Salon.com > August Heffner

Embracing ’90s typography

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I hear you. My teenage years ended abruptly at the turn of the century. This means I was born the year MTV went on the air and my entire teenage years were spent in the 1990s.

It's no wonder that upon leaving college as an official graphic designer, I was at odds with the decades I was reared in. I hated all of the styles I'd known. I hated the '80s. I hated Memphis. I hated April Greiman posters. I hated Neville Brody. I hated the '90s. I hated Raygun. I hated Emigre.

Styles always return. It's a boring subject but it's true. Just check out Rookie Mag and watch today's teenagers fall in love with Blossom. Or see Beavis and Butt-Head returning to MTV. Or, like me, after seven years of not owning a TV, watch "Seinfeld" again. It is amazing and it is really, really ancient.

Design for the people!

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to see Karel Martens speak at a lecture hosted by the New York chapter of the AIGA. It was the most inspired I've ever felt after seeing a graphic designer speak.

If you don't know him, Martens is the godfather of graphic design in the Netherlands and, through his teaching at Yale and founding of the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, the hero of a generation of young designers who are being influenced by his work every day, whether they know it or not.

Martens and other Dutch designers, notably Mevis and van Deursen, represent, to me, something terrible that may be happening in American graphic design. Carin Goldberg's cover for Fast Company (below) helped me to believe I might not be alone. She attempts to list "The United States of Design" while only listing designers born and possibly educated in other countries.

Hand lettering hits the Web

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:19:00 +0000

This summer I went on a relaxing vacation (a new experience for me) and decided to sit on the porch all day and draw letters. Perhaps the years and years I've spent in complete awe and jealousy of Steve Powers final built up and I thought, this time, I'm going to do it. I'm going to train my hands to paint perfect letters. So after stocking up on brushes and inks I decided I needed some books, if I was to be self-taught. I hunted throughout New York City, a city I believe to have an enormous number of books per capita, and couldn't find anything worth buying.

Why I still work with my hands

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:30:00 +0000

When I left a design studio that I was a part of for over three years to go to a branding agency, my boss/mentor gave me a bone folder. "They won't have any of these where you're going!" he said.

He was right. My first assignment was for an apparel brand and in trying to create some imagery I famously asked where "the ribbon drawer" was. It was met with some confused looks. I was all: "You know, where you keep your grosgrain, your silk, your different sized ribbon." I was almost fired on the spot.

These days I work "in-house" and "at my house." I've moved from designer, senior designer, design manager to assistant creative director, and I haven't forgotten what a bone folder is, yet. That is to say, even though most of my days are meetings, emails and spreadsheets, I try to work with my hands as often as possible. If, for a period of time, I don't do so at work, I'll do it at home, no big deal.

The intersection of food, design and politics

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:01:00 +0000

Here in Brooklyn, we've seemed to hit an apex of food enthusiasm. Its seems like every weekend this summer a new food-related event happens and every weekend my wallet is emptied by $20 lobster rolls or an even more expensive indulgence.

Happily though, the food movement of today is part of a nice history of food appreciation and reaction to the food industry with roots in a freer (read cheaper!) group of ideas.

Above and below are some samples from The Diggers Archive, a group of radical thinkers from 1960s San Francisco that used food (free healthy food!) as part of their art and political message. These pieces are from their newspaper FREE CITY NEWS, that showcased some pretty cool hippie graphic design.

The case against vacation photos

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:30:00 +0000

A few years ago, I stopped bringing a camera on vacation. It has been an amazing experiment and I haven't regretted it once. Traveling to a foreign country without a camera feels like that recurring nightmare of showing up to school with no shoes on. At first you feel unprepared, naked and as though you are missing some of the greatest photo opportunities in the world. It is scary but you have to be brave.

Soon, you relax and realize you are actually seeing the greatest photo opportunities in the world. And, instead of digging through your pack to grab a camera, turn it on, and unconsciously freeze all the light in front of you into a small digital file only to be dumped onto your computer then Flickr page, you are actually, well, thinking about what's going on. (OK, so my girlfriend/travel buddy is an amazing photographer and brings a camera or two, which puts me at ease, but stay with me on this). Taking a photograph of the Eiffel Tower, for example, seems ridiculous. There are millions of photos of the Eiffel Tower. If I were to take my own photo, I doubt I could pick it out from a crowd. By drawing, though, I would spend about 25 minutes looking at the Eiffel Tower, rather than 1/30 of a second, burning it into my brain rather than the digital sensor.

What is typographic illustration?

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 01:01:00 +0000

My colleague and I have been batting this question around ever since we created what we thought was a simple assignment for our Typography students. It reads: Replace all photos on the front page of the newspaper with typographic illustrations.

The point of this assignment is to dive into the world of editorial illustrations, while keeping the focus on typographic solutions. This is familiar to me as most of my design years were spent working for Stephen Doyle, recent recipient of the National Design Award for communication, and a master of (among other things) what I've always referred to as the "typographic illustration."

But that term has started to really bother me.

Perhaps it's the strangeness of the word "illustration." At a recent AIGA Fresh Dialogue, speakers Keetra Dixon, Mike Perry, Andrio Abero, Timothy Goodman all discussed what they "like to introduce themselves as." Graphic designer, designer, maker, artist? The only label that they all had a laugh about was "illustrator." None dared to be labeled such a thing, with no clear explanation.