An Old and New Topic

Our lives are constant blends of old with new. That's almost one definition of 'time' — old days / new days. We all own some old things and some new things.  New things become old things. We can acquire some old things and thereby make them new things, for us. We moved from our old house to our new house, bringing some old things and buying some new things. The old year became the new year, looking quite the same, except our old view is now a new view. The old computer became a new computer, looking much like the old one, but behaving in a new way. I've finished some old projects and begun some new.

Old and New are simultaneous. 

Where does one begin and the other end?

Milton Glaser — Old/New

Mirror Alphabet

This post is dedicated to Nikita, whose email has inspired an interest in ambigrams. This is a mirror sort of ambigram of a decorative alphabet. I can't credit its clever creator as it's been floating around my image morgue for years and years, before I ever thought to mark sources. It has an Art Nouveau flavor.

UPDATE: This lovely ambigram was created by Scott Kim, PuzzleMaster, and his website can be accessed by clicking here.

Thanks nagfa!

Painting is Poetry

I love brush calligraphy on watercolor paper. This is only an ad for Fabriano paper, and who knows if Leonardo said anything of this sort (he must've, right? Why make it up?). But it's pretty to look at, and relevant to some of the images I like to post around here.

Advertisement for Fabriano paper — ca 2004

It's About Time!

What red-blooded person WOULDN'T want to master time?

J. Allen St. John — The Man Who Mastered Time — 1929

If a person didn't recognize the art style enough to know this was by St. John, a person could recognize the typography style as his. Nearly all St. John's book covers had this elaborate type treatment that he designed and integrated into his moody and muted adventure paintings. And oh, a novel about "Time" — my favorite sub genre of sci-fi!

For All You Followers of the Female Form

To help warm up the post-holiday blues for all you followers of the female form, here is a Harper's promotional poster from a few years back, based on one of its covers, featuring the amazing loveliness of Gisele Bündchen.

Personally, I think the colorful typography adds to the graphic impact, making an iconic poster of the early 21st century.

Harper's Bazaar — Gisele Bündchen — 2002

Breathtaking Brilliance

The 1912 book presented here, Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur, created by Alberto Sangorski, is page-for-page the most beautiful publication I've ever seen.

Illuminated as of old, it is breathtaking in its brilliance. Any other words are superfluous.

Alfred Lord Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur

"Designed, Written Out, and Illuminated"

by Alberto Sangorski —1912

Compose the Troubled Spirit

Illuminated text designed & executed by F.Sangorski and G.Sutcliffe — 1910

AMEN to that brother! Good night and pleasant dreams!

Cigarettes Egyptiennes

There was a time when advertising, and even the act of smoking itself, was a refined and aesthetic experience . . .

Charles Loupot — cigarette brand poster — 1919

The hand-drawn typography is superbly appropriate.

Macabrely Phantastic

A macabrely phantastic display of calligraphy, from the pen of Francesco Pisani of Genoa from the year 1640, when death was always near at hand.

Matter of Life & Death

Life and Death are the same face of a tossed coin, depending on how it lands and how you look at it. At least so one might interpret while examining this intriguing bit of typographic design by C.E. Krausie.

Shown are the 180 degree views of the very same lovely device.

Legendary

These ads with art by Stark Davis, from the 1920s, have my vote for the most beautiful automobile advertisements—EVER. And there were others in this series. When I was at the Art Institute of Chicago, Davis was legendary among the instructors and students.

It has to be admitted, at least from my point of view, that the typography of 'Lincoln' in the background adds a lot to the appeal of these graphics; the name itself is classic as is the type font, and the subtle coloration is gorgeous. The cars themselves are pretty nifty.

Lincoln Coupe—1928

Lincoln Cabriolet—1928

Lincoln Berline Landaulet—1927

Lincoln Club Roadster—1928

Lincoln Town Sedan—1928

Biography from Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts:

 Winthrop Stark Davis was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1885.  He subsequently lived and worked in Chicago, where he was affiliated with several arts institutions including the Palette and Chisel Club.  Davis exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1924 and at the Chicago Galleries Association in 1930, winning prizes in both shows.

 During the 1920s and 1930s Stark Davis’s illustrations appeared on covers of the Ladies’ Home Journal, and in numerous advertisements, and from 1927 to 1929, Davis’s artistic and colorful “Bird Series” of ads for Lincoln automobiles ran in popular magazines such as Country Life and Home and Garden.  A typical ad would feature a Lincoln sedan or coupe in the foreground, with a peacock, a wide-eyed red bird of paradise, or a condor dramatically filling the background or framing the scene.

 During his time in Chicago, Davis would make trips to Santa Barbara, California, and subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, where he worked at the Disney Animation Studios and exhibited at the Ainslie Gallery in 1936.

 By 1947, Davis had retired from painting and was living in Morro Bay, a seaside town on California’s Central Coast.

 Stark Davis passed away in Marin County, California, in 1950.

Italian Art Nouveau

I know I use the word 'beautiful' an awful lot in describing the images that I post, and that's because that's just what they are. This is a beautiful and elegant Italian Art Nouveau poster by Adolfo Hohenstein from 1898. Love that typography, oh, and that little devil guy.

Typography as Art

Early 20th Century saw a lively use of typography utilized as art for art's sake. Yes, it was communication, thereby making it a practical art, but the lovely shapes of letters and the arrangement of them made for an aesthetic experience. Even if a person were illiterate, type could be lovely to gaze upon. 

This poster for an exhibition for the Munich Secession was designed by Franz von Stuck, the German symbolist.