I like Michael's comments. I recall when calligraphy and typography were highly refined skills for students in advertising and illustration fields. What led me to investigate them was the remarkable refinement of positive and negative space, figure/ground, entailed in hand drawing letters. Every letter required careful adjustment of the surrounding space; nothing was formulaic in that regard.
Frankly, I think both the cover design for the museum piece and the cover design for the amateur art club are good. Each serves a different audience and each represents a specific reference. The museum piece implies the august aura of the museum, its pillars and pediments, and romanized sensibility -- translation: art for the ages. The club piece implies a home-made but edgy and modern sensibility: translation: timely authenticity. Miller oddly contrasts two designs that can be compared only to the extent that both are covers for art catalogues. But the two covers are really aimed at quite differing audiences. Those audiences (that might be the same folks at different times) have presumptions which are reinforced by by the designs, one suggesting historical validity and the other contemporary validity. In short, I think Miller's critique is ersatz. By the way, I have been rethinking Cheerskep's word "cherish" as a signal of the aesthetic experience. Now I am leaning toward his view except I think his word cherish is a synonym for the more established aesthetic term, empathy. WC --- On Thu, 3/19/09, Michael Brady <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Cultural Institutions > To: [email protected] > Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 12:24 AM > On Mar 18, 2009, at 11:06 AM, Chris > Miller wrote: > > > Trivializing ? Yes -- but I'm sure that effect was > intended by a top team of > > marketing consultants -- to make the museum feel more > accessible and a more > > likely destination for family entertainment. > > Is there something wrong, or perhaps deficient, with making > a museum "more accessible" for "entertainment"? > > > BTW -- prior to 1950, it does not seem like art > museums (at least the one here > > in Chicago) paid much attention to catalog design. > > The designer you first mentioned, Noel Martin, is credited > with bringing a focus on graphic design to museum catalogs, > generally. BTW, the term "graphic design" was coined by > W.A.Dwiggins in 1922. WAD, as he referred to himself, began > studied art but began working in advertising. He moved on to > book and type design, and is considered one of the major > design figures of the first half of the 20th century. > > URLs: > Martin > http://noelmartin.home.att.net/ > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Martin > Dwiggins > http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1979/?id=264 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Addison_Dwiggins > http://giam.typepad.com/100_years_of_illustration/wa_dwiggins_18801956/ > http://www.linotype.com/373/williamadwiggins.html > > > Here's one from 1929 -- compared with some graphics > created by some Chicago > > artists for their own art club in the same year. (so > it's not as if local > > talent were not available) > > Both, btw, are hand-drawn. The museum cover is clearly > hand-penned calligraphy (transferred to a plate for > printing). The letter style is based on Roman inscriptional > capitals (the most famous contemporary face is Trajanus, > derived from the inscriptions on Trajan's Column). Such > inscriptional letterforms were widely developed in the 19th > c, and the typestyle in this cover shows its provenance. > Observe that the letters from one line to another are of > different proportional widths (note the ligature for TH in > TWENTY-FOURTH). In the 20s, there were no digital fonts that > could be easily altered, nor were there photographic > techniques for condensing or reshaping a given font. All > type was either hand-drawn, as this, or set in type. > This cover is not so bad, but it's just uninspired. > It follows a lot of design conventions from the 19th C and > before, such as putting the title type at the top of the > page and enclosing the whole in a decorative border that is > part certificate design with some affinities to William > Morris and the Arts and Crafts style (Morris was a type > designer, btw). > The Palette and Chisel placard (it looks like a > hand-drawn original, not a printed reproduction) borrows > strongly from the Art Deco/Art Moderne/Bauhaus style then > beginning to flower. The large main title type is clearly in > that style, but the smaller text is written in basically a > calligraphy style derived from chancery hand. > > > http://www.chicagocompactdiscs.com/pictures/1929%20catalogs.jpg > > > > Kind of stiff and clunky, isn't it ? > > Vague antecedent (the problem when your careless about > language). Does "it" refer to the P&C placard, the > immediately preceding noun? or to the museum book cover > (which I think is what you had in mind)? > > > No special sense for letters as marks on a page - it > might as well have been an announcement for a wedding -- or > better yet -- a funeral. > > Do you have to sound so damn churlish? Geez. Even if > someone is inclined to agree with your point, you certainly > don't make it a thing to brag about. To be fair, the museum > cover does show a sense for letters "as marks on a page" (a > cliche formulation), because, well ... it was made as > hand-drawn letters. > > > And yet -- there's something charming about the > museum's lack of concern for their own graphic image -- as > if all that mattered was the quality of the art they were > displaying. (and sadly, even though catalog design would > improve later in the century, the museum stopped having an > "Annual Exhibition of American Art") > > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > Michael Brady > [email protected]
