Types by Display November 13– December 13, 2014 Columbia College A+D Gallery
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A+D Gallery at Columbia College Chicago presents
Types by Display November 13— December 13, 2014
Types Claire Keys
Fernweh German; feeling homesick for a place you have never been to MARCH 2, 2006
This will likely be my last time writing, at least for a while.
Typography, and its many types, is instrumental in communicating things of all types. In the visual world that makes up much of our information age, types of letters, types of words, types of language, types of meanings, types of stories, and so on, all gain significance by way of typography.
Daniel called last night, and again just now, wanting to meet in the garden and share a bottle of red. I haven’t answered. Mom’s just come home and getting settled in—tired, but seemingly herself. Smiling, quieter. Pop says she wants nothing but her white and red quilt and green tea steeped with too much honey.
Ya’aburnee Arabic; literal translation: “you bury me”; one’s hope that they will die before another, as life without them is unbearable to imagine MARCH 1, 2006
Types, a site-specific exhibition designed by Display, a revolving design collective and artistic rubric led by Katherine Walker with Ken Frederick, presents an exploration of typography as it embodies multiple methods of literary and visual communication, including print design, signage, environmental graphics, and more. Using writer Claire Keys’ fictional vignettes featuring untranslatable foreign words as inspirational content, Display has transformed the gallery space into a physically all-encompassing installation to demonstrate typography’s incredible ability to simultaneously encompass the linguistic, literary, and visual arts.
I, Richard, take you, my darling Fiona I, Fiona, take you, my handsome Richard Mom and Dad; Muncie, Indiana, 1976
Komorebi Japanese; the sort of scattered, dappled light effect that happens when sunlight shines in through trees APRIL 2005, SOMEWHERE IN SCOTLAND
He took me to this quiet wood, over a hill—it just opened up from nothing when we stepped between two trees. We were there all afternoon, eating fruit and sharing a bottle of something I’d never bring, all nervous of each other. There’s this Jane Hirshfield poem I keep thinking of: It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books—
Seen, Not Spoken: Notes on Display and Its Types Jamilee Polson Lacy, Curator of Types by Display
At its simplest, typography is concerned with the structuring and arranging of visible language. Its real estate includes type design, which is the creation of units to be organized, the characters of which then make up a typeface. Type form materializes through dramatic alterations to singular characters within the typeface or single units contained within the type design. A true composite (constituted by a tricky nomenclature), typography functions to convey messages not always inherent in language. The why and the how of typography’s ability to deliver messages that might otherwise get lost must be bifurcated. The first part of the why and the how revolves around typography’s appearance, its look, and its overall style. These things differ according to the time and place, the design problem, and of course, the designer. At times typography may play a secondary, nearly invisible role. At others, it may dominate, reflecting the inspiration of the designer and on occasions such as this one, may lay claim to being ‘art’. The second part of the why and the how concerns the practicalities of working with typography, such as legibility, scale and formatting, and how these issues represent or even transcend the linguistics at hand. Types by Display—a revolving collective of contemporary artists, graphic designers, and writers who call themselves after ‘display type,’ which is a page’s top feature or headline font— plots these two parts on their own two courses. The two courses squiggle, twist, and wander, each diverging from and intersecting with that which concerns what W.J.T. Mitchell originally argues is a visual turn, or the “pictorial turn,” in contemporary culture and theory. The cultural reality of the pictorial turn can perhaps be clarified by comparison to the average computer screen: a glowing, ever-changing plane of symbols, emblems, pictography, ideography, and more, which makes linguistic statements and forms of communication nearly redundant. Mere words ordered into sentences and paragraphs, whether spoken aloud or read internally, are nowadays found practically only where they themselves are the most concise and effective communiqué. This reality sheds light on Display’s convergence of typography, literary form, and fine and graphic art to compose Types because the group simultaneously uses language—in this instance, a poetic set of singularly untranslatable foreign words taken from author Claire Keys’ hauntingly beautiful text—and also forgoes language—opting instead for simple representational markers, i.e. turning to the pictorial—in ways demonstrating that whatever is on the page, the computer screen, or the wall should be understood as the most
concise possible method for delivering the information at hand. In doing so, Display merges various disciplinary methods into various tableaus, each one carefully examining and thoughtfully portraying the layered meanings of some of the world’s most complex terms. Though many of the works in the Types exhibition address each word’s context, clarifying it through the visual simplification and manipulation of typography, each work also strengthens and draws upon the relationship of typography with its predecessor, pictography. Moreover, Display unabashedly highlights the most obvious connections between the two—references to letters and texts as geometric patterns or everyday representations are abundant in the work, as are textual illusions to the handmade mark or brushstroke. The pictorial turn is in full effect because these texts and precipitate offspring are not to be read, they are to be viewed. All art, however it is made, results from the perception and observation of relationships and their dialectical offspring. Like the work of some of modern and contemporary art and design’s most relevant visual linguists—think Sister Corita Kent, Milton Glaser, Mike Parker, Kay Rosen, Ed Ruscha, Stefan Sagmeister, Lawrence Weiner, and more—the true nature of Display’s artistic program resides in the indefinability of its activity. Questions like, “Is it graphic design? Is it literature? Is it visual art?” remain incredibly important in that they simultaneously exist, but ultimately answering such questions is much less interesting than asking them. And so, it would be rather pointless, futile even, to distinguish the roles taken on by the individuals of this collective as it is entirely clear that typography, as both literal and figurative form, has served as the group’s impetus for gathering the energies of writers, artists, designers, and even this curator. It seems more worthwhile to use the occasion of Types to consider this question: Does typography, an essential tool of both graphic designers and fine artists, and its subsects allow for an experimental approach at all? The alphabet by its very nature is dependent on and defined by conventions. Type design that is not bound by convention is like a private language: both can lack the ability to communicate broadly. Yet it is precisely the constraints of the alphabet which inspire many artists, designers, and the members of Display, who work in a light turned on by Wolfgang Weingart, one of the most revered alphabet manipulators in the world. A Swiss type designer whose life’s work has been to investigate the limits of legibility while reducing the basic forms of the
AIGA Chicago Mentor Program Event Presented by Mentor Chair Monina Velarde and Frances MacLeod Thursday, December 4, 5:30–7:30pm — A special event added to the Fall 2014 AIGA Chicago Mentor Program and designed just for A+D Gallery’s audience, this program brings together a community of creatives to help both students and others who aspire to have a career in the graphic arts. Attendees discuss and develop their portfolio and resume with distinguished AIGA mentors/industry specialists, learn best business practices for freelancing, to broaden their professional networks, and more. — For more information and to RSVP please contact Monina Velarde at monina@chicago.aiga.org.
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alphabet through brutal simplification, Weingart performs typographic experiments based on an intimate understanding of the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic functions of typography. Going against grain of ‘traditional’ Swiss typography focused primarily on the syntactical, Weingart became interested early on in how far the graphic qualities of typography can be pushed and still retain their meaning. The emotionally charged lines of his letters, the still-life look of his type, and the almost cinematic impact of his layouts, all demonstrate the man’s commitment to basic typographic form combined with an infinite willingness to test the limits of visual systems. Display’s work too experiments with some of typography’s simplest forms to succinctly communicate that which is incommunicable by mere words. But those familiar with Display and the creative productions of its individual members, will know that overly ornate type fonts are rarely employed. Yes, the group remains keenly aware that too much tweak of the serif there or trimming of the terminal here could disrupt the balance and tenor of an entire story. Instead, they usually incorporate minimalistic fonts that, though they may resemble many things you have seen or read before, uniquely demonstrate the high risks and big payoffs of designing and experimenting with fonts that max out simplicity. Such is the case in every part of the Types exhibition. These seemingly plain fonts come together to make up sprawling layouts and large-scale graphics, which eventually become a visual and conceptual linear composition. Thusly, the diversely themed set of diary entries within Keys’ inventively disjointed narrative develops into something that must be looked at, not merely read, if one is to fully grasp its meaning. Speaking of linearity, lines—actual lines, timelines, narrative lines, and more—play an incredibly important part in this exhibition. Lines in some of the most graphic works, like Tsundoku and Callucino, allow the viewer to experience both linear and cyclical time. The former encourages the viewer to follow the lines of the narrator’s zigzagging journey, while the complex concentric circles of the latter allude to a swirling index finger and recreate the dizzying feeling of an instant crush, embodying the head-spinning timelines inherent in extended travel. These compositions do a real trick because obviously, an unknown word from an unknown language does not conjure much of a visceral response when randomly heard or read. Such a word might roll off the tongue nicely, or even ring somehow true through the air, but unlike an image, words lacking comprehensive definition or situational context offer too little to the imagination. An image however, does motivate the mind, usually through representation, association, and style. Display, being steeped within visual culture, knows this well. This is why the group turns typography to imagery and imagery to poetry. They create a new language that is entirely comprehensible regardless of the viewer’s actual fluency.
These visual and conceptual linearities also enable color, shapes, and symbols to fold interchangeably into the typographical configurations, imbuing the installation with the sometimes passionate (Cafuné), sometimes cute (Age-Otori), sometimes heart-wrenching (Ya’aburnee), sometimes reflective (Koev Halev), quality of the word and the person employing it. This manifest interchangeability brings to mind the experimental post-modernist author Italo Calvino. Calvino, like Display, was so interested in the transposing of words, symbols and images that he presented a series of lectures dedicated to the matter at Harvard University titled, “Six Memos for the Next Millennium.” Similar to the myriad drawing, digital, and printmaking methods at a graphic artist or typographer’s disposal, these memos function as a set of tools—lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity—with which a writer, or any narrative maker for that matter, can create dynamic, clear pictures without overusing imagery or getting lost in the details of words. The memo on visibility presents a lucid meditation on the importance of enabling vision through literature, and vice versa, using visual devices (i.e. visual references, design, typography, et cetera) to unshackle the literary from its own verbosity. Each subsequent memo outlines how the visual properties of language—both in reality, which refers to the way language looks on the page or surface, and in the mind’s eye of the reader—pull together the puzzle of any narrative by linking the acts of reading and looking, and Calvino further demonstrates such in a number of his own stories. The fast-paced changes of time and setting in the author’s If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979) has strong correlations to the Types installation in that they both require the reader to glean a sense of order through unorthodox symbols and text patterns. Likewise, the writer’s Cosmicomics story “A Sign in Space,” makes the reader follow the unrecognizable being that is QfwfQ as he wings his way through the galaxies developing the universe’s first semiotics and graffiti by marking and erasing all over the cosmos’ surfaces to outdo his nemesis, KgwgK. Ironically, QfwfQ and KgwgK themselves have no form; they are but “a voice, a point of view, a human eye (or a wink) projected into reality,” yet their names, like the untranslatable words in Types, are meant to be seen, not spoken. In its finality, Types is Display’s memos on what it really is to compose with typography. And just like QfwfQ and KgwgK, Types is meant to be seen, not spoken.
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Art + Science (form versus meaning, meaning versus form) Lecture by Display writer Claire Keys Saturday, December 6, 2–3pm — Claire Keys, the author of the imaginative tale utilized by Display for the Types installation, discusses the full range of her experimental, literary and commercial projects, and talks at length about the inherently collaborative relationship between writer and designer. Typography Workshop Presented by Frances MacLeod Saturday, December 13, 2–4pm — A crash course in the essentials of typography, this workshop exposes participants to the vast creative, commercial and experimental possibilities of typography. — Space is limited to 15 participants, thus RSVP is required. Please RSVP directly to A+D Gallery by emailing adgallery@colum.edu. Participants must bring their own laptop installed with Adobe Illustrator.
Display is a revolving collective of contemporary artists, graphic designers, and other interdisciplinary cultural producers founded by Katherine Walker. Ken Frederick lives and works in San Francisco, California. Currently, he is a creative lead at Google’s Brand Studio. Additionally, he is part of a Munich collective producing works at the intersection of music, interaction, and technology. Previously, he was an associate creative director at frog in Munich, Germany, and worked at KMS-Team in Munich, Germany, and Landor in San Francisco. He has lead and developed print, brand identities, and packaging systems for a variety of clients, including Audi, Siemens, Barclays, and Old Spice, among others. Frederick holds a design degree from Northern Kentucky University, and attended the Fachhochschule München in Munich, Germany. http://kennethfrederick.de
So yesterday, I made a point of going on a walk. I knew where I wanted to walk, so I actually taxied over because it rained for most of the morning—but! I digress: I followed Waverly passed 5th and 6th avenue, following its squiggled vein deep into the village. I meant to call Mom and Maggie both during my walk, but never felt right. On some perfect corner (meant to write it down; little west 4th maybe?) I came across a tiny jewel box of a shop, two front windows collaged from top to bottom with paperback sleeves from old cookbooks, taped together, their overlapping corners highlighted when the sun passed through. There was a small piece of paper taped: But first, coffee. Around the corner; to return promptly in 10 minutes. I lifted the copper mailbox slot in the door, like Alice in Wonderland or something. I could smell the dust, making itself comfortable on pink, purple, blue-and-white checkered spines, thick red, thin white— hundreds of old cookbooks sleeping in the tiny space. The Joy of Cooking. The Complete Julia Child. The Art of Simple. Martha Stewart Presents: A Comprehensive Guide To Hors D’oeuvres. Sauces & Gastriques Made Simple. Mom would love it—such an exquisite set of hands in the kitchen; and me, always a total mess. I sat on the stoop and lit a cigarette. It had been the perfect time to call, but I don’t know. I waited about 20 minutes. The sun on my shoulders and ankles felt so good, stinging—some proof I’d been out and active. After a while (no shop owner), I finally got up and wandered home—I’d meant to take 10th street back, but just took Waverly instead, passing by the same brownstones and bistros, setting up for the alfresco dinner rush. Plates for olive oil, water pitchers, a comprehensive presentation of hors d’oeuvres. I didn’t bring my credit card and had no cash left for a cab, so I walked for an hour and a half to get back to Orchard. I thought of all the food, all the dishes, thousands of hours stirring, the stoves on fire, the failures and surprising triumphs that sit contained and untouched in that room. Shrimp stuffed with crab, stewed tomatoes, hericot vert (sp??), perfect little cakes and mousses and soufflés—they’ll never get made.
DECEMBER 23, 2004, HOME
Tonight Nora, Kit, and I drank warm beer under Kit’s parents’ carport in the snow, falling backward in our broken, bowing plastic patio chairs with laughter over ex-boyfriends and what’s become of everyone from the summer we worked at the amusement park, now a cemetery of halted roller coasters and collapsed tents. This visit home has been strange, has me wondering if I should even come back in April like we talked about. Everything feels smaller. Kit’s pregnant and Nora proposed to Jacqueline last night at her grandmother’s 80th birthday party. Kit got drunk and made me try her ring on. We couldn’t get it off and Jack yelled at us both when he pulled up in his truck. He told her to get her fat ass in the car. Before she left, both of the girls said something about hating the holidays and getting back to real life. Something about knowing they’ll never have what they want, really. Maybe it’s just all this snow, extra heavy this year says the weatherman.
Tsundoku
OCTOBER 5, 2004, NY
I’ve been meaning to be on foot more. It’s so easy to shift from train platform to taxi to taxi to Times Square circus here. I’m taking in more than I can process, but there’s no breath. No pause. New York is such a weird, tattered beauty of a town. It reminds me of a hundred different women fighting for attention: the red smudge of lipstick in Times Square, the vamp of the theater district, Hell’s Kitchen’s sweat, the pearly sheen of uptown’s cream and grey towers. They never stop screaming at each other. Anyway, I really am liking it more. Mom says I haven’t been calling enough, and she can tell something’s off. It’s felt schizophrenic, but the moment I’m home eating fish and rice on my cot of a bed in my room of a home, I’m ready to go back out, into something. Side note: I did not tell her about John. She still thinks we’re going to that wedding in Rhode Island (Connecticut?) together before Thanksgiving.
Cafuné Brazilian Portuguese; the act of tenderly running one’s fingers through another’s hair NOVEMBER 2, 2005, FRANCE
To do: Write back to letter (it came three days ago) Market Book flight home (dad’s dates?) Sort photos Ask Lu to patch ceiling Type up, print, and frame this. Put a second in the mail: i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite a new thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which I will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh...And eyes big love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill of under me you quite so new e.e. cummings
Ilunga Tshiluba (Southwest Congo); one who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate the second, but never the third FEBRUARY 28, 2005, LONDON
Mom says fool me once, shame on you fool me twice shame on me fool me once shame on you fool me once shame on me fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on you fool me once shame on you
Age-Otori
shame on you shame on you fool me once shame on you shame on us shame on you, shame on you, shame on you, shame on you shame on you
Japanese; to look worse after a haircut JANUARY 2006, MUNCIE, IN
I ran into John at the Rite-Aid off interstate 3 today. I was picking up Mom’s Rx and some discount chardonnay since it’s such a hurry up and wait situation. I’d been texting with Daniel in the checkout line, huge stupid grin on my face. I was just in one of those good moods. I even picked up a tub of that automatic shaving cream stuff to try out, since we’re thinking about going to the lake next month. (I feel like other women use it?) I gracefully held it behind my back. John looked terrible—pale and paunchy, sort of this nervous, unsure version of his former self. His cadence was awkward and he kept looking away, diverting his eyes toward the photo center. He’s home to take his new girlfriend to her community college dance. He had this big blood spot on his neck from shaving that he’d clearly missed. Our entire conversation, I just kept thinking of blotting it.
Culaccino Italian; the mark left on a table by a moist glass
Japanese; the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piling it together with other such unread books
As he swirled his index finger on the inside of my wrist, I gave him my address here in Paris, told him to write. We’ll see, we’ll see.
Perhaps I’ll go back tomorrow. Koev Halev Hebrew; empathizing with someone so deeply (often in silence) that it causes your heart to ache
OCTOBER 5, 2005, FRANCE
Even if I tried to explain this in full, I could not. Laurel and I wanted to go away for the long weekend—we only have so many left—so we took the train to Naples. Laurel’s so taken with food. She turns a tomato and a basil leaf into the silkiest, sweetest sauce, so naturally, she sought out a proper dinner spot and reserved a table for two. We arrived and of course, the trattoria was packed, people drinking red wine in short glasses and smoking cigarettes in the street. No Laurel written down in their book, nowhere to sit. A stout man poured us two glasses and motioned toward the sidewalk, where we stood for a while, debating if we should go, embarrassingly unfolding our map, turning it upside down.
L’appel Du Vide French; the call of the void; an instinctive urge to jump from a high place AUGUST 4, 2006
Considering everything, Dad really wanted me —all of us—to take advantage of summer’s end. “Please, don’t worry about the money. Go with your friend, just please call and do check in often. Do something to crack a goddamn smile on your face, or I’ll go mad.” I’ve been thinking a lot about control lately. What happens to us, what happens to others, the weird, happenstance ugliness that just falls out of the sky, and all the good wonder that surprises us—but instead of falling, that seems to sprout up from beneath. I wonder about what I’m doing wrong, what might come together just right later on. I feel like I’m disappointing Dad by being sad—like it’s the most unwarranted emotional reaction to death. Everyone talks about honoring your mother, honoring your mother, she wouldn’t want to see you like this. I think that’s why me and Laurel decided to go cliff jumping. It was so good to see her face—like not a day had gone by, but I’m sure she could read change and fatigue and shit all over mine. So, here we are, poised on top of this cragged rock, ready to fling our bodies into the sea. And it was the best moment, jutting out toward that blue line where the light sky meets the dark water. No control, just falling.
Then a finger pushes down on the top of the map, like a tiny flesh-colored ship, tearing through the Mediterranean Sea, gently forcing a lightning bolt rip right through it.
“What if we hit a rock?” I asked. (I almost bailed.) “We’ve all hit rocks.”
I don’t remember a lot more—he asked us to sit, ordered a thousand things. He told me a joke that made me laugh:
Swedish; the roadlike reflection of the moonlight on the water
“How do you make holy water? Boil the hell out of it.”
Dearest journal, I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long. I’ve just gotten back from a very long trip.
I remember him lighting my cigarette when the espresso came to the table with a twist of lemon—the best, he said. The four of us stayed until 2 or so. They were friends with the guys sweeping the cigarette butts out front.
About Display
Type Sets In conjunction with Types, A+D Gallery will host “Type Sets,” a series of public programs consisting of workshops and lectures on the diverse and contemporaneous qualities of typography.
Types by Display has been originally generated by A+D Gallery at Columbia College Chicago and is sponsored by the Art + Design Department at Columbia College Chicago. A +D Gallery acknowledges additional support by AIGA Chicago, Google, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and Providence College.
Types by Display is curated by Jamilee Polson Lacy.
Mångata
JANUARY 2, 2007, NEW YORK CITY
fishermen at dusk; Plongee Cap Cerbere, France, 2006
About the Curator Claire Keys lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Currently, she is a writer and an editor. She has worked on copy campaigns for Michael Kors, Estée Lauder, and Calvin Klein. Her editorial work has been featured in ELLE, Marie Claire, Gothamist, and Chicagoist, among others, and she has collaborated with Cris Cheek to produce RESIDENCE, a book of illustrative poetry. Keys hold a degree in English and creative writing from Miami University in Ohio, and studied book and magazine publishing as well as creative media at New York University. http://clairekeys.com
Katherine Walker lives and works in San Francisco, California. Currently, she is a senior designer for Google’s Brand Studio. Previously, she was associate creative director at VSA Partners in Chicago. She is a co-founder of Quite Strong, an all-female design collaborative focusing on community-oriented events and empowering creatives. Formerly, she served on the AIGA Chicago board and was director of the organization’s mentor program. In addition to showing her work in various exhibitions and lectures throughout the United States, she has taught at DePaul University. Her work has been recognized in Dwell, AIGA 365, STA Archive, UnderConsideration, Computer Arts, TimeOut, and Communication Arts, among others. Walker holds a degree in visual communication design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. http://kkwalker.com
Jamilee Polson Lacy lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, she is the director of PC Galleries at Providence College and additionally works as an independent curator, an arts writer, and the founding director of Twelve Galleries Project, a nomadic curatorial project. She is also managing editor for Bad at Sports, a leading international arts journal and podcast, and co-author (with Meg Onli) of Remaking the Black Metropolis: Contemporary Art, Urbanity and Blackness in America, a forthcoming research survey and digital archive. Formerly, she was the inaugural curator-in-residence for Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri; a curatorial writer for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; and a curatorial associate for the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague, Czech Republic. Lacy has edited and published two books and written for Flash Art, Umelec Magazine, Art 21 Magazine, and Art in America Online. Lacy holds two degrees in art history and studio art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Comparative Art and Literature from Northwestern University. http://jamileelacy.com
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