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 

The Jugend Tarot Deck


I recently came upon a rare and unexpected discovery in one of my favorite rare book stores, a set of tarot-style playing cards issued as a bonus insert in the 1892 edition of the classic German Art Nouveau magazine Munchner Jugend.

The card set was designed by Julius Diez and features woodcut-style images with color highlights in red, green and gold. The style is reminiscent of 16th century woodcuts like the Dance of Death illustrations featured in one of the contemporary issues of the magazine. The images are certainly somewhat grotesque and intended to be comical, though to the modern viewer they appear rather disturbing, particularly the crippled Knight and Knave cards. There are also peculiarities, including numbers printed upside down, hand-stamped printers marks and various irregularities and quirks.

The card deck is adapted to playing trick-taking games with a customized deck based on the tarot deck, a popular trend of the 1890s. Although the card set resembles traditional tarot cards in many ways, it was likely not really intended for fortune telling. The complete deck consists of 36 cards in 3 9-card suits, including numbered cards 6 through 10 and four face cards, an Ace, a King, a Knight and a Knave. Each card contains unique imagery with small scenes on each of the numbered cards and larger individual figures on the face cards. The suits are variations of the standard suits, with bells (coins or diamonds), rods or clubs (wands), leaves or blades (spades or swords) and hearts. There is no trump suit as you would have in a true tarot deck.

This is somewhat of a novelty item and will ultimately be added to our Jugendstil Collection, but for now we’re also making the cleaned up and print ready version of the card set available for purchase in digital form for just $7. It’s a curiosity with some useful graphic elements. You can get it in our ONLINE STORE and download it immediately.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

October 25, 2010 | Filed Under Art Collections, Articles, Collections, Found Art, Historic | Leave a Comment 

Political Signs: the Bold and the Baffling

In the next few weeks we’re all going to see an awful lot of political signs. Every candidate has them, from the lowliest office to the highest in the land, and based on the variety of designs there’s no absolute consensus on what makes one effective.

I’ve thought about this before. I’ve even designed quite a few fonts specifically for use in political advertising. I’m also not the only person putting some thought into the topic. There were quite a few articles written about it during the 2008 election, particularly relating to some of the images and poster designs used by the Obama campaign. I was recently brought back to thinking about this subject by a call from a reporter for a major newspaper looking for some expert input on the use of fonts in political campaigns.

A lot of what it takes to market a candidate comes down to branding, and visual representations are key to that, especially in how the candidate’s name and message are converted from raw information to visual form, usually through the use of well-chosen fonts in an appealing layout.

Campaign signs are particularly tricky, because you have to walk a very fine line. The design needs to be original enough to be remembered, but it still has to fit within some familiar parameters do voters can relate to it. A sign has to convey information about the candidate and a feel for the type of candidate he or she is, but can’t bee too crowded or cluttered or it becomes overwhelming and the information gets lost in the clutter.  It needs to be readable at a distance and emphasize the name which will be on the ballot in an unambiguous way.   It’s also good to avoid putting anything unnecessary on the sign which can distract from its impact.
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Rating 3.00 out of 5

October 20, 2010 | Filed Under Articles, Found Art, Review | Leave a Comment 

Daniel Martin Diaz and the Lowbrow Tarot

I started out researching some posters I’ve collected from shows at various Austin theaters over the past few months and then I got to riffing through google and chanced into something interesting, the Lowbrow Tarot project, a showcase for 23 illustrators and designers. What particularly caught my eye was the card back designed by Daniel Martin Diaz. It is exactly the kind of retro graphic arts style design which I particularly like. Diaz’ other work is also worth a look. It’s morbid, weird and mystical and full of arcane symbolism. It’s fun stuff.

The Lowbrow Tarot is interesting in its own right as well. It’s a great idea to bring a bunch of very different artists together in a thematically unified showcase and the Tarot provides excellent subject matter for them to work with. The quality of the art is uneven. I really like some of the artists, particularly Aunia Kahn, Laurie Lipton, Heather Watts and Claudia Drake. Others, like Scott Brooks and Sas Christian, I find pretty unappealing. But there are enough artists involved that there’s bound to be something which will appeal to anyone, and it’s interesting to see how a group of very different artists interpret the timeless ideas of the Major Arcana.

This past weekend the illustrations from the Lowbrow Tarot iopened as an exhibit at La Luz de Jesus gallery in Los Angeles where it will run through the end of the month. After that it will be released as a book and eventually in actual card format sometime early next year. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, check out the exhibit. If not, the website is a somewhat inferior alternative, but worth some time to look over.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

October 6, 2010 | Filed Under Articles, Found Art | 1 Comment 

Ken Featherston Posters from the Armadillo

This past weekend I attended an auction here in our little town just outside Austin. I was there to help work concessions, but as sometimes happens I also found something interesting to bid on. This time I hit the motherload. In among a variety of the usual household goods from someone’s estate was an envelope stuffed with classic show posters from the golden age of Austin’s legendary club scene.

All told the envelope contained about 15 posters from a variety of artists and venues, including many from famous venues which are no longer with us like the Armadillo World Headquarters and Soap Creek Saloon. Artists represented in the collection included some of the best of the era like Ken Featherston, Guy Juke and Michael Priest. Much to my surprise after a brief bid-off with an aging local hippy I won the lot of posters for just $50, a great investment if I planned to sell them, with some of the posters typically priced in the $75 to $100 range.

When I got the posters home and had a chance to go through with them I got a better feel for what I had won.  The unifying characteristic seems to be that all of the posters originated in 1974 which was pretty close to the height of the career of the Armadillo World Headquarters, which only lasted for 10 years, from 1970 to 1980.  During that era it showcased an amazing selection of musical acts, including the greats of the psychedelic 60s, amazing blues musicians and emerging rock and punk bands which would go on to greater fame.  Everyone played there from AC/DC to ZZTop.  The success — musically if not financially — of the Armadillo was the genesis of the vibrant Austin club scene of today and the large number of live music venues which make Austin the “live music capitol of the world.”

The artist represented most among the posters is Ken Featherston, whose career was closely linked to that of the Armadillo and who has more or less vanished in obscurity in recent yeas.  At the height of the era he was a revered figure, designing amazing and dynamic posters and considered on a par with the great artists of the Fillmore poster scene in San Francisco.  There were five Featherston posters in the package, representing some of his best work, including his Marshall Tucker poster which I consider one of his very best and also his original menu design which was used at the Armadillo for most of the decade.

Featherston’s work was always remarkably detailed and imaginative, and he particularly appeals to me because of his excellent lettering, which often drew on the styles of Art Nouveau master Alphons Mucha, particularly the styles represented in our Slava and Moravia fonts, although Featherston’s art was stylistically much grittier and realistic than Mucha’s preferred approach. Featherston was also a master of his medium, using clever techniques to provide texture and depth to his monochrome images.

I wish I could direct you to a web page for Featherston, but the page which was previously hosted by Threadgill’s restaurant seems to have gone offline. However,  if you want to see some nice samples of his work he’s heavily featured on fillmoreposter.com where many of his designs are available for sale or at least for viewing.  Tragically, he died in 1975 while working as a bouncer at the Armadillo, so although his output in the early 70s was prolific, it’s all we’ll ever have.

For someone working in the graphic arts and with a fondness for the music and visual vision of the 1960s discovering these posters was a real opportunity to look backwards and remember an artistic heritage which many designers are still trying to recreate today.  It was a discovery which I had to share, so enjoy these outstanding examples of Ken Featherston’s work and remember the music and the art which still live on.


This article originally appeared in a slightly different form on Blogcritics Magazine.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

August 31, 2010 | Filed Under Articles, Found Art | 2 Comments 

Heidelberg Archive of Jugend Magazine

One of the great expressions of the Art Nouveau movement was the magazine Munchner Jugend which became the focus of an entire movement of German art known as Jugenstil. Copies of Jugend are getting expensive and far behind, but in a recent search for something else I stumbled on an archive of scans of issues of Munchner Jugend from 1896 to 1895 available on the web from Heidelberg University.

The scans are of variable quality, but at high resolution. They were scanned more for reference than to preserve the art, but they do include every page of every issue, including advertisments. The problem is that even though they are scanned at a high quality resolution, many of the scans are distorted and discolored and little care was taken with making sure they were well placed or even flat on the scanning surface. There was also no effort to color correct or clean up the images. They make a great reference source, but would require a lot of work to make the images usable or up to the quality of those found in our Jugendstil Package of fonts and art.

Nonetheless it’s well worth checking out. The collection does not include earlier issues, and many of those in the first half of the 1890s included some excellent artwork. The quality of the magazine also declined considerably after the outbreak of World War I, so with a lot of material to look through, focus your browsing on the early 1900s and you’ll see some the best art without having to wade through too much junk.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

August 28, 2010 | Filed Under Found Art | Leave a Comment 

The Design World of Ross MacDonald

As sometimes happens, my teenage daughter the design maven, pointed my attention to a very interesting website, in this case showcasing the work of printer and designer Ross MacDonald (not to be confused with the pulp novelist who authored the Lew Archer series). His specialty is producing antique looking original printed works using old technology and clever tricks. He’s designed special books for movies like the Bible featured in the recent movie Book of Eli and has also produced custom letterpress work for posters and book cover designs, and is the creator of a series of peculiar vintage-style cartoons which I had seen before in various magazines but never really looked into more deeply.

MacDonald documents much of his work very thoroughly, with images, videos and explanatory articles on his website. His latest article is on a really fascinating hand-designed book called Wapurgisnacht created for an upcoming horror movie project, though he won’t reveal which one. The details on the construction of the book and the aging techniques are really fascinating, particularly his use of material from other antique books scanned and reconfigured to fit his needs.

Also fascinating is some of the work coming out of his Brightwork Press, which is a collection of old printing presses and an amazing assortment of antique letterpress type located in a workshop behind his house. A good example of this work is his article on a letterpress print project he did to create a title page for an article in LA Magazine, which also includes an excellent and detailed video of his presswork. The article on the letterpress printing he did for the Bible in Book of Eli is also interesting. And don’t forget to check out some of the peculiar vintage-style illustrations and cartoons he’s done for publications like The New York Times.

My one complaint — aside from not knowing what secret horror movie he’s designing the Walpurgisnacht book for — is that I wish there was more on MacDonald’s website. I suspect he’s done many other interesting projects, but only a few from the last year or so are documented. I have high hopes that if we keep an eye on his webpage we’ll get to see a lot more in the future.

A slightly different version of this article appeared previously on Blogcritics Magazine.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

June 13, 2010 | Filed Under Found Art | 1 Comment 

Hatch Show Print Exhibit in Austin

Austin Museum of Art for a month to see the Hatch Show Print exhibit. It’s a collection of historical posters from one of the most famous poster printers in the world. Hatch has been producing show posters since the 19th century and is still printing using traditional letterpress and hand-cut woodblock art. Their posters are iconic in the history of country, blues and rock music and have inspired generations of designers. I haven’t made it down there yet, but Sunday is the last day and I’m going to drag the family down with me one way or another. It’s a touring show and while they haven’t got other tour dates up on their site yet, keep an eye out for it coming to a museum near you.

If you can’t get to the show, Hatch sells their classic posters online through their very impressive website. Or if you want to make an oldstyle letterpress poster on your own, we can at least help you with the right fonts. We have a lot of fonts in that same letterpress tradition, particularly in our Wild West and Colonial Fonts collections.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

May 4, 2010 | Filed Under Articles, Found Art | Leave a Comment 

Review: Flatstock 24 at SXSW

As an Austinite, no amount of effort can keep me from being aware of the South by Southwest festival.  It takes over the city for almost two weeks, makes travel impossible, and fills every coffee shop with unkempt hipsters with man-purses and Zach Galifianakis beards. I manage to avoid most of the activities, mainly because I can't see paying thousands of dollars and wasting hundreds of hours listening to obscure bands and watching amateur movies just so I can discover the occasional gem a month before the rest of the nation. I've got to have better ways to spend my time.

Despite the hassles, I do try to work in at least one or two of the free activities at SXSW every year. I was a panelist at the first SXSW Interactive festival and have caught the occasional great band or interesting movie, but I only get involved when I can avoid most of the crowds and cost. This year, despite crowds which were bigger and hipper than ever, my wife convinced me that she could find me the ideal birthday present if we went down to the Flatstock 24 exhibition which was being held in conjunction with SXSW at the Austin Convention Center. It was all about posters and poster art, which draws me like lice to dreadlocks, plus it was free, so how could I resist?

Flatstock is a series of poster conventions held at various locations around the world, including San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Hamburg and, of course, Austin. It's not at all like the collectible paper shows I'm used to, which specialize in antique prints and posters. Flatstock focuses on contemporary music and event posters with original art and mostly in limited print runs. It represents a modern revival of the 1960s era of silkscreened show posters which I thought was long gone, but which I was pleasantly surprised to learn is actually enjoying quite a renaissance.

The Flatstock show was not huge, just four aisles of vendors, but the quality on display was outstanding. It was all artists and publishers representing themselves, on the spot and eager to discuss their work and show their wares. Most of the posters were limited editions and silkscreened by hand, overruns from posters done for shows, or special limited editions done for sale. There were a few which were unusual, including one artist whose posters were done with spray paint and stencils and a couple who did high-end offset printed posters.

Some of the vendors were from out of town but a surprisingly large number were from Austin or at least Texas. Stylistically there was a trend towards the macabre and highly stylized art, but also a strong retro thrust, particularly towards variations of the psychedelic style made famous by the Fillmore in San Francisco and the Armadillo here in Austin.

One of the standouts and certainly the vendor from farthest away was Jacknife Posters from Bristol in the UK. They were representing the work of several artists, but their selection was dominated by the work of Chris Hopewell who was also at the show. Hopewell specializes in retro designs, mostly in two styles. He does art nouveau style designs which are clearly influenced by Alphons Mucha, but even more interesting were his posters which featured a retro 1960s exploitation film style with exaggerated scantily-clad women, old cars, guns, and dramatic type selections. Most of those posters were done for the bands Queens of the Stone Age and Dragster. Hopewell's style is kind of an ideal blend of vintage and modern design themes, hearkening back to the styles of earlier eras, but also unique and original. I also found it somewhat endearing that he has a penchant for using my fonts in his more Art Nouveauish designs, including the Mucha-based Moravia font.

Another impressive selection of posters was at Voodoo Catbox which had sprung for an extra-large booth space to house their huge selection of posters. In most of the booths I found great art on posters for bands I'd never heard of or have no interest in, but Voodoo Catbox had very nice posters for roots-rock bands I like a great deal, like Social Distortion, The Knitters, The Blasters, Nick Lowe, The Chieftains, and Los Lobos. In fact, I ended up buying a calavera-style Los Lobos poster there. All of their posters are the work of Gary Houston, who has a unique folk-art style, which shows many of the influences you would expect, but filtered through a personal style rather reminiscent of the woodcut illustrators of the 1930s. Although Houston does a lot of original lettering on his posters he also has good taste in fonts, including using several of my designs prominently, notably Hubbard and Butterfield.

Robert Lee of Methane Studios also had some very interesting posters on display. His modern punk style isn’t really my favorite, but I have to give him a little plug for using my Posada font in several of his posters and also on his logo and business cards. He has good taste in fonts at the very least.

I was also impressed with the work of a local designer named Rob Story. He didn't have business cards or a website or tubes to put posters in or very many posters and he wasn't set up to take credit cards, but he had done some very interesting work for local bands, and one of the few posters I actually bought to take home was his Posada-inspired poster for Chili Cold Blood which happened to make good use of my Posada font, which many of the artists at the show seemed to have a fondness for. He also had a very impressive double-sided poster for Motorhead done in the style of a playing card, and what was probably the best 3-D poster at the show, a triumph considering how downright nauseating most of the attempts at 3-D poster design on display were.

Also not to be missed were Mig Kokinda's spraypaint and stencil posters, Bryan Mercer's dark fantasy-themed posters for what were mostly obscure metal bands, Lindsey Kuhn's extremely vivid psychedelic and punk rock posters, the highly stylized posters of Furturtle Show Prints, and Nick Rhodes' unique and quirky vintage-look show posters.

Some of those exhibiting were more illustrators selling prints than strictly poster artists, but many of them were very talented, including Diana Sudyka whose work is reminiscent of Edward Gorey, the rather twisted Paul Imagine, and Flynn Prejean whose comic-book style art and posters were pretty eye-catching. Of the artists who were more illustrators than poster designers I think my favorite was David D'Andrea whose work reminded me a lot of the macabre illustrators of the 1920s like Harry Clarke, Frank Pape, and John Austin. He also gets points for a creative use of the Rheingold font which is one of my earliest adaptations of antique wood type.

I found it remarkable how high the quality of the poster designs at Flatstock 24 were. I assume the show was juried, but even so it surprised me that there were so many artists working in such a limited field and doing such excellent work. There was a lot of creativity on display and it was interesting to see how different artists brought together diverse poster design traditions and gave them a contemporary spin. I also liked the fact that so much of the stock was for sale and not just on display and that the prices were reasonably low. Prices were mostly based on rarity, but only a few posters I saw were over $100 and many were under $50.

If you live near a town which has a Flatstock show, take the time to check it out. Seeing them all the time, it's sometimes easy to forget that posters aren't just advertising. They can also be outstanding examples of popular art. So buy a few, frame them, and put them on your walls. There's something for every taste, from hip to humor to horror.

Some of our fonts were particularly popular at the Flatstock show. Surprisingly the one we saw getting a lot of use was Rheingold an older font which is past due for an updating. Also popular were Mucha fonts like Moravia, but unquestionably the most used font, which showed up in poster after poster was our Posada font based on the hand lettering of revolutionary period Mexican pamphleteer and charicaturist Jose Guadalupe Posada.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

March 23, 2010 | Filed Under Articles, Found Art | 4 Comments 

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