Just your type

Despite being in the digital age there are plenty of designers and others who are fascinated by wood type from the letterpress printing age. When I was at art school years ago a friend and I bought a small second-hand proofing press and lots of lead and wood type faces (he still does printing with the collection) so seeing these cards was a lovely bit of nostalgia for me. 

The Hamilton Company, in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, is a printing and type museum and they still cut wood type. A fold-out poster has a brief illustrated history of the museum and on the reverse a visual guide to different typeface styles. Text type was always made from lead but anything that required large letters would have been impossible with lead so wood was the obvious choice, mostly cut from maple.

The cards show various close-ups of wood type and some of the letters are very decorative but unfortunately, there aren't cards showing these faces as complete alphabets, also included are six art cards printed in silver and brown on a light brown cardboard stock. 

The box would interest anyone who wants to see some examples of letterpress wood type from decades ago and the cards would also be worth framing.

Pop art culture

Pop culture has certainly inspired the eighty artists featured in this fascinating book of their work. Their creativity is remarkably varied, from the photo-realism paintings of Laurent Durieux (incidentally, Cernunnos have published a book of his work) the handmade action figures of Mike Leavitt, a series of room lights by Eyal Rosenthal, cardboard models from Monami Ohno to the fun interpretations of familiar logos by Bruce Yan.

Of course, the majority of the work uses paint with a brush or airbrush and there is hardly anyone included who isn't skilled in creating interesting compositions and the use of color. Kid's cartoons, gothic horror and psychedelia are strong influences for several of these geek illustrators. Well known names include Ron English, his brand images 'Last supper' (2010) is her, Dave Pollot and his classical pop art paintings combined with product placement in old masters, 'Old market expansion VII' (2018) and Alex Gross with his 'Mono Lisa joker' (2019) and shown on the cover.

The several hundred images in the book are printed on a good matt art paper with each artist getting two or three spreads to show off their work. A brief introduction gives some background detail and the publishers have gone the extra mile by including artist's websites and their social media contacts.

Overall, an excellent survey of the best in contemporary pop art. 

Murder most foul, just picture it

 

Who would have thought that such a grisly subject could produce such a fascinating book? Doctor Drew Gray reveals, in a very readable way, more than two hundred murders committed by the usual suspects in Europe, America and Australia though a few actually got away with it. The illustrated Introduction sets the scene for the way the police solved these murders, initially in a very haphazard way without the benefit of crime scene photos, fingerprints, forensics or even a detective. Between 1850 and 1910 rapid advances in technology (for example: blood splatter analysis was available in 1895) allowed the police and the courts to improve conviction rates.

Obviously, the well-known murderers are included Jack the Ripper and Hawley Crippen in London, Bill Quantrill and his Raiders in Lawrence, Kansas, Ned Kelly in Victoria, Australia but most of the killers in the book, though achieving press notoriety at the time come across as either corrupt or very ordinary individuals who lacked the intelligence to get away with their crimes. The copy reveals their crime, trial and conviction in great detail.

What makes this book come alive for me are the hundreds of illustrations (730). Engravings or photos of the murderer and victims, historical engravings by press artists who imagined how the murder was committed and the front pages of newspapers they appeared on, crime scene photos, interesting contemporary floor plans of the crime scene with a red silhouette of the body and obviously plenty of maps which all have keyed references to the places connected to the murder. All the images and copy are presented in very attractive page layouts with an historical feel because all the captions are in capital letters similar to how they would have appeared in the press over a century ago.