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LOUISE FILI
If you’ve ever seen a package of Tate’s cookies or a jar of Sarabeth’s jam, bought a cup of gelato from L’Arte del Gelato or eaten at Artisanal, The Mermaid Inn, or Pearl Oyster Bar, you’ve seen Louise Fili’s work. Interview by Amanda Shapiro W hen Louise Fili sits down to create a restaurant logo, she pencils the restaurant’s name over and over on tracing paper until, many pages later, a design is born. It’s a process that seems more like pottery or psychic channeling: “I’m writing the words and letting them speak to me,” she says. We see logos so often that we hardly notice them. If a restaurant’s name or a package at the grocery store catches our eye, we rarely think about why. The best logos are as familiar as people we’ve known our whole lives— Hershey’s, Campbell’s, Quaker. We can picture them instantly, and we can’t imagine them looking any other way.
or Pearl Oyster Bar, you’ve seen Louise Fili’s work. She’s the genius behind hundreds of beloved food and restaurant logos, and her style—heavily influenced by early-20th-century European signage
If you’ve ever seen a package of Tate’s cookies or a jar of Sarabeth’s jam, bought a cup of gelato from L’Arte del Gelato or eaten at Artisanal, The Mermaid Inn,
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who’d settled in New Jersey. She thought everyone’s parents spent every morning debating what to eat for dinner that night. Her dad, a school teacher, worked in their large garden throughout the summer, harvesting the vegetables that ended up on their dinner plates. More than any one food, it’s the freshness of that produce that Fili remembers most.
For a while, Fili designed book
with its bold colors and elegant scripts—is instantly recognizable once you know where to look.
covers for Pantheon, and in 1989 she decided to start her own graphic design company so she could focus on “the only three things” she cared about: food, type, and Italy.
When Fili was a toddler, she would
Some people urged her not to
carve letters into the wooden wall behind her bed. She didn’t know what the letters meant but she was fascinated with the shapes. Her parents were Italian immigrants
name her business after herself because she was a woman, but she did anyway. “I wanted to send a clear message. If you have a problem with me being female
LOUISE FILI is a New York-based graphic designer and founder of Louise Fili Ltd. Formerly senior designer for Herb Lubalin, Louise was art director of Pantheon Books from 1978 to 1989, where she designed close to 2,000 book jackets. Louise has taught and lectured on graphic design and typography and her work is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and the Bibliothèque Nationale.
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then I have a problem with you being my client,” says Fili. “I’m sure I lost jobs that way but I wouldn’t have wanted them.”
For a while, Fili designed book covers for Pantheon, and in 1989 she decided to start her own graphic design company so she could focus on “the only three things” she cared about: food, type, and Italy.
“
Sarabeth’s Jam
Some people urged her not to name her business after herself because she was a woman, but she did anyway. “I wanted to send a clear message. If you have a problem with me being female then I have a problem with you being my client,” says Fili. “I’m sure I lost jobs that way but I wouldn’t have wanted them.”
Fili learned to manage these intense clients, almost all of whom were men. (The majority of restaurant chefs were, and still are, male.) “Dealing with a male chef, it’s all about ego,” says Fili. “But it’s also all about perfectionism, and I’m a perfectionist too. I try to make them understand that we both have the same goal.” She’s also learned when to say no. “If they’re total narcissists, I say forget it.”
“
It wasn’t until she got to Skidmore College that Fili realized her obsession with drawing letters and collecting old signs could be a career. “In those days, nobody even knew what graphic design was. They called it ‘commercial art’ which was pretty unsexy,” she told me as we walked around a new solo exhibit of her work at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts, where she also teaches. When Fili was a senior, her graduation project was a hand-lettered cookbook of the simple dishes she’d grown up eating like pasta marinara and vegetable antipasti.
Her first restaurant client was across the street from her Manhattan studio. The restaurant didn’t last long, but the owner hired her for his second venture, and his third, and his fourth. “I learned right away that restaurants are the business most likely to fail in New York City,” she said. All that churn meant more work for Fili, but also constant exposure to the highs and lows of life as a chef.
YOUR LOGO SUCKS. CALL LOUISE AND HAVE HER FIX IT RIGHT NOW.
LOUISE FILI
Louise Fili reinvented book jacket design in the 1980s during her eleven-year tenure as art director of Pantheon Books. Louise may never have known that all the assistant designers, myself included, collected her covers like baseball cards, since we guarded our stashes like they were all Mickey Mantles and would never have traded unless we had doubles.
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Now, Fili is a legend in both the food and design worlds. Here’s a look behind the scenes of four of her most iconic logos. In 2005, Sarabeth Levine, the founder of Sarabeth’s, a beloved Manhattan café that also sells jams, coffee, and other specialty foods, hired Fili to update her logo. Levine was nervous about making a change after 25 years with the same label. In this case she kept the oval shape and the general style of the lettering. The result was a cleaner version of the familiar. “I think a lot of people somehow had a higher regard for the product [after the change] and they didn’t even know why,” said Fili. In 2002, the founder of the Long Island-based cookie company Tate’s hired Fili to design packaging and a logo for the brand. The founder had scrapped two designs already. “The packaging just didn’t look like food,” Fili said. She kept the
distinctive green color from a past version and designed a typeface that communicated elegance and delicacy. “The cookies were supposed to be the best on the market, and they were very refined. Fragile too! I wanted to communicate that.” (In 2014, Tate’s was sold to an investment company that changed the logo yet again.) “Your logo sucks. Call Louise and have her fix it right now.” That’s what Sarabeth’s owner Levine said to her friend Francesco Realmuto in 2009, according to Fili. She leveled with the owner of the Sicilian gelato shop, Italian-to-Italian. “I said I’d never walk into a gelateria with a logo like that.” The wide stripes and the puffy ice cream scoops had to go, she said. She wanted the logo to convey feelings of happiness and nostalgia, so she took inspiration from wrapping papers from Italian pastry shops and type from 1930s Italian signs.
Fili designed three options with different shapes. Luckily, she and Realmuto agreed on the winner. “I usually push a little bit toward the one I like the best,” she says. Oh, and her contract includes free gelato for the rest of her life. Total. Power. Move. Fili now has two other designers working out of her Manhattan studio. She still works personally with every client the company takes on, in addition to teaching and making her own projects, like a book of Italian signs that she photographed herself, and another of signs in Paris. Despite her love of all things European, Fili says she’s destined to be a lifelong New Yorker: “I’ll always have a table here.”
tate’s bake shop
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01
TYPE TIPS
13 TYPOGRAPHY FAUX PAS
AVOID BAD PUNCTUATION AND TYPE-CRIMES AT YOUR NEW JOB, WHO NEEDS THAT TYPE OF ATTENTION?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
TWO SPACES BETWEEN SENTENCES
DUMB QUOTES INSTEAD OF SMART QUOTES
FAILING TO TUCK PUNCTUATION INSIDE QUOTES
USING A HYPHEN INSTEAD OF AN EN DASH
LARGE AMOUNTS OF REVERSED TYPE
FAILING TO ELIMINATE WIDOWS
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INDENTING A PARAGRAPH TOO FAR
8 9 10 11 12 13
INCONSISTENT LEADING
NEGATIVE LETTERSPACING
HORIZONTALLY SCALED TYPE
STACKING LOWERCASE LETTERS
FAILING TO USE LIGATURES
FAILING TO USE ACCENT MARKS
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01
ED BENGUIAT HEROES
A MAN OF LETTERS
B
orn in Brooklyn, New York, Edward Benguiat got acquainted with design and showcard lettering when he was nine years old. His father was display director at Bloomingdale’s and he had all the drawing tools a little boy could want. Edward would play with his father’s pens, brushes, and drafting sets, and learned about sign painting, showcard and speedball lettering.
Education Ed received the usual education. During World War II, he wasn’t old enough to enter the armed service, so with a forged photostat of his birth certificate, he enlisted in the Army. After his stint in the Air Corps he traded his airplane control stick for drumsticks and continued the burgeoning percussionist career he had started before the war.
Music Career Ed became established as a talented progressive Jazz musician under the name Eddie Benart, and played with numerous big bands such as Stan Kenton, Claude Thornhill and Woody Herman, but preferred the New York gigs on 52nd Street, particularly at The Three Deuces. “It kept me in town; going on the road with big bands was a drag, and tough.” During that time a Metronome magazine poll picked Ed as the number three sideman/drummer in America.
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At the School of Visual Arts
Where about thirty years ago Silas Rhodes gave him a job—Ed compares graphic design and typography to the rhythm and balance of a musical composition. While playing on 52nd Street, Ed made use of the G.I. Bill and enrolled at the Workshop School of Advertising Art. He wanted to draw nudes like some of the well-known illustrators. His drawing teacher advised him to quit. Benguiat persisted. His first job as an illustrator was as a cleavage retoucher for a movie magazine. “You might think I was adding to the bust. No way! I was taking the cleavage away,” he said, indicating the reaction of the motion picture industry to the crackdown on obscenity in movies. It was obvious that Ed couldn’t draw too well, so he went in the direction of layout, design, typography, and calligraphy. He became Paul Standard’s prodigy. Once out of school, Ed established an impressive career as a designer and art director at a number of large and small publishing houses, studios, and ad agencies. Opening his own firm did not take too long. Enter Photo-Lettering Inc. and Ed Ronthaler. They saved Ed’s life financially by making him art director. One way or another, just about everyone in the graphic community has had some contact with Ed. He’s a neighborhood guy. Admittedly, most know him as the guy who sat in his cramped, cluttered office on 45th Street that had just enough room to swing his pen or brush.
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HEROES
“ [TYPEFACES] ARE LIKE YOUR CHILDREN. YOU HAVE ONE CHILD AND YOU SAY, “THAT’S MY FAVORITE”, BUT YOU DON’T LET ANYBODY KNOW IT. YOU HAVE TO KEEP IT TO YOURSELF.” Typography
Professor Benguiat
Ed became a partner with Lubalin in the development of U&lc, lTC’s award-winning magazine, and the creation of new typefaces such as Tiffany, Benguiat, Benguiat Gothic, Korinna, Panache, Modern No. 216, Bookman, Caslon No. 225, Barcelona, Avant Garde Condensed, and many more. This added to the more than 400 faces he’d already created for Photo-Lettering. With Herb Lubalin Ed eventually became vice president of ITC until its sale to Esselte Ltd. Ed continues to design faces for lTC, including, most recently, Edwardian Script. He is also known for his designs or redesigns of the logotypes for Esquire, The New York Times, McCall’s, Reader’s Digest, Photography, Look, Sports Illustrated, The Star Ledger, The San Diego Tribune, Garamond AT&T, A&E, Estée Lauder, U&lc…the list goes on and on. You name it, he’s done it.
-is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a past president of the Type Directors Club. In 1990, he received the gold medal for excellence from the New York Type Directors Club, and won the prestigious Fredric W. Goudy Award. Benguiat continues a busy lecture and exhibit circuit that takes him to Paris, Berlin, Brazil, Slovenia, London, Chicago, Washington, and New York, where he is an instructor at The School of Visual Arts. In 1995, SVA honored him with Teacher of the Year.
Benguiat has a beef. It’s that too many young designers substitute technology for talent. “Too many people think that they’ve got a Mac and they can draw a logo or a typeface. You have to learn to draw first. The computer won’t do it for you”. Although he laments that student designers show more interest in learning the computer than mastering the art of designing letterforms, Benguiat is growing optimistic about the technology behind computer-assisted type design.
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ED BENGUIAT American’s most prolific typographer and lettering artist. Benguiat has crafted over 600 typeface designs, here are just a few of his gems...
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30 UNDER 30
TOP YOUNG GRAPHIC DESIGNERS TO WATCH FOR. JENNIFER BROWN
What is Graphic Design? Graphic Design, now what does that mean to you? Being a Graphic Designer isn’t about being creative and it isn’t about being better than anyone else. It’s about getting involved. I’ve have been studying Graphic Design for 6 years now and if you know me I am not the competitive type. I grew up in a small neighborhood with the clothes on my back. Many students around me wanted to be a doctor or a nurse and here I am becoming an artist. When you think of art, you think of drawing in a sketchbook or coloring in pictures, but it’s definitively more than that. After starting out only learning the basics in Photoshop and Illustrator I knew it was going to be an on going challenge. After years of being in the Graphic Design field many facility members along with students have told me that the field is very competitive, but that didn’t stand in my way. I took it to a whole different level. Graphic Design made me take it to a whole different level. From going to museums all the time to studying art on my own. I wanted to stand out and Graphic Design allows me to do that.
Perseverance As a young Graphic Designer I had wonderful opportunities given to me by my professors and mentors. By taking trips and going into the city
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or even hosting different events. I loved doing all sort of actvities. How do you think it would make you feel? I could tell you, rewarding.
Education After my first year at Farmingdale, I finally got into high gear and started pushing my way through a lot. I grew with the students that were in my classes and studied Graphic Design constantly. I typically found myself studying all sorts of different programs and volunteering at local events. Graphic Design was definitively a passion of mine. Early in my years I knew that I couldn’t slack off. In my family I was the odd one out and I didn’t have time to sit down and play videogames anymore or even hangout with my friends as much as I liked. Graphic Design took over my life for that period of my life. Over the years I’ve learned to manage my time wisely and my desire for Graphic Design has increased over the years. I’ve pursed a couple of internships and became the President of Design Club at Farmingdale State College. I hope one day I would be able to complete my degree as a Graphic Designer and continue my degree as an instructor for those studying Graphic Design in the near future.
GIFT OF
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IT IS WHAT YOU DO WITH THE
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Ed Benguiat, A man of letters Steven Hellertalks with David Senior about THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY 40 Biggest Influential Designs A Type House Divided
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SPRING 2017
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The one who wields the sword wields the power
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Avenir, Jennifer Brown
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NEW TYPE
TYPEFACES OR FONT?
SOME NEW DESIGNS WITH AN OLD TWIST.
my monospaced unicase typeface font
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Designed by Jennifer Brown
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MARKER HAND MY MONOSPACED UNICASE TYPEFACE AND FONT
ABCDEFG HIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZ 1234567890 !"
Paper Thin My Monospace, Unicase Typography and FonT
aBcdeFghiJklm nopqrsTuvwxyz 1234567890 ,.!? Diana Chetnik
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