Type Specification: Distil 'Muscle & Iron' by Joshua Hughes-Games

Distil: Muscle & Iron — Strategy and Specification.

— — 25 1 — —

Joshua Hughes-Games

— 24 — 2—

Contents Strategy Page size Base line grid Margin set up Folios Colums set up Body font specification Indents Rag & kerning Type variations Notation / explanations Pull quotes List headers Strikethrough Chapter Titles Chapter Dividers Hand drawn type Hand drawn type manipulation Cameras

—3—

2—3 4—5 4—5 4—5 4—5 4—5 6—7 6—7 6—7 8—9 8—9 8—9 10 — 11 10 — 11 12 — 13 14 — 15 16 — 17 18 — 19 20 — 21

STR ATE GY. — 4—

Distil started as a personal search for the items in people lives that defined a moment or a choice, have the ability to re-kindle a passion or enable its advance. Or find the objects,like those in my life that remind me of my past and the experiences that I feel have shaped me. However during the time spent meeting of my chosen subjects and exploring them as creative and passionate individuals it quickly became clear to me that objects are meaningless. they’re merely memories or means to an end. I felt that it was more important for me to show the drive that goes into making someone work until his or her bones break. To shed a little light on the journeys, development & pains behind these life long struggles for mastery over a discipline. To represent my subjects words I chose a body font (Frutiger Next) that would hold their stories without imparting too much meaning or influence of its own. I coupled this with a style of brash hand drawn messy calligraphy that I hope screams the words I recorded. I also went to great pains to

—5—

make sure that my level of dedication did justice to the people that were kind enough to allow me a glance at their craft. Therefore all the imagery used was taken with various film cameras rather than digital, I learnt to use medium format cameras so as to be able to shoot portraits. All the hand drawn text is created using solutions of ink and water then scanned and edited. I also attempted to make sure that typographic handling was appropriate to each section and placement re-enforced the imagery and vice versa. And while I’m really only knocking snow of the tip of the ice berg I have found myself enthused with other peoples passion. I hope this comes across.

— 6—

Page size — Height: 288mm Width:210mm

Base line grid set up Relative to top of page Increment every 11pt

Margin set up Top: 15mm Bottom: 15mm Outside:15mm Inside: 19mm Bleed set to printer’s specifications: 2mm

Folios Frutiger Next (Medium Condensed) 8pt Colour — dependant on background either 100% Black or Paper

Column set up 12 per spread Gutter: 4mm

—7—

ecause o learn, was the f mine, y were metal nk they , ‘yeah ou pick a few this is ay the ts the ster, it

love. own,

— I played for years in a bunch of bands that never really did anything. We did a few singles, did a few 7” releases I think we did three 7” and I did a split with a guy Hugo from The Heads. It was a little experimental thing and we did a little 10” and it stared going towards an album and I was just losing faith in it and decided to knock it on the head. And I actually stopped playing for about five years, I just didn’t want to play anymore and that’s when the touring thing started and that was about ten years ago and I ended up picking up the bass all the time when I was on tour and I just missed playing it and the next thing I know I met a guy and he was just like ‘lets have a few jams’ and I just ended up playing again and then the amplifier fetish started.. (Laughing) well you know I bought an amp and you know I couldn’t get what I was trying to do out of it, and musically I was listening to, my musical tastes had really opened up as I got older as well which was a weird thing, a friend of mine Paul just got me into some really out there stuff and that really effected what I wanted to play.

Typographic Choices: Body Font Frutiger Next (Light) 8pt / 11pt Leading Colour — dependant on background either 100% Black or Paper — Chosen for its clear legibility even in its lightest variation. I also wanted to utilise a relatively neutral typeface that also creates a good contrast with the messy hand drawn text. As a large family Frutiger also has various weights and variations useful for createing clear typographic hierarchy throughout the book. (Variations used are fully explained on Pages 8 — 9,10 — 11)

Indents Each section of text is begun with an Em Dash the reasoning behind this choice was an attempt to replicate the stuttered nature of conversation and interjection.

— I was working in Replay Record shop* at the time and Neil and Hugo who used to work there always used to be hunting for really weird crazy stuff on little labels that would do like 500 copies on vinyl and stuff like that and you’d get to hear some really out there stuff, I just started thinking and I was like I want to go down that road and try and do something totally different and that pretty much was were it started or started again.

Rag & Kerning Text was justified left then massaged to create a cleaner rag.

— 8—

5. bass because actually started playing ought it would be the easiest to learn, ghing) well I’m pretty sure that was the on, there were some friends of mine, n we were teenagers and they were ng a band, they were doing a metal d and they wanted a bass I think they ted a bass player and I thought, ‘yeah uld’, because you know when you pick a bass and you can kind of pay a few t notes and its just like ‘yeah this is ght!’ I just thought yeah I’d play the s. I didn’t actually realize that its the ody hardest instrument to master, it y is a hard one.

But there’s something about it I love. it was difficult to make it my own, lay it in my own way,

mean that took me ages.

—9—

— ‘yeah, you better’ he had a real Somerset accent ‘You better come see I’ The following is concerned with passion

Please note that all text apart from titles and dividing pages have been sourced from the original recordings of conversations between

— so I said alright when should I come over? Gareth, Dan, Matthew, Charlotte and myself. He said ‘come over, come over when Blind Dates on’ I have attempted to replicate them as they were spoken. At times this has over-ridden

the rules of grammar and punctuation. Also please note that ‘Distil’ has been spelt

— I said where’d you live? He said ‘Winford’

with a singular l. This is in accordance with the British version of the word as opposed

to the American English version, spelt with a double l.

nford?

He said ‘ask any bugger they’ll know’ — an he just put the phone down.

— 10—

Notation / Explanations Frutiger Next (Light italic) 7pt / 11pt Leading Colour — dependant on background either 100% Black or Paper

Pull quotes

Frutiger Next (Bold Condensed) 34pt / 55pt leading Underline: 3pt with an offset of 25pt Colour — dependant on background either 100% Black or Paper

— 11 —

10.

Roland AP.7 Jet phaser 70’s vintage (1975)

Wattson Classic Fuzz FY-6 (Univox Superfuzz Clone)

Six way MODE selects between two clean phaser modes, and four jet modes. a combination of differently filtered distortion plus phase sounds. Also LEVEL (volume), RESONANCE of the phase and SLOW RATE. The final knob allows a “base slow speed” of the LFO of the phaser that is ramped up to maximum with a stomp of the FAST/SLOW. The take-off sound gives the Jet Phaser its signature sound.

Clone of the classic fuzz pedals from Shin-ei and Univox. stylishly captures the elusive tone of the sixties originals with fat compressed fuzz octave tones that have to be heard to be believed. A whole slew of original Univox pedals were dismantled, poked, prodded, and analyzed for R&D and comparison purposes.

MXR Distortion + M104

Vintage Roland AD-50 Double Beat Fuzz Wah (1976)

Original Roland AD-50 Double Beat Germanium-powered, soft-clipped distill | disˈtil | (Brit. distil) fuzz Wah. This pedal has a plethora distortion.Classic 70s distortion. of different vintage fuzz tones. originally designed in the 1970s verb [ trans. ] bypurify MXR (a Innovations. liquid) by vaporizing it, then condensing it by cooling the vapor, and collecting the resulting liquid : they managed to distill a quantity of water | [as adj. ] ( distilled) dip the slide in distilled water. ~ (usu. be distilled) make (something, esp. liquor or an essence) in this Boss OverDrive Freeze Electro Harmonix way ODB-3: : whiskeyBass is distilled from a mash of grains | [as n. ] ( distilling) the (Sound Retainer Effects Pedal) distilling industry. ~ extract the essence of (something) by heating it with a solvent. An~ overdrive designed to cover it during remove (aeffect volatile constituent) of a mixture by Trigger using heat : coal the decay portion the frequency range bass a guitar chord and it will loop the tarentire is made by distilling outof the volatile products of in coal. guitars, 5 - figurative string basses. sound to form an indefinite, smooth ~ (oftenincluding be distilled) extract the essential meaning or most Overdriven be blended sounding important sounds aspects can of : my travel notes were distilled into adrone, book with | [as an almost organ with bass signal maximum like very usable sound, with adj.dry ] ( distilled) thefor report is a distilled version of thequality. main accounts. clarity and punch. end :of loop glitches. ~ [ intrans. ] poetic/literary emanate as a vapor orno in giveaway minute drops she drew back from the dank breath that distilled out of the earth.

Fender Classics Series Phaser Pedal Fender FuzzEnglish Pedal : from Latin distillare, ORIGINBlender late Middle variant of destillare, from de- ‘down, away’ + stillare (from stilla ‘a drop’). The classic and coveted Fender Blender fuzz pedal in all its vintage-style growling glory, ’70s-era good looks combined with volume, sustain, tone and blend controls. — 12— Boss Space Echo

70’s era re-issue phaser pedal.

List headers (pg.16) Frutiger Next (bold) 8pt / 11pt leading Colour — 100% Black

10.

Strikethrough. Frutiger Next (Light) 8pt / 11pt Leading Strikethrough: 3pt with an offset of -2.5pt Colour — Paper

— 13 —

DOW NTON — 14—

11.

Chapter Titles Duke (FILL) ~ ALL CAPS 188pt / 225 pt leading Colour — Paper

— Chosen for its impact at large sizes and its angular aesthetic that create a harsh contrast with the rest of the content that follows it. The font needed to draw clear attention to the fact that a new section of the book had started this was also helped with chapter dividers (explained on pages 14 — 15.)

— 15 —

12.

Chapter Dividers Bauer Bodoni (Black Italic) 1000pt Colour — 100% Black

— Used to divide the book into its four chapters. I wanted a typeface that was totally different from the two choices I had made for body/titles. I also wanted something that I could utilise its features to create a bold divider. Bodoni’s Black Italic variation had interesting structure as well as working well at large sizes.

— 16—

3. 12.

— 17 —

13.

14.

— 18—

13.

— Hand drawn text throughout the book was created with a thin solution of water and ink. Neat ink was then dropped into the light grey trace. The ink disperses along the drawn lines and creates an unpredictable element to the text’s creation. Once dried the text was then scanned at 400dpi to retail all fine detail and manipulated to suit the images (explained on pages 18 — 19)

14.

— Certain sections of hand drawn text were also manipulated during the scanning process. In these cases the drawn text was dragged across the face of the scanner whilst scanning. This was done to reflect the text’s content or impair legibility.

— 19 —

15.

— 20—

15.

Drawn type editing

— Text layers were added and fitted to the images in Photoshop and manipulated to suit the aesthetic and mood of the section or photo in particular. Using editing light adjustments, opacity and filters I tried to create a range of subtle & bold uses of the hand drawn text to reinforce certain pull quotes, ideas or a feeling of the interview or subject.

— 21 —

— 22—

16. Two Cameras were used to capture the images for Distil

Olympus OM-1 with 50mm f/1.8 lens (all mechanical SLR) Fully manual — 35mm Film used was a mixture of out of date film stock (streched and damaged to create the distressed look in some photos) and various brands of 35mm

Zenza Bronica with stock lens Fully manual — Medium format film Used mainly for portrait and close up work the Bronica’s depth of field allowed me to capture some amazingly beautiful moments.

— 23 —

‘Sic Vos Non Vobis’

— 24—

— 25 26— —

— 26—