Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

Boston Premiere sold out

Advance tickets for the April 11 Boston Premiere at MassArt are gone (there may be a few stand-by tickets available at the door, I’m looking into this). Thanks to the folks at Eventworks for organizing the event, it should be good fun. See you in Beantown.

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Posted by Gary

5 Comments »

  1. Gary, are there any screenings in the works for the Washington, DC area? I feel that the Graphic Design dept at American University might be supportive of a screening at the new Katzen Center. Let me know if I can help.

    Comment by Greg Wasserstrom — Sunday, April 1, 2007 @ 12:39 pm

  2. Hi Greg, we’ll be announcing the DC premiere soon…

    Comment by Gary — Sunday, April 1, 2007 @ 4:02 pm

  3. Greetings!
    When is the DVD coming out?
    :-)
    Bharani

    Comment by Bharani Padmanabhan MD PhD — Sunday, April 8, 2007 @ 10:04 pm

  4. September!

    Comment by Gary — Monday, April 9, 2007 @ 6:22 am

  5. Gary, this was a fascinating film, very well done, however I believe only part of the story was told. The film focussed almost entirely on the _design_ of the face and the reaction of designers and typographers, and to a lesser extent, the general public, to it.

    The literal other half of the story not touched on was the manufacturing and distribution of linecasting matrices and foundry type to the established channels of access to type in the 60s and 70s. Type at that time was set by commercial type houses and to a lesser extent, commercial presses, especially as presses went to offset reproduction. Type had mass and weight and was a significant capital investment that required large amounts of space to house, factors that today’s digital generation, accustomed to pirating the ephemeral code that describes type by simply dragging and dropping, doesn’t conceive of.

    I would assert that the success of the design was not simply due to it’s æsthetic appeal and the mode of the time, but also to the ready availability of linecasting matrices and type to those established commercial/industrial vendors. Mike Parker touched on this point when he mentioned the “consistification” (my word) of drawings and alignment between the offerings of Stempel for hand set foundry type, and Linotype AG and the critical decision for Mergenthaler Linotype to produce linecasting matrices domestically. Mass adoption of the face would not have been possible if ready access wasn’t fostered by the industry.

    I could elaborate, but I believe this core point is salient to an informed discussion of the face culturally and commercially.

    oh, and btw, i love foundry Helvetica, especially the “extended” series in regular and extra bold.

    michael babcock / interrobangletterpress.com / linotypesetting.com

    Comment by mjb — Thursday, April 12, 2007 @ 10:24 am

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