My Apple Computer story

I have truly loved being known as a fanatical supporter of Apple.

I bought my first Macintosh (128k version) about 5 weeks after they came out in January 1984 from ComputerWorld in the Astro Shopping Center on Kirkwood Highway in Newark, Delaware. I paid $2,495 for it.

One Macintosh story

From 1988 to about 1997 Cypher + Nichols + Design served as the advertising agency for Alanx Products, makers of wear-resistant parts for hard rock mining equipment. Starting a new campaign for Alanx we designed the “Moon” ad below left.

You had to produce a set of CMYK films for the ad which was sent to the magazines and stripped in for making the printing plates. Our films were produced by LithoColor here in Newark. In the early 1990s, it was no small task to accomplish things like having that product shot lay overtop of the photograph and headline. It was a very time consuming process and required a serious degree of craft. Also, the merging of the “chocolate syrup” border was a huge effort, working by hand with Xacto knives & “Rubylith.”

The first set of film negatives for the “Moon” ad cost our client $2,250.

We were heavily committed to Macintosh, but moving from a mechanical done on Illustration board to one on disk took a serious leap of faith. In the two months between those two ads we decided to bite-the-bullet and give “all digital” a serious try. We tried rather deliberately to not make the retouching Ray was going to have to be doing in Photoshop (I believe it may have been 2.0) any more difficult than we needed to, but those four elements to the product shot were all photographed individually and the headline type does appear to run in behind the product shot.

The cost for those four CMYK films for “Grand Canyon” was $72.50. We never used Illustration board for a mechanical again.

Kalmar Nyckel crew training class keepsakes

We took on the Kalmar Nyckel, Delaware’s Tall Ship, as a pro bono client, without any particular interest or experience with sailing. Because of our interest in printing history we thought printing via letterpress connected to a 3-masted pennice that landed at Wilmington, Delaware in 1638 would provide an interesting creative outlet. At the same time we could help an organization that offers wonderful experiences (the chance to set and douse a sail on a tall ship isn’t your average experience for a fourth grader) to thousands each year. After starting our work with a volunteer recruiting poster, we decided that taking the Crew Training Classes would help us with our ideas along with having a few new experiences.

As we are progressed through the 10 weeks of training from January through April, 2011, to learn to sail the Kalmar Nyckel, Delaware’s tall ship, we produced a keepsake reflecting on each week’s experience. We let the topics ‘pour’ out of each training day. The layout was established fairly spontaneously, with little planning, except that generally we would like to do it in two runs.

The size of each piece is 5″ x 11″, so we get 10 out of a sheet of 22″ x 30″ American Masters and also gave us the deckle edge at the bottom. It is all handset in wood and metal type with a few other objects thrown in for good measure.

We took about 75 copies to the following week’s training session for classmates and the other volunteers. We set aside 50 copies of each that we are going to bundle into portfolios. We might try to sell them for $50 a set to help cover the cost of the paper or give them to letterpress friends or sailors.

Saturday no. 1: In typography we’ve always been attracted to any interesting use of punctuation and you can often see this in our letterpress projects (N’t cards, Mother’s Day, Raven Press). When you like that stuff it is hard to ignore a word with two apostrophes in it (and sometimes you see it with 3). It is a shortened version of ‘forecastle’ which is at the front of the ship. Sheetbend is a knot we learned that connects the ends of two lines so the type layout should be obvious. It was nice that the name ends in end which added an extra touch. The rope image is printed directly from rope that had been glued to a thin board.

Saturday no. 2: The highlight of the day was a fire drill which made you wonder what a fire would be like out on the high seas. If you see a fire on board you yell it out three times. We had to do an extra run for this poster for each yell in order to get the overlaps. Muster is ‘collecting together’ after a fire warning has been given. The shape was an abstract image of fire cut from a piece of scrap plywood on our lead (as in the metal) saw which can cut in very accurate increments.

Saturday no. 3: It was 11 degrees when we started this morning, consequently the choice of pastel colors. Outside. Freezing. Learning how block & tackles (pronounced with a long A) work. We also starting learning to belay (tying off a line and the Kalmar Nyckel has LOTS of lines) which sometimes happens by wrapping the line back and forth between two pins. We cut a tall “zero” in half (removing most of the middle) to get those two Cs combined with an X to illustrate the belaying. Normally we wouldn’t want to be cutting wood type, but in this instance we now have two pieces. We were using one of our pieces of orphan type so it didn’t dig into one of our more complete wood fonts.

Saturday no. 4: Knots, commands, belay points, man overboard drills, etc. were starting to all run together. Seemed like every time you learned something new you forgot two old things. And when you’re doing this when sailing you need to do it right AND QUICK. Hopefully, it will become more and more natural as we drive this information deeper into our brains. Anyway, the questions are starting to get the edge on answers.

Saturday no. 5: The highlight of the day was a low-key race to identify the belay points on the ship. We divided into two teams (yellow and blue). Each mentor had about 20 rings made from rope. They would hand a ring to one of the team members and they would run to put it on the belay point. Then the next one would be given out. Nice excuse to bring out a nice set of Os from our wood collection and our larger metal type (our largest is 96 point Caslon).

Saturday no. 6: Hmmm. More Os. The main focus was on doing a boat check, which while you are under sail, is done every 30 minutes. Look here. Look there. Water in the five bilges? Fire extinguishers in the right spots? Lines properly stowed? Propane leaking? Water running? Head pumps doing anything weird? While the ship is a very contained space, there are lots of nooks and crannies and during the night while you are checking there are lots of people trying to sleep.

Saturday no. 7: We spent a good deal of the day setting (making the sail big so it can catch a lot of wind) and dousing (making the sail small) the fores’l (large bottom sail on the frontmost TALL mast and the mizzen (triangular sail at the back of the ship). It is going to be pretty amazing to be out on the high seas and to have a few people reorganize the sails and have the ship head off in a new direction.

Saturday no. 8: When you are doing “bow watch” (standing watch at the front of the ship) and you see something that needs someone’s attention (i.e. large tanker ship, a speed boat coming straight for you, an iceberg) you need to be able to tell them the direction. Straight in front of you is “dead ahead”, 3:00 is “starboard beam”, 10:30 is “broad on the port bow”, to name a few. The chart that explains this is called a Wind Rose, which is quite a nice name for it.

Saturday no. 9: This piece was designed a bit more around the week proceeding week 10 which included a written final exam and a test of practical seamanship. Jill and I would ask each other random questions, location of belay points, responses to various orders, sequence of events to set and douse various sails, location of fire extinguishers, job obligations in case of man overboard or fire or abandoning ship, names of sails, and how to tie the various knots used on the ship.

Saturday no. 10: We had done keepsakes 1 - 9 using only handset wood & metal type and a few handmade graphics. We had designed the certificate (the first one they’ve given out) to be used for our class so we thought it would be appropriate to refer to it in the 10th piece. So, in this instance the piece also includes a corner of the certificate using photopolymer plates highlight the words “crew training class 26″.

While often a bit hectic trying to schedule a full Saturday, work in 40 hours of maintenance, make a few out-of-class talks & movies, and produce these keepsakes, in the end Jill and I easily passed our final exam and practical seamanship tests. It was a really nice experience, we got a ton of exercise, learned some interesting history, connected something else with our interest in printing & typographic history, and we made dozens of wonderful new friends.

Now to stand on the bow of the ship 60 miles off shore on a moonlit night and feel the wind through my hair. We are ready to sail.

APHA National Annual Meeting program

Maybe as a joke on the new guy, Mike Denker volunteered Ray (the new president of the Chesapeake Chapter of the American Printing History Association) to print the program for APHA’s annual meeting held in January 2011 in New York City.

There are always ideas floating around Lead Graffiti that would be interesting to try and a project such as this provides a great forum for giving them a try. We wanted to do something different (we think our ideas of how we can use letterpress are often different from the normal letterpress you see around) for this particular group who are committed to the history of printing, so we designed the piece to include two of those ideas.

The first came to mind with our Boxcards. We print their backgrounds in opaque silver ink on packaged-goods boxes to let the printing on the package show through as the type. We though it might be interesting to handroll the paper beforehand and then overprint the silver to essentially trap the type the same way.

Above you can see a sample of Jill’s handrolling using three 3-inch brayers. We decided we needed to seal off the paper under the silver to try and keep the edges of the handrolled areas from showing, so this image is after we had printed two runs of transparent white. Because we had just done the handrolling and the ink was wet the color was coming off and contaminating the transparent white giving it that orange cast. This didn’t matter as we were going to be immediately overprinting with the opaque silver anyway. If you look hard you can see a hint of the type to come.

Below is the outcome after double printing the silver. In case you are wondering, Jill wanted to have some white show through in the type. When she was handrolling and completely covered the type area she thought the color looked too mechanical and she wanted there to be a sense of the handmade which we like in our work.

The second thing we wanted to try was printing right to the edge of the deckle-edged paper. That took a little extra packing as the very edge of the deckle is much thinner than the paper itself. We also had to use a sheet under every print as the ink printed off the edge and would print onto the tympan which would likely offset onto the back of the following print. This part worked great and added a nice touch to the piece as the edge had a nice knife-like quality and was quite stiff with the two layers of ink.

When we stacked the programs to be picked up by those attending the meeting, we put them in four separate stacks so everyone would see that the pieces were different. When we were thanked for our effort at the meeting they even asked for an explanation as to how it was printed. Several people confided in us that they had taken a couple extra for library collections or to show students. Hmmm. We like it.

You might compare it to this sample of handrolling for Columbia University that was finished the same week.

Grandmasters Exhibition / Art Directors Club of NY

On October 5, 2008 I had the honor of being awarded the title of Grandmaster by The Art Directors Club of New York. The ADC initiated the award to highlight people in the design education field. The ADCNY describes the ADC Grandmasters as educators whose teaching careers and mentoring have impacted generations of students and whose legacy is a far-reaching network of industry leaders and professionals in advertising and design.

The winners (holding certificates) : Carin Goldberg (School of Visual Arts), Shiela Metzner (School of Visual Arts), Mark Fenske (AdCenter / Virginia Commonwealth University), & Ray Nichols (University of Delaware). Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (Yale University), had to leave early and wasn’t there for the photo. The award is a great honor in itself and to be included with these important teachers from such important schools was the cherry on top.

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity of working with a lot of great students who worked hard, stood up well under the assault of critiques and all-nighters, and opened their minds to creative possibilities. While I had a great time in VC, I envied every student when they graduated, often wishing I could change places.

Rick Boyko, director of VCU / Brand Center), who was supposed to introduce me couldn’t come, so they switched it to Nancy Miller Vonk (VC’79) who had some wonderful things to say and that made it so much more wonderful and personal.

Maybe as many as 100 graduates attended the celebration or joined us afterwards at the Black Door. It was great to see both graphic design and advertising design graduates there, as I had only chosen from my advertising design graduates to be in the show, along with a sizable number of younger graduates. It was an astounding feeling seeing graduates spread over 25 years meeting each other, many for the first time. Two of the graduates, Ellen Steinberg (’90) and Nancy Miller Vonk (’79) said they had been emailing each other for two years and only were aware that they had me in common when I sent a note listing who was included in the exhibition. Graduates came from a lot of places, including San Francisco (2), Boulder, CO (2), Chicago, and Toronto.

The photo at the top shows a spread devoted to work I was connected to from the 88th Art Directors Club of New York annual which announced the inaugural awarding of the title of Grandmasters to design instructors. At this point I had retired and had quit adding the books to my collection. I was Googling something and the article suddenly appeared. I looked up the book on Abebooks.com and there were copies easily available, so I bought two of them—one was for DCAD, who received a good number of the design books from my library, and the other was for Lead Graffiti’s library. I thought I would share the wonderful page designed for ADC88 back in 2009.

Nine of my absolute favorite projects through 2008, along with one of my favorite portraits, were shown on the double-page spread. Truly a great honor.

From upper left clockwise:

1. Rethinking 2009 — This New Years card was the first notion we had of doing our Boxcards using recycled boxes as the stock.

2. Histories of Newark: 1758 - 2008 — A 300-page hardback which we designed. We took hundreds of photos for the book, most notably the “citizens band” that runs through every page and includes more than 3,700 townspeople.

3. All preservation is merely theoretical if you can’t keep the roof from leaking broadside for the American Printing History Association’s national conference at Columbia University. A copy was given to every attendee. The type is from our orphan wood type collection.

4. Can you have too much good typography — The broadside celebrated a visit and talk by Justin Howes from London about his digitizing Caslon from original printings. The image is a single piece of 18″ x 24″ wood type that we made for the poster.

5. Think Small. Again. — Poster for a Visual Communications year-end exhibition reflecting back on the 25th anniversary of Volkswagen’s “Think small” ad. It was included in an exhibition of Volkswagen advertising at The One Club in New York.

6. Don’t let another art director beat you to the punch — This poster was the tipping point for my own feeling that I could complete on an equal level with other people and schools which I had envied from afar. Mounted in the Art Directors Club of New York exhibition on the same panel as one of Stephen Frykholm’s Herman Miller barbeque chicken picnic poster.

7. Yes 2005 — broadside printed via letterpress for a Visual Communications year-end exhibition. There are 11 pieces cut with a laser from a 1/4″ sheet of Plexiglas.

8. On October 5 we fished all day but didn’t catch the big one — Poster directed toward Saul Bass who called us about the piece.

9. The whole world is talking — The 3 versions of an 8-foot poster silkscreened in 2′ segments of voice bubbles for a Visual Communications year-end exhibition. Printed on a roll of paper 0.7 of a mile long. The stacked posters were handcut using X-acto knives (total length was 2.8 miles). There were 36,000 rubber-stamp impressions. Yes, it was a job, but a killer piece that won us a bunch of design awards with nods from people like Ivan Chermayeff, Helmut Krone, and Milton Glaser.

The following creative directors, art directors, copywriters, and photographers were chosen to represent that “far reaching network of students” which were included in the exhibition.

Nancy Miller Vonk / 1979 / Ogilvy / Toronto, Canada
Brad Tillinghast / 1980 / Produce Marketing Association / Newark, DE
Bill Oberlander / 1981 / McCann-Erickson / New York, NY
Mylene Turek Pollock / 1983 / Leo Burnett / Chicago, IL
Craig Cutler / 1983 / Craig Cutler Photography / New York, NY
Ann Lemon / 1984 / Freelance / New York, NY
Joe Johnson / 1985 / Ogilvy / New York, NY
Kirk Souder / 1985 / GMMB / Washington, DC
Kevin Moehlenkamp / 1986 / Hill Holiday / Boston, MA
Sean McCormick / 1986 / Caspari McCormick / Wilmington, DE
Rick Midler / 1988 / formerly of BBDO / New York, NY
Ellen Steinberg / 1990 / McKinney / Durham, NC
Franklin Tipton / 1991 / Goodby, Silverstein & Partners / San Francisco, CA
Libby Brockhoff / 1992 / Founding partner of Mother / London, UK
D.J. Pierce / 1993 / Crispin Porter + Bogusky / Boulder, CO
Marc Sobier / 1993 / Goodby, Silverstein & Partners / San Francisco, CA
Dave Laden / 1995 / Dave Laden Films / Ubër Content / San Francisco, CA
Tesia Farquhar Barone / 1997 / Philadelphia, PA
Bill Starkey / 1997 / STICK and MOVE, Philadelphia, PA
James Helms / 1997 / Slingshot / Dallas, TX
Brandon Henderson / 1999 / Y&R / New York, NY
Karl Lieberman / 1999 / Wieden + Kennedy / Portland, OR
Kat Morris / 2001 / Crispin Porter + Bogusky / Boulder, CO
Marco Kaye / 2002 / Wieden + Kennedy / Portland, OR
Amy Servidea / 2002 / BBH / New York, NY

We were asked to letterpress the certificates for the Art Directors Club of New York Grandmasters Award ceremony held in October, 2008. The Club is an important organization for those of us in the design field and it didn’t hurt that Ray was getting one of the awards.

Below is the award. The original photo was from the Craig Cutler Studio.

Terre Nichols (VC’88) deserves a lot of the credit for the original idea development of the award, along with Bill Oberlander, former President of the ADCNY, who brought the project into the light. The the original image for the certificate was photographed by Craig Cutler Photography (VC’83) and provided to us by the designer of the certificate, Lizzy Ferraro (VC’05). The signatures were executed in ink by Satwinder Sehmi, a constant for almost 20 years of VCUK trips. The signatures were scaned and then printed via letterpress. It was a family project, for sure.

Tray Nichols (VC’95) posterized the image in four tonal stages (#1 was the lightest to #4) to capture the dimension and detail using Illustrator and Livetrace. Ray was in charge of the printing and some serious resolution issues. Jill was the ink mixing master.

⬆ Former VC students who shared the evening at the Grandmasters ceremony.

Everyone of those represents a nice moment in my life and reminds me how good a run I had with a bunch of amazing students, colleagues, friends, and design professionals.

Robyn Stern (’94), Ray Nichols, and Dave Laden (’95). I thought the T-shirt made a nice statement about the evening and was the source image for one of my favorite portraits ever.

When starting the printing we had purchased PMS871 ink which is listed as the lightest metallic yellow-gold. In our experience, it is much darker and appears more like bronze with a heavy patina. We cleaned the press, added gold powder. Nope. Cleaned the press and then tried adding base tint. Nope. We decided to go back and start with yellow and build the image in color without worrying about the metalflake issue.

The first run of plate #2 looked OK, but it is also hard to tell where you are going with this kind of image after one run. So, we printed plate #3 to see a bit more of the image. The overall quality was better working from a base of yellow, but still lacked some snap. So we printed plate #4 followed up by #1. The image was still just OK and still without the snap of the reflective gold in the original image. So we put plate #2 back on and ran yellow with a bit of base tint to help the first run show through. An additional problem at this point was that we had cut off the registration marks (we were being cheap, not wanting to pay for all that blank area of the 10″ x 12″ certificate) so getting the registration aligned was much harder the second time.

The second layer of yellow helped a lot. Then we did the same thing with #3 (same issue of having removed the registration marks) and we had an image that was pretty accurate to the original. It had taken us 6 letterpress runs spread over two days.

After three more runs (logo, text, and calligraphy), the resulting certificate (below) came remarkably close to the original. We love showing it to letterpress printers. They always run their fingers over the name and ohhhh. We say, “No. Run your fingers over the frames.” They cannot believe it is letterpress.

It is worth mentioning the importance of a few colleagues in our program that contributed in very important ways to my own successes, both inside and outside of class, including Bill Deering, Martha Carothers, and Hendrik-Jan Francke.

And then there is Jill Cypher. Anyone who knows me knows how important she is to me and any successes I can claim.

Fonts for the Intertype

Lead Graffiti has a 1956 Intertype C4 linecaster. When we purchased it in 2007, we actually we got the machine for free, but did purchase the matrices (type molds) for approximately 200 typefaces.

We want to let anyone who is interested in what it is that we have. We also have hundreds of individual matrices which we are slowly trying to get back into the correct places.

One upcoming project we want to get started with is trying to print a specimen sheet for many of the more important fonts, especially the ones we are more likely to want to use in our work at Lead Graffiti.

Aldus — 12 point
Baskerville / Bold — 10 point
Baskerville / Italic — 8, 9, 11, 12 point
Baskerville / Italic (SPLIT) — 14 point S
Baskerville Bold / Italic — 8, 10, 12, 14 point
Bernhard Fashion w/ Park Avenue — 12, 14 point
Bodoni Bold / Italic — 12 point
Bodoni Bold Cond / Franklin Gothic — 18 point
Bodoni Book / Italic — 10 point
Bodoni Poster / Italic — 12, 14 point
Caslon / Italic — 10, 12, 24 point
Caslon 236 Old Face — 10, 12 point
Century / Bold — 10, 14 point
Century Bold / Italic — 14 point
Century Expanded — 14 point
Century Expanded / Bold — 8, 10 point
Century Medium / Bold — 5.5 point
Cheltenham / ? — 18 point
Copperplate Lining Gothic / Roman — 6 point
Egmont Medium / Italic — 14 point
Egmont Medium Italic Only — 18 point
Fairfield — 9 point
Futura Book / Demi Bold — 6, 8, 10 point
Garamond #2 Reg / Italic — 14 point
Garamond #3 Bold / Italic — 6, 8, 10 point
Garamond #3 Reg / Italic — 8, 9, 10, 12 point
Garamond Bold — 14, 18 point
Gothic Alt 1 / Palisade — 18 point
Gothic Alt 1 / Palisade — 24 point
Gothic Extra Bold / Memphic Extra Bold — 14 point
Goudy / Italic — 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 point
Kenntonian / Italic — 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 point
Lydian Bold / Italic — 10, 14 point
Melior / ital — 6, 8, 9, 10 point
Melior / semi-bold — 9, 10, 12 point
Memphis Extra Bold Condensed — 18 point
Metro Lite / Bold — 8 point
News Gothic / Bold — 6, 8, 10, 10, 12 point
No. 2 / Condensed Title — 10 point
Palatino / Italic — 6, 8, 10, 12 point
Scotch — 11 point
Spartan / Bold — 10 point
Times Roman / italic — 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 point
Vogue Bold Condensed / Extra Bold — 14 point
Vogue Extra Bold (CAPS ONLY) — 18 point
Vogue Extra Bold / Bold — 18 point
Vogue Extra Bold / Oblique — 12, 14 point
Vogue Lite / Bold — 8, 10, 12, 14, 18 point

That list totals 99 named fonts, but almost all of them actually contain 2 fonts. Often a regular or medium will also have the same in italic. Sometimes they will be regular and bold. Sometimes there are two completely different typefaces.

We also have approximately 100 border moulds for a wide range of elements.

VC Family Album pages

VC Family Album pages

If I started teaching now and knew what I know about this assignment, I would make every student in every class do 3 to 5 of these projects every semester. You get points for each to encourage students to work toward the maximum possible. Document field trips, speakers, assignments, best solutions, and semester portfolios.

I would group them into albums. Then, I would give the gazillion pages to some outstanding Special Collections focused on education. Princeton would be a good one because John Nash taught there. The photo at the top is from the results of this assignment done by Ari Garber (VC'05), produced because we watched the movie about John Nash at an in-class event.

• Students work as solitary designers on their pages in every instance, though more than one album page may be desired for more important events.

• Depending on how you think the students will organize themselves and the relative importance of particular events, more than one student might produce a specific album page.

• every assignment, focusing on 3 to 7 of the top solutions

• Every student would do a page for a final portfolio showing all of their final work for every assignment produced in the class.

• Every field trip (maybe three students would each do one so we could get different points of view), and I would find excuses to take field trips.

• Every speaker and I would find excuses to get speakers in front of my students and my students in front of speakers.

• Every film was viewed in class, and I would show documentaries, feature films, and shorts.

• an explanation of every textbook and maybe every reading

• For every weird class, I would find excuses to make them happen.

• The instructor should determine how many album pages might be produced during a semester. Say there are 20 students, and the general desire is for every student to make three album pages, giving you 60 pages in that class in that semester. Each student will have a final portfolio page. If there are seven assignments during the semester and you want the top 3 of each task documented, two field trips with every student going, and five other critical in-class events (movies, guest critiques, etc.). You expect students to attend five events outside class (movies, guest speakers, etc.). 20 portfolio pages + 21 individual class project solutions + 2 field trips + 5 in-class events + 5 outside-of-class events would total a maximum of 53 (remember you want 60). You must double up on some last events to provide enough for the students.

• And I would add this on top of everything else you are doing, not instead of some things. The students will learn to plow through these things quickly, and the restrictions should reduce the overall effort.

NOTE: Students will complain, but you can help them find ways to get many results from little work. The example at the top was given to a promising student producing the album page for the movie “A Beautiful Mind” I showed in class. He was complaining about how he didn’t have time. He was a great student, and I wanted to help him understand how a design decision could reduce the time. Writing these pages can take a while if they need to be written well with lots of words. So, let’s just set the DVD on the computer, set the captions to be on, and just screengrab every set of words in the most critical scene in the movie. Organize them into a grid, which was pretty much done in less than 3 hours.

Ultimately, it would be the best and most thorough journal about teaching, starting on day  1 and going through day number whatever.

The journal itself, closed—a kind of heavy metal design journal.

The idea for the project came from Rose DiSanto (VC'83) who was teaching a course for us, replacing another faculty member on sabbatical. It was a project set up with a heap of rules.

• 11" x 17"

• A rule ran horizontally right through the middle of the page

• main typefaces were Didot and Avenir

• seek inventive design while working in an unforgiving format under a lot of restrictive rules

VC family album

Individual pages may have specific guidelines or needs. For instance, a page about a writing class might need more words, but a page about a photographer might need more images.

Click here for an index of some examples (which appear to the right) of pages designed by Ray Nichols, which shows some of the design issues he thought were important for those events.

It is important to remember that pages can be used in three ways.

• As pages in the mother VC family album, it will be one of probably 200 pages per book and then multiple books that will develop over the upcoming years.

• A page for an event can be used as a thank you. The pages are 17" x 11" but are printed on 19" x 13" sheets. This provides a blank area around the image so that participants in the event can sign the page. The page will then be given to people to be thanked. Hopefully, they will keep it around and be reminded of their interaction with us.

• A set of pages can be gathered and used as a mini-book with a particular focus. This can also be given as a thank you. A good example is the VC / London trip. We will do individual pages for all of our visits (which will be given to them) along with a set of all the pages to the Center for International Studies as a document recording the trip. We might also keep a book in VC for students to look at without dealing with the mother-of-all-journals version.

Another point worth making is the importance of subjects for such pages so we will have an excuse to design them. It is the design experience we are looking for. The rest of it is just helpful to do.

To produce pages using these rules and guidelines, you'll need three stuffed files (an InDesign template and the two dominant typefaces, Didot and Avenir).

ALL pages in the book MUST:

• Be created in InDesign from templates provided (page size 17" x 11" horizontal only) and use provided stylesheets whenever logical and possible

• Be designed with a safe area (within where text falls) that falls on a 12p margin from the left side trim and a 3p margin from the top, bottom, and right side trim.

• The text must incorporate any details necessary to place the page content into the correct context as part of the VC history story (date, participants/titles, VC participants, place, etc.).

• Include a .2 pt horizontal rule always centered (33p below top trim) across the page ( the rule is locked into the template). There are instances when you might rather have the rule pass behind an image.

• Have one headline set in Didot Roman (see image below), 48 points, 100% black, and positioned vertically as dictated by the supplied master page using the appropriately supplied stylesheet. The bottom serifs of the type align tangentially with the .2 rule, with the typography in front. The headline may be positioned anywhere along the line.

• Incorporate 1 – 3 characters (no more or less) in any font other than Didot Roman in any form. It is important to choose a font that contributes to the page's design. Additional care should also be taken with sizing and kerning the type.

• Incorporate a single line of explanatory type in Avenir Black, 12 pt, any color, which must sit just under (the .2 rule must align with the x-height of the text as dictated by the supplied master page) the horizontal rule using the appropriately supplied stylesheet. The text may fall anywhere along that line.

the journal pages revealed

Below is what the type looks like together. The Didot sits exactly on the rule and the Avenir Black explanatory line is in front.

• Set all main body text in Avenir Book (click here to see Avenir Book) 8.5 / 12, 70% black, with an extra 3 points between paragraphs using the appropriately supplied stylesheet

• As a general rule, columns of text should align vertically and horizontally (there are instances when you might want to break this rule, but without such an intent, this rule should apply)

• Print on the front of super A3 size Epson Premium Luster Photo Paper (19" x 13") and trim to 17" x 11"

• Must show a credit line that begins with "Page design:" and ends with " / DEsigners." There are spaces on both sides of the "/". Following the colon, specific tasks performed by others are listed (i.e., Page design: Raymond Nichols; retouching: Hendrik-Jan Francke; copy: Bernie Herman; photography: Bill Deering."

All pages in the book CAN:

• Care must be taken to use understandably named files and supporting images

• Files should be well-organized in appropriate folders

• The designer of any page must supply a folder containing all images (typically, at least 300 dpi at the size used) and any typefaces used beyond Avenir and Didot to the caretaker of the VC family album master copy pages (typically in the form of a CD with all of the appropriate files)

— Logo created by British graphic designer, Alan Fletcher
— Story by Ben Thoma (VC’04) & Karla Burger Cushman (VC’04)

As Visual Communication students, we came to expect that amazing experiences could happen at any time. Whether it was on one of our New York City trips or a surprise guest for critique, we knew that there were no ordinary days in the VC program.

The annual study abroad trip to London was no exception. Because it was open only to rising Seniors, each trip would be reported back to underclassmen with such excitement; it became a legendary sort of experience. Visiting design studios and advertising agencies. Sipping drinks with calligraphers and sitting in the studio of design icons like Alan Fletcher. It all added up to the trip of a lifetime.

That last experience—visiting Alan Fletcher—was held in higher regard than all the others. He wasn't just an illustrator or a designer. He was a visionary thinker. He wrote a definitive resource for the creative thinker, "The Art of Looking Sideways," and had been awarded every prize coveted by the artistic community. Meeting him would be like a young musician meeting John Lennon or an author sitting down for absinthe with Shakespeare.

Ben Thoma (left) headed down the alley to the carriage houses that lined the inside of the block.

I don't recall everything about the visit to his tiny studio. What I do remember is more about the space than anything. To get there, we went through a small back alley. It was more like a driveway, but many attached cottages shared it. It wasn't at all what I expected to find in a major metropolis. It was tiny. And the walls were white. It was filled with little bits of his career, but also his musings. A scribble here. A cut paper silhouette there. I'm not sure, but I think it was his home as well.

And there we were — about 25 of us, jammed into his matchbox workspace. He had an assistant who tried to organize us, and then when he was ready, we joined him upstairs (see the portrait to the left).

Ray and Alan sat on chairs, and the rest were on the floor. Ray liked the idea that we were at Alan's feet. We were students at the hand of the master, and there was reverence in it that way. And I recall thinking that we acted that way, too. We had always been trained to be ready to ask questions, but I don't recall any of us being brave enough to start the conversation. Oddly, I don't remember mustering the strength to ask myself—too many self-doubts about saying or asking the "wrong" thing.

When our time on the floor was up, we headed downstairs again, and Alan offered to sign books. I need to remember who it started with, but he drew quick illustrations for each of us. Alan had a distinct drawing style, and his handwriting was even more unique. We instantly transformed into children, asking for horses and muscle-men sketches. There was a giddy reception to each quirky interpretation that Alan would make to one of our requests. I resisted the urge to ask for an illustration. We were treating this design icon more like a sidewalk artist or sideshow.

This natural urge to resist the popular path has generally led to my best stories in life, and this would be no exception. Even though I knew I didn’t want to be seen as demeaning Alan by asking for a sketch, I also wanted to ask him for one. The difference was I wanted my request to mean something. No, to be meaningful.

So, I waited for everyone else to have their turn, and when it was time to go, I approached Alan and asked him if he would consider doing one more sketch. I wanted him to sketch a raven. But this illustration wouldn’t be for me. It would be for someone else. A new initiative at our school. A letterpress facility called Raven Press.

In hindsight, it might have been rude to ask because I was asking one of the most sought-after graphic designers in the world to create an identity for our unknown, tiny effort to revive a dying production craft.

He responded by saying yes, but he would require me to organize through his assistant. So we exchanged information before the entire class left the studio. I had to be sly about it, as I didn’t want Ray or Bill to know anything about it. Honestly, it is an excellent idea, but this is one of those things that can also get you in trouble. This would be something of a gift for them. For the trip. For teaching. For caring enough to make these sorts of experiences possible.

I imagine Bill or Ray scolding me for hanging in Alan’s place too long for overstaying our welcome or disrespecting their generosity. Maybe that happened. Perhaps it didn’t.

But what I recall next was a miracle.

Alan’s assistant had given me a fax number and asked me to send a note detailing the project so that Alan could read it and respond. It was 2003, and the Internet existed—albeit in seedy Internet cafes—but he wanted a fax. So, I drafted a handwritten note and shared it with one of my closest classmates, Karla Burger. She had been chosen to have dinner with Alan, and I respected her design talent more than anyone else in our class. Was I crazy? Was this scrawled-out not working as the brief for the world’s best designer? What else should I tell him? And most importantly: where would we find a fax machine, and how would we know how to use it? Between country codes and calling cards, I barely knew how to call home to say hi to my girlfriend.

Well, somehow, we faxed it. And somehow, we got a response back from Alan’s assistant. We were to come by the studio to pick it up on a specific date. Holy shit! He was going to do it. And we were going to be able to see him again. But did it make sense? Did he understand what it was all about? Was it going to be something we wanted to use for Raven Press?

I recall feeling a lot of anxiety and excitement. We were worried because we had to pick it up on one of our final days in town, and although we knew where to go, getting there and back would be hard undetected. Somehow, we found ourselves again in that tiny back alley. And this time, it felt different. We were above those students who had flocked there feeling green and in awe. We were clients now. We were there to collect a contracted piece of work. Despite this feeling of pride, we were still nervous about seeing Alan again. We didn’t have the safety of the group. Imagine our relief when we discovered that Alan wasn’t even there! His assistant handed us a manila envelope. We thanked her, and we were off. We had it. We had an original Alan Fletcher mark right there in our hands.

I don’t think we could have waited until we were back at the flat to look and see what was inside. Besides, this was a secret. We couldn’t show anyone until we were back in Delaware. Karla and I snuck a peek at the underground. We carefully opened the envelope and pulled out our treasure. It was sandwiched between two pieces of wax paper to protect it—like a nest.

A little blob of ink sat with a thin penned outline of a beak and two wire-like legs. There was a white sticker over the body with an asterisk sketched in the center—an eye. And that was it. It was this perfectly hatched baby raven.

Not only had Alan read the note, but he understood enough to create a mark that represented the youth, experimentation, and notion of Raven Press. In my mind, what had always been a red raven, a mature, Edgar Allen Poe-inspired, suddenly was a quirky, youthful blackbird. It was perfect.

We tucked it away, only to open it again once we returned to the States. I recall feeling worried that something would happen to it during our journey. I was even more anxious to check on it and change fate to a gust of wind or spilled drink.

When back in the States, I did sneak it out long enough to scan it in the student Mac Lab so we could project the image of the logo to the entire Visual Communications program at our monthly gatherings. I’m pretty sure no one, especially Ray or Bill, knew we would present Alan’s mark that day. I was a bit nervous about their response. What if they had been tirelessly working on their own? What if they didn’t like it?

Well, there was nothing to fear. Ray was so overwhelmed that he kissed me—an act he would only repeat on one other day: my wedding day. So, yeah. It was a big deal. I felt proud for seizing the moment and seeing it through. I felt proud to have contributed something meaningful to the program and the teachers who would launch me into my career. I felt proud that I had been worth the time spent on Alan Fletcher’s floor.

Our group outside Fletcher’s renowned “alphabet gate.” Ben Thoma, laying down, lower left; Karla Burger Cushman, second row, middle; Bill Deering, far left; dad behind the camera.

The following year (2004) on our annual first-Friday-afternoon-of-VCUK we again visited Alan. This time we wanted him to write Raven Press for us so we could include it with the logo when beneficial.

Just below you can see a 00:50 film of Alan writing the words. The video was taken with one of the first Nikon cameras that would record video and was limited to 3:00 segments.

And just for fun of it and because I can, a selfie of Ray with Alan.