The Right Type

For the true type lovers, you probably already know about http://www.itcfonts.com and consequently the U&lc (Upper and LowerCase) magazine created by them. Also, then you may already know of a certain horse found on page 9 of the Fall Issue, 1998 (Vol.25 No.2). The Typographic Horse was created by Christopher Stern using metal and wood types, then rendered into a magnesium plate, according to the caption describing the horse.

As the title says, for those of you who can't go back in your library and look, the Horse (or at least the front half of a horse) is comprised of various letters of seemingly several fonts. A large "Y" and "J" by themselves create an uplifted leg. An "A" by itself is almost the entire face and muzzle of the horse. Several parentheses make up the waving mane. And a great number of smaller letter of all shapes and sizes fill in gaps all over the horse.

The method probably used to construct the typographic beast was to place all the largest letters first and then fill in the gaps with what looks the best. For the horse itself, the letters tell no tale that is readily apparent. Upper and lower case letters are used where it seems fit. Stern who worked with Jules Remedios Faye on this particular project, left the story to Faye. And the story accompanies the pieces as part of a unified whole. A solid block of text printed over the uplifted leg down to the ground about a horse.

This however, as far as I can tell is not concrete poetry. This is using the shapes and juxtapositions of the letters as an art form. In much the same way that Picasso could see a bull in the objects, a bicycle seat and a handlebar, Stern could see a horse in the alphabet soup.

So for the exercise of the week, I have decided to emulate this idea of using the letters to make a picture. While stern only used a single color to create the horse, I make us of the colors of the object. In fact I went about my process a little differently than I suppose Stern had. I merely started at one end of the image and worked my way back along the object picking and choosing letters along the way. I started with one large parentheses at the smooth of the beak.

As you can see I chose to do the large colorful bird, the macaw (or at least a head shot). I went about creating the type font version of the macaw by placing the letters one at a time on top of the original image. In all I used three fonts: Caslon Old Face, Baker Signet, and Bard. I did not distort the letters except by rotation and size. And I think I have 16 or less colors.

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