First Hours of Winter

In these first moments of Winter, I would like to send seasonal greetings to you on Planet Earth from Planet Nice. At the moment, there is a pause in holiday preparations to just catch my breath.

What has been the recent activity here at Planet Nice Crafts? Finishing up the semester and then cleaning, lots of cleaning. It is always good to start a new season with a freshened up, cleaner setting. This cleaning extravaganza did include the craft room which alone needed sessions across three days. It probably does not look any different, but that is OK. I did attend an activity at the Newberry Library as part of Art Design Chicago called Chicago Style: Typography and the City. A year ago, I didn’t know what typography was beyond changing the size and fonts in Microsoft Word. Now, at least I know there is a design area of typography. Some definitions are:

Typeface: a family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and styles

Font: collection of characters of a single size and style belonging to a particular typeface family.

Let’s look at this sample from the Ludlow Typograph Company:

I would say that Ultramodern was the typeface with Ultramodern Classic SG being the font. Typefaces were produced by printers by hand and were a particular printer’s stock that had commercial value. Hence, we are taught in classes that the fonts are to be treated as intellectual property and they are not to be distorted. Typefaces were also regional – you did not see the same typefaces in the newspapers of Chicago as in New York. 

The second part of the program was to make holiday cards, here are the fronts and insides of the two I created:

Being a fan of Art Deco, I chose the Ultramodern characters for my inside greetings. On the fronts, the graphics are reproductions from the Newberry archives originating from a real past printer who also used the images for holiday greetings.

I had a school project this past semester where we had to redesign two logos. I decided upon Oscar Mayer and Buick, there was an emphasis put on type so how did I start? With a sketch of course. Pencil to paper. And I am humble enough to share photos of my sketch book:

Do you see the design principles listed at the top? Those were my notes from the lecture portion.

These sketches turned into these, the final product for this particular assignment:

People liked the Oscar Mayer more but I like the Buick too because it allowed me to do a little Art Deco styling.

When browsing through the holiday cards, look at the fonts used. I have seen mainly the classical style with a lot of ornamentation, scrolling, curlicues, etc.

The current Planet Nice plan is to creatively get through all of the holiday tasks and then sew a bit before the next semester starts, stay tuned!