an audience who can appreciate their work—yet.

The post The Daily Heller: How to Not Snuff Out Your Flame appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The six books below are just a few recent fiction and nonfiction projects that have captured my interest over the past few months. There are others … but too many books and too little time to appreciate them as they deserve.

Reading Brian Blomerth’s Lilly Wave (Anthology Editions) was something of a flashback for me. I did not know Blomerth’s work and was unaware of John Cunningham Lilly, a leading psychedelic researcher from the 1950s through the ’70s. But the explosive power and the hallucinatory essence of the art and narrative presented by Blomerth was not lost on this child of the ’60s. Lilly Wave is a biographical deep dive into Lilly’s life and covers the generational shift from his scientific neurological research to the mind-expanding visionary (and recreational) impact of psychedelics on a battalion of inner-mind-out-of-body explorers.

Although I was not able to maintain enough energy to absorb the entire Blomerth experience, I am extremely impressed by his own graphic stamina and narrative gymnastics. What I was able to follow gave me new insights into a dimension of neuro-pathological discovery that has united popular culture and serious science.

This was produced for an audience that can better appreciate the cognitive anomalies that are described. I’m of the old prude school. Never having taken acid or psychedelics of any kind, I have nothing to base my opinions on, but I was turned on by Victor Moscoso’s ZAP comics. Blomerth’s work is possibly the next level to the fantastic work that Moscoso and his cohort of psychedelic artists invented in the ’60s.

The graphic novel and zine genres, like the underground comix that preceded them, have grown with incredible speed and brilliant imaginative power. The titles themselves have also evolved beyond familiar formats into the realm of more precious artist books. Raw Sewage Science Fiction (Drawn & Quarterly) by Marc Bell, another artist (and designer) previously unknown to me, has pieced together from eccentric self-published and small press booklets a distinctly eclectic mix of sci-fi, hi-brut, low-art manifestations. He draws as he writes, with an eye and ear toward the past and future of his personal realm of the absurd. The book feels in design and physical presence as though a diary/scrapbook/catalog of personal graphic tropes, which on the surface seem anarchic but are nonetheless very deliberate.

I wonder whether there is any symbolism in the large “RAW” on the cover. There is a certain suggestion of the original RAW magazine, famous for its band of first-generation experimental comix artists. And I don’t mean that this is derivative, but rather just as exciting.

Like Blomerth’s book, this is a feast that will go half-consumed, but I will keep it by my nightstand for those periods of increased insomnia when I wish I were able to create my own Raw Sewage.

The cover of Edward Steed’s Forces of Nature (Drawn & Quarterly) is as curiously ornamented as it is decoratively appealing. It reminds me a little of Edward Gorey’s eerily, ironically, comically neo-gothic/Victorian short tales (even Steed’s title page resembles lettering done by Gorey). But this work is not fashioned in Gorey’s contiguous narrative manner. Steed is a “gag” cartoonist of decidedly refreshing humor; he is skilled with the single-panel captioned joke—the mainstay of The New Yorker, where his comedy often appears.

Steed’s drawing line is loose and expressive, simple and inherently hilarious. Combine that with his absurd captions and he excels at making commonplace situations ridiculous. Take the cartoon directly below: The fireman on the ladder is calmly explaining to the woman he’s about to rescue from a burning apartment that the hook and ladder lying on its side below, next to two bodies, “hardly ever” tips over.

Steed’s wordless humor is just as precise. With his few scrunchy lines he evokes an emotional satisfaction that few gag artists achieve so consistently. He may not be that other Edward, but Steed has similar witty deviousness and, from what I can assume, a lot of fun doing it.

Distant Ruptures by CF (aka Christopher Forgues), edited by Sammy Harkham (New York Review Books), is another welcome discovery. CF’s most-known book, Powr Mastrs, is glowingly referred to by the publisher as genre-defying punk. After spending time with Distant Ruptures, I agree with the assessment … but I can’t quite get a Gary Panter deja vu out of my head. I know that CF’s comic world is different and his ecosystem of characters and creatures profoundly varies, but the spirit is a nagging reference to Panter’s variegated view.

Distant Ruptures is a collection of rough sketches and notes. Of most interest are the unfinished strips, like “Hearing Loss,” “Wolf Problem” and “Sex Comic,” which live as one-offs of ideas that CF appears to be trying out. I’m also seduced by the simple complexity of “Wizard Acorn,” and where this storyline is headed.

Like Raw Sewage, Distant Ruptures fits well into the comic/art book genre outgrowth of the zine scene and is well worth delving into further.

I am forced to admit that my ignorance of Japanese comics is woefully extensive. I’ve read some manga books and have obtained a few wartime collections. But I’m currently reading as much as possible to catch up—a goal that eludes me as time speeds by. Oba Electroplating Factory by Yoshiharu Tsuge (Drawn & Quarterly) is one book that I had previously put aside, believing from a superficial once-over that it was a lesser Gary Panter. I was dead wrong.

I’ve since learned that Ysuge is a pioneer of the form, from his first comics in the mid 1950s through to his opus entry into surrealism with Nejishiki. Oba was published in 1973, and it was the first time he created manga that, per editor Ryan Holmberg’s introduction, “aspired to a realistic representation of his personal past”—a bleak one, indeed, having grown up after the war in the midst of American occupation.

It is always enlightening to see what cultural traits influence comics, and my mistaken attribution to Panter was admittedly me looking out when I should have looked into the window of Oba Electroplating Factory.

Although not a comic, this small book is, in a delightfully inspiring interview-style format, the voice of one of my favorite illustrators/comics artists. Q & A (Drawn & Quarterly) by Adrian Tomine is an ersatz memoir constructed using questions from fans that he has dutifully answered during free time on Sundays. He writes in the introduction: “From 1995 to 2015, I published what I considered the most interesting of the incoming mail in each issue of my comic book series Optic Nerve, but also made an effort to respond to people directly, usually with a handwritten postcard.”

Times have changed. Tomine “might not do so again,” so this book is a substitution. In it he has selected some FAQs about technique and technical issues but keeps things lively with answers to queries on how to pronounce his name to such questions as, “Do you ever do sketches for fans?” (His answer: “I’m terrible at off-the-cuff drawing, especially while people are watching, but I’m happy to do a little unimpressive sketch for anyone at a book signing event.”)

The book is like being at just such an event. It is a comfortable pocket-sized volume, generously illustrated with sketches, progressives and finishes, and is a pleasant read for those boring rides on the Metro North after the end of Daylight Savings Time.

The post The Daily Heller: A Graphic Novel Dump appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At our November PRINT Book Club, we’ll welcome Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico for a discussion of his new book, New York Nico’s Guide to NYC. Nicolas Heller is the son of PRINT’s Steven Heller and artist Louis Fili. In our recent interview with the Heller-Fili family, Heller discusses being raised by creative parents and the city of New York; both very much inform his unique point of view.

Nicolas Heller is a filmmaker and a social media icon. In his first book, Heller takes us on a tour of 100 shops, institutions, and eateries, and the characters who shape them. He covers beloved spots across all five boroughs (you too, Staten Island!), visiting barbers, kosher delis, and record stores, to name just a few.

By hearing the living histories of New York’s most colorful characters, Nico shows us the heart and soul of the place they call home.

From the publisher:

“What makes New York City the greatest city in the world? As one of the foremost chroniclers of New York’s local legends and urban glory, New York Nico has thoughts. Nico gets asked a lot of questions about his hometown. Where’s the best slice, pastrami sandwich, cup of coffee, vintage store, or bookshop?

In this must-have city guide, New York Nico takes readers on an epic tour of his 100 can’t-miss NYC spots, including food, shopping, and so much more. As he traverses the five boroughs, he offers a raw and authentic “locals-only” guide to the city so nice they named it twice. But behind every New York institution are the personalities who make them special.”

Left: Nicolas Heller; Right: a recent feature in The New York Times covering a book launch event at Astor Place Hairstylists, one of the institutions featured in the book

Don’t miss our conversation with Nicolas Heller on Thursday, November 21, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

The post New York Nico Shares His City at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Designer (textiles, furniture, and interiors), graphic designer, and architect Alexander Girard refused to be boxed in by medium or style. He played with an aesthetic uniquely his own—defying the design canon. You may not know something to be “an Alexander Girard,” but his work is most definitely stamped on your design DNA.

Here are just some of the phrases Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee, our guests and collaborators on Let The Sun In, used to describe the ineffable Alexander Girard:

“An incredible synthesizer.”

“A joyous creator.”

“Endless cross-pollination.”

“Inspired by everything.”

“Would have been himself anywhere.”

“Both timeless and ahead of his time.”

Todd Oldham’s first exposure to Girard was at eight or nine years old, in DFW’s new Braniff terminal. Oldham remembered being surrounded by patterns and color (and being able to touch the dinosaur bones they had excavated while building the new terminal). That explosion of color and pattern, though he didn’t know it then, was courtesy of a collaboration between Alexander Girard and Emilio Pucci to redesign every aspect of Braniff International Airways. Oldham later learned the extent of the Braniff project: Girard and Pucci designed 17,000 items across 80 colorways (luggage tags, ticket jackets, timetables, seat fabric, the actual jets!).

Kiera Coffee’s recognition of Girard happened naturally as a design writer. She had long admired his work without knowing his name and understanding who he was. Coffee’s collaboration with Oldham on Girard has been an ongoing project. Let The Sun In is the second book on the artist they’ve worked together on. (Fun fact: the first had serious “plunk value,” weighing nearly twelve pounds!) Let The Sun In is the perfect coffee table size.

This book is glorious everything. It’s the superstar tribute [Alexander Girard] deserves.

Todd Oldham

How do you encapsulate Alexander Girard’s singularly open and curious mind in a short recap? We can’t. But we hope you’ll register here to watch the recording and buy your copy of Let The Sun In.

Here are some additional links worth your time:

The gorgeous Girard Studio website.

Girard’s work on the La Fonda del Sol restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, in Architectural Digest.

More about a fan favorite: Girard’s John Deere mural.

A fun feature on the Braniff redesign by Billie Muraben: “The End of the Plain Plane.”

Coming up on November 21, the PRINT Book Club will welcome Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico. Look for an announcement soon!

The post Book Club Recap: Celebrating Joyous Creator Alexander Girard appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“Letters are magic” is the watchword of Jessica Hische, one of the world’s leading lettering artists. “Letters are an amazing playground,” she says, “a playground for art and creativity. They’re an art form that gets kids — and everyone — believing they’re artists.” But it’s inaccurate to call Hische “just” a lettering artist. She’s a bestselling author, a graphic designer with an enviable client list, and an illustrator with a delightfully sophisticated style.

She’s also the mother of three school-age children, which gives her an insider advantage when it comes to creating books that kids will love and parents will want to buy (and read aloud and collect and display). It’s no accident that her books‚ which are one hundred percent Hische productions from the cover and spine to the acknowledgments page — have sold up to 200,000 copies each.

On October 22 — that’s next Tuesday — her fifth picture book, My First Book of Fancy Letters, will be released by Penguin Random House, and Hische is currently on tour.

What places does she most enjoy visiting? Elementary schools, of course, like the two pictured above, where she’s introducing her 2021 New York Times bestseller Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave. “Kids at first don’t know what a lettering artist is,” she explains. (For a detailed explanation yourself, please see her 2015 book In Progress: Inside a Lettering Artist’s Process from Pencil to Vector.)

To break the ice at a school visit, Hische might ask, “Who has letters on their shirt?” Many kids always raise their hands, so she explains, “An artist drew those letters and made them into what they wanted to express.”

She then demonstrates that letters can have all kinds of forms and meanings. As long as the basic shape of the alphabet letter is clear, it can be Athletic, Bubbly, Creepy … or whatever you, the artist, want it to be. I personally appreciate that each letter is shown as a grown-up capital and a baby lowercase because 95 percent of the letters we read in text are lowercase. Kids who start first grade only knowing the uppercase letters are at a big disadvantage.

Spreads ABC and DEF from My First Book of Fancy Letters, © Jessica Hische, 2024

Hische might then ask, “What’s your favorite thing?” If a student says, “a rainbow,” she might encourage them to draw an ‘R’ made from a rainbow, like the one in the spread below. If another student answers, “A rocket ship,” you can already visualize the kind of ‘R’ the child will draw. This game has only one rule: you must draw the alphabet letter that matches the concept or word. So, if the word is “Prickly,” like in My First Book of Fancy Letters, in which each letter illustrates an adjective, the ‘P’ is a prickly green cactus.” The ‘F’ is definitely Flowery. And the ‘Y’ is as Yummy as a cookie with pink icing and sprinkles.

Spreads PQR and XYZ from My First Book of Fancy Letters, © Jessica Hische, 2024

“I’m not there to sell books,” Hische says of her school visits. “I’m there to inspire the kids, especially when they’re still at the age when their brains are mushy sponges. Even if the book is not specifically about letters, they’ll walk away inspired to draw letters.” Her way of organizing a talk or pitch — totally involving the audience in a creative process — could be a model for all of us.

A quick stroll through Hische’s website tells you that “lettering artist-author-designer-illustrator-mom” is still an incomplete bio. Hische is a true entrepreneur. In addition to 20 years — and counting — as a design firm principal, creating logos, posters, book jackets, packaging, and all kinds of cool stuff like holiday cookie jars for A-list clients, she owns two retail stores in her adopted hometown of Oakland, California. She describes Drawling as a kids’ art supply store and Jessica Hische &Friends as a showcase for her books and lots of flourish-y things she’s designed: limited-edition prints, posters, apparel, jewelry, and note cards. Many of the products are on the ‘shop’ section of her website, where font packages of her six original typefaces are available for sale and download — so that you, too, can design with very fancy letters.

A few examples from the extensive Jessica Hische portfolio. (l-r) Top row: Spread from the book Tomorrow You’ll Be Brave; Popcorn can from the Neiman Marcus 2022 holiday packaging suite; Poster for all-star Scott Rudin film. Center: Neiman Marcus Christmas cookie jar, based on a ceramic tree that Hische’s grandmother put out every holiday season; Promotion for a master class she teaches for Skillshare featuring her hands refining the Mailchimp logo. Bottom: Poster for the American Red Cross encouraging vaccination; Main title design and poster for Lionsgate film; Poster for Comcast used as set decoration in a film in which E.T. reunites with Elliott’s earth family; Limited-edition print.

Hische is the first to admit that from kindergarten on, she was the one whose art was most often displayed on school bulletin boards. After attending public schools in the small town in Pennsylvania where she grew up, she became “a design major who did illustration on the side” at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, graduating in 2006 with a BFA. In 2007 she came to New York to be a junior designer at Louise Fili LTD, bringing her own historically-based swashes and ligatures to the firm’s work in logo, book, and postage stamp design. Not surprisingly, the job soon became a full-time senior designer position.

“When I’m looking to hire a designer,” Fili says, “I want to see at least one portfolio piece that I wish I’d done. Jessica’s was a set of postcards for the Twelve Days of Christmas, a showcase of her skills. From day one here, she was fearless. To anything I asked of her — Can you make this type look like spaghetti? Like embroidery? Oatmeal? Ribbons? — I received an affirmative response. And the lettering was always, of course, perfect.” 

In 2009, Hische began freelancing in New York, making a name for herself and winning just about every award and accolade in the business. In 2011, her husband, the musician and web designer, now Meta design director Russ Maschmeyer, was hired by Facebook, and they moved to the Bay Area.

Hische and Maschmeyer began growing their family in 2015, now with kids aged nine, seven, and five. “I have a complicated life,” she admits, “but I could never miss one of my kids’ first steps or birthday parties. We’ll even make the cake together. Part of the reason I’ve kept my businesses small — mostly just me — is to have a ton of flexibility around family stuff. I love going to their school plays, volunteering at the school, and bringing them to sports. I’m even taking karate with my middle son!”

Letters are an amazing playground.

Jessica Hische

Portrait of the family, © Rasmus Andersson

What are the most important things Jessica Hische wants everyone to know? One: that every letter in her books is hand-drawn, first in pencil, then in Illustrator or Procreate. Other than the glyphs in the font packages, each letter is a unique work of art. Two: that she hopes that the kids (and grown-ups) on your gift list will make their own fancy letters. And have lots of fun doing it.

With Hische, even an interview can be lots of fun.

Images courtesy of Jessica Hische, except where noted.

The post Letters are Magic in Jessica Hische’s New Children’s Book appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

October is a special month because we are bringing you not one, but TWO book club discussions.

One week after our talk with Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller about Here: Where The Black Designers Are, we’ll welcome photographer, fashion designer, and artist Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee to discuss their new book Alexander Girard: Let The Sun In.

Register here to attend the live stream on Thursday, October 24.

The new monograph, by Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee, covers the full breadth of the influential and much-loved designer’s life and career. It begins with Girard’s textile designs where he favored abstract forms and geometric patterns that moved effortlessly between chic, understated designs full of subtle color and texture, to intensely vivid designs that popped with super bright tones.

For many years he led the Herman Miller textile department where he worked with George Nelson and Charles & Ray Eames, and designed, colored, and drew hundreds of patterns, many of which are still popular and available today.

The book also covers the highly diverse range of work Girard undertook for commercial businesses, from Braniff (rebrand) to Detrola (radios and turntables) to La Fonda del Sol restaurant in New York (interior design).

For Girard, design (interior or otherwise) was never fixed; his ethos was one of constant change and allowing space for new ideas and seasons.

Art is only art when it is synonymous with living.

Alexander Girard

Todd Oldham is a photographer, author, and designer. Widely regarded as one of America’s top fashion designers in the 1990s, Oldham has since authored more than 20 books about artists and various design subjects, including Best of Nest (Phaidon, 2020).

Kiera Coffee is a New York-based writer and has spent more than a decade writing about design. She has worked for publications such as Interiors, Nest, and Martha Stewart Living amongst others.

Don’t miss our conversation with Oldham and Coffee on Thursday, October 24, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of Let The Sun In, here!

The post Todd Oldham & Kiera Coffee on Alexander Girard at Our Bonus October Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Visual effects magazine befores & afters looks at the impressive array of seamless VFX shots in Ripley.

More gorgeous photography – Richard Weston and family follow in the footsteps of Mr Ripley along the Amalfi Coast.

More Farrow-meets-Kubrick than the rest of Richard’s pics, that up there is Anish Kapoor’s Dark Brother at Museo Madre. No family holiday is complete without a big black hole in the ground filled with nothingness and despair.

Back in Blighty, The World of Tim Burton is opening this month at the Design Museum. I’m very much “love the early stuff, and then … ehh” on Burton², but heck, I’ll still lap this up. Can’t wait to see the range of gift shop merch. I love gift shop merch.

The Folio Society have continued their Dune series with a new edition of Children of Dune, illustrated by Hilary Clarcq. At some point I’m going to get all three of these books and make a little sandy shrine to them.

Pretty certain that Harold Fisk’s Meander Maps of the Mississippi River (1944) are some of the most beautiful images ever made. Do I need one of these on my wall? If so, which one? All of them, you say? Every wall? FINE.

A brief history of a graphic design icon: Chip Kidd/Sandy Collora/Tom Martin’s Jurassic Park logo. Features the greatest fax of all time.

Very pleasantly surprised to find myself alongside other fantastic newsletterists in this week’s Substack Reads digest, curated by Coleen Baik.³ Apparently I’m a “known quantity in design circles” and should be enjoyed with a dirty vodka martini. This is all I’ve ever wanted.

An LP a Day Keeps the Doctor Away – excellent guest post by Rachel Cabitt on Casual Archivist, delving into the world of educational record sleeve art.

“I have been told to stop stealing muffins from the bakery. Unfortunately, it’s the only way to keep my lucrative muffin stand in business. Everyone is fine with this.”

That is all.

1. If anyone needs me, I’m out here perishing on the “remakes and re-adaptations are distinct cultural entities that each deserve their own critical discourse” hillock. ↩︎
2. Slavishly copying Burton’s art occupied most of my time at school. Ideally, this show would have one room dedicated to nothing but nineties teenagers’ exercise book doodlings of stripy snakes and Edward Scissorhands. ↩︎
3. This has created quite a spike in subscribers, which will immediately correct itself the moment I hit Send on this thing. Nothing loses you newsletter subscribers quite as effectively as sending a newsletter to your subscribers. ↩︎

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header image by Osarugue Igbinoba for Unsplash+.

The post Meanwhile No. 212 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Our obsession with celebrating book and cover design finds good company—AIGA has just announced its 50 best book covers and 50 best book designs of 2023.

Just because we’re hurtling through the last quarter of 2024 doesn’t mean we can’t take a moment to reflect on these stellar book and cover designs from last year. AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers of 2023 marks the 100th year of the competition, with 542 book and cover designs entered from 28 countries. All Eligible entries had to have been published and used in the marketplace in 2023.

One hundred years into this competition, the book seems to be as protean and chimeric as ever.

Rob Giampietro, AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers Chair

“At times confounded and delighted, we asked ourselves [during the judging process], Is this a course packet or a manifesto? A sculpture or a monograph? A glossary or a guidebook? Is this book contemporary or retro? Gauche or chic?” Rob Giampietro, chair of the competition, said of their consideration process. “We debated books that blended the grotesque with the goofy alongside books that were delicate, subtle, and difficult to emotionally classify. In the end, we felt we found some of the best of this year’s offerings, books that in every case seem to show what design can do to bring the experience of reading to riskier-yet-more-rewarding places.”

Each of the 2023 winners can be viewed through AIGA’s online gallery, and will become part of the AIGA collection at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University’s Butler Library in New York. Entries for 50 Books | 50 Covers of 2024 can be submitted starting this November.

The post AIGA Looks Back on the 50 Best Book and Book Cover Designs of 2023 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

There’s little else in America as inherently nostalgic as a bowling alley. From those ‘90s kids such as myself who grew up attending duckpin bowling birthday parties at kitschy spots in suburban strip malls to those who remember high school dates spent at the local lanes, to grow up in the States is to have a heartfelt reverence for the institution of the bowling alley.

The signature style and aesthetic of bowling alley architecture is central to their mystique, which originally developed in mid-century California after World War II, in an effort to get more people going to the lanes. Suffice it to say, the strategy worked, with bowling alleys blooming nationwide. The history of this bowling alley boom is beautifully preserved and articulated in a new book from Angel City Press of the Los Angeles Public Library, Bowlarama: The Architecture of Mid-Century Bowling.

Written by the LA preservationist and senior editor at Los Angeles Magazine, Chris Nichols, along with historian, advocate, and former president of the Museum of Neon Art, Adriene Biondo, Bowlarama encapsulates the enthusiasm and splendor surrounding mid-century bowling alley culture through vintage photographs, ephemera, and hand-drawn architectural renderings.

An architectural style called Googie architecture was the dominant look of this era of bowling alley design, which is characterized by space-age shapes, materials, signage, and more, meant to catch the eye and entice onlookers. Last year, I took a tour of relics of Googie architecture that remain in Los Angeles with Nichols himself as the charismatic tour guide. Considering the grip Googie had on LA in the 50s and 60s, it’s no surprise the city served as the epicenter for the mid-century bowling alley frenzy portrayed in Bowlarama.

For gamers and architecture buffs alike, Bowlarama is an at-home library must-have. So many bowling lane structures are no longer with us following the crash of the craze in 1962; Bowlarama is a critical historical record that helps keep them alive.

Hero image above: The gloriously googie Covina Bowl (1956, Powers, Daly & DeRosa), shortly after it was completed in 1956, was an instant landmark in the new suburbs. (Photo credit: Charles Phoenix)

The post A New Book Honors the Bygone Bowling Alley appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The accomplishment Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. is most proud of, is that 6,000 Americans display his prints on their walls. There’s perhaps no better anecdote to describe Kennedy’s humble, generous, thoughtful spirit, on full display in the pages of the gorgeous monograph Citizen Printer and in our Book Club discussion.

If you missed our live conversation, this one was truly special and worth a watch!

Kennedy was exposed to letterpress printing as a ten-year-old in Louisiana with his Cub Scout troop. He rues that in our contemporary, digital culture, people don’t always have access to see how things are made. “I just watched him work,” Kennedy said, “The pride that he took in making these things, in workmanship, I picked that up.”

One doesn’t realize what effect an encounter will have on our lives.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy talked about his career trajectory from a “one-time business bureaucrat,” to taking what he deemed the easy path: “I decided to do what made me happy.” He’s a practitioner of bad printing, a term he uses to describe his lack of formal training, his use of layering, and his self-described sloppy, hurried technique.

There are other followers of “bad printing,” notably the Dutch experimental artist and typographer HN Werkman. Kennedy, like Werkman, values the power and influence of printed matter, saying, “Printing is always a dangerous business. The dissemination of information is dangerous.”

Dangerous, and important. Kennedy’s manifesto is passionate and provocative: I PRINT NEGRO. “Those voices that have been suppressed, I have to use my press to put those voices out in the world,” he says.

He considers himself an agitator (and our culture is better served with his hard truths). Listening to Kennedy, one can’t help but absorb his palpable joy and contentment in his work.

I try to put ink on paper everyday. Then it’s a complete day.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

We’ve only scratched the surface of this incredible conversation. We hope you’ll register here to watch the recording. Psst: Kennedy offered a free postcard print to everyone who attended. You’ll have to watch it to find out how!

If you haven’t purchased your copy of Citizen Printer, order one here. Your design bookshelf will thank you!

Links & diversions from this live stream:

Kennedy refurbished an old building as his print shop, starting in 2016. Check out the photo album.

Clear some space in your studio. Posterhouse NYC has two Kennedy prints in the shop. We Tried to Warn You! (2023) and the Posterhouse 2021 anniversary print. Smaller in scale, Kennedy’s Sista Said postcard set at Letterform Archive offers words of wisdom from Black women in social justice and the arts.

Go see the gorgeous exhibition that accompanies this monograph at Letterform Archive in San Francisco! On view until January 2025, Citizen Printer showcases 150 type-driven artifacts produced throughout Kennedy’s career, including broadsides, maps, church fans, handbills, and oversized posters.

The post PRINT Book Club Recap with Joyful Agitator, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

In my first year working with the large-format camera I saw how it was too slow for street work. I thought if I had a subject against which I could pit street life, perhaps I could develop a strategy for working in the city. My goal was to have the Empire State Building ever-present, presiding over the scene like a Mount Fuji, while I would watch for the signs of daily life that would make a new kind of photographic sense when seen all together.

Joel Meyerowitz

Popped into Tate Modern for the first time in ages – particularly loved seeing Joel Meyerowitz’s Empire State. Tempted to try something similar in old York.

Coming soon from Unit Editions: 1,000 Marks, a collection of symbols and logotypes designed by the Pentagram since its founding in 1972. It’s BIG. Seriously, the girth of the thing. Crikey.

Winona Ryder visits Criterion’s closet, shares her profound connection to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, recalls the deep impact Gena Rowlands had on her life and career, and selects favorites by Gordon Parks, Jim Jarmusch, Albert Brooks, and John Sayles. SEE ALSO: There is no love affair more enduring than Ryder and a black jacket and a Tom Waits t-shirt.

When a film doesn’t look like its concept art – another fantastic read from Animation Obsessive, looking at the influence and frustrations of Disney artist Mary Blair. 

A brief lesson explains the visual impact of an early cinematic favourite, the Sustained Two-Shot. 

Julia Schimautz on how to make a risograph animation. 

“Stålenhag’s most personal work yet, Swedish Machines explores masculinity, friendship, and sexuality in a queer science fiction tale about two young men stuck in the past – and in each other’s orbit.” – only a couple of days left to back Simon Stålenhag’s long-awaited new art book.

“Please roll the back window down and approach the White Zone at exactly 2.6 mph. Staff are standing by to launch your student into the window, Dukes of Hazzard style, with a trebuchet handmade by the LARP Club. If you cannot achieve this speed in the requisite time, simply CIRCLE THE BLOCK” — McSweeney’s new school year drop-off and pick-up rules.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header image by Daniel Farò, Death to Stock

The post Meanwhile No. 210 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Expensive medical care for domestic pets has surged over the past few decades, especially for dogs, with costly vet visits and rising insurance rates. Dogs are not as resilient as I once thought (Lassie and Rin Tin Tin to the contrary). Among the most common medical devices for dogs, the neck cone is used to prevent them from exacerbating wounds or harming themselves in other ways. It is also an awkward-looking piece of equipment, which, for all I know, is as embarrassingly annoying for a pooch as a neck brace was for me when I suffered an ailment.

Regardless, it begs the question of how an implement that looks like a lampshade can be made more aesthetically pleasing and conceptually witty. How can it be transformed into art? Author/photographer Winnie Au and Designer Marie-Yan Morvan explore that in their new book, Cone of Shame—which will also raise funds for Animal Haven’s Recovery Road fund, and which Winnie Au discusses with me below.

(All images reproduced with permission from Cone of Shame by Winnie Au © 2024. Designs by Marie-Yan Morvan. Published by Union Square & Co.)

Like you, I’ve always felt bad for dogs who had to wear lampshades on the street. What inspired you to do these photographs?
Cone of Shame was born out of two things. I often see things in life and file them away in my brain as ideas for future projects. I had always seen dogs wearing cones post-surgery, and that image and shape was sort of seared into my head and floating around. I knew there was something strong about the visual and that I could do something interesting with it. I also loved how the cones made a dog look both sad and funny at the same time. And the cone has a transformative nature—when it’s worn, it really transforms the energy that a dog has. So I wanted to create a series that transformed our own vision of the cone. I decided to turn the cone of shame upside down and really make it into a majestic, beautiful and artful moment.

The second thing that made Cone of Shame into a series was the passing of my corgi Tartine. She was diagnosed with throat cancer, and after about a month of chemotherapy and endless doctor visits, we had to put her to sleep—one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make. The whole experience was so difficult and sad, and it made me acutely aware of the high cost of medical bills for dogs. It made me want to make sure that other pet parents would not have to make any medical decisions based on finances. So I decided that the Cone of Shame series would help raise funds for rescue dogs with urgent medical needs. For every print, notecard, and now book sold featuring the Cone of Shame, a portion of the proceeds is donated to Animal Haven’s Recovery Road fund.

How did the pooches respond to wearing these?
I did a lot of work in advance of our photoshoots to vet each dog and make sure they would be comfortable wearing a cone. For dogs who didn’t have prior experience wearing a cone, we sent them plain plastic cones to get comfortable with in advance of the shoot. So first and foremost, the dogs had to be comfortable wearing a cone in order to participate in the series. On our actual photoshoots, the reactions would vary quite a bit. Some dogs did not even notice they were wearing a cone. For example, Kyrie fell asleep while sitting up wearing a cotton cone. To be fair, her cone did seem very cuddly and pillow-like. Other dogs had more abstract cones that required us to lift areas of them with fishing line on set (in order to get just the right shape for the photograph). This was the case for Finley the papillon, and Tia the shar pei. In some cases, wearing the cone required a lot of discipline from our dogs—they needed to be able to sit or stand absolutely still while we adjusted the cone to create the right shape. Some dogs, as expected, tried to shake the cone off. And we had the usual reaction—a bit of confusion/disorientation coming from our pups. Some loved staring at themselves in the mirror. Other dogs would just dance while wearing the cone—they would jump, they would get excited. And others did look proud, which was a vibe I was going for throughout the series. I mainly photographed the dogs with the hope that they would forget they were wearing a cone so I could capture their true personalities. Most of them would forget after about five minutes that they had a cone on.

Some of them are quite fashionable. Since dogs are now wearing shoes, sweaters and whatever else owners can think of, do you think at least some of the dogs enjoyed their cones?
Yes, I did try to cast dogs who already enjoy “wearing” things. So for a lot of them, they were not phased at all and [they] just enjoyed all the love and attention they were getting during the photoshoot. We, of course, had a lot of treats on hand, so for a lot of the dogs, wearing a cone = getting fed delicious treats.

You achieved some great poses. What surprised you most?
One of the challenges in doing a series of this size for a book was to try to not repeat the same shapes too much. And with dogs, there is such a wide range of dog sizes, fur and breed intricacies. This was a lot of fun to explore. I loved learning about each dog breed or type to understand what they could or could not do. Some of my favorite poses came from dogs whose cones mimicked their fur. The dog shapes became very abstract (for example, with Calvin the Komondor or with Waldo the Bedlington Terrier). It was fun to kind of watch the dogs disappear in front of our eyes on set, to wonder where the cone ended and the dog began. I do love some of the photos of the dogs stretching (Tia, Henry McGoober). It’s a moment that you just have to catch—most dogs cannot do this pose on command. And it feels like a really recognizably dog moment for all of the pet owners out there, but in placing it in context with the cones, it becomes this beautiful shape. The other pose I loved getting was when dogs jumped or danced in front of me. The shapes of the dogs could just be so unique and unexpected, and there’s just always something magical about seeing a jumping dog frozen in air. They look like they are flying.

Where did you find your models?
I have a network of friends/dog lovers who I reach out to whenever I have a dog project, and that usually results in some great recommendations. I also found some dogs in dog parks around NYC, on the street (I made notecards to give to dogs who I found photogenic on the street), on Instagram, and we also found some of the very unique dogs through an animal agency. I worked closely too with designer Marie-Yan Morvan (who made all the cones), and she reached out to her network of creatives to find dogs as well. I have been photographing dogs for a long time so I also reached out to some of my favorite dogs from past shoots to see if they wanted to participate in this series. The fun thing about working on Cone of Shame is people and their dogs are so excited to be a part of it, so the casting—while time-consuming to find just the right dogs—was always easy in a sense.

The post The Daily Heller: Art of the Dog Cone appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Letterform Archive in San Francisco is currently showing a retrospective of Kennedy’s work in an exhibition entitled Citizen Printer, curated by Kelly Walters. On view through January, the show features over 150 type-driven artifacts created by Kennedy throughout his career and is accompanied by a monograph of the same name. This book has been selected for our September PRINT Book Club, which will feature a virtual conversation with Kennedy moderated by Steven Heller and Debbie Millman on Thursday, September 19, at 4 p.m. ET. Learn more and register to attend here!

As a primer to the Book Club, check out my conversation with Kennedy about his background and the exhibition below! (Conversation lightly edited for length and clarity.)

What first brought you to printmaking?

I didn’t enter into letterpress printing until about 1988, and prior to that, I’d worked in corporate America as a computer programmer. I discovered it in Williamsburg, Virginia. Williamsburg is a historical village based upon the 18th-century colonies, and they had an 18th-century print shop. I saw the docent doing a demonstration of letterpress printing, and then I just started doing it. I’ve been doing it ever since!

Before that, I had dabbled in calligraphy for a number of years, so I had a background in letters and letter forms. But for some reason, letterpress printing really resonated with me. I also had very minor experience in commercial printing at the university that I went to; my neighbor was the university printer, so occasionally, I would pop into his shop while he was working, and he would explain some of the rudimentary principles of printing, but I didn’t actively pursue it.

After you discovered letterpress printing in Williamsburg, how did you start printing yourself?

I was staying in Chicago at the time. There was an organization called Artist Book Works, a community-based book arts program that taught letterpress printing, bookbinding, paper decorations, and things of that nature. I took two of their letterpress courses, and then I was on my own.

I continued to work in corporate America, and then I was forced out by the downsizing of the company. I tried to set up a print shop at home in my basement, but I was very unsuccessful at it. So then, like any good person, when you don’t know what you’re doing, you go hide out in graduate school. So I did that. I got my MFA in graphic design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

I had my own letterpress shop, even when I was in graduate school— I had it long before I went to graduate school. That’s one of the things that distinguished me from other students; they were using the equipment that was at the university, so once they left, they had to find equipment to use. But I already had my equipment—I had a Vandercook 4 and a Heidelberg 10×15 Platen—and so once I left, I could continue to pursue learning the skills and learning the craft. 

How did you acquire those two presses? 

When I started, the zenith of letterpress printing had waned, and offset printing had taken over, so people were getting rid of this equipment. But a school had one, and no printer wanted it, so they just offered it for free. I saw the notice, and then I went and picked it up. I paid about $5,000 for the Heidelberg from another printer, which was an exorbitant price at that time.

Do you still have them?

I have the Heidelberg, but I gave the 4 to a community print shop, and I have no idea what happened to it. 

What was the turning point that allowed you to go from your unsuccessful print shop in your basement to the successful artist you are now?

A complete abandonment of any goals. I just gave up and started printing because I liked printing and needed a modest income to support myself.  Everything else has been the result of me doing those two things: getting up every day and printing and enjoying it. I also tried to become an academic, but I found that to be too stressful and too confining.

How did you develop your signature printmaking style? When did that distinct aesthetic coalesce for you as an artist?

Well, to begin with, I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a printer … kinda. I don’t even consider myself a printer; I consider myself a person with a printing press. Printers are very professional, careful, and sincere about what they do, and I just mess around. I have fun. And I’m fortunate that people see the merit in what I do and want to hire me and buy the things I make.

I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a printer … kinda. I don’t even consider myself a printer; I consider myself a person with a printing press.

I was formally trained in what they call fine printing and book arts, but when I moved to Alabama, I transitioned to what I’m doing now. The reason I do what I do is out of necessity. I had a commission that I was working on, and I made a mistake, but I didn’t have any more paper, and I didn’t have money to buy it, so I had to do something with what I had. I decided to carefully print another layer over everything so you couldn’t see the mistake and put the corrected text on top. After I did that, I found it interesting how the letters overlapped in the shapes that were made, so I continued doing that. It became one of the styles that people recognize me for. 

Your activism is a central part of your printmaking practice, and you use your printmaking as a form of abolition. Where does your drive to communicate those ideas and themes in your work come from? 

It comes from my humanity. It is a part of the universal humanity in all of us: the humanity that cries out for justice, the humanity that cries out for liberation. We all have that within us. It is what makes us human.

I’ve always been that way. How do I separate my skin from the rest of my body? It’s just the nature of the beast that I am. I was raised in a family that, foremost, was truth, respect for individuals no matter what their so-called social class was, you do not infringe upon another person’s rights, and you show generosity and gratitude at all times.

Can you tell me a bit about your exhibition at Letterform Archive, Citizen Printer?

The exhibition includes works from as early as 1988, so it’s not just posters. It shows the artist books I’ve done and the wider swath of my work. It’s a retrospective, and that’s the first time this has ever been done. All of the exhibitions I’ve done to date have been site-specific, in that if an organization or a university or a museum asks me to do an exhibition, I will do it, provided that they identify grassroots organizations that need to have their message disseminated. I will then create promotional materials for those grassroots organizations to be exhibited as posters in the museum. Then after the exhibition is over, the museum gives those materials to the organizations to use as they see fit. 

I tell them, If you want me, then you have to do something for the community. And I don’t mean the United Way or the NAACP. I mean, grassroots organizations and small organizations that may not even have a 501(c)(3), but they’re out there helping their community.

The reason I do that is that traditionally, museums have excluded Black people, but now, they want Black people, brown people, those populations that they did not actively recruit in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, to come and take advantage of the services and the offerings of the museum. But when you’ve told somebody for 40 years that they can’t come in, you can’t just stay, “The door is open! Please come in!” You have to actively go and get them. 

So I tell the museums that that’s what this is about. It’s about them going to the community and saying, “We value what you do. We value your words. And we hope that you have a degree of trust with us, and you’ll come and visit us and utilize the services that we have here.”

It’s commendable that you’re using these opportunities to exhibit your work to uplift others. 

That’s basically the way that I do things. When I work with organizations or museums, it’s about expanding the audience of that institution and bringing in new people to experience the services that that institution has.

The post Letterpress Printer Amos Kennedy Jr. Makes Art As Statement appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Peele has committed his film-savvy to horror using urban legends such as doppelgangers “to tease out the uniquely American perceptions of xenophobia.” As critic Monica Castillo wrote of the film, “Us is another thrilling exploration of the past and oppression this country is still too afraid to bring up. Peele wants us to talk, and he’s given audiences the material to think, to feel our way through some of the darker sides of the human condition.”

The new book explores alternate endings and deleted scenes, along with over 150 stills. This veritable reader’s guide includes annotations by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Jamieson Webster, Jared Sexton, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond and Leila Taylor, who individually and collectively present “a cosmology of images, definitions and inspirations that extend the themes of the film.”

Inventory Press’ Adam Michaels is a known fan of 1960s paperbacks that documented the period’s most emblematic mainstream and avant-garde movies. Likewise, Us is an invaluable guide to a deeper understanding of this important film.

The post The Daily Heller: Jordan Peele’s Reel Deal appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

You’re in for a treat at our September PRINT Book Club. Letterpress printing legend, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. will join hosts Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to talk about Citizen Printer. The new monograph, out this month by Letterform Archive, celebrates the Detroit-born artist’s life and work.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is known for his type-driven messages of social justice and Black power, which he emblazoned on rhythmically layered and boldly inked posters. Now, with Citizen Printer, Kennedy’s inspiring story sits alongside his most important work, providing essential context for this contemporary Black artist. The book also acts as a call to action, giving readers tools for lifting their voices, too.

Citizen Printer features 800 reproductions representing the breadth of Kennedy’s posters and prints, plus original portraiture of the artist at work, a powerful artist statement, and a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Austin Kleon. The book’s dynamic, type-forward design was created by award-winning designers, Gail Anderson and Joe Newton.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. (born 1948) was working a corporate job for AT&T when, at the age of 40, he discovered the art of letterpress printing on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg. Kennedy then devoted himself to the craft, earning an MFA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaching at Indiana University. He now operates Kennedy Prints!, a communal letterpress center in Detroit. Borrowing words from social justice heroes Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and others, Kennedy layers bold statements on race, capitalism, history, and politics in exuberant, colorful, and one-of-a-kind posters. Kennedy has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, and The Economist, and his work has been exhibited by the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and other institutions throughout the US. He was the subject of a 2012 feature-length documentary, Proceed and Be Bold!

Don’t miss our conversation with Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. on Thursday, September 19, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of Citizen Printer.

The post Citizen Printer: Amos Kennedy Jr. at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

As a lover of all manner of bars, pubs, dives, speakeasies, and cocktail lounges, I was eager to learn more about this latest endeavor from the Murrays and get my hands on my own copy. The pair’s responses to my questions about Great Bars of New York City are below.

Why bars? What is it about bars that you find so compelling and reflective of NYC culture and history?

We chose to publish a book highlighting New York City bars as we consider them to be the heart of New York City’s culture and neighborhoods. Historically, bars have always been melting pots and places where people from all backgrounds and cultures can mingle and share stories while enjoying a drink, and where relationships often start. For many New York residents, their neighborhood bar serves as a home away from home, where people can choose to be alone together. 

For many New York residents, their neighborhood bar serves as a home away from home, where people can choose to be alone together. 

We also feel the need to document these special places, similar to our work featured in our previous book, Store Front NYC: Photographs of the City’s Independent Shops, Past and Present, as many beloved bars have been forced to close in recent years due to economic pressures and rapidly changing neighborhood demographics.

You’re known best for your exterior photographs of storefronts. How is documenting interiors different when it comes to capturing tone, mood, and telling a story?

We approached our interior photography of the bars with the goal of capturing the essence of each location as well as including often overlooked details, especially ones that even regular visitors may have missed. We included an establishing photograph, often showing the overview of the space as you would walk through the door, and also photographed areas where patrons would spend most of their time while drinking, either at the bar itself or at a specific booth or table.

We photographed each bar using only available light, not bringing any additional equipment inside so that our photos would mirror the way the bar would appear during a typical visit.

What sorts of details typically capture your photographic eye?

We always seek out interesting architectural details, including handcrafted woodwork such as the mahogany balcony with its quatrefoil design inside The Campbell, the stained glass windows and back bar insets made by Tiffany at Peter McManus Cafe, and even the shoulder-height porcelain urinals in the men’s bathroom at Old Town Bar and Restaurant.

We also focused our lens on many of the items hanging on the walls and from the ceiling of the bars as they also provide insight into the bar’s history, including the turkey wishbones hanging at McSorley’s Old Ale House and the old saloon licenses at Fanelli Cafe.

How did you approach curating the 30 bars included in the book? What was your selection process?

In choosing which bars to include in our publication, we decided to concentrate on only the borough of Manhattan and focused on historic establishments, former speakeasies that sold illegal alcoholic beverages during the Prohibition era, as well as bars immortalized in film and literature. 

We additionally featured many lesser-known spots and dive bars including Rudy’s Bar & Grill, one of the city’s last affordable “working man” bars. Of course, there were numerous noteworthy locations we would have loved to include, but those will have to wait for another book!

Of the 30 bars cataloged in the book, do you have a favorite?

It’s so difficult to pick a favorite, but Pete’s Tavern holds a special place in our hearts as it not only has a beautiful historic interior, but also a welcoming staff and great food and drink. We try to stop by as often as possible and especially love visiting at Christmastime when the bar is strung with hundreds of lights and decorations.

Why does creating physical books continue to be so important to you both as photographers?

Since our journey as photographers began with documenting the streets of New York City using a 35mm film camera, printing our photographs and studying them has always been important to us. We have always felt that sharing our work in book form complements the subject matter by staying “old-school,” similar to the stores and bars we have photographed, while also capturing the patina and texture of the locations.

The post James and Karla Murray Raise a Glass to NYC’s Storied Bars in New Book appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Enlightenment, here we come.

The post The Daily Heller: Invaluable Wisdom, If You Want It … or Not appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Nine months into the pandemic, architect James Biber thought if he did something on Instagram every day, he’d know what day it was. So he started his timekeeping experiment by cataloging architects’ birthdays, eventually adding graphic designers and artists into the rotation. Michael Bierut saw what Biber was up to and thought it’d make great fodder for a book.

We couldn’t agree more—make room on your bookshelf for The Architect & Designer Birthday Book!

Biber was the book’s editorial conductor, and Bierut was the designer. Our discussion with the duo was insightful (the book features many women creators that were new to us) and oh-so-fun (tune in to learn what everyone really thought of Bob Gill).

The design is very simple, like Massimo Vignelli’s Audubon field guide series. The spreads are sparse with the focus on a visual at the top and the anecdotal and often relational history with the author.

Designers love working with constraints. This project was full of parameters that were fixed and could not be negotiated. It made it a fun project.

Michael Bierut

Part of the magic of the physical reading experience happens on the spreads, which sometimes mirror each other (like the Williams-Kent spread above). Sometimes, as in the Gehry-Savage spread below, they provide a visual contrast.

A particularly interesting discussion point centered around the bane of all publishers: the clearance of images. And, we’re talking IMAGES. Three hundred and sixty-six, in fact. A team of people worked tirelessly to find and obtain permission for the book’s visual content. When unable to clear for a variety of reasons from a good, old-fashioned ‘no’ to hearing crickets from the estates, Bierut got creative.

For Milton Glaser, they relied on an overhead shot of Times Square chairs arranged in the shape of Glaser’s famous logo from a personal friend. For Charles Addams (right), they opted for a pull quote. Their visual stand-in for Dan Flavin’s work is genius.

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