The font is one of the oldest tricks in the book. You typeset text in a regular font, I think this was Rotis, and then you blow it up really big on a Xerox machine and then you shrink it down really small. The trick is to see just how much you can distress it and keep it readable. It’s gotten harder to do because Xerox machines are so much better, but if you’ve got a wonderfully shitty machine it will look all corroded and gummy and yucky. It takes a bit of playing around, but it’s really not that hard.

With that tip as inspiration I used the same technique to make these little design posters. The typeface is Rockwell Bold and each letter was blown up 1600% on a Toshiba photocopier, before being digitally reduced. The Toshiba was too new to give the type a truly wonderfully gummy yucky look, but it was a good exercise. Even with all of our digital tricks, it is pretty fun to get in there with some old school techniques.

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@Colorburned Of course you’re on fire, it is colorburned after all! Can’t wait to see the new stuff. in reply to Colorburned #

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This was a design based on one of my favorite poems, Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The poem is very moving, and has the great hero Ulysses (Odysseus in Greek) at the end of his life feeling the urge to strive, explore and set sail once again. That is an urge we have and should cherish, that little voice that tells us there is still much more to see and do. It is a human quality that we need to heed, especially when our boat has waited to0 long in the harbor. Here’s the complete poem (don’t worry it’s in the public domain):

Ulysses
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Poem Source

Just for fun here’s a YouTube video of a performance of the poem:

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I was at the park with my kids playing in the sand box and I recalled this quote from Chip Kidd’s wonderful novel The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters: “Design is purposeful planning… Graphic design is the form those plans will take.” Between the juice boxes and pushing kids on the swing I tried to represent that with sand, sticks and pebbles.

Anyone who is interested in literature or good storytelling would like The Cheese Monkey’s, but for designers, I highly recommend Kidd’s book for many reasons, first it is a gripping tale of Happy (the protagonist) discovering himself and the world he inhabits. Second, the host of characters that Kidd creates are unforgettable, especially Himillsy Dodd and Winter Sorbeck. Finally, the book is full of great nuggets about graphic design. That last point is something designers should enjoy, or at least provoke some food for thought. It isn’t often that graphic design gets so eloquently discussed, defended and criticized in any form, let alone a novel. Having the history, purpose and practice of graphic design examined in fiction is refreshing.

Links:

• The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
• The Learners by Chip Kidd (his follow up novel, continuing the adventures of Happy)
• Good is Dead, Chip Kidd’s Blog

Here are some great interviews/talks by and with Chip Kidd:

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Here’s a little sketch for my design something every day project. Imagine yourself as one of clever Odysseus’ men in the cave of the Cyclops, and one-eyed Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, reaches down to devour you, or as Samuel Butler gruesomely put it in his translation:

The cruel wretch vouchsafed me not one word of answer, but with a sudden clutch he gripped up two of my men at once and dashed them down upon the ground as though they had been puppies. Their brains were shed upon the ground, and the earth was wet with their blood. Then he tore them limb from limb and supped upon them. He gobbled them up like a lion in the wilderness, flesh, bones, marrow, and entrails, without leaving anything uneaten.” — Homer, The Odyssey Book 9, trans. Samuel Butler.

Links:

The Odyssey, by Homer Translated by Samuel Butler via the Classics Archive at MIT.
Free online audio version of the Butler translation of They Odyssey at Librivox. Although it is great to read Homer, one should listen to a good reading of his epics. Considering that’s how most in the ancient world were exposed to them, I find it fun to listen to them being read. It makes me feel like I am walking in their shoes, er sandals.

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I have always loved maps, as a child I would look at our world atlas and ponder the far flung reaches of the globe. Then I discovered a historical atlas at my school and realized that maps could not only take you horizontally across the globe but also vertically in to the distant past.

A period I found particularly fascinating was the Roman Empire. I’d gaze at the maps showing the roads stretching out from Rome like a web uniting the disparate corners western world under the the banner of The Senate and People of Rome — SPQR.

The great poet Publius Vergilius Maro, better known to us today as Virgil wrote his masterpiece the Aeneid at the same time Rome was nearing the apex of it’s power and confidence. This magnificent poem was written to, amongst other things, create a mythologized past for the Romans of the first century CE, particularly for Virgil’s patron, the Emperor Augustus. As such, the poem depicts the Romans  as a people not great at skill in art, destined to rule.

Let others better mold the running mass
Of metals, and inform the breathing brass,
And soften into flesh a marble face;
Plead better at the bar; describe the skies,
And when the stars descend, and when they rise.
But, Rome, ‘t is thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule mankind, and make the world obey,
Disposing peace and war by thy own majestic way;
To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free:
These are imperial arts, and worthy thee.“
–The Aeneid, Book 6 Translated by John Dryden

This passage takes place during a conversation between Aeneas and his dead father Ancheises in the underworld. This is direct allusion to Homer and The Odyssey. In Homer’s work must his hero Odysseus must visit a cave where he will summon the dead seer Tiresias (amongst other dead celebs). By doing this he will gain the knowledge to compete his quest and finally reach the far shores of Ithica.

In the Aeneid, Aeneas has the same quest but he actually has to travel through the land of the dead, instead of just waiting at the gate like Odysseus. This is one of the most important and vivid parts of the poem. His journey has inspired artists and poets for centuries, now it has inspired a daily design and underworld subway map!

Links & Sources:

• The basic outline of the map was taken from Alice K. Turner’s truly amazing book A History of Hell. It would be devilish of me not to recommend it.
• The Aeneid translated by John Dryden via The Internet Classics Archive at MIT. The recent Robert Fagels translation looks really good too.
• Free Audio Version of  The  Aeneid via Libravox.org (also the Dryden version… yeah Public Domain!)
• Underworld & the Afterlife: A good article about Greco-Roman ideas of, well the underworld & the afterlife via Carlos Parada of Greek Mythology Link. I used a little of this for the subway of the underworld map.

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