farm city!
national identity.
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“The closer we got to the States, the more maple leaf flags we saw. Then the federal buildings with the Canada logo. Such a weak typeface for a national identity.”
– Michael Winter, The Architects Are Here
I just finished reading this novel and it’s great – Michael Winter is quickly becoming one of my favourite Canadian authors.
It also got me thinking about federal design strategies, national identity and government typeface.
My research found that “apparently the government adopted a typeface variant based on Helvetica Medium, yet decidedly incompatible with original.”
In this image, Helvetica Medium is overlaid in red. More musings at the Canadian Design Resource.
And more still at the “signage typeface” section of the Federal Identity Program’s Usage Manual.
slo-ven-ija.
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Slovenian Posters. 1950s-1970s.
My favourite poster is at the top – an advertisement for the 1955 International Exhibition of Wood in Ljubljana.
The others, in order of appearance, celebrate the Institute of Cultural Events 1979, an Exhibition of Children’s Drawings 1961 and the 1954 Craft Industry Exhibition.
More Slovenijan event posters care of the ‘ephemera assemblyman’ here.
dig for victory.
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British Ministry of Food. World War II.
Well-designed, well-meaning wartime rationing propaganda.
I especially like the ‘Ministry of Food’ logo that appears on all the leaflets and ration books.
buy pork!
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Yvan Rodic takes pictures of hot people and cool places. And pork.
top shelf.
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That Salty Air. Tim Sievert.
I just read a bunch of graphic novels / comics that I got at the library. None of them were that great, but this one had some really great elements.
Page one features a bicycle-riding postman. I like that.
The next best thing about the short novel is the tag on the back cover.
It reads:
Graphic Novels / Nautical Literature / Oceanic Revenge / Seaside Heartbreak
Any novel with tags like that is worth reading, is right up my alley.
That Salty Air is Tim Sievert‘s first novel. It’s published by Top Shelf Productions.
Tags: graphic novels, literature, nautical literature, oceanic revenge, sadness, sailors, seaside heartbreak
mexicka grafika.
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José Guadalupe Posada. Mexican artist, engraver, printmaker, newspaperman, graphic designer, inspiration. 1852-1913.
Last winter I visited Southern Mexico and came across a book of Posada’s prints. It’s great and really gives a context for much Mexican folk art – the skeletons (calaveras) that have become associated with el dia de los muertos originally satirized the upper classes during the reign of Porfirio Diaz.
Posada died during the Mexican Revolution, but his work is an ode to the revolution, a print documenting the assassination of four zapatista soldiers.
As an aspiring/amateur printmaker myself, I’m grateful to have discovered Posada.
farm city! 