First, from the accompanying essay by Geoffrey Bensusan:

“Hella Basu’s calligraphy shows itself apt, varied and assured; its fitness for purpose unquestionable, its deployment as one might say most inventive, the execution impeccable; it has a lineage clearly honorable but not trad and while accessible, as communication should be, it remains exciting.”

Also (speaking well before the computer typography boom):

“It is the prized consistency of machine-made lettering that generates the demand for contrasting forms, inventions not provided for on transfer sheets. For in the hands of the skilled designer-lettering-artist-calligrapher the alphabet is almost as flexible and expressive a medium as illustration itself in evoking a mood, creating a feeling, reinforcing a fact.”

Aside from her birth date and place (Germany) the only other info I found was a single quote purported to be from Hella:

“In making any object, the philosophy behind its creation is ‘art,’ the planning is ‘design,’ and its execution is ‘craft.’”

Hope you enjoyed.

As always these were just the examples that caught my eye, not necessarily perfectly representative of the state of design and illustration in 71 / 72.

This annual had an added bonus in the form of an introduction by one Paul Rand, a fella you designey types might have heard of. I decided rather than chop his text up into little quotes in the post I’d just make the whole thing available as a pdf, and here it is: Paul Rand Intro to Graphis Annual 71 / 72. Enjoy you design dorks.

More to come.

I’m sorry you had to absorb that all in one massive dose but as a person interested in design, and more importantly as a proud owner of both a cornea and an optic nerve, I felt it was my duty to drive home this point: Television weather-infographics are pitifully, horribly, inexcusably bad. These are pieces of design which we seek out every single day for their intended functionality, often first thing in the morning, when we are half asleep and most vulnerable, but which hammer at our eyeballs like Schuster conundrums made of broken neon tubes and melted crayon shavings. I ask this, here and now, of all the television weather-infograpic makers– Why?! Why must it be this way?

Television infographics in general are pretty much out of control so far as I can see. Their scrolling, swirling, swooping gloss has at this point far overpowered the meager amounts of information they are meant to shuttle efficiently into our brains. They do not, if I had to put a totally fabricated number on it, contribute in any way to that purpose 75% of the time. They are the gaudy prefabricated ornament on the facade of pure televised information. Howard Roark would dynamite your satellites! Well, were he a real person… who was able to fly… into space… carrying one of those old-timey plunger boxes… Anyway what I’m saying is from sports broadcasts to news broadcasts the infographics are poorly thought out, overused, detrimental to effective transference of data, and did I mention spectacularly ugly?

As for weather graphics in particular I just can’t help but wonder, where did networks get the idea all that crap was necessary? It seems like presenting the weather forecast ought to be quite a simple operation. Temperature and precipitation projections for 5 days. Why all the confused hubbub? Best as I can surmise there are only two possibilities– meteorological hubris or graphical incompetency. Perhaps a combination of both.

If there are any young people out there reading this who are enamored by the glitzy and glamourous life of a television weather graphics professional and are planning on making a career of it, let me offer these few tips:

1) Nothing needs to move. Not raindrops, not snowflakes, not wind marks, not sun-rays. We already know how rain and that other stuff works.

2) Remember there are other colors besides ultramarine blue, pure red, and neon yellow. Use them, but please not all at once.

3) Don’t try to get to clever and “nuanced” with your atmospheric icons. All we need to know is whether it’s sunny and dry or cloudy and wet, the numbers fill in the rest. Having one icon with a single cloud, another with two slightly more wispy clouds, and a third with a darker more rounded cloud does not help us at all. If you want to interpret weather conditions in sensitive and unique ways paint landscapes.

4) Go to design school, take a few courses at the local community college, or at very least have lunch with your highschool art teacher a couple of times. Please?

5) One word: Standardization!

This last would go a long way in cutting down on the eye contusions. If we could just agree on a few simple symbols which would hereafter represent important weather conditions things would be a lot easier. If weather icons were standardized a symbol and two numbers would deftly tell us all we needed to know. No need for interpretation.

Well, hope you feel gratified, my having finally voiced this displeasure which I know was secretely eating away at all of you. Sometimes there is such a thing as too polite you know? That’s how you get ulcers.

Next time: Shampoo bottles!

“Meerschaum has been called Venus of the Sea, White Goddess, sepiolite, sea-foam or froth, the Aristocrat of smoking substances! It has been identified as hydrous magnesium silicate, an opaque white-gray or cream colored mineral of the soapstone family. It has been written as H4Mg;Si30 ,o, 3S .O^MgO^H^O, 2MgO, S,0;-14H20 and even Mg4(H;0)3(OH),SitO,5-3H;0! Whatever its composition, meerschaum is not the bone of the sepia or cuttle fish, the residue or fusion of decomposed sea shells, petrified sea foam or a clay composition. It is a mineral! Mined 30 to 450 feet below the surface of the earth, the magnesium content provides strength while the hydrogen and oxygen contribute to its porosity. It is, in the words of one, “. . . soft and light as a fleeting dream, creamy, delicate and sweet as the complexion of young maidenhood.” -Benjamin Rapaport, A Complete Guide to Collecting Antique Pipes. 1979.

“Meerschaum is a German word meaning ‘sea foam’— it derived its name because it often was seen floating on the Black Sea. The German term probably has been used because German-speaking people controlled the meerschaum-pipe industry until World War II. Also, most of the craftsmen who began making meerschaum pipes in the United States came from either Germany or Austria.

Meerschaum is a very soft, porous, hydrous silicate of magnesia that is found in pockets within clay or serpentine deposits. Its origin is unknown, but it is believed to have been formed from the metamorphic shells and bones of tiny prehistoric sea creatures. Its geological name, assigned in the mid-nineteenth century by a German mineralogist, is sepiolite, from the Greek “Sepio,” or cuttlefish bone, which it resembles.” -Carl Ehwa, Jr. The Book of Pipes & Tobacco. 1974.

“The discovery and initial use of meerschaum as a substance for making pipes is shrouded in much mystery and myth. Even the origin of the word is obscure but the most generally accepted account is that a certain Hungarian nobleman, Count Andrassy, on an official mission to Turkey in 1723, received a lump of meerschaum from the Sultan. Returning to Pesth, on the east bank of the Danube, he gave it to a cobbler who, when not making or mending shoes, made wood pipes; the Count was one of his patrons. Another tale relates that when John Sobieski, King of Poland, rescued the beleaguered city of Vienna from invading Turks, he had seen many Turkish articles, including pipes; the articles were made of luletaschi, a white mineral called pipestone believed to have been meerschaum. And, there is yet a third story which meerschaum pipes were being made by a French artist, Louis Pierre Puget, student of the Italian sculptor Berini, who carved the first meerschaum in 1652.

Meerschaum could have been used even earlier than 1652 but however devious, cryptic or circuitous the route, meerschaum came from the East and was popularized in the West.” -Benjamin Rapaport, A Complete Guide to Collecting Antique Pipes. 1979.

“No matter who actually was responsible for the introduction of the meerschaum pipe, it steadily gained favor among wealthy smokers throughout Europe. After 1750 pipes of the new material were in exceptionally heavy demand. Unlike clay, however, which was available to everyone, meerschaum was restricted to the rich and titled who could afford to commission the handiwork of a carver or an ‘artist.’ The meerschaum rapidly became the pipe of the stylish smoker and the effort and money spent by these smokers to outdo their peers probably accounts for the artistic meerschaums created in those times.

In many cases, the fact that these masterpieces are pipes is almost incidental;

indeed, a great many never were smoked. Some of the very large, magnificent pieces adorned cabinets and shelves as objects of art. One wealthy Englishman had a lovely pipe made for himself even though he didn’t smoke. When the pipe-maker had finished the job, the gentleman instructed him to color the bowl before delivering it. For a period of two or three weeks, the pipe was smoked by every pipe-maker in the shop until the color became very rich and dark. The gentleman was well pleased and promptly placed his seasoned treasure on the mantle.

As artisans and wood-carvers turned to pipe-making, they soon became swamped with more orders than they could fill. By the 1850s, enterprising merchants and pipe makers set up factories that employed hundreds of carvers. Between that time and the years just before World War I, when briar began to dominate the industry, the thousands of meerschaum pipes created in factories finally found their way into the hands of middle-class smokers, who now were able to indulge in what only nobles and the rich had been able to afford in previous years.” -Carl Ehwa, Jr. The Book of Pipes & Tobacco. 1974.

“A new meerschaum pipe is generally either pure white or a very pale, creamy yellow color. As it is smoked, tars and oils seep closer to the waxed surface of the shank and then the bowl. Pinks dissolve into deepening amber reds and the golds become a richer, golden brown. The coloring ultimately approaches black-brown or a muted, dark cherry. These changes take place very gradually, the seasoning progressing so slowly that it almost goes unnoticed. It is as if one were watching a very cautious but exquisite autumn slip stealthily into its colors. In addition to its beauty, the meerschaum smokes quite dryly and, after a time, tobacco smoked in it tastes somewhat more delicate and sweeter than it does in a briar.

Today, with the exception of the fine carved heads produced by Andreas Bauer in Vienna, almost all meerschaum pipes are fashioned into shapes corresponding to those of standard briar pipes. In marked contrast, those carved by artisans years ago featured clusters of exquisite figures in relief or forming the entire body of the pipe. The bowl often was slipped in unobtrusively so as to avoid disrupting a battle scene, or dancing nymphs pouring wine for an amber-faced Bacchus.” -Carl Ehwa, Jr. The Book of Pipes & Tobacco.1974.

“It has been said that the cigarette smoking craze in the United States had a significant effect on the meerschaum industry. Further, ‘meerschaum is no longer so fashionable as it once was. Probably the numerous cheap imitations, the extreme readiness to break of the genuine article, and the fantastic designs into which it was fashioned, have led to its decadence in public estimation.’

All good things come to an end at some point in time. The delicate and slight, even the massive, the bulky meerschaums were impractical, never fashioned for a hurried Twentieth Century industrialized world of assembly lines, crowded buses and elevators and middle class income. But the magical and captivative nature of meerschaum has kept its popularity alive and the ranks are now augmented by a new breed of young, curious and enlightened collectors committed to preserve the cult of the White Goddess! -Benjamin Rapaport, A Complete Guide to Collecting Antique Pipes.” 1979.

“A perfect Meerschaum pipe is decidedly            
one of the choicest and rarest gifts of
the gods; but like all choice and rare
gifts, it is a source of considerable
anxiety to the owner. Like women, its,
‘name is frailty.’ As originally taken in
hand, and presented to the lips, nothing
can exceed the loveliness of its looks—its
delicious smoothness, its graceful
rotundity of form, and apparent innocence
from everything that can tarnish a
reputation. But, alas! you take it as
you take a wife, ‘for better and for
worse;’ and again, alas! it does not fare
better with the smoker and his Meerschaum
than with man and wife.”

-The Smoker’s Guide, Philosopher and Friend
A Veteran of Smokedom, 1876

Most of the images above are from the two books quoted, A Complete Guide to Collecting Antique Pipes and The Book of Pipes & Tobacco. A few were found online.

Hope you enjoyed.

Evidently Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but after his death a colleague said “he influenced my generation of architects more than any other man.” With The Metropolis of Tomorrow it’s easy to see why. It’s beautiful with idealistic and poetically expressed ideas about the then current state of urban architecture (including the only recently enacted zoning laws) and a fond hope that architects to come would put concept, human experience, and emotional response before mere capitalistic considerations.

The book is broken up into three sections titled, Cities of Today, Projected Trends, and An Imaginary Metropolis. In choosing which images to post I’ve decided to leave aside the first chapter with its renderings of real buildings of the period, and focus instead on a few examples from the last two chapters, all of which were imagined by Ferriss to illustrate the key concepts of his text.

Hope you enjoy.

For a few more bits on Ferris see the following: 

Place, Power, and the Human Being.

Tangible Futures example: Hugh Ferriss’s delineations.

High Priest of the New York Skyscraper Sex Cult.

Lastly The ASAI happens to offer an annual award for the best architectural illustrators which is named for Ferris. See here for past winners.