{"id":2934,"date":"2013-08-05T17:07:32","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T00:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaeldoret.com\/blog\/?p=2934"},"modified":"2016-03-06T15:01:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T23:01:25","slug":"dc-comics-book-jackets-for-taschen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/?p=2934","title":{"rendered":"DC Comics 75th Anniversary Book Jackets for Taschen Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comic Books were once considered throwaway trash aimed at adolescent boys. Now comic books are considered one of the premier art forms of the 20th century. So it wasn\u2019t surprising that Benedikt Taschen decided to enshrine this art form in \u201c75 Years of DC Comics – The Art of Modern Mythmaking<\/a>\u201d\u2014one of his Extra Large scale books: \u201c\u2026in honor of the publisher\u2019s 75th anniversary, TASCHEN has produced the single most comprehensive book on DC Comics, in an XL edition even Superman might have trouble lifting. More than 2,000 images\u2014covers and interiors, original illustrations, photographs, film stills, and collectibles\u2014are reproduced using the latest technology to bring the story lines, the characters, and their creators to vibrant life as they\u2019ve never been seen before.\u201d
\nI was tasked by Taschen AD Josh Baker with helping to create letterform graphics for the cover of this monumental edition. These graphics needed to integrate seamlessly with the vintage cover image so that the new cover design might appear to have been \u201coriginal\u201d. The publisher came up with an incredible image of two sign painters painting a monumental protrait of Superman. They also found some vintage lettering of \u201cDC COMICS\u201d which I was to design around. Also included was an original \u201cDC\u201d logo in a circle which I needed to balance off on the other side of the cover with wording that read \u201cOver 700 Pages in Color\u201d. What I came up with seemed like the only logical layout for this. I looked at dozens and dozens of pieces of vintage comic lettering from DC\u2019s past and distilled them to what I felt would work the best:
\n\"75<\/a>
\nI decided to create the final lettering not digitally, but with pen and ink, to try to approach the less than perfect forms that these letters would have had\u2014here are the various elements:
\n\"75<\/a>
\n\"75<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c75 Years of DC Comics\u201d is divided into five sections, each covering a time span of between 1\u00bd to 2 decades. Taschen decided to expand each of those five sections into its own separate, more reader-friendly sized volume, with much more artwork and commentary. Each volume then needed its own special cover art and graphics, and I was again tasked with trying to integrate titling with an appropriate look for each of the five new volumes. The jackets for each volume were to be made of metallic stock matching the contents\u2014so the Golden Age was to be printed on gold metallic stock, the Silver Age on silver stock, and so on.
\n\"DC<\/a>
\nThe process for creating the graphics was much the same as what I did for the \u201c75 Years\u201d jacket\u2014creating five different titling units, each in keeping with the time period it represents, and four more \u201cslugs\u201d to play off opposite the various DC logos (we kept the same slug for \u201cGolden Age\u201d as we used on \u201c75 Years\u201d), each also in an appropriate style to its context. Lest what you see below not confuse you, on the first and last volumes Taschen changed the cover art they selected from what they originally supplied me with. To date, only the first two volumes have been published, \u201cBronze Age\u201d, \u201cDark Age\u201d, and \u201cModern Age\u201d will follow, released one at a time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 THE GOLDEN AGE OF DC COMICS<\/strong>
\n\"Golden<\/a>
\n\"Golden<\/a><\/p>\n

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

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 THE SILVER AGE OF DC COMICS<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

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

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 THE BRONZE AGE OF DC COMICS<\/strong>
\n\"Bronze<\/a>
\n<\/a>\"Bronze<\/a>\"Bronze<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 THE DARK AGE OF DC COMICS<\/strong>
\n\"Dark<\/a>
\n\"Dark<\/a>
\n\"Dark<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 THE MODERN AGE OF DC COMICS<\/strong>
\n\"Modern<\/a>
\n\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\"Alphabet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comic Books were once considered throwaway trash aimed at adolescent boys. Now comic books are considered one of the premier art forms of the 20th century. So it wasn\u2019t surprising that Benedikt Taschen decided to enshrine this art form in \u201c75 Years of DC Comics – The Art of Modern Mythmaking\u201d\u2014one of his Extra Large scale books: \u201c\u2026in honor of the publisher\u2019s 75th anniversary, TASCHEN has produced the single most comprehensive book on DC Comics, in an XL edition even Superman might have trouble lifting. More than 2,000 images\u2014covers and interiors, original illustrations, photographs, film stills, and collectibles\u2014are reproduced using the latest technology to bring the story lines, the characters, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[583,581,586,587,578,584,191,588,579,585,582,322,580],"class_list":["post-2934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigs","category-news","tag-batman","tag-book-jacket","tag-bronze-age","tag-dark-age","tag-dc-comics","tag-goldern-age","tag-lettering","tag-modern-age","tag-paul-levitz","tag-silver-age","tag-superman","tag-taschen","tag-titling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934","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=2934"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3521,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934\/revisions\/3521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alphabetsoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}