Transcripts from a 2004 text-chat hosted by O2 and then prime minister Tony Blair. The press release stated it was ‘the first time a UK politician has used SMS and a mobile chat room to communicate with the public’. Almost 7k people texted the PM, usernames like Teapot, Voodoo, Mosquito and Turtle quizzed Blair with a range of inane and critical questions signalling the political climate; smoking bans, fox hunting, band aid, id cards, Northern Ireland, and of course the (illegal) war in Iraq.
Blair had been introduced to texting by his daughter only a few days before the event, and due to his ‘poor’ and ‘underdeveloped’ texting talents dictated responses to three young ‘moderators’ who acted as texting proxies. As such, answers were shortened and often contained errors. I hadn’t realised that Twitters original character length matched SMS message constraints - developments in tech changed political rhetoric, some commentators remarked after the event that Blair’s responses were more clear cut than usual.
File under politician tries to connect with younger voters. Typeset in Nokja Original Small Bold
Hobo Signs, sometimes called hoboglyphs, hobo code or marks (as they were left using chalk, charcoal or dirt). Scribed on sidewalks, fences, paths, buildings, these icons provided a rich lexicon of support for itinerant depression era Americans migrating for work.
Curiously, the signs are most likely a fabrication of 19th century author Leon Ray “rambler” Livingstone, whose tales of riding the rails established much of the mythology and folklore around American hobos.
I found the ones above through the National Cryptologic Museums website - they’re affiliated with the NSA so perhaps the state has bought into the myth.
Scans from: NEW GRAPHICAL SYMBOLS FOR MANY MORE (2008)
The book catalogues the competition entries for a Swedish national development and standardisation project aimed at making public symbols more uniform and accessible. The project was conducted by the Swedish Institute of Assistive Technology and the Swedish Standards Institute in association with the Swedish Agency for Disability Policy Coordination, the Swedish Disability Federation, the Organisation for Cognitive Support and the Swedish Institute for Special Needs Education.
Entrants designed black and white (positive / negative) ‘intelligible and easily readable’ graphic icons for 7 new public information symbols; a medical centre, a library, a travel centre, source separation (recycling), a playground, an evacuation meeting point, and an internet cafe.
From the Jury text by Lars Fuhre:
‘Everyday we encounter innumerable messages in the form of pictograms…It is virtually impossible to act in the present-day society without understanding large numbers of graphic symbols.
And knowledge is dynamic. Just as the internet cafe, a mere two decades ago, was an unborn concept, there will in the future be a need for symbols whose meaning we are unable to even conceptualise…a new global iconography is all the time developing into a written language of its own.’
#internetcafé
In the UK, we are all watched over by the slogans of Anthony Burril. Monochrome, condensed, grotesque, ALL CAPS! Neoliberal propaganda, both innocuous and invasive – banal tyranny (no suprise he’s a former adman). ‘MAKE IT NOW MAKE IT NEW’, ‘GO EVERYWHERE DO EVERYTHING’, ‘WANT BETTER NOT MORE’, ‘IDEAS ARE EVERYWHERE’, ‘THE SUN SHINES HERE EVERYDAY’ and of course the crowd pleaser, Burril’s self described ‘greatest hit; ‘WORK HARD & BE NICE TO PEOPLE’ (dated 2004). The graphic designers See it. Say it. Sorted.
Burril’s text and typographic treatment articulate protonostalgia (aka ideology) – formally suggestive of a cultural sector of yesteryear (oh we do love a bit of letterpress in this country). Such ephemera speaks to a moment, real or imagined, when financially viable *authored* Graphic Design (or *Graphic Art* as Burril would say) seemed possible. A creative career accessible to mostly men, born in postwar Britain, having later been churned through the Polytechnic to RCA pipeline.
Keith Dodds cover for Owen Hatherley’s brilliant book The Ministry of Nostalgia (2016) made the above points far more succinctly and creatively. Dodds sandwiches Burril’s words between other pithily jingoistic, familiar instructions; ‘Make Do & Mend’, and the obvious analogue to Burrils work ‘Keep Calm & Carry On’. As someone who’s grown up in Tory Britain, and having been through British Art School (now teaching) I can’t help but see a parallel between Hatherley’s critique of our modern political fantasy – an economic orthodoxy partly enabled by austerity nostalgia, a misremembered and fetishised past contributing to a particularly English sense of deference – and how ideas, experiences, practices (i.e stories) from 20-century British Art Schools percolate through cultural spaces (the University, the Design Talk Circuit; Typo Circle et al.). This anemoia (great new word) might explicate some of our fascination for ‘Zines’ and ‘Print’ – although I do think that anachronism has as much to do with the administrative, financial, and technical constraints of 21st Century HE. Not necessarily separate factors; nostalgia can be useful rhetorical cover for marketisation.
Burril’s universe is one of optics and vibes (positivity! creativity!), where aesthetics and process (the inky, ‘dirty’ work of manual typesetting and printmaking, albeit outsourced) are the primary extraction from our collective cultural memory of Graphic Design Past. An art school vernacular that leaves out all those material benefits that informed practice, and crucially, established practitioners. Namely that it was free, class sizes were small, studio space was affordable and GD was an emergent profession, carrying with it a certain intellectual and class status (that is to say it was aspirational).
I recently spotted Burril’s poster in an overpriced flat featured on Modern House, an estate agent specializing in post-war former social housing. Acquiring such an ‘austere luxury flat’ (Hatherley) now signifies a creative at the top of their game. Energised, I posted a facetious critique of Burril’s work on my Insta Stories, conflating the rise of Right Wing Populism with the ubiquity of WORK HARD... After which a bunch of well meaning graphic designers DM’d me to let me know these two things have no relationship whatsoever. True. But I find it a funny counterfactual, and besides, it does strike me as odd that our sector more often allows (even encourages) designers to inflate the *intentional* goal of their work, while few seem interested in exploring all the *unintentional* collateral damage. Can’t both be hyperbolic. This sentiment feels increasingly hard to express, mainly because we’re all keeping up appearances (our work must have value) plus forever networking (I must be NICE). Symptoms of a dying discipline and rampant competition.
To me it seems unsurprising, and at this point almost inarguable, that Burills’ work is more likely bought by bosses, studio directors, home owners, landlords and politicians (someone got in touch to tell me of a print order straight to Downing Street, circa the Cameron years). Burril typographically barks the command of eternal drudgery while also offering the kind of meritocratic messages upper management types can’t resist. There’s no exploitation, nepotism or (financial) inheritance, only the HARD WORK of NICE chaps.
💿 CD-ROMs from American publisher Wayzata Technology. They were active in the early 90s distributing (design) software, libraries and media for Macintosh until going out of business in 1996. They published a bunch of Robert Schencks early typeface collections, one of them is the last image in the carousel - Font Pro Volume 2 (1992)
Scans from the Internet Archive
How to See Nanjing: At the end of last year I spent Christmas travelling to the Communication University of China, Nanjing (CUCN) to teach a six day workshop with a group of around 40 graphic design students. I used George Nelson’s famous book on messages and meaning, How to See: A Guide to Reading Our Environment (1977), to scaffold the week.
The students visited 3 different locations, visually transcribing their observations in response to the chapters; Communications, Mobility and Geometrics. Working in groups, this field research was critically unpacked through a series of workshops, presentations & discussions, then later designed (or translated) into a series of graphic banners and postcards.
I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to teach abroad. Working with Chinese students, and being in Nanjing and Shanghai more generally, has had a profound impact on the way I think about my teaching practice, how I see/experience teaching within the UK and my relationship within HE to East Asia (too much for an insta post).
A huge thanks to all the amazing students who took part in the workshop, and for the kindness and support of all the staff I met over the week.
Special thanks to:
CUCN Tutors: Lili Yang, Tianyuan Wei, Mingzhi Song
Translators:
Yiyang Hu, Yuxin Liu
The Creative Knowledge Exchange Network:
Kate Sedwell
Image caption: Pictures of faces found in the environment. The students were asked to literally read their surroundings by searching for gyphs; A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, 🙂, 😮, 😑
Me and @ayayaykok recently spoke to our favourite type designer Robert Schenk (b. 1946, Minnesota). Robert’s been designing and publishing fonts since the late 1980’s as the foundry Ingrimayne Type. Our interview will be published (hopefully) soon under the embryonic imprint No-Hype Type, which draws its name/ethos from Roberts work. In the meantime here’s an R. Schenk appreciation post.
Image 1
Robert’s chosen classifications organising a selection of Ingrimayne Type’s extensive catlogue. The index is one of many subsections on ingrimayne.com, a labyrinthian html website that Robert built and originally hosted through his universities intranet system (where he taught economics) hence the anachronistic aesthetic.
Image 2
A poster from the ‘Font Tales’ section of ingrimayne.com, which includes a number of attempts to produce more playful specimens. This one’s a fake playbill announcing a ‘Novelty Opera’. Underneath the image Robert reflects; ‘Novelty fonts are like spice: they must be used in very small doses. A meal of pepper will make one sick, but a sprinkle here and there can improve food. A similar principle holds for novelty fonts.’
Image 3
Robert’s self published CD-ROM ‘No-Hype Type’, released sometime between 1997/98, which collated 500 of Ingrimayne’s typefaces. From the blurb; ‘Why name the CD "No-Hype Type?" Because Ingrimayne Type is a small type foundry which does not have the funds to extensively advertise its products.’
Image 4
One of my fave fonts, ‘Nails N Staples’ (1995). Robert’s a prolific Novelty Font designer, no object, animal or body part is safe from legible transmutation; arrows, feet, pencils, ants, bowling pins, hammers, umbrellas, crutches…
Image 5
Fonts in use. Spotted on @bookspeckham insta, Ingrimayne’s typeface ‘Zirkle One’ (1990) is used on the cover of Marquis de Sade’s ‘Crimes of Love’ to typeset the books title.
Image 6
Text taken from the intro to ‘Puzzling Typography a Sequel; Mazes with Tessellating Letters’ (2012), printed via Amazon. Featuring 84 mazes designed using several early computer programs Robert wrote.
Image 7
Page 25 of ‘Puzzling Typography a Sequel’ featuring a tessellating lower case letter ‘f’.
More cartooning, this time a reassembled scan from Will Eisners ‘Comics and Sequential Art: Principles & Practice of the World’s Most Popular Art Form’ (1985).
In this example, the frames or panels of a comic indicate duration not only through their sequencing and arrangement, but also by their border. The ‘character’ of a panels line can translate other non-verbal information too (Eisner refers to panels as hieroglyphs for this reason).
(A) Implies action contained in the present tense. (B) Flashbacks. (C) Also represents past time as it visualises thought/memory/unspoken speech.
(D) Signifies sound (usually from a machine) or an emotion.
