Film Poster Miscellania

In this final entry, I will be looking at 70's movie posters (it would seem my topic - 70's and 80's type miscellania - became too large long ago).  Sci-fi, fantasy, commodious horror, and classic crime drama will be covered. 

Why don't we begin with Silent Running? This classic sci-fi film featured psychological drama and a thoughtful ecological message against the backdrop of empty space, and delivered with groundbreaking special effects that would later be perfected in Star Wars.  Not unlike computer typefaces, which I have previously noted emphasized a "futuristic" quality, the lettering in "silent running," with its efficient, lopped-off stems above the shoulder of the "r" and dots eliminated from the "i"'s, as well as an emphasized angularity, shares similar qualities.  The typeface used here, otherwise, is basically a tightly kerned Bauhaus. (I believe I have established a trend in 70's logo typography!)

Next, The Shape Of Things To Come.  It says "H.G. Wells'", but then more than a few terrible 60's and 70's bearing only the most superficial of similarities to his work used his name in the same way.  The typeface used in "The Shape Of Things To Come" appears to be based off of the art deco font Broadway, with the reproduction of the basic forms of the letters quite faithful.  The only difference is the innovative use of a single, continuous symmetrical stroke in the individual letters, and a slight augmentation to, as in the case of the Silent Running logo, emphasize an angularity associated with both the computer age and the future.  It is interesting to consider how these fonts, which were designed to be "modern" and in effect looking to the future in their own time, would later be revived some 40 years later in roughly their same form, and for the same purposes.  It certainly lends class and sophistication to what is actually a very (enjoyably) dumb Star Wars rip-off.

In my previous blogpost, I mentioned the "Phantom Of The Paradise" as an iconic  glam rock film, specifically pointing out lightning bolts as key parts of "glam" iconography.  As you can see, lightning bolts frame what is part logo, part surreal mandala symbolizing different parts of the film.  The title, "Phantom Of The Paradise," is not inappropriately done in neon lights, as the setting is a rock concert venue (called The Paradise).  The magenta "Phantom" and the yellow-orange "of the paradise" are part of a dynamic split-complimentary color scheme.  The black background creates a high level of luminosity and heightens visual excitation.  (I love this poster)

I mentioned a "commodious horror" film would be included, and that is "Frogs" (incidentally by the same director as The Shape Of Things To Come).  This movie was one of the many "when nature attacks" horror films that came out in the increasingly ecologically-minded 70's, and as it bears the nauseating, armpit-like aura many 70's films do, I have appropriately labeled it "commodious."  Come on, this poster makes you just a LITTLE bit queasy, doesn't it? The "Frogs" logo literally looks like grime or slime  graffiti'd on the poster.  The strokes appear to have been painted on an uneven surface, and are otherwise inconsistent and unsteady.  They are also externally and internally severely degraded, producing that overall nauseating effect of which I've been speaking.  That aside, the 2-color scheme of green and yellow, as well as the gross frog with a hand coming out of its mouth (I won't discuss how the frog appears to be normal in size) contribute to a sticky, unpleasant, b-movie poster experience.

Last, a CLASSIC poster.  I feel fortunate I'm not inclined or obligated to talk in detail about design, as I could go on for pages and pages about the presentation of the city and the integration of the smoking gun into the cityscape.  All I'm REALLY here to talk about is the "Mean Streets" logo.  This is a mostly original typeface, utilizing deliberate, angular strokes in the letter "M" and "A" to create diagonal tension and perhaps to suggest violence.  The angular "A" nicely parallels the stroke of an adjacent "N", and forms a ligature with E, creating a new letterform.  All of the letters are fused together - with the exception of three small cracks, left to maintain legibility - forming one unit.  Lastly, "Mean Streets" is colored red - the only color in what is otherwise a black and white composition.  The resulting logo has great visual vitality and intensity, and with its red color suggests its ways are paved in - or will surely produce - blood.  A logo befitting a movie that deals with these very themes.  Superb.

If you have been reading, and have enjoyed my blog, thank you.  If you have found it educational, I am astonished.  Cheers,

John

70's album art

The topic of this post will be 70's album art.  As I have a wide selection of images I would like to discuss, I will be far more brief in my clumsy dissections of their use of type/design.

To start off, I thought I would take a look at a classic David Bowie album, entitled Diamond Dogs (1974).  While all Bowie album covers did nothing to dispute Bowie's image of creative eccentricity or ambiguity, this is actually one of his few 70's albums to feature a custom, personalized typeface (his other albums were typically san-serif typefaces, with some variation, written in all caps).  It was around 1974 that Glam Rock was on the rise, and the lightning motif adopted by the "Bowie" logo is in fact representative of the glam movement, and can see repeated in a variety of glam and glam-inspired rock (Kiss famously made use of the lightning motif in their own logo) as well as other media, such as the 1974 film Phantom Of The Paradise.  Many regard Diamond Dogs as not only Bowie's best album, but as the album most representative of glam rock (along with Lou Reed's Transformer).

Having mentioned Kiss in the last breath, I might as well post a Kiss album image.  Alive! (1975) was Kiss' fourth album, but the famous band logo was established in their self-titled first, released in 1974.  As previously noted, it sports two lightning bolts.  The  premier signature of glam rock, the lightning bolt can also be seen repeated in the foreground guitarist's outfit.  Additional glam iconography includes makeup, silver/reflective material, metal studs, and riser shoes.  But for the purposes of this blog, it is the logo that makes and completes the image.  I will note that the stencil typeface "Alive" does not seem to fit into any of this, and appears forlorn and unnoticed in the corner.

I looked for some unusual/obscure album art, and found several.  One of them is the self-titled Hawkwind.  Here, the logo appears to made up of seeds, which drift down to an alien orange landscape.  The role of the logo in this case is illustrative, and appears to show the seeds forming piles out of which strange creatures are emerging.  The seed shape is repeated in these creatures.  The narrative role of the logo is unique, and tells a story about both the logo and the band.

Next is Citadel by Starcastle, a 70's progressive/electronic band.  I love classic sci-fi art, so I was a bit of a sucker for this album cover.  However, the logo is particularly interesting.  The letters almost appear to be made out of smooth, hollow glass, teasing light upon their surfaces.  The "C" almost completely encloses the "A", while the leg of the "R" extends to cradle the "C" and repeat the arc of the stroke.  Rules on either side of the leg support it, and produce a natural framing effect for the word "CITADEL" below.  The bars of the letter "A" and "E" rest on top of, or in front of, the rest of the letter as separate pieces, and all of the letters are kerned together to produce both flow and tension.  A really excellent logo, actually.

I ran across this album cover and really dug it.  It's by a band called S.O.S.  Like the other sci-fi themed covers, it has a strong element of the fantastic --- LOVE the rocket-propelled zeppelin roaring through the stratosphere.  Check out the highly stylized logo too, though.  It appears to be made of bands of gold.  The banding has the additional effect of creating a strobing effect, heightening visual interesting.  Variety is established through the shift to a central line along the spines of the "S"'s.

Plastic People by Birth Control is not only a surrealistic album cover, but another example of an intriguing logo typeface.  It appears to be similar to Century Gothic, though with a much lower x-height.  "T" and "H" have been formed into an unusual ligature, and one might even say the same thing of the "C" and "O", which conform to each other so well that they almost become a new letter.  There is another unusual ligature between "N" and "T."  If ligatures suggest transformation or even the alien, I would say they suit the logo in this album cover very well.

Last, and definitely NOT falling in the electronica vein, is James Brown's 1971 Super Bad.  Like the man himself, the typeface is larger than life and, with its thick strokes and strong vertical orientation, makes a statement.  The light purple is an unusual choice of color, but achieves high visibility in contrast to the black album cover.  The best part is the "empty" letter "U", which has been filled with James Brown's name.  Efficient and Super Bad!

Toy Packaging Solutions

Conceptual Design in the 60's and 70's was the breaking away of graphic design  from narrative illustration and formalism, and the embracing of historicism and reformulation of art and graphical design history into new, uniquely expressive forms and identities.  In my previous posting, in the discussion on the origins of the Bauhaus typeface, this has already been well-illustrated.

Personally speaking, I find the late 60's and 70's to be a fascinating period in design in general, and would love to better understand the ideas, goals, and movements of this design period.  For now, though, I will have to look at its use of type.

The examples I have for this posting, like the Bauhaus typeface discussion, demonstrate the late 60's/70's spirit of experimentation.  This period also saw a greater integration of layout and design, which makes the "air trix" package design a great place to start.

In spite of making use of photography for its primary design resource, the image itself is non-naturliastic, and contains very few elements.  One of the most prominent elements, the game board and the yellow game poles, have been arranged to create a specific rhythm that moves the eye across the box.  The boy's blue shirt creates striking contrast with the last yellow pole.  Color has also been greatly restricted, with hues in the primary pictorial elements - the boy's blue shirt and the red wand - matching the logo colors exactly.  This shows a high degree of planning and coordination between art director and photographer, as well as a careful and purposeful integration of type and image.

The typeface is similar to Montara, which was an Adobe Open Type Font designed in 2001, and based off of Pica Roman No.1 and Oxford Typefaces from American Type Founders, but places the slope on the "t" so that it moves from left to right.  I have not seen this replicated in any other font, and it appears to be a stylistic choice made to continue the sliding left-right movement of the entire logo.

Also note how closely the letters have been kerned together, with the letters "t, r," and "i" extremely close to create tension and rhythm, and the "x" strokes touching and overreaching the "i."  The alternating red-blue of the letters further intensifies the tension and movement.  

The leaning letters of "air" convey movement, and even seem to suggest, by their placement in coincidence to to the wand the boy is holding, that THEY have been affected by the air being blown out of it! The word is further enhanced by the unique slope formed by the transition of the counter of the "a" into the stem of the "i," then back up the "r."

Also note the hairline strokes placed around the dots on the "i'"s in order to convey movement.  This logo is HIGHLY illustrative, and though it appears on a toy box, it is very interesting to contrast with logo design that would have appeared in any medium a decade earlier.

Simon is both a famous toy and a logo.  As far as I can tell, it is a custom typeface.  It is similar to Briem Akademi, which as far as I can tell was created no later than 2001, but am uncertain if it was the basis for the Simon logo.  The most distinctive qualities of the Simon logo is the strong vertical emphasis, consistency of stroke thickness, and highly regular formation of the letters, broken up only by incidents of negative space.  Smooth curves add a pleasing quality to what would otherwise be a blunt typeface, and tight kerning further emphasizes the vertical nature of the letters.

I believe it would be accurate to characterize the Simon logo as partly reflective of the developing age of computing and computer typefaces.  However, the letterforms are also repetitions of similar forms found in the four broad Simon buttons.  A simple, restrained primary color palette and a black background gives the overall packaging a visually exciting, dynamic quality.

1970's food ads/logos

For my next entry, I will be discussing 1970's food ads/logos.

The first item appears to be a flier - probably aggressively circulated on cheap paper - for a restaurant called Hamburgers By Gourmet, based on the relatively simple design and the fact that it is in black and white.  Before I examine the use of type in this advertisement, I just wanted to comment that I LOVE the illustration.  In spite of the disadvantage of being in black and white (historically not the most effective way of making food look appealing) there is a wonderful, slightly exaggerated quality to the overflowing tall glass, and the thick, textural contour of the lines on the bun only enhances this sense of exaggeration.  The pickles are the most understated element because of their size, but the they possess the most amount of contrast and rhythm of perhaps all the elements.  There is a distinct sense of fun in this larger-than-life quality.

Now, the type is just as unusual and interesting.  The header "Wash it Down at" uses a condensed Bauahaus, so that the letters connect into one smooth, continuous form.  Considering that one would typically associate Bauhaus with art deco, early modernism, or the period of the 1930's/1940's in general, this seems like an unusual selection.  However, in researching the typeface, I found that while its origins can be traced to 1925, this was in the form of a different typeface designed by Herbert Bayer called Universal.

In fact, Bauhaus as we know it was only first revived and experimented with in 1969, by Joe Taylor for Fotostar.  It was called Blippo.  In 1970, Herb Lubalin designed another variation called ITC Ronda.  Then in 1975, Edward Benquiat and Victor Caruso designed ITC Bauhaus - the one that appears in this flier.  With the timing of this revival centered between the end of the 60's and the mid-70's, it is therefore not surprising at all to see this typeface appear in this ad, as it was evidently in circulation.

The next part, "HAMBURGERS BY" is a plain san serif, and merely serves the purpose of transitioning from the headline to the word "Gourmet" without drawing attention away from either.  "Gourmet" is the artists' own decorative typeface, designed specifically to be in the shape of a hamburger bun.  The high-contrast letterforms, with fat terminals blanking the word, fancifully emphasize the experience of a fat, juicy hamburger.  Without exception, I consider this a wonderful and entertaining ad.

Next up, we have a tastee-freez ad for a pineapple sundae.  tastee-freez is a soft-serve ice cream and fast food chain, similar to an A & W or Dairy Queen, that was started in 1950.  So the typeface that appears on the sundae cup in this ad is a slightly refined version of tastee-freez's own custom typeface dating back to 1950, and is therefore not relevant to this discussion.

The "pineapple" header is of the greatest interest to me.  It appears to be a slightly compressed slab serif.  I find the typeface selection interesting, as slab serif is more commonly associated with industry.  Yet I feel like this is not the first time I've seen it used in this context.  The letters have been placed close together, emphasizing the compressed effect, and set unevenly to give the letters rhythm, and impart a lively quality to the word.  The selection of green is an obvious choice for the letters, and they stand out energetically from the light green background.  A rhythmic counterpoint is found in the highly textural green leaves and banded, waving yellow trunks of the palm trees below.

I will also note that in advertisements, I'm beginning to observe secondary or low priority copy receives the san serif treatment, so as to not draw attention away from more important elements, as is the case here with "SUNDAE" and "Tantalizingly Tropical."

When I was growing up in Virginia, if you wanted a tasty treat of syrup and slush, you went to 7 Eleven and got yourself a Slurpee.  When I moved to Minnesota, I learned that if I wanted to continue that experience, I was going to have to accept the SLUSH PUPPIE at Apache Mall as my new master.  Publicly I swore an oath of loyalty to this cute northern dictator of sweetened ice, but every time my family and I went back to Virginia I immediately went to 7 Eleven and got myself a Slurpee.  What does this have to do with typography? Absolutely nothing.  But it does introduce my last item, the SLUSH PUPPIE logo.

SLUSH PUPPIE's origins date back to 1970, which is about when this logo was designed.  The SLUSH PUPPIE mascot, center, is a very simple and appealing design which knows its target audience (kids) and  conveys the message "cold treat" efficiently.  The typeface used for "SLUSH PUPPIE" is somewhat similar to Cooper, with its fat, rounded serifs and easygoing, medium-contrast progression from stroke to stroke.  In researching 70's and 80's ads, I have also spotted it numerous times in toy advertising and packaging, making it clear that this typeface was a popular choice to market to a kid audience.  Last, I will note the use of color and asymmetrical balance in this composition.  The mascot uses four different shades of blue, which fill about half of the design.  Only its tongue is a different color - red.  Connecting it to the brand, SLUSH PUPPIE, is the application of the same color.  Not only does red establish a relationship between the mascot's tongue and the brand, but being paired with blue, these two elements - the tongue and the brand - advance in space.  Lastly, the asymmetrical balance of "SLUSH" and "PUPPY" add a simple, dynamic appeal to the design.

introduction, and first topic: 70's computer ads

I hope that a title like 70's/80's Type Miscellania doesn't generate too much in the way expectations.  From my point of view, it certainly shouldn't - after all, do you REALLY know what I'm talking about? Do I?

I selected 70's/80's Type Miscellania out of a broader interest in 70's and 80's design.  Part of my research for this blog will be in film and tv titles - the more obscure and unusual the better. But in particular, I am interested in the small, lost things: the retired logos, product package design logotypes, and forgotten once-off's such as limited edition collector's cups and even stickers.  To put it more directly, I am interested in the general design trends of these two periods, but also in design at its least glamorous, most unique, and possibly most misguided. How type-based design solutions relate to content should also be examined.

It will be my goal over the course of this blog to attempt to define - however loosely - these general design conventions so that I may then examine how an individual design connects to them, and the personal touch with which it expresses the concept it is marketing.  As design conventions can be very broad and far-reaching, this second goal may be impossible without research far in excess of the reach of this short blog.  We'll see!

It is also my hope there will be plenty of opportunities to discuss type in relation to the rest of the design as well (as the "rest" part, honestly, interests me far more - sorry, type-fiends!)

So to dispense with the talk-talk and pacify with some fascinating images of musty but still-fresh retro design...Why not start with vintage computer ads?

One has to consider that there was once a time when a market for personal computers did not exist. The market for personal computers rumbled into being practically overnight in the late 70's, introducing numerous problems for advertisers: how to market a new, untested product to consumers, and how to distinguish your product from others.

The obvious solution to the first problem was to create copy-heavy ads, in which the various features are given the hard sell.  However, this environment conversely created the circumstances in which these new devices could be sold as "magic boxes."  I think both these approaches are evident in APF electronics' "Imagination Machine." (LOVE the name!) The advertisement features a large, somewhat long sub-head with extensive body copy, while in the space above the computer whooshes through space like a starship, heralded by the header "The Imagination Machine."

Note the rainbow color of the type (signifying its magical, feature-packed properties) and the distinctive long, lyrical, round curls emerging from the pleasingly curved san-serif letterforms.  This logotype sells the idea of "The Imagination Machine" as a thoroughly whimsical, somewhat fruity experience.

Next (and admittedly much less entertaining) we have sinclair's (note my deliberate use of all-lowercase, in imitation of their own logotype) ZX8O.  I love the design on this thing - the orange ZX8O text with the purple keys set against a black keypad - but I only have two things to talk about here: the header "The first personal computer for under $200" uses a distinctly modern typeface - a very practical one to reach out to consumers with - but with the "sinclair" logo and product name uses a very compressed, squarish font that emphasizes horizontal movement.

This is not unlike a lot of typefaces used in association with computers at the time, and suggested both the "futuristic" quality of this new technology, as well as alluded to the unique look of fonts on computer screens due to the limited, low-resolution manner in which they were displayed.  Returning to the all-lowercase presentation of the logo, the small "s" puts the top bar in alignment with that of the n, c, a, and r, thus enhancing its horizontal thrust.  Great logo!