Alphabet City Press

11 December 201511 December 2015

Corrugated iron

I love this sculptural gate, which is in the grounds of a vineyard on the Bellarine Peninsula. The vineyard is a huge concern, with a cafe, restaurant, accommodation and cellar door—all very impressive. But what I enjoyed most about my visit there was a wander around the grounds, which were full of things like rusted, once-functional machinery (some of it just lying around, some of it repurposed), a whole garden of succulents planted in teapots, rescued buoys hanging from a clothesline. I was in awe of the vision that inspired the overall plan, and the apparent ease with which it all seemed to come together, despite the fact that it must have taken a huge amount of hard work.

7 December 20156 December 2015

Simply Black and White

I currently have three prints and five small artists books in ‘Simply Black and White’, a group show that features (primarily) black and white work from more than thirty emerging and professional artists. The show runs until 22nd December at ME Artspace, 25 Atchison Street St Leonards NSW. This is a spread from one of my books, ‘Building for beginners’, from the seven-volume series A Classical Education.

4 December 201529 November 2015

Firewood

My brother lives in a colder climate. A while back I was telling him we were in the grip of an unusually cold winter for Sydney and that, before we even had need of the heater or knew we were in for a chilly few months, we had taken advantage of a pre-season firewood bulk deal and was surprised that we might actually go through it all. He just laughed at the one tonne we had bought—already he had gone through seven! Lucky he didn’t have to get his supply from the servo, which sells these mini-packs at inflated (or should I say inflamed) prices. These bags were most appealing however, and who could not be warmed by the illustration.

30 November 201529 November 2015

Gelati

The handwritten ‘gelati’ reminds me of how writing looked when we used to use squeakers for mocking up design concepts. I was never particularly adept with the squeakers—I much preferred (and was better at) sizing headline type. We would trace individual letters from the type catalogue, use the photocopier to enlarge or reduce, cut the words up to manually letter-space them before photocopying them again. All before marking it up for the typesetter. Groan! Who would wish for a return to those days! Nostalgia aside, I love this scene—the (I’m hoping intentional) humour in the half-hearted attempt to cover ‘veterinary’, the very gelati-like colours of the plastic furniture and the gaping cartoon maw of the yellow bin.

27 November 201527 November 2015

’Tis the season

Walking past the local butcher’s window this morning, I see that the festive season is upon us, because we are now being invited to order our christmas ham’s and turkey’s! It’s reassuring to know that, in this chaotic world, some things come around like clockwork, and that the punctuation is so reliable.

23 November 201522 November 2015

Woodfried

I was out for dinner at a local pizzeria the other night with my husband—the typo-sleuthing monster who, while I will admit to some initial accountability, has taken his eagle-eyed zeal to another level—and our editor friend, who is capable of demolishing the writing style of any menu with a single withering glance. I was hungry, and preoccupied with the capriciossa vs vesuvio dilemma, so I was not paying attention to, well, spelling and punctuation mistakes (or, until it was unavoidable, to their obvious glee at being treated to such an excellent example of each), but finally I caught on.

20 November 201515 November 2015

Phone coverage

Luckily I’m not the type of person who can’t function without my phone close to hand at all times, but when you’re in rural areas and out of range for hours or even days at a time, you realise how useful those pesky devices are, and how much you use them for instant access to, well, almost everything. This notice is posted on a tree in the parking area of a property on the outskirts of Bermagui in NSW. Certainly not the sticks, but remote enough that reception is patchy! I didn’t want or need to make use of the phone coverage here, but the sign was hard to ignore, especially with its pleasing background of spotted gum bark and accompanying cobwebs.

16 November 201515 November 2015

Bruce Lee

Looks like some local wag had fun with masking tape. Lucky I looked up, otherwise I would have missed it! I’d like to think of something else to say—maybe about the legibility or suitability of Gill Sans for such street signage—but really, I just liked it because it made me laugh.

13 November 201513 November 2015

Caslon 540

William Caslon was an eighteenth-century English gunsmith, engraver, punchcutter and type designer. His distinctive and legible typefaces transformed English type design by establishing a national typographic style, replacing the previously popular Dutch Baroque types which inspired him. Caslon typefaces have come in and out of fashion over the centuries, and today there are many variations of the original, including Caslon 540, designed by ATF in 1902, whose character set contains this particularly beautiful ampersand.

9 November 20155 November 2015

673

Wrought iron is a tough and malleable iron alloy, and over time has been used to make swords, cutlery, axes, garden furniture, rails, rivets, nails, nuts, bolts, horseshoes, decorative ironwork—to name but a handful of a huge array of items. These days, things that look like wrought iron, like this curly number, are more likely made of mild steel, but retain the name ‘wrought’ iron because they are worked by hand. This olde worlde style is not generally something I particularly warm to, but in this instance I was drawn to the shape of the numbers, particularly the spirally 6 and 3.