Oh Canada! Logo Project for Iron Oxide Design – Part 2 of 2

In Part 1 of this post I outlined this project from inception until completion of the finished art. But the part that was the most fun for me was when that artwork was finally placed in the client’s hands—a client who himself is a master signmaker, and who had ideas about how to take the design to the next level. I had never worked with someone like that, and was anxious to see how my art would be interpreted by such a craftsman. Because I was unable to be up there in Canada to see the fabrication first-hand, I asked Blaine Casson to photographically document the different stages of his project. In the end the final photos of the finished signs were taken by Blaine’s good friend, photographer Bryn Gladding. Following are Blaine’s notes on how he translated my 2D art into 3D signage.

The Making of the IRON OXIDE DESIGN Sign. Three-Dimensional. 40 1/2" high x 138" wide x 5 1/2" thick

“With no available drawings of the 105 year old building I began by photographing the destined sign location below one section of my third floor windows. I then scaled that photograph up, made a full size card pattern and checked it in the installation area to prove out the dimensions and arch shape.

“It was decided that the full version of the logo would not work well in this space so I made a scale model of the sign blank for Michael. I sent him vector art of the sign blank shape and dictated the background of the sign would be oxidized metal sheets and that his Iron Oxide script was already committed to be 80" wide. Michael took over the design from there and I began to plot out full size paper patterns of the script and it's background shield.

“I milled rough cut select Pine, glued and clamped it up into oversize blanks for the different layers that I had decided to use in the multi-layered three-dimensional logo script. As my sign was on a third floor in height and to be viewed from about 150 feet away I thought that to really convey the three-dimensional effect I was after I would have to be aggressive and chose to over compensate in layers and thickness. I assigned the first layer to the metal clad sign blank then broke Michael's vector art up into the red shield and the gold tail of the "e". These were on the same plane but of different thicknesses. Next layer would yield the black outline of the Iron Oxide script and finally the actual cut out script characters. The pending design copy from Michael would be painted directly onto the oxidized metal background.

“Patterns now generated, I transfered them to my Pine blanks and cut out all the individual letters and logo elements using either my 50 year old Oliver pattern makers scroll saw or my slightly more modern Hegner scroll saw. Vector art was flawless, so it was just a matter of splitting that pencil line as I cut.

“Translating Michael's logo design into the three-dimensional realm was simple enough but proved a little time consuming at the stage where I had to descend the tail of the "e" by 2" from the script layer to the metal sign blank layer. As well, it had to pass under and through the red shield. I built up wood on the end of the "e" and between the band saw, chisels and plenty of hand sanding I was able to fashion the profile. I routed a path in the underside of the red shield to accommodate the tail.

“All wood characters were then primed and sanded three times and sprayed with two coats of exterior paint."

Et voila! The finished sign finally emerges. The following photos were taken indoors by Bryn Gladding, prior to exterior installation.

The making of the IRON OXIDE DESIGN interior door sign. Three-dimensional. 28" wide x 40 1/2" high x 3" thick.

The interior sign was scaled down considerably from the exterior one, and utilized the full logo as designed. Blaine Casson writes about its fabrication:

“Working in Poplar wood this time, the production of my interior door sign was basically a downsizing of the exterior fascia sign project.

“I changed things a little bit given that this time I was reproducing the full "as designed" version of my logo. I eliminated the separate cut out layer for the script's black outline and made it integral with the cut out shield layer, differentiated by painting the outline profile. I also painted "DESIGN" rather than individually cutting out the characters as I had on the fascia sign.

“I routed out the back of the shield to accommodate the "X" element as in the logo design it peeks through the area between the shield and the underlying tail from the "e". This guaranteed alignment over the other option of cutting up the "X" and butt jointing the sections against the shield."

Finally, below is the full version of the logo as used for interior signage in Blaine’s loft building.

Client, Signage Fabrication, Progress Photography: Blaine Casson – Iron Oxide Design

Photography–Finished Signage: Bryn Gladding

Oh Canada! Logo Project for Iron Oxide Design Part 1 of 2

When I was first contacted for a logo design project by Blaine Casson, who runs a one man shop up in Cambridge, Ontario (near Toronto)—that handcrafts three dimensional wood signs, custom promotional pieces, and presentation cases—I was absolutely blown away by the quality of the work he was producing. Blaine specializes in raised letter wooden signs—something one doesn’t see that often in this “Age of Vinyl”. I have not seen his extremely high level of craftsmanship and attention to detail in such a looong time! He wanted me to design a logo for him, and saw in me a “kindred spirit”. We both gravitate towards a lot of the same types of vintage graphics and ephemera for certain types of inspiration. So I felt absolutely certain that whatever I did for him would be manifest perfectly in three dimensions, down to the smallest detail. I also knew that certain problems which I could never forsee in the fabrication of dimensional signage would be handled with sensitivity and with an extremely high level of problem-solving. Blaine wanted to move the design in a direction that I totally concurred with—using vintage motorcycle decals as a source of inspiration: Blaine writes about these graphics:

“Beautiful cast metal logos affixed to the radiators of the automobiles of the day. Fantastic, colorful and complex water slide transfer decals on the gasoline tanks of the many hundreds of brands of motorcycles. I am mesmerized by the logos on antique motorcycles and have actually once added a motorcycle to my collection based on the decals over the mechanical attributes of the machine. A most interesting fact to me is that in the first year of some motorcycle companies existence, when they only produced a single or two or three machines, they would send the gasoline tank over to the local sign writer to get the company name hand lettered onto it. Sometimes the sign writer's style and skill on this lettering became the genesis of the companies logo. As production increased in later years the sign writer was replaced by transfer decals but the hand lettered look often remained and was carried on.”

I saw working on this project as an opportunity to tap into this rich history—an area into which I had not delved in quite a while. There is so much in this tradition to sink one’s teeth into. I love the limited color palettes, predominently using gold and silver, the thick, heavy, black outlines, the swashes (you know I love those!), and the way type and lettering are organized within banners and shapes.

Blaine had quite a bit of information he wanted to be included in this design, because it was not only going to serve him as a logo, but as signage outside and inside his business—an old brick factory building in Cambridge. Words like “Signs • Displays • Promotionals”, and “Memorable • Effective • Unique” suggested advertising slogans from a bygone era. Never one to shy away from a challenge, I started putting my pencil to paper. It’s important for me to try different configurations, to see how organizing the words in different sequences and relationships might either hide or illuminate what we’re trying to communicate. When I came up with the layouts above, I was directly referencing the Excelsior decal seen at the top of this page. I could easily justify turning the “cross” into an “I”, and using the “X” as a motif definitely seemed to fit in with the word “Oxide”. But the layouts seemed to be overly busy and a bit confusing, so I took the elements from the center of the design and re-worked them, playing down the secondary slogans quite a bit. I was quite happy with how the design was shaping up, and Blaine concurred. Then, placing my rough drawing on a Template layer in Illustrator I proceeded to flesh out this artwork. I used my font DeLuxe Gothic Condensed for the slogan words, and set up various arcs and curves that I would follow closely. Before I worked digitally I would have done a much tighter pencil drawing, working out all the fine details before inking, but now I do that in this Illustrator stage, using a rougher pencil drawing. I hadn’t figured out color at this point in the process, so in Illustrator I just randomly assign different black, white, and grays to the different elements so that they separate and can clearly be seen one against the other. Also at this point I hadn’t yet decided what would get an outline, and what would be solid, but it’s still important in this phase to work out shapes and relationships to make sure everything is going to work. When I completed the artwork Blaine wrote:

"You nailed the feel, the era and the complexity that I was after. The outlined gold script, the swoop of the tail on the lower case 'e', the big 'X' element and especially the slightly cramped and varied kerning and stacking of the lettering within the 'X' and the 'I'."

For the very large sign that was to be installed outside the third story windows, we needed to make some major alterations to the design. It needed to be fit into a long narrow space between the two floors, and have a very long arc along it’s bottom edge. Blaine sent me these sketches (above and below) as a suggestion for how he thought it could work. I then came up with this rough sketch on wording and placement—some of it could be typeset, other parts needed to be hand-lettered: With the designs for the main logo and the horizontal exterior logo completed, the one other adaptation that needed to be addressed was for the Iron Oxide delivery van. We opted for a simpler solution, reverting to the original design, but adding a few elements. The tendency these days is to “wrap” a vehicle, covering it completely with graphics, but we decided in this case that simpler was better, opting for a cleaner look, having the white background of the truck set off the logo. But the most exciting part of this project was yet to come. For me that was the actual fabrication of the signs by Blaine in three dimensions, cut out of wood and metal, and painted. Exciting for me because this was going to be an interpretation—not a literal translation. I would get to see how someone else chose to solve certain design problems that were inherent in translating something from two dimensions into a truly dimensional piece of art. So stay tuned for Part 2 of this story . . . where I document how a master signmaker exercises his craft . . . coming soon!

A New Logo for American Contemporary Ballet

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of meeting Lincoln Jones and Theresa  Farrell—respectively the Artistic and Associate Directors of Los Angeles' American Contemporary Ballet. They describe themselves as producing "original contemporary classical ballets in Los Angeles, California–works that are built upon the foundation of classical ballet, and which extend the art into our own time". When we first met their studio space was less than ideal, but it wasn't long after meeting them before they lucked into a fantastic space on Wilshire Boulevard directly across from the main entrance to LACMA. At the time they had a professionally designed logo that did the job, but their new space presented them with a challenge: outside, directly in front of their floor-to-ceiling windows was a fountain, and centered in the fountain was a large, white, blank "monument" whose purpose obviously was to support signage for whoever was the tenant of the space behind it. Occupying their beautiful new space, and realizing that the "monument" in the fountain was the wrong proportion for their existing logo, Lincoln and Theresa asked me if I'd be interested in designing a new logo that would also work for them as signage. Lincoln described the process of our working together on this project:

"In my experience, it is rare to be delivered a design product and love it unreservedly, at first sight. With Michael it happened twice, on the same project. We needed a sign to fit the large monument in front of our new building across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Our current logo didn't work, given the size and shape of the monuments face, and I hadn't been able to imagine even a vague outline of anything that I liked for the space."

The previous logo superimposed over the blank "monument".

"I asked Michael to make some suggestions, and he came to the studio and made a sketch in front of me. What he drew was something that I had never considered, but which was beautifully alive, eye-catching, and seemed to capture the spirit and aesthetic of our company in just the right way. It was also totally unique within our market. I told him to do it exactly like that, and that it would also serve as our new logo."

Well, in case you were wondering how anyone could tell very much from the thumbnail above, I did "fill in" quite a bit with a verbal description of what I was envisaging. I went back to the studio and subsequently started developing that very loose thumbnail into a design that was a bit more coherent—

Then taking it several steps further, I digitized it in Adobe Illustrator, trying to make it work with several different iterations:

…but for various reasons I was less than happy with where this design was going. At this point I'll let Lincoln take over, describing what happened next:

"He called me a few days later to say that while he liked the art he had done, he didn't think it was right for the location. His reasons made sense to me, so he sent me a second design which retained a few qualities of the first, but was totally different in the overall feeling."

I had decided to keep the script lettering of the word "Contemporary", but shifted it to read along a horizontal plane instead of moving upwards at an angle, and I had decided to simplify the words "American" and "Ballet", rendering them in my adaptation of one of my favorite fonts Bernhard Gothic. Making these rather large alterations didn't totally change the nature of what I had imagined for the logo, but helped to make it more legible and coherent—especially from a distance. So this is how it worked out in the fountain in front of their new studio space:

I also convinced them to use a second color scheme on the "monument", alternating on its sides. I felt that this should be a "living logo" that could perhaps change appearance if its immediate environment called for an adaptation.

Lincoln continues by saying: "Despite the fact that it was a highly different approach, I again felt that it beautifully represented our company, and was a strong expression of our values, in addition to being a standout design. I love having it out in front of our building, and as our new logo. It still catches me by surprise, and delights me when I walk by our building."

More recently we made another adaptation of the logo to work with a beautiful painting created for their 2014 Season by our mutual friend Kenton Nelson. I felt that the color logo would detract from the beautiful simplicity of Kenton's work, and so created a one color version. I then organized all the information along the bottom in boxes whose colors were derived from Kenton's palette—note that all the copy set at the bottom of the poster is set in my font DeLuxe Gothic:

A better look at that one-color version—note the details where "Contemporary" goes over or falls under the adjacent words:

And here are a 2 color and a 1 color T-shirt design created using just the logo:

Lincoln concludes by saying:

"I think Michael's work is tremendous, but sensitivity to the project, its requirements, and the honesty and originality of his approach make just working with him half the fun."

For those of you who would like to read more of what Lincoln Jones has to say about his ballet company, his philosophy, and about this design, I've included his lengthier statement below.

"When I decided to start a ballet company, it was because I wanted to make and to see a kind of ballet that I wasn't currently seeing anywhere. Now in our third season, I think our product, our values, and our approach to the art form are even more distinctive than when I started. Our graphic art, indeed all of our graphic, photographic, and illustrative material is very important to me because I want it to not only communicate that we are different, but specifically how. I want it to be a flag representing our values to both our audience and our potential audience. To really see what we do, you have to come to a performance, which means these materials have a big job to do the rest of the time, in terms of getting our message out.

The sign that Michael did (which also became our new logo) is totally unique within our market. The 'Contemporary' in our name is there because we make new work, and I want people to understand ballet as a contemporary art form. It was important that the design be in a vernacular that would feel very contemporary to people, to contrast the view that I think most people still have about the art, that it belongs more to the 19th century, or even earlier. Still, it had to have a timelessness about it - a classical strength, which is what we strive for in the ballets - something that will make sense to contemporary audiences on their terms, but which also has a substance and depth that transcends the simply current.

The 'American' in our name is also very important, in that we are continuing the forward-thinking work that was done in the art form in the United States in the 20th century, but it goes deeper than that. I have a strong connection to the values that this country was founded on - independence, principled thought, and a break from convention to forge new, better paths. These are not values that are necessarily automatically associated with ballet, which is often thought of as being heavily traditional.

I thought Michael did a beautiful job of creating a design that felt both contemporary and American, but it is also such a strong, balanced design with a timeless feel that it can rightly be called classical.

It is also a beautifully integrated design. The way that the 'Contemporary' playfully bursts between the strength of 'American' and 'Ballet' can suggest a new view of the art. But the playfulness isn't cheap, it is strongly located within the other two words, which to me suggests not only playfulness, but substance, which are the two qualities that any great dance must have."

Le Train Bleu #2

Two years ago I visited Bloomingdale's in NYC, and specifically their Le Train Bleu restaurant for which "back in the day" I had originally designed many of the original elements. In my visit to NY last month I revisited the restaurant—and this time dined there. If I was surprised the last time to see that my signage and monograms were apparently still in use, dining in the restaurant this time allowed me to see the full extent to which everything I had done was still there—just as it was the day it opened back in the '80s. I hadn't known that they were still using the menu design I had done for them, or to the extent that they were using the emblematic monogram I had done at the same time. After years and years of use I would have imagined that the menu would have been a bit dog-eared, but apparently they've been printing and reprinting it all this time.

Aside from it being rendered in gold leaf on the outside of the train car and imprinted on the wine list and check wallet, they'd gone so far as to embroider the monogram on each and every uniform in the restaurant—classy! Perhaps that says something about a designs longevity?

And here's a reminder for those who are interested: there are prints of the Le Train Bleu vertical format artwork—identical to the signage murals outside the restaurant—available on my ILLOZ site. These prints are finely produced, hand-crafted 12 color fine art lithographs that are virtually identical to the original painting.

Scripts: Elegant Lettering from Design's Golden Age

Sunday I picked up a book at Hennessey + Ingalls (my local bookseller), and I spent the day marveling at the treasure trove of typographic gems it contains. The book is "Scripts: Elegant Lettering from Design's Golden Age" by the dynamic duo of Steven Heller and Louise Fili.

If you're like me, and love type—especially vintage scripts—you must get this book. The culmination of over 30 years of digging through swap meets, flea markets and antiquarian bookstores, it is a priceless collection of ephemera by two passionate collectors.

The book's 352 pages are filled with well over 300 examples from around the globe, from advertising to street signs, from type specimens to invitations and personal letters, spanning the period from the 19th to the mid-20th century. I could spend days poring over this book. It is as rich a collection of typographic material as I have seen in years—and much of it I have never seen before. I LOVE this book!

The book is readily available from Amazon.com, but (personal note) why not shop locally and check out the book in person at your nearby (non-chain) bookstore? You might pay a few dollars more, and it might not be as "convenient", but in this day and age wouldn't it be worth it to give them your support?

"Appetite" Opens at Cooper's Lubalin Center

"Appetite – A reciprocal relationship between Food & Design" opened last night at my alma mater The Cooper Union, hosted by the Herb Lubalin Study Center. The exhibition explores how design influences our day to day relationship with food, and covers everything from restaurant signs and menus to supermarket price labels and takeout packaging.

I was fortunate enough to have some of my work included in this show—my "Le Train Bleu" project that I had recently highlighted in this blog. Although I couldn't make it to the opening, my good friend Louise Fili was kind enough to send me some snaps of my work displayed in the exhibition:

Hungry for more? The exhibition is at 41 Cooper Square (3rd Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets), NYC. The show runs through October 9th. The gallery hours are Monday through Friday: 12–7; Saturday: 12–5. The exhibition was curated by Alexander Tochilovsky. Read an interview with Alexander about this exhibition at Eye Blog, and read more about it and see more photos of the exhibition from the opening at Design:Related.

Le Train Bleu @ Bloomingdale's

While in New York City to give a talk at the Type Directors Club Laura and I stopped in at Bloomingdale's. I hadn't been back to Bloomingdale's for many years, so while there I thought I'd check to see if some signage I had designed for their "Le Train Bleu" restaurant might still be in use. To my utter amazement, my work was there—still in use after 30 years. The restaurant itself is a stunning recreation of a vintage dining car, and has been virtually unchanged inside since the day my work first adorned its entrance.

The Original "Le Train Bleu" was a luxury French night express train which carried wealthy and famous passengers between Calais and the French Riviera from 1922 until 1938.

Back in 1980 I had designed and painted art for two panels that were to bookend the stairway leading up to the restaurant. The challenge, as outlined to me by then Bloomingdale's Creative Director John Jay, was to design a poster reminiscent of the great transport posters of the '20s, '30s and '40s,—but in an extremely thin vertical format: almost a 4 to 1 height to width ratio. Also the design had to be able to mirror itself so that it could appear on either side of the entrance. Designing the piece so that one had almost a bird's-eye view of the train which was letting out a very art-moderne steam stream seemed like a natural for the format.

This was not a typical project for me at the time because I had never executed a painting like this before. In addition the typography played a much smaller role in the design, and in the end was much more toned down than in most of my other work.

Above is the menu cover I designed as a companion to the stairway panels. It depicts the same train as in the panels from the more traditional "heroic" viewpoint seen in many transport posters of the time. I redid the lettering, but kept it in the same moderne style—only in a lighter weight. And unlike the panels the art for which I had painted in gouache, I did the menu cover as pre-separated mechanical art—much more akin to my current work which is usually done in Adobe Illustrator.

Additionally I had designed the "Le Train Bleu" seal or monogram that appears in relief outside the restaurant and on printed materials. This was much more akin to the type and letterform-centric work that I've become known for, and was designed to be very heraldic in nature. To my surprise this large monogram in relief was also still there, looking as fresh as the day it was first mounted in the vestibule of the restaurant at the top of the stairs.

For those who are interested there are prints of the Le Train Bleu vertical format artwork available on my ILLOZ site. These prints are finely produced, hand-crafted 12 color fine art lithographs that are virtually identical to the original painting.

Please also see my more recent supplemental posting on Le Train Bleu at Bloomingdale's.

Paris Loves Letters

I'm just back from a stay in The City of Light, and just wanted to share an impression I had that typography and lettering are admired and extremely well respected there—possibly as much or more than anywhere else in the world. If nothing else, Paris is a city where history permeates everything, and you can almost trace its history through the many layers of lettering and signage that stretch back over many decades. I say respected because so much of it has been preserved, and not painted over or replaced just to be up to date. In fact, many shops kept and preserved the lettering from previous incarnations, even though the name and nature of the business had changed. It was refreshing to see that just about every business that had a public face, from the smallest boutique to the largest high-end stores, all took great pains to maintain an artful, thoughtfully designed appearance. Aesthetics on every level are a part of the culture, and an understanding of the importance lettering and typography seems to be universally understood and encouraged. Here is a small sampling of some snapshots I took while strolling around the city:

My new favorite restaurant in Paris—not so much for the food, as for it's graphics and interior.

The mosaic floor of one of Paris' many arcades.

A sandwich shop. I love those colored bottles!

Metro signage – not the typical art nouveau version everyone's familiar with.

Paris' Wax Museum . . . an Art Déco Extravaganza

A confectionery shop with signage that dates back . . . who knows how long? Still in perfect condition.

Contemporary tile work in the Metro's Concorde Station. This incredible project was begun in 1989 and contains the text of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This typographic work covers the entire arched wall and ceiling of the station.

And finally, (please excuse the shameless plug) while walking the streets of the Marais, I happened across a shop called "L'Art du Buro" which had my QWERTY pen displayed front and center in its window. Certainly an ego boost, if ever there was one!

Art Imitates Life...Imitates Art (Canter's Truck #3 of 3)

SignQuest was the company that RoadStoves had recommended to "wrap" the truck with the graphics I had designed. They produce large scale banners and signs as well as vehicle wraps. One interesting project they were recently involved with was wrapping the Hollywood Sign for the "Save the Peak" campaign. The goal of this campaign is to raise funds to purchase the land adjacent to the Hollywood sign. Hopefully this would prevent commercial development that would permanently mar the view of the iconic sign and the world-famous silhouette of the hills that frame it. Wrapping the Hollywood Sign was a complex project, but wrapping a truck properly is also difficult and time consuming. Getting it right means placing the many strips of 3M Controltac vinyl film in the right positions:

Louie Navarro is seen above carefully positioning the vinyl on the service side (the side from which the food will be served) of the truck. He must carefully gauge where to position the film at the back of the truck so that the graphics end up at the right spot by the time they reach the front.

Over on the driver's side, Louie positions the main graphics. There are many ins and outs to the truck surface, and the Controltac film is flexible enough to conform to them all, ending up looking very much as if it had been painted on. It's pretty amazing.

Here's one photo of the driver's side. I'll post more photos from different angles as they become available.

In the meantime the  Canter's Truck has begun cruising the streets of LA with Bonnie Bloomgarden at the helm. To find out when they're going to be in your area you can follow them on Twitter.

Photo: Adam Stein

Coming Soon . . . Canter’s Truck Post #3 of 3

Due to my inability of being able to get good photographs of the completed Canter's truck, I'm holding up posting the final chapter in this saga. I hope to be able to get some better shots by the end of this week. If not I'll just post what I've got.Thanks for your patience!

Above: Careful placement of my credit below the trash receptacle.

Deliscript Critique on FontFeed

Belgian designer and writer Yves Peters has been posting his comments and critiques about the winners of the TDC² 2010 Typeface Design Competition, and has finally reached the Display Type category—the one in which Deliscript was selected. While Yves' comments are considered and thoughtful—and with regard to Deliscript were for the most part on target—I feel as if I would like to comment on a couple of his remarks.

Yves mentioned the "Word Logos" I have thrown in, and mentions that they're only in English and that there aren't that many. I agree with this. I probably shouldn't have put them in at all. I had literally been working for months on Deliscript, and really wanted to get it out for release, so I guess I rushed through their creation, thinking of them as just a small extra feature to include. They probably don't add that much to the font, and I should have thought of the European market as well. The next time I do a feature like that I'll definitely try to do it in a much more expansive manner.

Yves also mentions that he is "unsure about the finer details in the character shapes", citing that "some curves and joins seem rather stiff, and the weight distribution and contrast in the character strokes appear a little off in some parts". I'm not sure, but I think this perception on his part may stem from cultural differences that we share, and from a possible misunderstanding of what I'm referencing. What I'm going for is not really in the lexicon of classical font design—rather it is from the American pop culture vernacular—from all the (traditionally) untrained eyes that created all the wonderful signage and ephemera that I grew up with.

Coming to font design from that background, I can totally understand how what I'm trying to do can seem foreign to those who are trained to look at fonts from a traditional perspective. While I'm sure we all share some of the same font heroes (such as Morris Fuller Benton) I also celebrate those whose work joyously displayed a flagrant lack of regard for what some would consider to be "the formal rules of design". It is to these designers whose names we'll probably never know—and to their typographic "mistakes" and flourishes that I find so engaging—that I try to pay homage to in my lettering and font design work.

Art Imitates Life...Imitates Art (Canter's Truck #2 of 3)

Although most of the food trucks are similar in appearance, many contain details that slightly alter some of their proportions. So it became necessary for me to visit the Road Stoves truck depot and to take pictures of the truck that would be closest to the one that Bonnie would be getting, and to use those photos as templates for my design—I'd also have to Photoshop out the existing graphics, making the truck as clean as I could to act as a blank canvas for my new design:

I set about to create the elements for the truck wrap, basing the graphics on the look of the Canter's neon sign and my font Deliscript. I felt I needed to modify Deliscript a bit to make this a strong graphic statement—kind of like a logo for the truck. So I began by creating a large, circular initial "C" in Canter's—and that became the basis for the look:

I also settled on a palette of colors that I felt would be attractive and reflect what I thought of as a Deli aesthetic. The unique double "SS" in "DELICATESSEN" was borrowed from the neon sign—one of many small details that I felt would help keep continuity between the restaurant and the truck. I added some other elements such as "Since 1931" that Bonnie wanted. In my first iteration for the truck my feeling was that I'd try it as a white truck—a good clean look— and adjust the graphics accordingly.

I might've had the Good Humor truck from my youth in Brooklyn in mind:

Nevertheless, a white truck wasn't exactly what Bonnie had planned on. I have to admit that I'm glad she pushed me to do a more colorful truck. Even though the truck was to be treated as a "vehicle wrap" by SignQuest, a process that is being more and more widely used, I decided to treat the truck as if I was designing a paint job in order to give it a look that was more in keeping with its mid-century heritage. Keeping the color palette that I had first come up with I created some mock ups that I thought would work even better for Canter's than my all white version:

We also decided that it would be a good idea to have a slogan and, after much deliberation, settled on "...home of the Kibitz Room". The Kibitz Room is the dive bar/cocktail lounge that's off in a corner of Canter's Deli. Like Canter's, it's an LA institution that just seems to keep going and going.

I had envisioned that we would somehow use my very graphic take on the neon baker sign on the service side of the truck. So I put him on the door and let the steam from his platter trail back along the length of the truck towards the menu. Along the top of the truck yet another version of the Deliscript/Canter's logo:

In “Art Imitates Life…Imitates Art #3″ I’ll post photos of the actual truck wrapping, and also of the finished truck.

Art Imitates Life...Imitates Art (Canter's Truck #1 of 3)

Recently I had a strange (and kind of wonderful) confluence of circumstance—combined with a smattering of coincidence and random luck. It all started right here in this blog over a year ago when I started sharing my thoughts about creating my new font Deliscript. In the posting I mentioned how the design was "loosely inspired by one of the signs at Canter’s Deli", a Los Angeles staple for almost 80 years:

At any rate my good fortune with Deliscript began about two months ago when I learned that it been selected by the Type Directors Club in NYC for inclusion in their annual show. About a month later I got a call from Bonnie Bloomgarden, the great-granddaughter of Ben Canter—one of the original Canter Bros. She and her sister Dena were trying to do a few things to gently update the Deli, while still respecting its heritage. One of their ideas was to create a "Canter's Truck" and take advantage of the recent mobile gourmet food trucks craze. A lot of the newer trucks have been completely "wrapped" with colorful graphics using fairly new printing technology.

She told me that they had started looking for fonts to design the wrap for the truck themselves, but then realized it might be a little difficult for them without having a lot of graphic design experience. Then fortune smiled on Bonnie and Dena when they did a web search Googling "Deli" and "Font" and ran smack into Deliscript (probably because of the Canter's mention in this blog) and then in turn found, and contacted me.

It has been a real pleasure working with Bonnie, a young person with good entrepreneurial instincts that are combined with a keen sense of what is worth keeping in the Canter's visual vocabulary, and what perhaps should be let go. We both concurred that the truck identity should be based on that neon sign, and that I should use Deliscript as the starting point. I also suggested that we somehow should try to incorporate into the truck design their famous neon chef, who for years has been carrying that platter of freshly baked bread:

At first I tried to graphicallyt recreate him pretty much as he was for the side of the truck. I soon realized that my rendition seemed far too literal for the look I was going for. Then, in an old matchbook catalog, I found a cut of a little round chef carrying a platter of turkey, and decided to use that as the basis for creating my updated baker (a little slimmed down) for the door of the truck:

In "Art Imitates Life...Imitates Art #2" I'll discuss how we created the design for the truck.

My Hollywood: Then & Now

Hollywood is a study in contradictions. It's a city that on the one hand celebrates its past, but then turns around and either ignores or vilifies it. Living here is a constant love it/hate it battle with one's own feelings. I recently decided to jump into the fray, attending meetings with the Community Redevelopment Association (CRA) with regard to signage and billboards in Hollywood. The CRA really wants to do the right thing but for too long the residents of Hollywood have not spoken up about their needs, and so the business interests have held sway. Walking the streets here is an assault on ones senses—billboards and signage are starting to completely take over the Hollywood landscape, turning the city into one huge canvas for advertisers to hawk their wares. Landlords make large profits from renting the walls of their buildings to advertisers, and this has gone on unregulated for far too long. It has turned a once beautiful city into the poster child for visual blight. It's no wonder nobody walks in LA—it's not a pleasant experience.

Although it's not the best example of how bad things have gotten here, I thought I'd contrast an image from a postcard of Vine Street from the '40s, with a current shot of the same street.

As one can see, billboards were not an issue at the time. Signage was well designed and often dramatic–adding a colorful and graphic component, enhancing the cityscape. The same view (below) although it is a commercial street, and not as an egregious example as I could have shown, demonstrates some of the problems that we face.

The worst one, I feel, is that buildings like this one are now being designed as vehicles to carry billboards. What cannot be seen in this view are the eight billboards that are on this one side of the building alone! Turn around and this humongous billboard is what's in your face, and can be viewed for miles. Gone are the days when architecture was designed to fulfill the purposes of those who would occupy it. Now new buildings in Hollywood are thought of more for their advertising potential than their architectural significance. Also note the way the "Tropic Thunder" billboard obscures the historic "The Plaza" rooftop neon, and how the gargantuan billboard atop Sunset and Vine blots out the sky. Also note that the poor residents of The Plaza have their windows blotted out by a liquor ad. On a more positive note, an attempt was made to resurrect the famous "Schwab's" logo as rooftop neon, but the business connected with it was just a flash in the pan, and disappeared a while ago.

Hollywood is considered one of the worst cities in the country for billboard blight. Various groups have sprung up to try to fight it, but it seems that for every step forward we're able to make, we go back two steps.