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Q U I R K Y
C R A F T S M A N
Work Work, Ed Fella, 2010
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ED FELLA
The quirky craftsman, is one of Detroit’s greatest graphic designers to date. He was born in 1938, and he worked as a commercial designer for 30 years.
Portrait of Ed Fella, Photography by Lucy Bates
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Lecture Announcement Poster, Ed Fella, 1993
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nce Fella started improving his craft, he started working with found typography, scribbles, brush writing,typesetting, rubdown letters, public domain clip art, stencils and much more. It was in the 60s and 70s that Fella felt that his commercial work wasn’t really getting him anywhere, and he felt the need to branch out. So he started to become very active in Detroit’s culture scene. He became the designer for the Detroit Focus Gallery. The assignments he got there gave him the push to print the kind of experimental and crazy work that he had been wanting to do. He would make posters for the events the Detroit Focus Gallery was holding, which gave him artistic freedom because he didn’t have to make them appeal to the commercial audience. These posters also helped him expand his body of work. In 1985, Fella retired from the commercial industry. A commercial artist for thirty years, he earned his nickname “The King of Zing”, because of his whimsical style. He gave up working for the commercial industry, and completed his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1987. When Fella was studying at Cranbrook, he had the freedom to explore experimental designs. His work developed in anarchic, acidic, typeface designs. This was very different from anything that was being made at the time because most graphic designers were sticking with the grid, and creating simple, clean typefaces. He became very popular in the graphic design world, especially with designers who wanted to make a claim in the design world. Fella gained a huge following by the time he was fifty.
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Letters Across America, Photography Ed Fella, 2000
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It Takes Time It Takes, Sketchbook, Ed Fella, 2004
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ella needed more to his life, he needed that spark back, so he moved out to California to teach at California’s Institute of Arts. Ed Fellas work represents deconstruction. Los Angeles was the perfect place for him to be. Surrounded by warm weather, and bright colors, he dug his feet into the graphic design fads of the century. He works the page, adding layer after layer of color into his typographic image. The weight of the acidic colors give life, and lift the type right off of the paper. Ed Fella would collect anything that might one day give him inspiration. Hoarding images, and old loose leaf papers. Putting them away in folders, or desk drawers, and to one day reveal again and get the same feeling that he had when he first spotted them. Looking at Fellas work, we can almost imagine the whirlwind of ideas going through his head at once. In his more recent work, Fella uses Prismacolor pencil, ballpoint pen, and collage. He would produce his letter-forms at just a sketchbook scale, and he would break every rule in the “graphic design book,� the materials, composition, hierarchy, and the very function of the work itself. Fella would willfully expose the constraints of the modernist system by erupting them. He would take all of the historic references for designing, and insert himself into the communication, and the narrative of his designs. He was influential to developing freelance graphic designers both personally and as a historic influence. For Fella, language is form, and type makes up the landscapes, the faces, the drawings of people. He uses type to create an image, and to tell a story without having read it.
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Bringing in the Rosies While Warming Up the Rest, Ed Fella, 2001; One Can’t Ever Figure It Out, Ed Fella, 2001
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If You’ve Got a Good Sense of Design and Good Ideas Can You Apply that to All Kinds of Media, Ed Fella, 2009
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SOURCES
http://www.edfella.com/ http://www.aiga.org/medalist-edfella/ http://www.printmag.com/interviews/words-and-images-oned-fella/ http://www.noupe.com/inspiration/showcases/getting-itwrong-edward-fella.html Fella, Edward, and Lewis Blackwell. Edward Fella: Letters on America. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2000. McFetridge, Geoff, and Edward Fella. Two Lines Align. Los Angeles, Calif.: Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, 2008.
Fella Typeface, Ed Fella, 2005
COLOPHON Designed and written by Celeste Pelletier Composed in Courier New and Helvetica Neue Printed in the U.S:TOSHIBA ColorMFP-X4 USA Copyright Š 2015 Celeste Pelletier, Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art