Although I prefer the sentiment of Buy Nothing Day, if you must hit the internet in search of consumer goods, you can’t go wrong with Steven Heller and Lita Talarico’s Typography Sketchbooks.

Steve and Lita asked me to submit my sketchbooks a few months ago and I’m very impressed with the final product. The book includes the creative scribbling of many type-focused designers and artists. Mathew Carter, Ivan Chermayeff, Ryan Feerer, Maira Kalman, Jeffery Keedy, Gary Panter, Rick Valicenti, and Erik Spiekermann, just to name a few.

I get no better pleasure than scratching away in my trusty Moleskine Plain Paper Unlined sketchbooks, some of which can be seen in the book.

We also get a rare glimpse into the fragile ideation stage of some of the world’s greatest type designers and artists. Mr. Keedy works solely on 8.5 x 11 tracing paper, no sketchbooks for him.

Erik Spiekermann’s highly nuanced designs go through many revisions on paper before he even considers turning on a computer.

Katie Lombardo is a great example of the other end of the spectrum, the type artist who works without the restriction of design constraints. I fall squarely into this group!

Typography Sketchbooks can be purchased here.

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Here’s a quick little painting I did for FISK. FISK is a publication and online resource made by CalArts graphic design students. The latest issue is Halloween themed. My goal for this year: stay away from the candy. Happy Halloween!

 
 

I recently worked on a short film directed by Aaron Rose, El Mundo Es Tuyo (The World Is Yours). The film was shot on location in Ecuador, and features clothing from Opening Ceremony’s Fall 2011 line. I designed a custom typeface for the titles and created the poster that is featured in the film.

The fairy tale-esque brush lettering was too perfect not to also use on this hand-painted gift for my good friends Jon and Sonja’s wedding. Held here by Yosi Sergant.

Graphic designers are especially indebted to, and most likely very familiar with, Steve Jobs’ greatest creation, the Macintosh computer. Last week I had the opportunity to discuss Jobs’ legacy, as it pertains to graphic design and more specifically typography, on KCRW’s DnA: Design and Architecture. DnA’s host, Frances Anderton, invited April Greiman, Lorraine Wild, Andrew Byrom and myself to the studio to talk about how the Mac has influenced our lives and careers.

Listen to the program here.

 
 
In 2009, after being asked to participate in a group art show, I decided to pick up a brush and paint an old door that was lying in the street by my house. Knowing nothing about sign paint or sign painting, I chose sign enamel to paint my door, buying the paint on sale at a local art store that was going out of business.

Two years later, I’m still painting, and early this year I made the decision to enroll in a sign painting curriculum at Los Angeles Trade Tech College. I still have a robust freelance design business, which is also very important to me, but painting has evolved beyond a mere hobby. So what is it about this lost, and arguably useless art that has captivated my attention and caused a possible detour in my career path?

 
 
In 1984, with the introduction of the Macintosh computer, there was a major shift in the world of graphic design. The change to digital typography resulted in a revolution in the world of visual communication. While the digital type revolution is largely considered to be positive, the same cannot be said for the business of sign-making.

Signs are everywhere. We take for granted their importance in our world. Imagine what it would be like to go to the hospital with a medical emergency having no signs to show you where to go, or navigating to your gate in the airport, having to ask people every step of the way.

Before computers made the scene, many signs and billboards were hand painted. Journeymen sign painters, probably thousands of them throughout the world, painted most of the signs in our urban environment.

 
 
With the new computer technology came a new sign technique. The new process, known as applied vinyl, is cheaper, faster and makes sign creation much easier. What used to take hours of painstaking work, now could be completed in minutes. And anyone with a computer, a few fonts, and a plotter could make signs.

The vinyl signs are now ubiquitous. The remaining hand-painted signs are faded and adored, but few people realize why our urban landscape now lacks the visual charm of the not-so-distant past. Vinyl signs, which go perfectly with our penchant for bad urban architecture, look like they were made by a five year-old. Those journeymen sign painters? They’re gone. They’ve either adapted to the vinyl business or quit long ago.

 
 
The reason those old ghost signs and the few other hand painted signs in your neighborhood look so good, is because their creators understood their craft. Even beyond brush control and their faded good looks, these signs were designed by professionals who understood how to make a sign that is both beautiful and functional.

I believe that these qualities in visual communication, through hand-painted signage and art, are worth preserving. So I’ve decided to practice and study it for myself, and also to share it with others. Look for more hand painted goodness on these pages in the future!

–Keith

James and Karla Murray’s Storefront: The Disappearing Face of New York is an incredible book that documents the quickly-disappearing old storefronts around New York City. Many of these landmarks feature hand-lettering of the faded-into-glory nature which sign painters and fans of sign painting tend to find irresistible.

The Murray’s book, photographed over many years, is an invaluable document that I wish existed for my town as well. But the reality is that L.A.’s ever changing landscape has not left many of these old bodegas (or their hand-lettered signage) for us to admire.

So what’s the alternative for getting our old L.A. kicks? Well the only way I can think of is to dig into the archives and pull out some of those signs in their native state. I discovered many of these images on the Vintage Los Angeles Facebook page. What you see here is just a tiny sampling of the old-timey goodness you will find there. I also recommend reading this article about how that amazing resource came together.

Immediately following a successful Face-Time™ talk we gave to a class at PSU a few months back, I got an email from Frank Chimero asking, “can you paint these words?” Make, Break, Collect, Connect. Frank is someone I respect a whole lot and I loved the idea of this little collaboration. So I promptly replied yes!

About 4 months later, the signs are done. They came out great. Thanks to Mr. Chimero for being so patient.

If you’ve been living in the forrest for the past few years and you’re not familiar with Frank’s work and writing, get yourself a haircut. Then click here.

I recently rewatched Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University. It’s a great speech, where Steve humbly describes how he became successful, and even goes into some detail about his personal life, which is rare for him. The speech consists of three stories, one of which is about how he never completed a college degree. At that age, Steve was unsure about what his career path might be, and under a lot of pressure to choose a direction for himself, he decided to drop out of school. But instead of leaving, he spent 18 months dropping in on various classes one of which he describes as “caligraphy.”

“Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”

Now, when I think of calligraphy, I think of a classic pen and ink script or possibly a Japanese brush. But wait. He said “serif and san serif typefaces.” He also describes what sounds, not like beautiful calligraphy across the campus, but signs. Serif and sans serif typefaces, hand painted and letterspaced, are the work of sign painters. He then goes on to describe how this class became valuable to him in the creation of the first Macintosh computer:

“None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.”

Malcolm Gladwell recently observed that Jobs is more an innovator than a creator. In my mind this story illustrates how massive these innovations are. The thought that, in 1984, a digital typeface did not yet exist, and now they are so pervasive it’s nearly impossible to remember what life was like without them, is staggering.

Click here to read the entire speech.

GOOD/Corps is a new division of GOOD that works with organizations to help them push the world forward. Their new website, which I designed with Atley G. Kasky, went live today.

For the technically inclined, the site is built on Cargo and may be one of the most innovative uses of that platform yet. With the help of Cargo front-end developer John-Kyle Mohr, we built a completely customized site that can be edited using the Cargo interface. The animated scrolling works via HTML5 and all of the fonts, including GOOD’s signature Trade Gothic, are embedded webfonts.

If you’re interested learning more about GOOD/Corps check out this profile in the New York Times today.

Cargo also has a great support article about using webfonts here.

You’re looking at a few hand-painted signs I made for a text-themed group show at Parlor gallery in Asbury Park, NJ. I took the opportunity to render some of my favorite disposable communications in lettering enamel.

The show is called Blah, Blah, Blah, and showcases works by Greg Lamarche, Ryan Cronin, Derek Gores, Scot Lefavor, Isaac Salazar, Keetra Dean Dixon, Meg Hitchcock, Michiel van der Born, Danielle Spurge, King Farish, Erin Riley, Brandon McLean , Baron von Fancy, Pablo Power, Dahlia Elsayed, Pauline Galiana and myself.

Juxtapoz has a recap. Photos from the opening are here.

If you’re interested in purchasing these, drop a line here.