Saint Thomas Choir School, my favorite alma mater, is coming to an end. After 105 years, the church, agonizing about its finances, announced a plan turn the education side over to another school, the Professional Children’s School in New York. I’d never heard of it, but it’s actually five years older than the Choir School, and located a short walk away on the west side of Columbus Circle. Jeremy…
DESIGNERS often talk about getting started. You hear some say they found “inspiration” from a poster from the Bauhaus, or a magazine cover from the 60s. But the good designers work from their own experience—in life, with people, and with nature. We just lost a great observer, Vincent Winter (1947-2024). He took it all in—and then brought it back out in strong type and incisive photos. I was able…
It never occurred to me that Nixon would win the election in 1968. It seemed impossible after all the ferment of the year, the combination of the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, and the collision of the counter culture—hippie style, free love, drugs, and the transformation of music with rock and roll. How could a country that elected John Kennedy eight years earlier vote for his…
My father Joseph Jefferson Black was born 122 years ago today. Dec. 12, 1900. He liked to say, “On the 12th day of the 12th month of the 12th year, I was 12 years old.” He was an architect, and he never quite understood why I was a graphic designer. “You work a short time on pieces of paper that will be duplicated by the thousands and then thrown away.” he said. “I work a long time on one project…
WHEN you’re young, it’s easier to dismiss setbacks and move on. LA, the weekly newspaper that gave me my first job as a publication art director, folded after 24 issues. It failed. But everyone there quickly found other things to do, and I don’t think any of us filed for unemployment. The failure marked my thinking about the work. I remembered the sloppy layouts, weak illustrations, poorly lighted…
Starting with an exception: Centaur, with Monotype’s companion Italic, Arrighi. While outside the set of 19th century old styles we settled on, I was happy to have exceptions, to make a point about the content. LA Type A six-month dash of typesetting was an education for me as I interned for [Robert] Dothard the summer before college. His association with the printer, Edwin Rudge put him in direct…
Los Angeles was easy to get used to. A change for me from the older cities (New York, Chicago, or Washington), it shared the new, chaotic, automobile-centered sprawl of Houston. Unlike Houston, which my friend Tom Curry described as “nice and flat,” it was a geographical delight. LA had the ocean to the west, and the mountains on the east, when you could see them. Supposedly, air pollution was…
No. 1 In May and June (1972) I brought together a staff, and tried to work out the copy flow with the editors. We thought we all understood what to do, but each had assumptions based on their experiences. Fleming and Sherrill came from publications who had teams of people moving copy, setting type, and making up pages. I came from places where we improvised, and shared the work equally in the hope…
The interview As much fun as I was having in Houston in 1971, working for Adie Marks, the strong and impetuous head of Gulf State Advertising (among clients, the Astrodome, Ringling Bros.), I really couldn’t live on my salary without living at home. And if you’ve ever taken acid at your parents’ house, you know what I mean by needing a raise. Off hours, I had enjoyed working with Nathan Fain on…
WHILE at The New York Times in the mid-20s, Eleanor Fox, my mother, heard about an opening at the American Mercury , which had become the hottest, most sophisticated magazine of the Roaring Twenties. She got a job as secretary, and there was a lot of typing, but today she would be called “production manager.” She had a big desk at the Fifth Avenue office with a typewriter with four modern rotary…
