Vintage Typography

Typography is one of my favorite themes, so I don’t know why it took me weeks to decide on what to do for my heARTist Trading ATCs. There were so many directions within typography that I tried three or four approaches, but nothing was really working. 

My family has been watching the old 1970s PBS show “Upstairs, Downstairs”, so I wanted to do something with the Art Nouveau style. I puttered for hours with Nouveau-inspired fonts and played with letters, words, and fabric designs in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator without too much success. Next, inspired by the work of artist Lisa Occhipinti, I used portions of the swoop of a Q, Z and M Art Nouveau backgrounds, an antique beach, and my own designs—without success.

So, I went back to my old favorite—vintage advertising, and layered Graphics Fairy http://thegraphicsfairy.com/ and other antique images in Photoshop to create this month’s ATCs. I tried about 50 different ideas, and printed the five styles I liked best. I surrounded a Pears Soap ad with text about cleanliness and beauty in an old west-inspired font. The Monaco-Monte-Carlo card was the only one in an Art Nouveau style; I layered a Mucha poster on one of my own designs. The beehive/rose, bird in an envelope and French advertising all multiple vintage images that were layered and softened in Photoshop.

Feeling Blue

When Marie Johansen suggested that we revisit the typography theme for our next Arts in the Cards ReVisioned http://artsinthecardsrevisioned.blogspot.com/ project, I had an idea of what I wanted to do--Character Study, in the style of Lisa Occhipinti. http://www.locchipinti.com/ Lisa wrote an article for ClothPaperScissors back in May/June 2010...it was one of those articles that I just couldn't forget, and I had been meaning to give her technique a try. The idea was to use text not to say something that the viewer would read, but just to appreciate a letter, or a part of a letter as a design element. The concept really appealed to me--I am a writer and magazine/newspaper layout designer and on a daily basis I work with, and love, fonts. I had a 'duh' moment when I realized what a good idea it was to use just letters, or just a swoop of a q or point of an M, as a design element. And it only took me two years to find the time to try out her technique! However, it was harder than I thought. For this challenge, we threw all rules out, so I was free to choose any size, any material, anything at all that had a theme of typography. I chose a favorite size, 12" x 12" and a favorite material, paper. I do love quilting and fabric, but paper behaves so much better--it doesn't wiggle, doesn't bleed when you paint it (unless you want it to) and is easier to cut.

I studied Lisa's guide, and began with choosing some letters and fonts, arranging them in Photoshop, printing them out, cutting them, and coloring them. I chose a horizontal design and a blue color theme, with water and waves in mind. I added painted strips of paper from my husbands newspaper to honor him (he has been a journalist and publisher for many years), a strip of fabric with the name and copyright in the selvedge from the company I used to work for (Leon Rosenblatt), some woven, rustic ribbon from Tinsel Trading, and painted some stripes with energy and om symbols silkscreened and stamped on. I couldn't resist adding my favorite Buddha quote, which I printed on Extravorganza. I used, along with the fabric and paper, a base of coquille watercolor paper, Derwent blocks, and Lumiere paint. It took a lot of puttering, painting and repainting, and many, many trials and errors before I had a piece that I was fairly happy with.