Once you have removed Alan Kitching’s jacket to reveal Alan Fletcher’s drawing, there’s still a lot to uncover in this issue.
Stephen Banham analyzes the output of the post-Grapus generation of French graphic designers, while the slow precise skills, of master punchcutter Edward Philip Prince, cause us to reflect on the worker hidden in the workshop.
Examples of Alan Fletcher’s inventive approach to graphic communication appear in Philip Thompson’s article, followed by the ‘craft as art’, virtually tactile, style of Alan Kitching in his typography workshop, enthusiastically endorsed by Patrick Argent.
The source of facts for countless bar-room raconteurs, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, also gives graphic stimulation, described by Steven Heller, and providing a total contrast to the calligraphic philosophy of Werner Schneider.
More typographic contrasts, of style, method and thought, and no mention of the millennium.
Hans Dieter Reichert & Mike Daines
Before its current transformation into a corporate theme park, New York’s Times Square was the world’s largest and gaudiest carnival midway. Replete with dazzling lights, boisterous barkers, and frightening freak shows, the Great White Way was a hugely popular attraction with a reputation that spanned the globe. Until the 1960’s, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum was one of the most famous of destinations. For displayed in a dark and cavernous dungeon one floor below street level on teaming Broadway, illuminated by faint coloured spotlights, were myriad oddities guaranteed to raise hackles and tickle funny bones.
Shrunken heads from Africa, human skulls pierced with hundreds of nails, stuffed vampire bats with demonic eyes, South American birds with multiple wings, and domestic canines with extra legs and tails were all splendiferously on view. The world’s weirdest phenomena were presented with such sublime verisimilitude that the visitor could only believe it… or else…
Steven Heller
©1999 Bradbourne Publishing Ltd.