One Plus One Equals Three

Young Lovers of Hand-drawn Type Run Free

Review
Hand Job: A Catalog of Type 
by Michael Perry
Princeton Architectural Press, 2007

Undoubtedly the winner of 'Design Book Title of the Year: Undergraduate Humour Category', Michael Perry's Hand Job (see?) is a funky, street-savvy compendium of hand-drawn type and lettering that features the work of 55 designers (think 'indie' and zine culture –€“ torn jeans too). A handsome, colourful book that looks like it has been modelled on manga comics (this volume is about the same size and thickness as a large manga book), Hand Job is a fun, spirited and very groovy (if slightly patchy) visual smorgasboard of typo-doodlery, hand-drawn type and general design typo-street-funk.

A more reflective tome that explores and attempts to categorise€“ the unique traits of hand-drawn type this is not. Steven Heller and Mirko Illic have done that already. But Hand Job is a fun and interesting read even though there's not a lot of words here –€“ this is essentially a picture book. Everyone who dropped by our studio picked up our copy and made the same 'arf, arf' noise (that title again).

For (younger) lovers of hand-drawn type. 100 extra street-cred points with every purchase.
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There's a movie of the book (literally) over at Drawn! and a slideshow of the book here.

Datuk Lat: Malaysia's Ambassador of Drawing

On a recent holiday in Malaysia I was wandering through KL's museum, where I came across a cartoon describing the act of male circumcision. (It was funnier than it sounds). In Malay Muslim culture circumcision occurs when a boy is – I'm guessing - around 5 years old. Drawn in a whimsical, simple, easy style, and conveying a gentle sense of humour, the cartoon captured the essence of what it must be like for a boy of that age to go through that particular event.

Scrawled in a corner was the artist's name LAT. The name of the cartoonist rung a bell. My colleague (Julian, who is Malaysian) had mentioned that name before. I could tell from Julian's reverential tone that Lat commanded much respect in Malaysia.

Later on, in another country as our holiday continued, I flicked on the TV late one night. Discovery Channel were running a documentary on Lat (Datuk Mohd Nor Khalid). He is Malaysia's preeminent cartoonist, known for his cartoons in the New Straits Times and for his Kampung Boy comics.

I had enjoyed Malaysia and its laid-back, ever-friendly culture and though I was no expert on Malaysian cultural norms, and had only been in the country a few days, I recognised many of the cultural stereotypes of Malaysia and and the physical traits of Malaysians that Lat was able to convey graphically, effortlessly, and with such good humour.

From extra-large domineering mothers (watch out!) to kids running amok under palm trees to artful political caricature and beyond, Lat has chronicled 'what it means to be Malaysian' with an economical, yet charming signature style and lovely, gentle humour – for over 40 years.

He certainly gets my vote to be Malaysia's first Ambassador of Drawing.

The Premiers Drawn

William Ellis Green (WEG) is a legendary figure within Australian Rules Football. He's not a strapping centre-half back nor a sharpshooting full-forward. He's a cartoonist. Traditionally, Melbourne's Herald newspaper (now the Herald-Sun) produces a poster drawn by WEG displaying a 'graphic entity' (character, mascot, call it what you will) of the winning team. (Sydney, Richmond and Melbourne football club posters seen above). WEG's footy posters are very well-known to most Melburnians, whether you're a football fan or not. I can't imagine AFL football without WEG cartoons.

As a child, the team I followed was rarely in the finals, and I really didn't take that much notice of the grand final (which, if you know how football and sport-obsessed Melburnians generally are – is no mean feat). I do remember always being more excited the following day, after the grand final had been played, when WEG's premiership posters would be out in public. I also happened to grow up a few streets away from where WEG lived – he was always a bit of a local felt-tipped-marker hero of mine. I don't know if he influenced me to become a designer per se, but he certainly influenced my brother and I to pick up marker pens and to draw – constantly.

Come late Saturday afternoon, a poster looking somewhat like this, or perhaps this, will become available via the Herald-Sun. I hope the Cats win... they make for a much more interesting cartoon.

The Carltonian (and Real Coffee)

It certainly lacks the dazzling artistry of Saul Steinberg's wonderful original, but, he he... (that's California and Mexico on the horizon, just past The Dandenongs).

Available as a postcard around Carlton – the home of coffee in Melbourne (perhaps even Australia). You could say that a Carltonian's view of the world revolves around good coffee. It's interesting to see that 'The Emporium of Brown Drink' (to paraphrase Barry Humphries) is now located in Carlton too. According to Humphries (and this is a sentiment echoed by most Australians): "Starbucks doesn't make coffee, it makes something else. It makes a brown drink. They should just call it Brown Drink."

"What is unique is that, outside Italy, the Australian and New Zealand café markets are the only other 100% espresso-based markets in the world! The US and other countries are dominated by filter style, or brewed, coffee. You cannot give filter coffee away in Australia or New Zealand. Furthermore, the Australian and New Zealand markets are unique in that the espresso based coffees are nearly always served with milk - approximately 98%, compared to 5% milk based coffees in Italy."

More on our national coffee obsession (New Zealand has it too) – and the National Espresso Training Standard. Link via City of Sound.

More Saul Steinberg here.

Historic Japanese Medical Art

Some astonishing Japanese medical illustration at BibliOdyssey. More here too. Compiled from the vast collection of The Medical Library of Kyushu University. There's also the Clendening collection at Kansas University Medical Centre, which houses much Japanese medical art. Ukiyo-e are woodcuts, Yamato-e, paintings. Fascinating and (eerily) beautiful.

The above image depicts different varieties of 'pink eye'.

The Lying Rodent Tracksuit

It's been a big, juicy, interesting week in Australian politics (for all the wrong reasons). Who better to have the last word than Michael Leunig. A brilliant (and very lateral) take on the week that was. I've been chuckling all weekend.

Not Australian and have no idea what I'm writing about? Here are some clues. And here. Here too. Click on 'Continue reading' (below) to see larger scale image.

10,000 Sheep

10,000 hand-drawn sheep created by paid online workers via the Amazon Mechanical Turk.
The what? Each worker was paid 2 cents to draw a 'sheep facing left'. The art budget was obviously $200. Via We Make Money Not Art.

The Finest Interpretations of Classical Music Goes Wacko

Deutsche Grammophon is one of the most well-known homes of 'serious', classical music. Emile Berliner, the founder of the company, established the first record-producing factory in the world in 1898 and "scoured the world's great concert halls and opera houses, signing up stars such as Enrico Caruso, Feodor Chaliapin and the leading operatic soprano, Dame Nellie Melba" to record for his burgeoning label. Now the label is home to the Berlin Philharmonic, Venice Baroque Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Vladimir Horowitz, Herbert von Karajan and similar artists.

People familiar with the record label will know that the music generally sounds just like how their branding (above) and packaging looks: namely, to use those descriptors again, 'serious and classical'.

So it's quite unexpected (or is it?) to see the respected stalwarts of 'respectable' music develop a line of CD packaging that uses the work of comic book artists. Classical Bytes is pitched as "your first byte of classical music". For me another 'youthful' visual language could have been better employed to denote 'unstuffyness' to a younger audience. It seems quite odd to have a Peter Bagge comic cover related to the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, but maybe that's just me. Apocalypse Nerd, Hate and the Brandenburg Concertos?

2 x (Re)animated

Two examples of (re)animation:

It it worked the first time...
Animation is a time-consuming business. All those frames: the keyframes and in-betweens, or 'tweens' as they're known. Why not recycle some key sequences in order to save labour and time? The mood, tone, graphic approach and subject matter of Disney animations are often quite similar and contribute to 'Disneyness': we know what to expect when we buy a ticket to a Disney animated film. Like other celebrated animators such as Tex Avery, Hayao Miyazaki and others, their own graphic approach (in particular) becomes an integral DNA-like aspect of their work.

The Fly that Escaped from the Ink Pot

At this years Walkley Awards for journalism, the Australian Cartoonists Association won the award for 'The Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism'. This award usually goes to a journalist from print/radio or TV – so it was great to see visual communicators, often the unsung heroes of journalism, being duly rewarded.

The acceptance speech was along the lines of: due to our 'convict past' Australians have scant regard for authority – nothing terribly new in that, have heard that many times before – and that Australian cartoonists love to 'get ugly' in their efforts to lampoon and ridicule the powers-at-be, these efforts also aided by our somewhat liberal libel laws. The 'get ugly' bit struck a chord with me: I feel our cartoonists do 'ugly' very, very well.

One Australian cartoonist depicts the ugliness, the duplicitousness, the vanity and the sometime stupidity of our political leaders with a drawing style that looks like "the victory dance of a fly escaped from the ink pot". Bruce Petty's cartoons are beautifully and scribblingly chaotic and disarmingly funny. I have to confess to giggling everytime I see his drawings of John Howard.