Alphabet City Press

7 December 20136 December 2013

Cool combo

It’s the weekend, time to relax a little after a busy week. Put my feet up, have a glass of something, maybe even catch some live music. There’s a jazz lounge near me where the seating comprises plush old sofas and comfy low armchairs in an almost haphazard arrangement. It’s perfect for kicking back and enjoying the show, and I can picture this cool combo there, although they do seem quite at home on this brick wall. I like how the wall is painted black, evoking that low-light nightclub ambience, despite the harsh afternoon sunlight.

4 December 20134 December 2013

Aperture

The word aperture comes from the Latin apertura, meaning opening, so it follows that, in typography, aperture would refer to an opening in a letter from. Specifically, it is the opening to the partially enclosed negative space (or counter) in characters such as a, c, e, n and s. Apertures can be small or large depending on the typeface. The lower case e of Berkeley Oldstyle Book has a large aperture due to the angle of the horizontal bar, but the e of Bembo Bold has a relatively small aperture. Vectora’s a has a tiny aperture, and while Serifa Light’s is larger, it is still small compared with that of Today Extra Light.

1 December 20131 December 2013

Guitar

At first glance there is nothing special about the Tamworth tourist information centre building. Inside, the ‘Walk a Country Mile’ exhibit documents the history of Australian country music and, I confess, surprised me by being far more engaging than I expected. However, the real surprise came at the end, when I walked out the front door. The angle of the sun had shifted to reveal this dramatic shadow. The machine heads are ordinary spherical light fittings and the headstock is angled just as it should be, and on closer inspection I could see that the walls of the building were curved like a dreadnought.

28 November 201327 November 2013

Pink grille

Fordson manufactured small, lightweight, affordable tractors that went into mass production in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1917. Eleven years and more than half a million tractors later, production was transferred to Ireland and then later to England. I chanced upon this old Fordson tractor along the New England Highway when I was stopping to look at something else. It was obviously no longer in use, but it looked like it had been well cared for and it was still in pretty good nick. The most corroded part was this grille, and although I like the typography, it is the grille I find most interesting: a modern art bas-relief sculpture at the side of the road.

25 November 201325 November 2013

Rockwell

Rockwell is a slab serif typeface released by Monotype in 1934. The design, based on Litho Antique, was overseen by Frank Hinman Pierpont, Monotype’s in-house designer. Rockwell is geometric and mono-weighted (although with some slight unevenness that stops it looking too regular), with a large x-height and unbracketed serifs — features that make it suitable for display purposes rather than for large bodies of text. Distinguishing features of Rockwell are the serif at the apex of the uppercase A and the circular O of the light and regular weights.

22 November 201322 November 2013

Skype

We are fairly techno savvy in our household. As computer-literate iUsers, we can, for example, select music through devices that are not plugged in to the speakers from which the sound emanates, or we can piggyback devices to expand functionality. However, a working knowledge of how to use the technology at our disposal doesn’t necessarily imply complete understanding of the science that goes into making them function. So imagine how thrilled I was to discover the explanation for how skype works! It’s nothing more than pigeon post and wires!

19 November 201319 November 2013

Walcha

The NSW town of Walcha is quite a surprise. For a place with a population of around only 1600 it has a rich history: sheep farming, cedar, gold and slate mining for starters. In 1950 a Tiger Moth was the first aircraft to spread superphosphate in Australia. More recently Walcha Telecottage was established, which aids interaction between local communities with job training, education and internet services, and also produces the Apsley Advocate, a free and widely distributed weekly newsletter. Walcha has significant buildings, significant natural beauty, significant flora and fauna, notable sports people and artists, and a swag of OAM-awarded residents. And if that’s not enough, there are 41 pieces of open-air art around town! The sculptures are outstanding, and I was particularly taken with this figurative work, by Tom Deko, made from oil drums.

16 November 201316 November 2013

Caret

Hat, control, uparrow, chevron, shark-fin, fang, call it what you will: the caret is a wedge-shaped mark made on written or printed matter. Although the caret is used widely in ASCII and unicode, in publishing it is more commonly recognised as a proofreading mark, which is where it has its origin. In Latin, caret means ‘it lacks’, so the name describes its function as the proofreading mark that indicates the place where something — a punctuation mark, a word, a phrase — should be inserted. The mark to be inserted is generally placed within the caret and it is written below the line of text for a line-level punctuation mark such as a comma, or above the line as an inverted caret for a character such as an apostrophe.

13 November 201312 November 2013

Bannister’s

There’s a lot wrong here, and not just the letter spacing. It is one of the few — well, the only — bits of lettering with any sense of style I could find along a commercial strip that was so awful it was shameful, a street bursting with shops — ugly, noisy, smelly, crass — that have sprouted too quickly and competitively with little thought for anything other than the tourist dollar. This, in an area that should know better. But I was lucky to find a spot across the street where I could obtain an unimpeded view of this building name. I like the B and R, and the S that isn’t quite straight, that perfect A, and the acute angle of the apostrophe. And the fact that they didn’t pull it down.

10 November 201310 November 2013

Fresh kings

Of late there are more smart boards and tablets than chalk and blackboards. Only yesterday I saw an iPad on the counter at the butcher where once upon a time there might have been a hand-scrawled specials board. I am heartened by this handwritten blackboard because the very impermanence of the chalk implies that the information changes, reassuring me that the catch is more likely to be a daily one. Today, though, my friends and I are having prawns for lunch.