Image of the Day: Pantone Purple-M Marker

Purchased over thirty years ago for an assignment at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, this marker is still going strong!

Lost Type Term? Pop'd Kerns

When I spotted these the other day when I was grocery shopping, they struck me as so funny. Is this a lost and cryptic typographic term? I can almost hear one of my instructors at AIP stating that, "Jim, you've really pop'd the kern there between the letters A and V!"

Real definition of kerning can be found here.

So when you open the bag, is it overwhelmingly visually pleasing and this is due to the spacing between the individual snack items? Is this a way to get children to learn about negative space; "Sally and Jason, quit messing with the kerning and finish already!"

White and Pink Pearls

I had an instructor at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh that despised the use of Pink Pearl erasers. If he caught anyone using one in his class, he would snatch it off of their desk and throw it across the classroom. He was an evangelist of kneaded erasers, and hated the dreaded “pink streak” that Pink Pearls are notorious for leaving behind in their wake of pink crumbles. But it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that there are White Pearl erasers — no more pink streaks [I think]! I wonder if a former student of his invented this version . . .

AIP and Henry Koerner

pointed out by a fellow AIP classmate
Henry Koerner used Pittsburgh as his inspiration, and he explains his ideas on art interpretation in this episode of Profiles in Excellence. Watching this video brings back memories of being in his class in the early 1980s. At 1:55 in the video, when I spotted the old AIP [Art Institute of Pittsburgh] logo on a portfolio I almost expected to see fellow classmates! Henry was eccentric and had a huge ego, but he challenged the way we approached figure drawing. I liked some aspects of his earlier work, especially color, but in general I wasn’t a fan of his later works’ juxtaposition of proportion and size.



More can be found here and from his obituary in the NYTimes here.

Cover: Training in Commercial Art

via letterology
Just one of the old cover scans found here.
My 1982 degree from the Art Institute in Pittsburgh is in Visual Communication, and I am fairly certain that initially my resume from that time had me searching for jobs as a commercial artist. It was many years later that I took on the title of graphic designer.

Business Cards: Page IX

[Top Row] Becky Ballato’s card—Love the idea of the free flowing shape of the two letter B’s and brush, hate the type treatment and font choice. The Cat’s Meow was a local florist that had a great shop to discover wonderful surprises in every nook and cranny of their location, but the downturn in the economy took its toll on them.

[Middle Row] Love the red shoes and use of negative space, hate the typeface and treatment. Bert Gries was probably my favorite teacher while I was a student at AIP. My class projects were just average, but he really made the process of package design inspiring. He also had one of the best classroom locations in the building; second floor looking out onto Penn Avenue. Joe Petrina was one of the best design students and classmates at AIP; he seemed to work so effortlessly and ideas just seemed to flow for him. If I remember correctly, he also had a great laugh.

[Bottom Row] A classic Mac in silver foil on black stock; this card just rocks. Ahh, Accu-Weather—I do not think I have every heard anything good about how graphic designers were treated when employed by them under a very confining contract. While at Graphics II, we did a bit of work from them, including cleaning up the [ugly] logo concept that was created by the owner’s mother. I think that billing issues eventually led to them leaving our fold of clients. AquaPenn’s card—nice blind embossing, the “non-photo” blue ink is just a tad too light for my liking.