Channel Thirteen Totebags

The symbol of artistic and cultural charity: PBS in New York City's Channel 13 tote bags. Yours with a donation of $50 or more during pledge drives, the Herb Lubalin-logotyped bags were a ubiquitous in Fairfield County during the 70's and 80's, but now nearly extinct- except in our closet, where they're falling off the shelf.

(and now they're in our shop.)

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Wary Meyers City Posters

The first four posters from a total of 12 cities which I drew earlier this year for a travel series. As alluded to in the last post, we're super excited about these, in particular all the logotypes. Typography is a big love of ours, and when we can incorporate it into a project we're all the happier. So here are the first four. Coming soon are SF, LA, DC, and Dallas.

The posters are 19" x 24", printed on 100lb. smooth Bristol paper, signed. $55 each, in our shop

The New York poster owes a lot to the work of Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, with a little Tadanori Yokoo thrown in at the bottom. It started out as Massimo Vignelli Subway lines coming worm-like out of the apple, forming the frame, but later I changed the bottom lines to lox coming out of the bagel. But then we changed the line colors, since , although kind of funny, all-salmony didn't look that great as a border. And a lot of food worked its way in, mostly after drawing the bagel, then we had to represent the hot dog and pretzel, and all the eggplants and ugly tomatoes.

Miami's logotype is based on Ettore Sottsass' Superbox wardrobes. No relation to Miami, but it was the shortest city name and I the boxes would be nice and bold. Plus I've always wanted to make my own Superbox, modified into a monogram. The view is an artistic-licensed South Beach, with a couple Stilt houses in Biscayne Bay, the Bacardi buildings, a little Mondrian, and the ubiquitous rooftop cranes. The two curved graphics at the corners of MIAMI represent the sun, while the two at the bottom are tanned boobs, in a blue cutaway-bikini-top.

Seattle is overall a little more sci-fi/Moebius influenced. We wanted the logotype to be sort of rock n roll, and I was listening to a lot of Paul McCartney and Wings at the time (and still) which may have influenced the design.  Coincidentally Wings' big US Rock Show kicked off at the Seattle SuperDome. On the right is a giant Peep looming behind two towering onions. Probably the most accurate rendering of anything in Seattle is the outline of Mt. Rainier in the background.

London is my favorite. I love the red telephone booth type, and yet another Beatles reference in the Yellow Submarine spreading its colour along the Thames.

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Here come the judges

Quite an impressive list of judges for this anti-war poster competition from a 1968 Avant Garde magazine. Could you imagine winning?
A couple issues later the winning posters were shown, but nothing was as impressive as Herb Lubalin's announcement. (above)

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Wary Meyers Baxter Library Installations

Our first round of installations for the Old Baxter Library/Via Advertising Agency is finally all together in one spot on our website. Including this fountain pen & ink seating group, which would look equally cool with oil wells, pastry bags, or shampoo bottles- whatever your company's reception area needs, we can do it.

Click!

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Herb Lubalin Ampersand

Ampersand designed by Herb Lubalin for Upper & Lower Case Magazine, 1970. 

This 3-D version is a leftover from a type/writing themed installations project we've been working on lately for an ad agency. More soon.........

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Lou Dorfsman

Type Chess Set, from Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found

Le French Dresser, ibid.

Lou Dorfsman

Two of my favorite projects from our book, and the man who inspired them. Lou Dorfsman, designer par excellence. Our latest post at AT is about it all, read it here.

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Herb Lubalin & John Alcorn

Designed by Herb Lubalin and illustrated by John Alcorn. The type treatment on the cover is great, but the case is awesome. It repeats on the back, then the endpapers are the same but the colors reversed. Two of the greats.

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