What are you working on at the moment?
As usual the studio has a multitude of different projects – a glance at the projects file tells me that we’re doing some re-branding for a faculty of Monash University, a brochure for a musical ensemble, a book cover, some web work for a dentist, some research documents for RMIT University etc.. We normally work on between 10-15 commercial projects at a time. That sounds a lot but they are always in various stages of approval etc. The core projects this year however are studio-led. We are researching and writing a book at the moment (still under wraps) as well as doing a typographic art project for a City council. It’s a particularly exciting year of projects.

What are you reading/watching/listening to/browsing at the moment?
Reading – The History of Love by Nicola Krauss.
Listening – Music for Airports by Brian Eno. I’ve been re-buying a lot of ambient music from 20-25 years ago.
Browsing – ilovetypography.com and Brand New

Where did your passion for typography stem from?
A love of language – and how to play with it. Going right back the kind of comedies I liked as a kid – The Two Ronnies etc. It’s a finely tuned instrument that can be multilayered, viewed from all directions ect. Typography just happens to be its visual manifestation and so it’s this that I’ve pursued. It is a very joyous thing to do. It’s a little known secret that I still whistle on my way to work every morning.

Reading your site we know that you understandably don’t like to be asked what your favourite fonts are, we were however curious to know if you think there are any underrated fonts out there that haven’t had the exposure they might deserve?
Yes, with the incredible number of fonts being produced now there are bound to be some that are forgotten along the way. Sometimes they deserve this of course. But what most interests me are the fonts that spend their time in the wilderness, in the shade, once celebrated and now forgotten. To see Herb Lubalin’s lettering or faces like Bookman, Clearface or Souvenir re-emerge is really interesting. It takes a generation to come along and see them with fresh eyes. The lagtime is normally about 20 years or so – so we’ll see students engage with the early emigré faces soon. Strange but true.

We noticed your ‘Death to Helvetica’ Tshirt in your store. Is that really how you guys feel about Helvetica?
That’s an old, long and complex story. Best covered in the very well researched article by James Button.

Is there a place in this world for Comic Sans?
Yes. What it was meant for; a computer game for kids. Never to be let out again.

Do you think there are typical characteristics to Australian graphic design that stand out as being unique?
This is an issue I’ve been thinking (and writing) about for a long time now. But ultimately it’s a bit like sleep – if you try too hard it will always be elusive and frustrating. Just enjoy the ride and then maybe look back after 20, 30 or even 50 years. Besides, just what it is to be gained by pinpointing it or describing it?

What advice would you have to younger designers entering the industry?
Like the last question, just relax and enjoy the ride. Don’t swallow the stupid stereotype that you have to be a ’star’ by the time you’re 21. That keeps the field of graphic design infantile as well as burning out some very talented people.

First published in February 2010 on australian edge

Posters announce. Posters exclaim. Posters proclaim. No other graphic design medium carries such a heritage of direct public engagement as does the poster. Considering the strong and legacy of this visual language, the poster work of American graphic designer Jason Munn presents some very interesting questions for the field of graphic design.

Munn’s rock poster designs are immediately compelling. Presenting a bare minimum of information – usually just the names of the band, venue and event date – the success of these posters lies in their ability to communicate a graphic idea with such a minimised simplicity.

His work reinforces the graphic strength of the silhouette – the poster for the band The Books featuring two heads linked by a looped tape, while two records sliding out of their sleeves form an uppercase B for Beck. By making the method of silkscreen production so apparent in the design process the posters beautifully exploit the properties of pure opaque colour, overprinting and texture. Also refreshingly transparent was the honesty with which Munn described his humble operations – something that should be particularly illuminating to students of design.

Typographically, the work draws upon a limited palette of primarily contemporary American gothics (Gotham, Archer etc) which lends an effective consistency to the posters when viewed them as a series. Set in subdued point sizes, the legibility and nationality of these typefaces have become somewhat of a Munn signature.

But where the selection typography may be consistent, one of the most conspicuous observations of Munn’s posters is the repetition of particular concepts and elements. Motifs of snakes, records, tear drops and pirate ships emerge and re-emerge across the series of posters. Although he sought to justify this ‘self-referential’ aspect in his work as a way of moving an idea further, one suspects this repetition may more likely be a symptom of Munn’s isolated practice and limited range of influences.

Having initially seeing Munn’s work as projected pdfs (and being very impressed), it is only in the later gallery viewing of the actual screenprinted posters that an additional powerful life is given to this these. And herein lies the most enigmatic side to these posters. They are not designed with the conventional demands of the poster in mind – the exposure to the mess of the street, active public response, commercial demands and the harsh jostle for attention amongst a wall of other posters. Instead they are designed as purchasable artifacts – beautiful objects of desire, framed and viewed in a rarified space of the gallery or apartment.

Like a blank sheet of letterhead or a building photographed without people, these works celebrate design with a spirit of purity, removed from the ‘messy’ world. But since these pieces do not operate as an actual advertising medium, these blur the line between rock poster and mock poster.

As if to reiterate this point, there was a marked difference between the posters he had independently produced (The Books, Mogwai) and the more recent posters that had emerged from an actual commission (Nora Jones, Beck); the former are pure, uncluttered and at times sublime whilst the latter tend to be more textually dense and conceptually compromised. This, more than anything else, highlighted the complex negotiations and conventions of being an artist (where one is seen to be commissioned internally) and a designer (where one is more commonly commissioned externally). The fact that Munn, when faced with a commission, experienced the familiar process of compromise and refinement to meet external demands was telling.

So where does Munn’s work sit within the field of graphic design? Deliberately avoiding the harsh commercial rigours that conventionally defines graphic design, does Munn’s work simply offer the viewer an aesthetic thrill and an association with the music, or more specifically, the band? Now that authorship within graphic design is a more familiar and comfortable phenomena, Munn’s mock posters may indicate a further step – a disconnection of media (poster) from traditional purpose (to be read in the street).

For me the greatest irony here is that Munn’s media of choice is the poster. The result being that we have a ‘medium of public statement’ is now repositioned as one of private and aesthetic contemplation. Like all things that nudge at the sides of design practice this poses more questions than answers. Questions surrounding many of the cornerstones of graphic design – namely the commissioning, mass production and distribution of the design object.

Footnote An extreme design disconnection was eloquently described by design critic Alice Tremlow speaking on the recent  ‘cart-before-the-horse’ poster design entries into Chaumont Poster Festival Images Top: Posters by Jason Munn Bottom: Image of the Jason Munn Exhibition. Photography by Stephen Banham.

Jason Munn was a guest speaker at the 2009 Blow Festival at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.

Vignette 1

Vignette 2 | A few years ago the graphic design community was up-in-arms about the rise of websites such as Logomaker.com. Sites like these enable the user to go through a wonderfully abbreviated design process – simply selecting the client industry, a graphic from a set of templates and, most impressive of all, a typeface from a curious font menu. The result is an instant logo generated online – the logo above took above 45 seconds, combining the shaking hands motif with a typestyle called Funky. Whenever these sites are discussed. the proclamations of a graphic design doomsday ring loud.  Most surprising about this reaction is the fear that clients would actually prefer to go through this (45 second) online process than to have their visual communication fully addressed in a more meaningful and analytical way. The ‘graphic design shorthand’ these sites produce may actually help designers by accentuating the importance of the design process itself. By generating these bland emblems of non-identity, Logomaker clearly defines its market. And in the process leaves those who are prepared to go through a process of well considered visual communication for the rest of us.

Vignette 3 | What LogoMaker teaches us (by absence) is that identity systems respond to a complex set of criteria and objectives, an intended content and a desired message. The resultant brand is then produced and released to what it is an increasingly cynical and knowing marketplace. But what if we were to throw this logical and linear process in reverse – take an abstract mark disconnected from any direct content and bring to it a multitude of meanings never really intended. An example of this is the story of PSR B1919+21. This rather baffling and innocuous number refers to the very first radio pulsar discovered in 1967. Removed from its original role as a diagram of scientific data, many people may recognise it as being the iconic graphic used by English graphic designer Peter Saville for the album cover of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures (1980). Although it graphically depicts the jagged topography of the pulsar soundwave it has been imbued with another meaning altogether – one that captures the melancholic turmoil of a post-punk music movement.

Vignette 4 | Back in 1991 a friend of mine who had no formal design training had found work in the then-burgeoning desktop publishing industry. He then set out to develop his own way of learning about type on the job. When a logo job came in, he scrolled to the top of the font menu and used that font. The next job he worked on used the font under that and so on. The identity set in Aachen would lead to the next being in Abadi MT, Akzidenz Grotesk to American Typewriter, etc. So that in the end each identity was both a learning exercise in using a particular font as well as being subject to a curiously random system.

Vignette 5 | It is widely considered that the ipod popularised the notion of ‘the random’ into the world of music. The advent and popularity of the scroll-down itunes menu has also had the curious effect of alphabeticising the selection of music (when did you ever play a song first because it started with the letter ‘a’ on a record or CD?). In the drive to get to the top of the list will we see contrived track and band names referring to aarvards?

Vignette 6 | Esperanto is often described as a contrived language. Although intended as a universal auxiliary language, it has no cultural or geographic roots.  Nevertheless the language is a powerful source of identity for Esperanto speakers around the world. Not many people realise though that there were two feature films made in Esperanto. One of these films, Incubus (1965), starred a very young William Shatner who had to learn the language in order to gain the role. Having grown up in French-speaking Quebec, Shatner’s Esperanto pronunciation was widely criticised by speakers as having too strong a French accent.

Vignette 7 | Klingonese is of course another fake language. Created by American Linguist Marc Okrand, it is the language spoken by the renown alien race from Star Trek. A dictionary of Klingon was produced in 1985, followed by the formation of the Klingon Language Institute in 1992 in Flourtown, Pennsylvania. Although the Institute claims to have some 2500 members, the actual number of Klingon speakers is difficult to estimate.  One fluent Klingon speaker, Dr. d’Armond Speers, reportedly attempted to raise his child bilingually in English and Klingon. The experiment failed when the child refused to use Klingon when he got older.

Vignette 8 | In Australia there is a chain of bookshops called McGills. You may have even been in one. And you may have seen their corporate identity and thought nothing of it. But it is in fact a rare occurance of an odd phenomena known as Typographic Onomatopoeia. It happens when a typeface is used because its name happens to match the name of the company it represents.  In the case of McGills Bookstore they have chosen the classic Letraset script Gillies. It’s an identity derived from a baffling logic.

Vignette 9 | The creative legacy of English type designer Eric Gill (1882-1940) is of course fundamental to twentieth century typography (his better known faces include Gill Sans, Joanna and Perpetua amongst many others). But history has a habit of recording many lesser-known parallel stories. Gill is perhaps as well known for his liberal sexual attitudes and practices as his expertise in stone cutting and type design. The design of unique glyphs extended from his professional life all the way into the pages of his personal diary. A page from Eric Gill’s diary for the period 16 to 18 July 1925 features a series of marks down the margin of the page. At the bottom of the page is a legend indicating that these marks relate to the physical position adopted during his sexual activity that week. A simple X marks he describes as ‘face to face’. The addition of dots in either quarter of the X mark indicates ‘sideways, generally from back’.

Vignette 10 | A contemporary of Eric Gill, the English type designer Stanley Morison (1889-1967) is most known for his contribution to the design of Times, a typeface specifically designed for the newspaper of the same name. But it almost never happened. When asked by the Manager of The Times, William Lints-Smith whether he would join the paper as a typographic advisor, Morison’s acceptance was conditional, stipulating that he would only take on the job ‘…if you take the full point out after the paper’s name…’. The full point was promptly omitted from The Times masthead and so began a new age of typefaces customised for specific publications.

The format of these vignettes happily and gratefully references Ryan Gander’s Loose Associations.
This article was originally published in Open Manifesto Issue 5.