Hatch Show Print Wine Labels

While wandering through the wine aisle at Target (not normally known for its cool wines or artistic experiences), my eye was caught by the striking label on a bottle of Argentinian Malbec from The Rebels which features a design by Brad Vetter of Hatch Show Prints, produced in their unique style and featuring many fonts, especially on the back label, which are similar to those preserved in our Letterpress Font Collection, including Big Show, Letterpress Gothic and Caelian. Hatch Show Prints has been doing amazing posters using traditional letterpress for about 150 years in Nashville and for customers nationwide.

It turns out that this wine is the latest in a series called “The Show” with Hatch Show Print labels. Each label is different, but they all feature a characteristic bucking mustang. The series goes back to 2007 and includes some very eye-catching designs on a wide variety of vintages. The Rebels or the Three Thieves who market the wines are a group of wine experts who find interesting wines from around the world, import and package them in this unique style and sell them under their label. I haven’t tried the wine itself yet, but if you can judge a book by its cover and a wine by its label then the wine ought to be a lot of fun. At Christmas time a bottle of wine under the tree makes a pretty good present.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

December 12, 2011 | Filed Under Found Art, Posters | Leave a Comment 

The Hot Retro Design of the “Burly Q”

When I go browsing in our local vintage shops I always check out the racks of flyers and promotional cards for various local bands and businesses. Sometimes I find a graphic design treasure, and last weekend that treasure was a half-page, two-sided promo card for a movie called Behind the Burly Q which is coming out on DVD next spring.

The card, which I suspect is also the DVD cover, has the look of an aged poster from the period in the 40s and 50s when Burlesque was at its height, which makes sense as the film is a documentary history of Burlesque from its origins in Vaudeville to the reminiscences of surviving stars of the era. The design is pretty bold in its use of creative paper yellowing and texturing. It’s not perfect, but it does get the look of cheap high-acid paper which is a couple of decades old about right. The font choices are pretty good with a clear awareness of the kinds of fonts available for cheap letterpress printing 50 years or so ago.

What I think stands out most is the use of overlapping graphic elements, with photos and blocks of text arranged where they share space but still stand on their own and remain distinct enough to read or view, all in an overall design which doesn’t seem too crowded or unbalanced – especially on the front of the card, much less so on the back.  Bringing all those elements together into a coherent whole and making them work together takes a special eye, and  I’m a little envious of how well it’s done here, as it’s something I often have trouble with myself.   I tend to be afraid to use odd angles and asymetrical placements, afraid that the final result won’t have the balance which it ought to.  So I’m keeping the “Burly Q” card around for reference to remind me to be bold in my placements and not fall back on too many predictable positioning.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

July 24, 2011 | Filed Under Articles, Found Art, Letterpress Fonts, Posters | Leave a Comment 

Beehive Collective

So I’m on vacation with the kids and we happened to stop in to Finelli’s Pizza in Ellsworth, Maine. On the wall in Finelli’s is a mural-style poster of a banner opposing the Free Trade Area of the Ameircas from Beehive Collective, which reminded me that I had intended to give them a plug after seeing their work displayed at The Common Ground Country Fair (AKA Unity Fair) last fall in Unity, Maine. So that’s the context, and here’s the plug.

I don’t agree with 90% of the political ideas espoused by the folks involved in Beehive Collective, but I do admire the work which they do. They are a printing and design collective – a business model which I think has a lot of potential and is underused here in the US – and they do work which is unique and fascinating even if I find some of the political content naive and unappealing. They specialize in printing large posters and banners – and I mean really large. The minimum size printing job they will normally take on is 20 square feet. They also tour the country selling posters and banners and reproduction prints of their works at fairs and art shows, mostly in the northeast and midwest.

What’s particularly interesting about their work is the peculiar design style which they’ve developed in these murals, which are crowded with messages and images which are striking and even disturbing. They’re kind of a combination of Where’s Waldo and the work of Heironymous Bosch, telling a story with multiple little vignettes and images mixed in together in a gigantic maze of information and political statements and allegory and just pure bizarreness. The style of their work owes something to the underground comics of the 60s and also to editorial cartoons of the 19th and early 20th centuries, plus a sold dose of pure paranoid mania. It’s also interesting that they work only in black and white. They are what they call “narrative posters” and every one tells a story, but they are so complicated that it helps to have a guide to explain them, and they do have several pages on their website where they break down the content of the poster and explain the included elements. See this example from their Plan Colombia column-style banner. Or check out the more traditional shaped banner for their Free Trade Area of the Ameircas campaign which they also explain in detail.

They use a lot of interesting hand lettering in their posters and tend towards certain styles which you can also find preserved in our font designs. They seem to like Art Nouveau styles, or maybe they’re just influenced by 1960s concert posters which were heavily influenced by Art Nouveau. You’ll find fonts similar to those they use in our Art Nouveau and Psychedelic Fonts collections. They particularly favor the more topheavy Art Nouveau styles like our Fnchley, Gehenna and Estoril fonts. We may have more fonts along similar lines in a forthcoming collection of fonts which sort of bridge the gap between Art Nouveau and psychedelic styles.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

June 18, 2011 | Filed Under Art Nouveau Fonts, Design, Found Art, Poster Fonts | 1 Comment 

Austin de Croze’s Calendrier Magique

In stumbling around art resources on the internet I sometimes run into amazing resources and collections of art which I never expected to see online or anywhere else for that matter. But there are some conscientious archivists and academics out there who react properly when they see something rare and strange. Too many of their colleagues react defensively and want to hoard their treasures, but some few noble souls realize that unique works need to be shared and that the internet is a fantastic way to do it.

One example of this is Cornell University’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and their charming online museum of The Fantastic in Art and Fiction, an online collection of historical images on themes of the fantastic and magical, taken from printed works of the 18th and 19th century. There are lots of great images included from various rare books on magic and mysticism. Some of the images are fairly familiar, but what really stands out in the collection is one of the few books they have preserved all the images from, Austin de Croze’s amazing Art Nouveau Calaedrier Magique. It’s a remarkable work of French art nouveau graphic arts design, reminiscent of the best of the Jugendstil movement of the same period. It’s a unique work which was produced in an edition of only 777 copies in 1895 making it rare enough that you’ll likely never see a copy in person much less have a chance to buy and own one. So it’s great that Cornell has preserved the whole thing.

Obviously, it’s a calendar. Producing calendars was a common practice of the art book and magazine publishers of the art nouveau period. In fact, Munchner Jugend produced some very interesting calenders. But nothing I’ve seen is like this work. The integration of unique art, hand lettering, graphic decoration and fantastic themes is phenomenal. Each page is a revelation and at first look I found it hard to believe it was over 100 years old. Some of the designs are so clever and so modern looking that at first I thought it must be a hoax, but by all appearances it’s the real thing. Some of the images are disturbing, some are erotic and all of them are rich fodder for the imagination.

The only thing to do if you’re at all interested in art nouveau design or fantastic-themed art is to go look at it for yourself. You’ll enjoy the tour. Although I suspect the pages could be in better condition, my one real complaint it’s that the images aren’t in higher resolution. I’m guessing the original calendar was about 4 by 11, but wit the digital images at only 72dpi I found myself disappointed in the lack of zoomability. But the presentation is nice and you can get a great feel for this fascinating work. If you happen to see a copy in a rare book store, pick it up and send it to me. My birthday is just around the corner.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

May 9, 2011 | Filed Under Found Art, Historic | Leave a Comment 

The Colors of Tiny Wings

Now this is an odd thing to cover here, but nothing interesting should be off limits. There’s a popular game for the iPhone and iPad which caught my eye because it has the most remarkable use of color. The designer is Andreas Illiger and in addition to being able to design a fun, playable game, he has a real eye for interesting color combinations.

The basic structure of the game is to play a bird with tiny wings who flies and slides and glides over a series of hills trying to achieve various objectives. The hills are idealized and done in two or three tone stripe patterns and what stands out is the color pairings Illiger has made with those striped patterns. They are bold and unusual yet very effective, with a really eye-pleasing softness despite the vividness of the colors. The colors are rather reminiscent of some of the pop art of the 1970s or of the far out fabric designs of legendary Finnish design firm Marimekko from that period.

Textures and shadows play their part too.  Illiger consistently uses a subtle texture which provides patches of slight variation of color which softens the overall look, and shadows add another level of variation.  But it all comes down to the choices of colors and the juxtaposition of strongly contrasting colors really works.  Pink and bright green, dark blue and gold, blood orange and a light green.  None of the colors are pure primary colors, but their vividness and the contrasts work extraordinarily well.  Playing the game makes me want to design graphics in the color schemes it features and that is a the highest compliment.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

May 1, 2011 | Filed Under Found Art, Review | Leave a Comment 

The Art of Sideshow Banners

A couple of weeks ago I took my daughter to the Travis County Rodeo, not so much for the animals and shows, as for the accompanying carnival run by Crabtree Amusements. They have some excellent rides, but what always catches the eye is that for larger events they also bring along their classic sideshow. What draws your eye to the sideshow is the wall of colorful banners advertising attractions like “Molly the Mermaid,” the “Chupacabra” and of course “Tyrone the Giant Rat.”

Those banners are by Bobby Rawls, one of several contemporary artists who specialize in recreating the look of classic sideshow banners which follow a format and style which goes back more than a century. The frame is always red, the title banner is gold, there’s usually an emblem with a one-word epithet like “Alive!” and the art itself is highly stylized with bold contrasting colors. Of course, the figures are grotesque and titillating, provoking the viewer to come into the sideshow and see what the real thing is like.

Read the rest…

Rating 3.00 out of 5

April 8, 2011 | Filed Under Found Art, Posters | Leave a Comment 

Flatstock 29: A Plethora of Posters in Austin

For the second year in a row I braved the crowds and the chaos which is the South by Southwest festival in Austin to check out the Flatstock poster show at the Austin Convention Center. It was a great experience last year, and I was not disappointed to find much more of the same this year. As a graphic designer with a particular interest in posters it’s right up my alley, and it falls on my birthday, so that makes it a special part of the birthday celebration.

I consider myself pretty lucky that Austin is one of the five cities hosting a yearly Flatstock show. I’m not quite so happy about the fact that it’s held during SXSW, which is becoming more and more of an inconvenience for anyone who wants to travel anywhere downtown in Austin while it is going on. SXSW gets larger every year and even on the last day the crowds were unbelievable. No parking, even at inflated rates, lines of hipsters a mile long to get in to see bands, and this year the convention center had new events jammed into every nook and cranny.

Despite what appeared to be a smaller exhibit hall there were actually more exhibitors at Flatstock than there were last year. Not a huge number more, but some new ones as well as many who were returning. The layout of booths was more economical and the booths were jammed closer together, but there was certainly a lot to look at. The downside was that the crowds were larger by an even greater proportion. There was less room to move around, fewer opportunities to talk to the artists and people were selling out of posters and running out of business cards. The upside was that with more of a crowd and more of an assurance of sales the prices for posters were considerably lower overall – a pleasant surprise at a time when the price of so many things seems to be going up.

There’s no way I can go over everything I saw at the show in detail. There were a lot of great designers there, including many who were not there last year and a few I covered in my previous article. I’ll skip those I hit last year and hit the highlights of what I saw this year, some of which was very good and some of which was somewhat mystifying. There were fewer of the stock efforts to reproduce the design styles of the sixties and the Art Nouveau era, which was probably a plus, but the level of creativity of those trying to define a more contemporary style was not always impressive. Too many designers seemed willing to substitute complexity for creativity or to neglect text and design and let illustration carry work which seemed incomplete. Flatstock should be about posters as coherent works of design, not about great illustrations with a few words in a boring font hidden in a corner.

Two other interesting trends also stood out. A lot more of the designers were local to the Austin area, though there were still some from places as far away as England and Germany. There were also more exhibitors whose main business was something other than posters, but who produce posters as part of that business, including record labels, illustrative artists, publishers and clothing companies. One example which combined both of these trends was Austin-based Rural Rooster which was selling posters, but also selling the graphic fashion t-shirts which are their main stock and trade.

Also notable this year was a strong presence for art and posters with a psychedelic theme. The art prints and poster designs of Charlie Hardwick certainly fell into that category with their day-glo colors and floral motifs. Pop-art psychedelia with a somewhat sterilized commercial look. Like posters you’d have found at Sears a few years after psychedelia went mainstream. More visceral were a few posters which strayed into the domain of early 1970s blacklight poster design style, a style which seems dated, but was a nice change from the usual attempts to copy the classic Fillmore and Armadillo show posters. The example to the right really stood out. I haven’t been able to figure out who the artist was from the zillion business cards I collected, but I like the effect and it uses my Butterfield font, so it deserves a mention.

I also have to throw a nod to Vrooooom Press, a letterpress printing company showing off some creative applications of a venerable printing technology. You know I love letterpress and last year there was very little of it to be seen at Flatstock, so their work was nice to see. Unfortunately their website doesn’t show much of their poster work, but they had some great examples on display at the show. Also showing some good retro letterpress style work at Flatstock was Spoke Art. They represent a number of artists whose work ranges from the traditional 60s style show posters to letterpress to much more modern designs. I particularly liked their pieces by Chuck Sperry and Emory Douglas. Unlike most of the posters at the show, theirs were quite expensive, so I didn’t end up taking any home.

I overlooked him last time, so I have to mention the comic-book inspired art of Flynn Prejean of Bad Moon Studios. He’s known most for his posters for The Misfits, but he does a great job combining vivid art with creative use of type and lettering. He uses a lot of my font designs (Semiramis, Ligeia, Ironwork, Spoonbill) or variations derived from them, which predisposes me to like his work, but what really impresses me is his composition and the way he brings art and type together to produce an integrated whole without being too derivative of traditional styles, though obviously drawing on 70s era horror comics for inspiration. He’s also one of the few artists who is clearly working in a digital format to recreate a slicker version of a classic look, which I find appealing.

I can’t wrap up without a couple of more vague mentions. One goes to an artist who had run out of cards and who I can only identify as SBPW. His stripped down style for posters for shows at the Beachland Ballroom in Ohio was really eye catching, and I liked the fact that he kept things simple and clean and had the audacity to silkscreen his posters on unusual paper stock, including butcher paper and construction paper. I actually paid (not very much) to pick up a couple of his posters, and if I had any idea how to track him down I might buy more. I don’t know who he is, but I like what he does.

And finally a nod to Clint Wilson, another Austin local who had the kindness to pose for a photo with his poster for a Ministry show which features my Captain Kidd font, and who also does some very nice poster work, including a set of super cute dinosaur cards for kids. A lot of his work has a cool, distressed-punk look and a childlike quality which I find engaging.

I’ve just touched on a handful of the many great artists and designers who were at Flatstock 29 in Austin this year. But viewing the show in snippets like this is kind of like the experience of actually attending, where the crowds were too large and posters were selling out and it was hard to get to what you wanted to see. To really get an idea of the diversity Flatstock has to offer, find the show which is nearest where you live and take a few hours to walk through the hall and really experience it.

 

Rating 4.33 out of 5

March 25, 2011 | Filed Under Found Art, Posters, Review, Sightings | Leave a Comment 

New Austin Posters in Comic Book Style

As I roam restlessly through the coffee shops of Austin (and it’s wall to wall coffee shops), I can’t keep my eyes off the poster covered walls (everywhere but in the soulless corporate wasteland of Starbucks) where a remarkable and ever-changing selection of posters showcase some of the most interesting and creative art in the city. With all the theaters and night clubs and other entertainment venues in the city it’s a great working environment for poster artists and those who like to observe their work.

Admittedly, there’s a lot of generic dross to wade through while looking for creative gold, but every week or two I do find something interesting. The trick is the timing. It wouldn’t be right to snatch up a poster before the event it’s advertising takes place, so I have to spot the poster and then make sure I come back and get it right after it expires but before a bored barrista notices that it’s out of date and takes it down, consigning it to a dumpster of doom. This fall’s harvest was rich in brightly colored cartoon-style posters, and I managed to add thee of the best to my collection.

Two of my finds came from the Thunderbird coffee house on Manor Road, east of the University of Texas. It’s too crowded, but they serve a fine selection of beers and decent sandwiches in addition to coffee so they’re worth a visit. My first find there was a fun poster for Threadgill‘s Armadillo Showdown, a show featuring some popular local bands. The font choices are predictable, but the illustration of a gunslinging Armadillo is a lot of fun. It’s not quite up to the quality level of the art that you could find on Threadgill’s posters back in the 70s, but it’s nice to see them continuing their musical and poster traditions. Weirder and even more fun was a poster I found in that same visit for a multi-band show at a club called Red7. The artist for this poster must be a child of the 90s because the art looks like some of the creepy alternative eastern European animation which dominated Cartoon Network in the post-Rugrats era.

The final find to round out my set of comics-style posters was found at Fricano’s Deli which is basically a pizza and sandwich shop in the north campus area, but not to be confused with the similarly named pizza chain in Michigan. Fricanos does a different poster every year for their anniversary party and I couldn’t resist their Fantastic Four themed poster from this year’s celebration so I had to beg one from them.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

December 1, 2010 | Filed Under Found Art, Posters | Leave a Comment 

Letterpress Poster Design for “Fight” in Austin

Austin has a rich and diverse artistic community and the different elements of it feed on each other. The many clubs and theatres provide great opportunities for graphic designers to produce unique show posters and all around town in restaurants and coffee houses and ice cream shops there are poster walls where the work of these designers is on view advertising the show of the week.

My thespian daughter drew my attention to the poster for an upcoming play called “Fight” because she new the letterpress-style design would appeal to me. It’s really very nicely done. It has the bold contrasts and worn character forms which are typical of real letterpress printing. I don’t know if it was really printed by that method, but if it wasn’t it’s a very clever simulation, which is even better in a way. It looks very much like the classic fight posters of the 1960s and 1970s. The attention to detail is impressive. Aside from the requisite information at the top, the rest of the design is very true to the style.

If you take a close look at the fonts you’ll see similarities to a number of our letterpress-derived styles, including Letteroress Gothic, Caelian and Stampwork, all of which will be featured in our forthcoming Letterpress Fonts package. The designer of the “Fight” poster doesn’t seem to have actually used any of our fonts, but they’d fit right in.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

November 12, 2010 | Filed Under Found Art | Leave a Comment 

The St. Nicholas Font Put to Good Use

Recently, one of our customers who goes by the nom de net of Ghostfire, contacted us about some minor improvements she had in mind for our St. Nicholas font. In the process, she brought to our attention an example of some work she had done with the font, and I thought that her work was worth sharing as a clever bit of art and an excellent use of this font, which is based on Victorian period lettering, in a very appropriate context.

It also doesn’t hurt to give St. Nicholas a little plug at this time of the year, as it’s an excellent font for Christmas card design and that season is now upon us. It’s also included in our Holiday Fonts and Art package.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

November 8, 2010 | Filed Under Fonts, Found Art, Sightings | Leave a Comment 

Next Page »


Search Articles: