A Stellar Poster for Simon & Garfunkel

A Stellar Poster for Simon & Garfunkel

A Stellar Poster for SImon & Garfunkel

Back when I was doing fairly regular work for Time Magazine, one of their ADs—Irene Ramp—asked me if I wanted to do a poster for a reunion benefit concert for Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel that was to be held in Central Park. Irene was a friend of Paul Simon, and so putting Mr. Simon and myself together was fairly easy. Because of the many intervening years, I don’t anymore have my preliminary drawings or sketches for this piece, so here I would like to talk about my inspiration and how my ideas for the poster came to be.

Even as a young boy growing up in Brooklyn one of my passions was star-gazing. I remember saving up my meager allowance for months until I had enough saved ($42.15) to buy my own telescope. With my trusty “Jupiter” telescope (Made in Japan) I charted sunspots, gazed upon the craters and mountains of the moon, and saw the rings of Saturn. To help me find and recognize the constellations in the night sky I used a wheel chart I bought at the Planetarium called the “Star Explorer”. Apparently I was a young nerd in the making!

Star Explorer

In addition to its usefulness I was fascinated by the graphics and the design—the representaion of the various star magnitudes by differently sized circles, and the seeming randomness of the star map in contrast with the beautiful geometry and design of the mechanism that made it all work. This strange beauty, born of utility, would stay with me for many years.

I had purchased the Star Explorer during one of my visits to the Hayden Planetarium. At my insistence, my parents took me there many times. The Planetarium was attached to Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History (dinosaurs!), and I just couldn’t get enough of it. Whether it was seeing how much I weighed on Jupiter, or being able to touch an actual meteorite—or even just admiring the wonderful black light murals—I loved it all! But the best part (of course) was the sky show under the Planetarium dome.

Inside the Planetarium

The Hayden Planetarium

Since 2000 the Hayden Planetarium has been housed inside the new Rose Center for Earth and Space, and has been completely revamped and brought up to date.

The Rose Center for Earth and Space

While the changes were needed, reflecting all the new technology and discoveries made since I was a kid, much has been lost, and I greatly miss all those things that had initially attracted and charmed me.

One of those things was the incredible look of the Zeiss Mark II projector. To me it looked like an alien spaceship or some sort of insect/monster. The new projector is a bit more high-tech and to my mind a little more visually nondescript. The other is that the projection dome is lacking one feature which I thought was great—and that is the wonderful silhouetted NYC skyline that surrounced you as the lights went down, simulating dusk.

Zeiss Mark II Projector

I’m not the only one who thought the interior and projector were beautiful—it was the subject of a Fortune Magazine cover by John Cook.

Fortune Cover

Note the prominent role played by that skyline silhouette in his art. When you settled into your seat for the sky show, having that skyline surround you really made you feel connected to both the sky and to the city—it was as if you were laying down in the middle of Central Park (which is right across the street) at night, and were gazing up at the stars surrounded by the city. For me that was really magical. Actually adding the local environment to star charts and such was nothing new as is clearly shown in vintage charts such as this:

Star Chart

All these things were in the back of my mind when I met with Paul Simon to discuss the direction the poster would take. Just the fact that the concert would take place in Central Park on a warm Fall evening led me to start thinking about what it might be like to be at the concert, listening to music under the stars. That led me to thinking about how much I loved the Planetarium (just minutes away from the concert site) and how it felt to be there, about my telescope, about star charts, but most of all about that magical NYC skyline. I knew that I had to incorporate them all into my poster. Luckily all parties agreed! The concert was a great success, attended by half a million, but the best thing was that despite the fact that it had rained all that day, the clouds parted and the stars came out.

Simon & Garfunkel Poster

The posters had been sniped up all over NYC before the concert. If you were lucky, you were able to snatch one off a wall without destroying it. Despite the fact that T-shirts were produced and were for sale at the concert, there actually were never any officially sanctioned posters for sale anywhere. Over the years I’ve had many, many people write to me wondering where they could find a poster. I never had that many myself, having given away to friends and acquaintences what few I had. But luckily I kept one. Now I am very happy to be able to say that I am producing a limited edition of the poster myself, which I am making available through my Illogator site.

These posters will be 18” x 24”—the original size the poster was produced at, and will be signed by yours truly. I scanned the original poster myself, and spent days retouching the scan until it was absolutely perfect. These digital prints (or giclées) actually look better than the original. The original printing was done on fairly inexpensive paper, but the edition I produced is on a much better stock—which allows much more depth of color. If you’d like to find out more about the new edition, just click HERE, and you’ll be taken to my store—where you can also see other items I have for sale.

Simon & Garfunkel w/T-Shirt

"And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people maybe more"

Alphabet Soup

Kiss Kulture Klash

Authors Note: Yes, I've previously done posts on this work, but there's always intense interest in this subject, and I'm presenting some new material here.

When I was asked to design and do the art for KISS’ 4th studio album Rock and Roll Over, I was fairly ignorant of the culture that was forming around the group. I was unencumbered by any preconceived ideas as to what the group and their music was about. Many are surprised to hear that Gene, Paul, Ace and Peter had to explain their different personas to me before I started working on the design.

I’d love to be able to show my working pencil sketches, but over the years they’d gotten lost or destroyed, and the only record left was the original colored pencil comp that I used to explain my concept to the group. A few months earlier I had done a cover for IDEA, a Japanese art magazine that had done an article about my work, and for whom I had created a cover. I really loved how that cover had turned out, so my thought was to try to emulate the look I had come up with on this new cover for KISS. My cover for IDEA had certain gamelike, and very graphic elements that I thought would work well telling the story of what KISS were about.

Since their makeup reminded me of classic Japanese Kabuki players, I thought the look would be appropriate. So I created a little story around each character and put them all together in a sort of “mandala” motif surrounded by a sawtooth blade with lettering. I kept the colors simple and bold as I had done with my IDEA cover. Here (yellowed and a bit worn with age) is the original colored pencil sketch I created for the group’s approval:

The meeting went particularly well, since I was expecting outright rejection of my idea—which at the time was pretty unorthodox for an LP cover. The changes gthey asked for, I felt, were fairly minor—adjustments to the faces (with the exception of Peter Criss), and rotating the lettering 90°.

The KISS logo already existed, but I felt it needed some help to work better with my design (Paul told me he had drawn it on his dining room table). So I redrew it, making the design more consistent, and adding the lightning strokes to help give movement to the sawtooth blade.

After the cover was done, I didn’t think about it very much. It was only years later that I came to understand that this cover had taken on a life of its own and become sort of a cultural icon. I started to realize that when I discoved all the incredibly blatant and poorly done rip-offs of my design. Rather than upsetting me, seeing all that was quite amusing . . . after all, isn’t imitation “the sincerest form of flattery”?

Another indicator to me of how pervasive this design had become in the culture was that people were having it permanently etched onto their bodies. This both horrified, and delighted me at the same time! Personally I would never have anything tattooed on my body—especially one of my own graphics: I’d get bored with the design way too quickly, and then it would be too late to do anything about it. Here are some shots of the process of one lucky soul having the complete Rock and Roll Over art permanently engraved on his right flank. The tattoo artist did a pretty good job, if you ask me!

And below, for your viewing pleasure, a few more of my favorite RaRO tattoo shots. I especially like the one of the guy getting his back autographed by Paul Stanley. Now that’s what I call Kiss Kommitment!

Speaking of Paul, he contacted me again recently. It seems that KISS were about to record their 19th studio album. They hadn’t done one of those for eleven years, and he told me they wanted to recapture some of the magic that the Rock and Roll Over design had provided for them when they were starting out. So, in a way they kind of wanted Rock and Roll Over All Over Again—the same . . . but different.

Attempting to recreate the success of an iconic image is a thankless task. You can’t realistically have that as a goal. The most you can do is to give it your all and try to do the best piece of art you’re capable of doing. Here are a series of rough sketches that led up to the finished design

The hardest part of this process was figuring out what to do with the four faces. This time Paul wanted them to be photographic instead of just plain old graphic—as they were the first time around. And I couldn’t get new photography—it had to be taken from existing files. The approach I decided on was to take the best photos I could find with the most contrast and shadows, and translate them into flat graphics that I could make work with the rest of the art. I’ve simplified the steps a bit, but here’s an example of what I did with the faces, using a photo I found of Gene’s face:

Everybody’s got an opinion as to whether the art for Sonic Boom is better or worse than that for Rock and Roll Over. Being so close to both designs it’s difficult for me to say. As far as Sonic Boom is concerned, I did the best I could within strict limitations provided by Paul. I think it solved the problem, and I’m quite happy with the results.

I’ll leave it to time, to posterity, and to others to decide if Sonic Boom becomes as much a cultural touchstone as Rock and Roll Over did. If it does, we may soon start seeing . . .

Purchase an original “Rock and Roll Over” press proof HERE

COMMENTS WELCOME! 

The Evolution of PowerStation

PowerStation is my one font that specifically evolved from a prior design assignment. I had been tasked with designing signage for Hershey’s Times Square flagship store. The signage needed to be designed in the spirit of a retro future-machine, à la Jules Verne or other Victorian “Steam Punk” aesthetic. So I came up with the following sketches in which I combined various lettering and type styles:

In the tighter version I designed the word “Hershey” to have a feeling of faceted letters, similar to what you might see on an old theater marquee:

Ever since I first became aware of them I’ve been faxcinated by the tactile qualities of these extruded plastic letterforms, and how they reminded me of candy. I’ve always thought there was something “delicious” about them.

So it seemed entirely appropriate to me that the word Hershey should be rendered that way, giving it a chunky, almost chocolatebar-like flavor. Note that in the final signage we needed to change the lettering of the word “Chocolateworks” to read “Chocolate Machine”.

I loved how my art turned out, especially the word “Hershey”. After this job was over it occured to me that I wasn’t aware of any fonts that successfully captured that particular faceted look. So I thought I’d try and see if I could make that work as a typeface:

I started sketching out various letters to see if it could be viable. As the font developed and it's strong industrial and moderne qualities became more apparent, I decided to name it "PowerStation".

As I developed PowerStation, it evolved from the one version I had adapted from the Hershey’s assignment into four different versions. These I decided to call Block, Wedge, Solid, and Outline. Then I thought I'd expand those into another four “Wide” versions. Now I had a family of eight different fonts.

But I guess I wasn’t able to leave well enough alone. Why not provide the added ability to set PowerStation in two colors? So I took the basic four faceted versions of PowerStation (Block, Block Wide, Wedge, and Wedge Wide) and broke each of them down into two separate fonts which, if set on separate layers, could provide 2 color typesetting. The solid “base” of the letters would be formed by setting the “Low” version of the font, and the facted part of the letter would be formed by setting the “High” version of the font on a layer directly above the “Low” version.

In other words a two color version of PowerStation Wedge could be achieved by setting PowerStation Wedge High over the same copy which would be set in PowerStation Wedge Low, and applying different colors to each layer.

Setting words like this in two colors can provide richness and variation when used imaginatively.

Some time after the release of PowerStation I discovered the next step in its evolution—that you didn’t have to be limited to two color typesetting with this font. I found that by combining the various PowerStation fonts in different ways one could set this font in three colors as well. The instructions for doing that may be a little long for this article, so if you’d like to see what’s involved with that, you can download the free PowerStation User Manual.

I originally created the serigraph above to celebrate the release of PowerStation. The signed and numbered edition is limited to 100 copies, and there are still some left. Click HERE to find out more about this offer.

License the PowerStation fonts HERE .

Purchase the PowerStation Serigraph HERE.

COMMENTS WELCOME! 

Japanese Time Machine

My friend José Cruz recently posted this LINK on my Facebook page, reminding me about one of my earliest, favorite projects—one which set the tone for much of my work that followed. In the page that was linked the reproduction my cover was so tiny that I figured it might be time to unearth the real thing and tell its story. I had only been freelancing for a couple of years when the Japanese magazine “Idea” contacted me, wanting to do an article about my work. I proposed doing a cover for that issue, and they agreed. Rather than designing a standard 4 color process cover, I prepared the art for 5 flat Pantone colors. Overlapping the transparent inks would create even more colors, and I hoped to achieve a richness and depth of color that approached the look of a silkscreen. It all worked out really well.

Starting with a few thumbnail pencils, I developed the look for the cover, which was based on an arcade/shooting gallery/metal target game look:

’m sure there were a couple of pencil drawings between the ones above and the next one, but it’s been many years, and things tend to disappear. This next drawing demonstrates how I used to work pre-computer. I needed to work out the drawing in the finest detail, because once I inked the linework on prepared acetate, there was no such thing as ⌘-Z: making changes was difficult. You’ll notice in the detail, the great care I used when drawing—this was extremely painstaking work (the yellowing of the vellum is mostly due to the aging of the rubber cement used to glue it to a board:

Next I worked out rough color with Prismacolor pencils on a piece of tracing paper over the tight drawing. I was tryng to approximate how transparent Pantone colors would react when laying one over the other. For example laying the blue/violet over the burgundy would get me a very dark—almost black-ish color. There were probably other color studies, but this is all I have left:

After working out the color, all that remained was to create the finished pre-separated art, inked in black with technical drawing pens (Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph). In this case the art consisted of seven inked, prepared acetate overlays, plus the base art that was inked on vellum and glued to an illustration board. Below is a representation of just one of the overlays in position over the tight tracing—where it was when it was inked—this represented the dark blue ink:

When all the inking was done, all the overlays were registered to each other (note the register marks), and the whole was prepared for the printer in Japan with detailed instructions written on a vellum overlay with a more accurate representation of what the finished piece would look like (rendered in colored pencil). Pantone color chips were taped alongside for color matching. It’s a hell of a lot easier to render art like this today using Adobe Illustrator!

Below is the actual printed cover. It remains one of my favorite pieces. It also served as the design and color model for how I executed the album cover “Rock and Roll Over” for KISS just a few months later that year:

COMMENTS WELCOME!

An Interview With “Posting and Toasting”–Pt. 2

Yesterday I presented Part 1 of  Seth Rosenthal‘s interview from his blog (Posting and Toasting) with me about my experience in creating the identity for the NY Knicks. So without further adieu, reproduced below is Seth's second installment:

Behind the Knicks Logo with Michael Doret: Part 2

In Part 1 of our conversation with Knicks logo designer Michael Doret, we talked to Michael about the initial assignment he received in 1991 and got to see a few of his sketches and logo concepts that didn't end up getting picked. It was a prolonged back-and-forth process between Michael and the league, and today we'll look back at the steps of that process leading up to the Knicks logo that's been in place for 20 year sand counting.

Before we take a look at some more sketches, I should mention that, out of sheer coincidence, ESPN's Jared Zwerling has an interview up today with Tom O'Grady, who was-- at the time-- a representative of the league office that contracted Michael's work for this project. Though this conversation has been more about turning up old sketches than it's been about the stories surrounding them, I invite you to check out Jared's piece for another perspective on the logo's history.

Here's more from Michael:

"The development of this logo lasted about six months, and during that time there was a lot of back-and-forth in terms of which designs were developed further and which designs were shelved. I was hired by NBA Creative Director Tom O'Grady, who was great to work with. He was very open to all the ideas I presented to the league. In the one idea they ended up selecting, I had pretty much taken many of my design cues from their old Knicks logo. I had thought "I know they're telling me to shoot for the moon on this, but I know that the way these things work—they'll get scared and won't want to make a big change". So, I gave them that one as a sketch, which was kind of like an updated, contemporized and cleaned up version of the old logo."

With that in mind, here's a look at the metamorphosis of the logo with which we're familiar today:

A couple of things:

1. You can see in that third-to-last sketch where Michael started experimenting with the color scheme (which is different from the final one).

2. Recall from Part 1 that one of the initial design requests was the inclusion of the Empire State Building, so some of these look just like the familiar logo, but wearing a building hat. Obviously, that element got cut from the final logo.

Ultimately, this was the design of Michael's that the Knicks chose heading into the 1992 season. A few years later, Michael was asked to design and integrate the "New York" line above the "Knicks". Recently the logo has undergone a minor color makeover, but it's otherwise the same as it was back in '92, not unlike my voice.

Now, that wasn't the only thing Michael was working on for the Knicks project. He also presented them with a series of monogram sketches-- more compact, initial-based logos that could be used for other purposes. Here are some of those sketches:

The league ended up setting for just the main logo and none of Michael's monogram designs. But wait-- that last one looks familiar, doesn't it? Indeed, it's the token insignia the Knicks have been using as a secondary logo in 1995. It's graced equipment and merchandise since then, and was featured on the back of the uniform until recently. Michael's design drew its inspiration from the old MTA subway tokens, and, if you look back at yesterday's post, elements of it crept into early concepts of the main logo. New York's adoption of the design has a bit of a story behind it:

"Being a New Yorker and growing up riding the subways, I always had that image of the subway token with the Y cut out of it somewhere in the back of my head. I just saw an opportunity to somehow use that iconic NY image for an iconic NY team. Using it for a secondary Knicks logo was something I wanted to push for. When we started discussing a secondary logo—"a monogram or something". I gave them quite a few different ideas, but at the time, they decided not to use any of them. I thought "okay, that's fine"-- I was being paid fairly for the logo development work that I was doing. That whole secondary logo/monogram thing was dropped, and I got paid for the work I had done on it (but not for finished art or usage). Then, several years later, after this whole project was done, an old friend of mine called and said "did you know the Knicks are using that token logo you did for them in your sketches?". I had had no idea-and more importantly, I had not been paid for any usage fees for that design. No one from the organization had informed me, so I contacted the people at the NBA. I don't think Tom O'Grady was there anymore, or maybe he wasn't in the same position—at any rate I don't remember speaking to him about this. I tried to discuss it with some people there, and they informed me that no, the token monogram was their idea—they had created it, and I had had nothing to do with it.

A couple of years had gone by before I found out about this infringement, and In the meantime some of my work had been published in a book called "Design In Progress - What Happens Behind the Scenes", which was about how design projects are developed. I had picked the Knicks logo as a case study of how I develop a logo design, and so in the book were printed many of the sketches seen in this blog. It was just one or two pages in the book, but among the material published was one of the sketches that had included the NYK token monogram. This book was published just after I had completed the Knicks project, and well before the Knicks had started using the token logo. So when they said to me "well, you didn't do it, and if you're going to insist on this and say you did, you're going to need to prove it", I just pointed them towards the book, which had a copyright date of 1992. Realizing they were caught with their pants down and wanting to avoid any kind of legal entanglements, they begrudgingly told me "well, okay we'll pay you for this", and then to punish me said "but you'll never work for the NBA again". That, of course, has been borne out by history.

I felt like I was there at the beginning helping to create a look that a lot of sports teams have picked up on, and from which a lot of other designers really benefited. After that debacle it wasn't me that was being consulted for my design expertise—but other designers who took their cues from what I had begun—and you can see that in a lot of the team logos these days. I feel like I should have been part of that. But if I had to do it all over, I would still stick to my guns and fight for what's right."

Cool. Thus concludes our journey through the history of the Knicks logo(s). Huge thanks to Michael for sharing all this with us, and to P&T's normanhathaway for helping to set it up. Once again, I encourage you to check out Michael's website and blog, and to read the ESPN interview with Tom O'Grady for more logo history.

An Interview With "Posting and Toasting"

My good friend Norman Hathaway is an avid New York Knicks fan, and follower of Seth Rosenthal's humorous Knicks blog Posting and Toasting which boasts one of the biggest communities of Knicks fans on the internet. Apparently Norman spoke or wrote to Seth about my involvement with the NBA, and specifically about how I created the current identity for the Knicks. So Seth contacted me, and we talked about how that whole thing went down. I dug up a ton of my old sketches and comps for this project and sent them to Seth who put them all together, interviewed me and is now posting the story in two parts over two days on his blog. Today, I've reproduced verbatim (below) Seth's first post, and tomorrow will do so again with the second:

Behind the Knicks Logo with Michael Doret: Part 1

This is the current Knicks logo. This is what the Knicks logo looked like in 1992. Little has changed, y'all. They added a little "New York" and modified the colors recently, but have done nothing else to alter a design that's been the primary logo for over twenty years. That emblem has been a constant symbol of the team, and its distinctive big, block lettering echoed throughout several other teams' redesigns in the '90s, some of which are still in place today. So, where did this logo-- which has persisted through multiple Knicks regimes-- come from? With the help of P&T citizen normanhathaway, I had the pleasure of corresponding with Michael Doret, the man who made the Knicks logo.

Doret is a New York-raised, Los Angeles-based designer and lettering artist with a rather extensive resume. When the NBA approached him in Spring of 1991, he'd already done some work for the league, as well as designs and design ideas for the MLB, the NFL, TIME Magazine, the band Kiss(!), and a lot more. So, the league felt pretty confident in his abilities and gave him pretty much free reign to try out different logos and letterforms:

"Before starting on this design project I didn't receive that much input from the NBA other than the directive that they wanted to have something symbolic of New York CIty incorporated into the logo. After discussion we eliminated several options (such as the Statue of Liberty), and settled on the iconic Empire State Building as the only viable alternative that might work in the new logo. So in the beginning stages that was the given which, as we all know, they ended up deciding against as the logo development progressed. I think other than keeping the original blue and orange from the old logo, there wasn't that much else given me in terms of requirements. The directions I took were mostly left up to me."

It was a fairly open-ended task and, as Michael notes, the only specific request made of him didn't even make it to the final product. So, with that dearth of instruction in mind, he set about producing a variety of design concepts. In Part 1 of our magical journey through Michael's old files, he'll show us some of the concepts that didn't make it.

To generate ideas, Michael began with some rough sketches, examples of which are below.

With the Empire State Building icon relatively unchangeable, Michael focused his imagination on the lettering:

"At that time (and even still) my work was all very lettering-oriented. I was trying to open up new areas of letterform design that, up until that point, had tended to be a bit stodgy and traditional. I was just trying to do something different for the time. In actuality I was picking up a lot of cues from bygone eras, from when lettering was really in its heyday-like in the 1930s and '40s-only this time around with a slight twist."

Some of the sketches and elements of others eventually made it into color concepts which, before the widespread use of computer design programs, Michael rendered in colored pencil (the '90s were a dark time).

Any of these could have ended up as the Knicks' primary logo (and, incidentally, Michael loves all his logo babies, but told me the first of those color logos was his favorite), but alas, they could only pick one

In Part 2 (tomorrow, perhaps) we'll look at the process behind the logo of Michael's that the Knicks did choose, and learn about how another familiar piece of Knicks iconography also comes from Michael's desk.

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.

Oversized Album Cover Prints Available on Official KISS Website

2/1/13 NOTE: Due to "human error" these prints are currently unavailable for purchase from the Live Nation website. However they will be back—please check back here again soon! These two signed (signed by me [Michael Doret] and the members of the group), limited edition, large scale fine art prints (not lithos) are still available through the official KISS Online Store. RaRO is signed by myself, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Sonic Boom is also signed by the two newer members of the band. These prints made from my original artwork of Rock and Roll Over and Sonic Boom are the best incarnations you will ever see of my art for these two iconic KISS releases (please ignore the fact that it says "Pre Order" on Sonic Boom – that's a typo).

I have digitally redone my orignal art for Rock and Roll Over (after 30+ years the original original art is long gone), and so now it's cleaner and crisper than ever before. The art for Sonic Boom was digitally created to begin with, and so enlarges to the 20" size perfectly. To give an idea of the print quality and clarity of these giclées, here's a detail of Sonic Boom showing the watercolor paper texture:

The print images are 20" square printed on 25" square "Museo Textured Rag" digital Watercolor paper. These are archival prints and will show no visible signs of fading for 100+ years under reasonable lighting situations.

Printed by Art Works Fine Art Publishing in Los Angeles, these editions are limited to 250 prints each, and each print will come with a certificate of authenticity signed by me.

As the creator of these two pieces I am very critical of print quality, but suffice it to say that when I saw the final proofs of these two pieces I was blown away by the color intensity and the quality.

To see my other blog posts on Kiss...here are the links—earliest first:

1) For All You ‘KISS’ Fans Out There…

2) The Return of . . . KISS (#1)

3) The Return of . . . KISS (#2)

4) The Return of . . . KISS (#3)

5) WXRX/Live Radio Chat

6) Podcast Interview on PodKISSt

7) Signed Prints Available on Illogator

Audio Interview w/Tony Ross at TonyTeach

TonyTeach is an online learning center where you can find video tutorials, podcasts and live training for Flash, Toon Boom Animate, Photoshop, and more—both for free, and for purchase. Recently Tony Ross caught up with me, and we had a half hour discussion about how I work, my inspirations, digital vs. analog, and about my career in general—plus I give a couple of useful tips on using Adobe Illustrator's pen tool that even this seasoned teacher was surprised by. Here's a recording of that discussion: Tony Ross Interview

Lettering & Typographic Artists: Sucker Punched by Film Industry?

No doubt by now you've seen the title treatment for "Sucker Punch". It seems to be everywhere. I don't know who designed and did the art for it—and perhaps it's best that I don't—because I have a lot of issues with this design including its plethora of inconsistencies. BUT . . . on the bright side, I will say that its free-wheeling disregard for convention is a welcome reprieve from the unimaginative, dull but "safe" typographic treatments that have taken over film promotions for the last few decades. The genres of action and sci-fi movies would seem likely candidates where designers could "stretch their wings" so to speak, and be much more creative with their typography and lettering. If "Sucker Punch" is seen as a successful promotion, perhaps it will be the beginning of a trend, marking the moment when it was OK for creative typography and lettering to return to movie advertising. There was a time when I was regularly called upon to work on title treatments for feature films. In retrospect there seemed to be more creative freedom back then—less control exerted on creativity by clients. A lot of what I did never saw the light of day, and much of it I'd prefer not to show. But there were some that I'm still proud of. The one that most people remember is my treatment for Zardoz, a film directed by John Boorman—who had previously directed the amazing Deliverance.

The design of this treatment was derived from one of the plot elements in the film—crystal rings. Originally my design had the two Zs mirroring each other, but it was decided that would interfere with legibility. John Boorman liked my solution so much that he used it in the opening credits for the film: It has been suggested by others that this design was the original inspiration of many rock and roll band logos done by others—such as "Asia" and "Anthrax": I have no knowledge that this actually was the case, but looking at them now I have to admit that it seems likely.

Another treatment I'm happy to have worked on was for Wolfen. This little seen film was directed by Michael Wadleigh and starred Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Gregory Hines and Edward James Olmos. In this particular design I was trying to do my sort of tongue-in-cheek take on all those great horror movie titles from the '40s and '50s . . . the ones with the lettering suggestive of dripping blood and ripping flesh—such as:

And finally, the one that I would really have loved to have seen the light of day: The title treatment I designed for Ridley Scott's Alien never made it into the public arena. It had some small promotional uses before it was run over by the Bill Gold Advertising machine and relegated to the back burner. At any rate, this was great fun to have worked on—the more so since I was able to work on it with my friend (the now famous "pop-surrealist") Todd Schorr. I designed and drew the forms based on the "bio-mechanical" forms I saw in some publicity stills from the production, and Todd painted the absolutely gorgeous finished art. Perhaps we went too far with this piece? I'll probably never know what really happened.

But what I do know is that in the years between then and now we haven't seen any great strides forward in the art of title treatments. Am I being over-optimistic in thinking that perhaps now we're at the beginning of a new Golden Age? I hope not.

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MyFonts Creative Characters Newsletter

I feel very honored that MyFonts chose me as the subject of their January 2011 Creative Characters Newsletter. It took the form of an interview, and in it I've answered a lot of questions, probably at greater length than I have in the past. So if you're curious as to what makes me tick, set aside 10 or 15 minutes and read this interview. If you still have any questions, I'll entertain them here!

All you information hounds can also check out the new "Interviews & Resources" page I've just set up on my website, where I've posted other interviews, articles, PDFs, etc., that I've done in the past. Now go write that report!

"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.

Podcast Interview on PodKISSt

After doing my first live radio interview for WXRX I did another, slightly longer interview for the KISS fansite "PodKISSt". In this interview I discuss influences on my work, how the two covers for KISS came to be, the limited edition prints of those covers, international problems with the KISS logo, crazy fans, and some advice for budding young artists out there.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Fonts In Use – Major League (In a Minor Way)

Recently Andy Heckathorne brought to my attention that Major League Baseball had used Metroscript in their logo for this years World Series logo. Admittedly it's not a major part of the design, but as Andy pointed out "It's the WORLD Series!".

In the Metroscript Manual I wrote that "You can change the proportion of the set type by scaling it either horizontally or vertically." The designer here has really pushed the reproportioning by scaling the type vertically at 72%. Below the sample is the un-reproportioned type. I don't know who the designer is who worked on this logo, but if anyone out there knows and wants to send me that info I'd like to properly credit him or her.

Actually I'm no stranger to the World Series logo, having actually designed it once some years back. I wasn't terribly thrilled with this design (below) so I tweaked it a bit a few years later, and that newer version is the one I now show on my website.

It was interesting for me to notice that the letterforms I used in this logo were in some ways precursors to the forms in both Metroscript and Deliscript.

I'd been using script letters similar to these in my assignment work for years before creating those fonts.

While I'm on the subject of the World Series, as a side note I thought that it might be worth mentioning that my wife, illustrator/designer extraordinaire Laura Smith, did a series of illustrated scorebook covers for Major League Baseball for what became known as the "Subway Series" in 2000.

Announcing Grafika: It's a New "Old" Font . . . (or is it an Old "New" Font?)

I'm very pleased to announce the release of Grafika, a font design that has been "in the making" for many more years than I'd care to remember! It can be purchased from Font Bros, MyFonts, FontShop, Veer and YouWorkForThem.

Grafika began its genesis when I received a call to work on a feature film. That phone call came from Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, the reknowned team who have given us such films as "A Room With a View", "Howard’s End" and "Remains of the Day". The assignment was to create a title treatment for their upcoming film "Savages".

The title treatment (above) that I created to reflect the Art Deco sensibility of the film was so well received that it was decided that we would emulate its elegant, elongated look in all the typographic elements of the film. To do that I needed to create what would be my first complete font design. So taking my design cues from the logo I had created, I put pencil to paper and came up with a basic character set. Then I inked it on vellum (which was as hi-tech as it got at that time), and had it photographed and positioned on a roll of Typositor film.

Over the years I had forgotten about this font design. My career became totally about assignment work. I hadn’t gone back to designing fonts until recently when I started doing it again under my foundry name Alphabet Soup. Recently I unearthed a poster for Savages which contained all the credits set in that nameless font I had designed for the film. Looking at it again after all these years I realized that for a young designer this hadn’t been bad. So I decided to revisit it, and to add Grafika to my collection at Alphabet Soup.

To see Grafika in more detail, you can download the PDF brochure I've created (3.5 MB). As always, I welcome your comments!

WXRX/Live Radio Chat

Today I did my very first live radio interview with Stone and Double T at WXRX radio out of Rockford Illinois, home of the landmark Coronado Theater. I chatted with them about my work on KISS' album covers: both "Rock and Roll Over" and "Sonic Boom".

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

The Return of . . . KISS (#2)

When Paul Stanley came by my studio to discuss how to proceed on the art for the cover of their upcoming CD/DVD package "Sonic Boom", I had no idea what to expect. I hadn't met with him since working on Rock and Roll Over, and had very little memory of what that had been like. Any anxiety I had melted away when we started talking. Paul is a "gentlemen's gentleman" and I immediately felt at ease talking with him—as if all those years had not intervened since the last time we had spoken. After some small talk he explained what he was after with the new cover art. His vision for this album was to make it as vital and raw as it had been when they did RaRO. He felt that that had been some of the best work that they had ever done, and wanted the new album to recreate that energy both musically and visually. While he didn't want me to reprise what I had done with my art for the earlier cover, he did want me to try to capture some of the same spirit, attitude, energy, and look that I had instilled in that piece. Also one of his stipulations was that unlike RaRO (where I had created abstract, graphic versions of the KISS personas) this time he wanted photographic representations of the four group members in full makeup. When I did RaRO I had a 12" canvas to work on. Now with CD covers and digital booklets that canvas had been reduced to less than 40% of its original size. Designing in a 4¾" space poses some very different problems from what I faced while working on covers for vinyl releases. In fact the older cover design would not have worked at that size, it's many elements would have felt crowded into a small space. So the elements of Sonic Boom had to be bigger, bolder—and fewer. I made the decision to make the title the main focus of the graphics, moving the other elements (faces, KISS logo) into prominent—but subordinate—roles.

So I set about putting pencil to paper and trying to solve this the way I solve any other design problem. I did not want to get psyched-out by thinking too much about how the new design would compare with RaRO. That cover had taken on a life of its own and had become a pop culture icon. Creating an iconic cover could not have been one of my goals. All I was capable of doing was to try to create the most compelling graphics possible within the parameters and limitations that had been set out for me. So I started out at the core of this design by creating what I call a "word constellation" out of the title. I tried to make it communicate its meaning visually by not only making it angular and "explosive", but also by creating a shape that was somewhat suggestive of flight—a "flying wing", if you will. Bearing in mind the symmetrical, mandala-like layout of RaRO I started designing the new piece as a field growing out of the center of the square, with the four members faces moving outwards from the center, and capped with my version of the ubiquitous KISS logo.

It took about a week for me to develop my sketch to the point where I felt confident in what I had come up with. As I had done with RaRO, I felt so strongly about this cover design that I decided to not present any other options—I wanted this to be the ONE.

This is the rough pencil I first presented to Paul. I held my breath as he first took it in, and then was able to exhale when I saw a big smile appear on his face.

Next: A few changes and the final art.

The Return of . . . KISS (#1)

I've been waiting a few months to be able to talk about this—and I have talked about it to some degree in a few online interviews, but not really in any detail. Back in April of this year I received a telephone call from out of the blue—from somewhere in South America. At the other end of the line was KISS' Paul Stanley. It'd been more years than I cared to remember since we last spoke. That was when I had done the cover art for "Rock and Roll Over"—KISS' 5th album and their 2nd to go Platinum. So you can understand my surprise when Paul asked if I'd be interested in designing the cover art for KISS' first studio album in 11 years—which Paul himself was producing.

That's when I started remembering how exciting it was the first time around, to have been involved in that fast-paced world of entertainment and music. For me it had been a far cry from doing the corporate logos, magazine and book covers I had been working on at the time. An "edgy" job for me then was doing a spread for High Times (yep, they've been around for a while)! I've always enjoyed the fact that doing what I do has enabled me to straddle many different design worlds, from the fairly straight to the totally off-the-wall. I always tried to say "yes" to just about anyone who was adventurous enough, and had the vision to see how having me design for them could work to their advantage. At any rate I had said "yes"to KISS the first time around (even though I had no idea what I was doing), so of course I again said yes to Paul. We agreed to meet when he returned at the conclusion of their South American tour.

Much to my surprise the "Rock and Roll Over" cover had in recent years become one of the most—if not the most—talked about piece of art in my portfolio. It was a little bewildering to me how over the years that cover had become an icon for this iconic group. I've been contacted by more people about my KISS artwork in the past 6 or 7 years than in all the years prior, and more than any other piece I've ever done including the New York Knicks logo. So the expectations for this new art I was to work on were quite high.

Next: the new cover design revealed.

Letter Cult Interview

For those of you who are interested, an extensive interview with me can be found on Letter Cult.