{"id":12,"date":"2008-05-29T13:46:52","date_gmt":"2008-05-29T17:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alphabetsoupblog.com\/?p=12"},"modified":"2012-06-13T14:00:23","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T21:00:23","slug":"what-i-do-2-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"What I Do (#2 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I created a teeny-tiny niche for myself when I started doing “letterforms” art\u2014this was back in the \u201870s<\/a>. For me that time was a low point for typography<\/a>. There wasn\u2019t that much going on design-wise that held my interest. I felt at the time that illustration and typography\/lettering were seen and treated as two seemingly unrelated disciplines. To my mind typography had become uninteresting and was hardly ever fully integrated with images\u2014whether they were photographic or illustrative. At the time the very popular modernist movement (as typified by such designers as Rudolf de Harak<\/a> and Chermayeff & Geismar<\/a>) represented a way of approaching design that for me held very little interest. When I looked back a few decades at the rich history of ephemera<\/a> in this country it seemed that we were in visually lean times.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Early work by Rick Griffin (l.) and Victor Moscoso (r.)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

While a student at the Cooper Union<\/a> I was very taken with the “psychedelic” posters that had appeared on both coasts. The work of such artists as Victor Moscoso<\/a>, Kelly & Mouse<\/a> and Rick Griffin<\/a> had a huge impact on me with their unusual use of color and integration of letterforms and striking images. Of course I don\u2019t think I could have verbalized any of this at the time, I just knew what I liked\u2014and wanted to see more of those sorts of things. So I started to create custom letterform solutions, working and collaborating with illustrators\u2014specifically Charles White III<\/a> and Doug Johnson<\/a>. I soon realized that I myself could also be a maker of images and so, after gaining a little self-confidence, started to take on projects where the image and the typography associated with it became more integrated with each other\u2014at times becoming one and the same. I guess this was to become my “thing”\u2014the integration of letter and image. Soon, other young designers began imitating what I did. At the time I kind of resented it as \u201cplagiarism\u201d, but I soon realized that imitation was the most sincere form of flattery. Over the years my \u201cimitators\u201d branched out and found their own voices. So it\u2019s gratifying to see that in some small way I may have influenced a generation of designers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I created a teeny-tiny niche for myself when I started doing “letterforms” art\u2014this was back in the \u201870s. For me that time was a low point for typography. There wasn\u2019t that much going on design-wise that held my interest. I felt at the time that illustration and typography\/lettering were seen and treated as two seemingly unrelated disciplines. To my mind typography had become uninteresting and was hardly ever fully integrated with images\u2014whether they were photographic or illustrative. At the time the very popular modernist movement (as typified by such designers as Rudolf de Harak and Chermayeff & Geismar) represented a way of approaching design that for me held very little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","category-waybackmachine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2045,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/2045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}