davidthedesigner

z z top

Well here we are a year down the line and we've come to end of this little series. Been interesting, hasn't it? Not always easy, mind. I've struggled at times, particularly with those last two (or should that be four?). But the effort's been worthwhile, because I've made some lovely discoveries along the way. My one regret (so far) is that I still haven't found the opportunity to use Modern. But I will.

And so we come to numbers 51 and 52.

First:

And yes, I know, the kerning's crap. But I don't own a copy of this font (yet), so I have to rely on the auto setting facility on fonts.com (a jolly handy resource if you want to know how a particular typeface looks when set).

This is Zemestro, designed in 2003 by David Farey (he's often referred to as Dave Farey, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he's like me and hates being called Dave). David's goal was to create a more legible and friendlier typeface than those limited to single character and stroke widths. The face finds its foundation in two earlier designs from Farey: Cachet, a soft-terminal sans he drew in 1999, and a partial alphabet he created for the New Scientist. Cachet appears to be monospaced and constructed with geometrically precise character strokes, but it isn't. The characters drawn for New Scientific are more condensed and structured than Cachet. Their offspring Zemestro takes on the proportions of the New Scientific letters and builds them into a full typeface family. Round characters have squared shoulders, helping to create visually consistent letter spacing and even typographic colour. Terminals are now square and clipped at right angles to the stroke.

And the name's interesting as well. "I'm always fascinated by typeface names," says David. "Most of mine are inspired by movies or books." It was while reading a book on the Russian revolution that he discovered zemestro was the word for a village council or group of elders, "before Comrade Lenin dissolved them all," he explains. "So this is the first Zemestro since 1917. I thought it was worth reviving."

And last but not least:

Zapf Dingbats. Simply because it's essential: you can't have a career involving setting type without ever having the need to set bullets and suchlike. And European Pi is never going to cover all the bases.

Zapf Dingbats is one of the more common dingbat typefaces. It was designed by Hermann Zapf in 1978 and licensed by International Typeface Corporation.

In 1977, Zapf created about 1000 (or over 1200 according to Linotype) sketches of signs and symbols. ITC chose from those a subset of 360 symbols, ornaments and typographic elements based on the original designs, which became known around the world as Zapf Dingbats.

The font first gained wide distribution when ITC Zapf Dingbats, which consists of the subset chosen by ITC, became one of 35 PostScript fonts built into Apple's LaserWriter Plus.

For those of those who really want to go to town, Zapf Essentials is an update to the Zapf Dingbats family, which consists of 6 symbol-encoded fonts categorized in Arrows One (black arrows), Arrows Two (white arrows, patterned arrows), Communication (pointing fingers, communication devices), Markers (squares, triangles, circles, ticks, hearts, crosses, check marks, leafs), Office (pen, clock, currency, scissors, hand), Ornaments (flowers, stars), for a total of 372 glyphs. However, not all ITC Zapf Dingbats glyphs are included in the Zapf Essentials collections (eg: airplane, letter).

One interesting little story about Zapf Dingbats is that David Carson lent the font a degree of notoriety in 1994 when he printed an interview with Bryan Ferry in Ray Gun magazine set entirely in the symbols-only font – the double-page spread was, of course, quite illegible. Carson has it that he did this because the interview was so boring.

And if you'd told me a year ago that I'd be ending this series with David Carson I would never have believed you.

six by twelve

 

equals seventy two

three score

My Pantone past grows to 60 sheets, including the first complete sheet (#55) and the first virgin sheet (#58).

anyone handy with fontographer?

Is anyone out there handy with fontographer?

I need some help in compiling a symbols font: nothing excessively complicated, but it might be a nice little freelance job. If you're interested, drop me an email - david(at)celsius.eu.com.

And while I'm here: apologies for the lack of posts. I'm a busy, busy bee, me.

believe it or not, my first 48-sheet

And thus my pantone past grows.

does this register?

This is a snippet from yesterday's Observer Magazine and I'm showing it to you because it's not something that you see very often these days: printing that is out of register. In this case, the magenta printing is out of fit with the other three colours (and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, it might be worth reading up on CKYK printing before you continue). Because out-of-register printing was quite common in the days before digital imaging and computer-to-plate technology.

Just like this, it didn't used to be unusual to come across something that would make your eyes water.

And I have a little story to tell you about printing in and out of register. I used to design and manage a large series of annual accommodation guides, which involved organising and overseeing the printing. And since this was before the days of computer-to-plate, a very large part of the process was the 'pre-press' (usually called repro). This used to involve transferring artwork that had been prepared on board onto sets of clear film, which would then be assembled and transferred once again onto sets of printing plates. When it came to full-colour printing, this was a complex and time-consuming - for which read expensive - part of the whole printing process.

For instance, the guides that I worked on were A5 in size and would be printed on B1 presses. This means that 16 pages would be printed together on one 'pass' through the printing press. And since each page required four pieces of film (one each for the cyan, magenta, yellow and black printing), a total of 64 individual pieces of film were assembled together in order to make one set of printing plates. And all of that assembly was done manually.

Now, when it came to the maps, we had a clever design solution for our series of guides. We made the base maps common to all three guides in the series, and those common elements could all be assigned to the cyan, magenta and yellow plates, with all of the individual elements restricted to the black plate. It was a very clever way of cutting down on production costs, and was a solution that served us well for many years.

But I had to keep any eye on the printers: make sure that they didn't get the sets of films muddled up; make sure that each 16-page section was assembled in register; that sort of thing. And I always made sure to pass on press the first sections to be printed: to make certain that I was perfectly happy that everything was printed in register and with the correct colour balances.

One year I'd arranged with the printer that I would pass the first sheets at 9am on a particular morning, got up at the crack of dawn and made my bleary-eyed way to Colchester, and (surprisingly for me) got there before time at 8.30am. Announced my arrival to reception, who called the sales director down to meet me. "I'm sorry, we've had a union meeting called that I need attend - so, if you don't mind bearing with me for half an hour, I'll put you in the boardroom. Oh, and we had an overnight slot on the press, so we've got on and and printed the maps. They look really good and I've put a set of running sheets in the boardroom so that you can check them over."

So, up to the boardroom - take off my coat, have a cup of coffee, make myself comfortable, and then look at the running sheets. Yes, they do look good. But hold on, what's going on here? Around the coast of Norfolk? Here's the town name caption for Wells-next-the-Sea and it's not 'next the sea' but under it - 20 miles out in the North Sea. What on earth have the cartographers done here? was my first reaction. But, on closer inspection, I see that the whole of the black printing - over the entire 16 pages - is out of register by 10mm or so. And it's not immediately apparent, because the only thing that's printed in black are place names - so there's nothing 'eye watering' (like the samples above) to show that there's anything wrong.

Anyway, an hour or so goes by and eventually the sales director reappears. "They do look really good, don't they?" he says. "Well, yes, they look good, but I'm afraid there's a bit of a problem" I reply. And I explain, and point out how every place name on each page is 10mm out of position. "Impossible" he says, "there must have been something wrong with the original artwork. Let me get hold of the repro manager." So more men appear in the boardroom. "This can't possibly have happened" they all chorus. "Every single piece of film we handle is punched and pinned as soon as we get it. So the registration is guaranteed to be absolutely correct."

"Well it may be impossible" I say "but the evidence, gentlemen, that such a thing has occurred is here before your eyes". Thirty minutes of discussion ensue and eventually, yes, they have to agree that indeed it has happened. Next we all decamp to the repro department where there's a further hour or so of discussion into how exactly it could have happened - getting out the original film from the cartographers and looking at the assembled film sheets, and examining punched holes and pins. And eventually, when all arguments have been exhausted, it's conceded that the fault lies in the assembly of the film prior to platemaking.

"Let's go back to the boardroom" says the sales director, "I'll organise for some lunch to be brought in and we can discuss what we're going to do over a glass of wine."

And then it's put to me "well, the maps look really good - does it really matter?"

"Oh, so could I ask you quite what you think the maps are for?" I replied.

So, yes, the maps did get reprinted (at the printer's expense). And, no, they aren't any longer in business.

on the beaten track

I'm not supposed to mention the day job on this blog (it's one of my unwritten rules: not to talk about what I'm working on at this moment). But I'm making a rare exception here.

I've just completed a book concept for the AA in readiness for the Frankfurt Book Fair next week.

 

I designed a lot of books for the AA back in the 90s, but then we lost touch (as you do). And now we've reconnected - which is nice, because they feel like old friends.

Anyway, they're looking for a co-publisher for 'On the Beaten Track'. Wish it luck.

another designer dozen

Twelve more sheets added to the web page. And already I'm beginning to regret having started this whole thing: all this scanning and documentation is getting to be a tad tedious.

On the upside though, it's got me thinking about just how many colours I've used over the years. Look, even sheet 24 (the pinky/purple one on the right, second row) has a chip missing. Pantone 253C: I wonder what I used that for?

And when you think about it, wouldn't it be great if I could have added a chip to every chip (you know, just like tikitag)? And I could have charted their journeys across the globe on dopplr, maybe.

What stories they could tell, eh?

...and grows

my pantone past #11 - 24

and so it grows

my pantone past #4 - 10