I love to see people interacting with the B. Prisco: We made a representation of a chromatic layer out of a different material, in this case plywood, like a little drop shadow for the metal form. It’s slightly unpredictable in terms of where you end up with your 3D shape you can’t control it. Eventually the water breaks the seam and that’s how you know you’re done. Sywalski: You weld two flat shapes together, drill a hole for a spout, and hook it up to a pressure washer. All the forms disassemble so we could pack them into a van and drive them up to New York when we were done.Ĭourtesy Helen Sywalski and Michael Prisco.
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Prisco: My dad is an industrial designer and furniture designer, and we fabricated the letters at his studio in North Carolina. We made some adjustments to the proportions as we worked, almost like adjusting optical sizes for a print typeface. To build the sculptural letters, we made both computer and hand-drawn sketches, and Michael did a few digital 3D renderings.
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Sywalski: Next, we executed a series of classic type studies of positive/negative space and started to abstract them. We were looking for interesting forms and counterforms. Michael Prisco: We weren’t interested in alphabets that were dimensional or extruded. Helen Sywalski: We started by poring over type specimens in the Herb Lubalin Center, since this was a research-based fellowship that uses the collection as an entry point. Take us through your design process-how did you get from flat, printed letterforms to large-scale sculptures? We spoke with Prisco and Sywalski about the show, including how they built the four-foot-tall letters-A, B, and C-that visitors can walk through, around, and even into. This is no secret to Michael Prisco and Helen Sywalski, 2016 graduates of the Cooper Union’s School of Art, who received the prestigious Rhoda Lubalin Fellowship for seniors who demonstrate excellence in graphic design. Their project Type High: Experiments in Dimensional Design and Typography, explores typography as a sculptural art form that plays with positive and negative space, a reference to the physical origins of typesetting as wooden or lead letterforms. Sometimes 2D forms (like typefaces) take on unexpected lives of their own-an increased presence, a grandeur even-when reimagined as 3D objects. Lubalin, rather it is inspired by his style and type treatments.Courtesy Helen Sywalski and Michael Prisco. Please note that the ad for the Audi Fox is not by Mr. He died, aged sixty-three, in 1981 perhaps sparing him the cynicism of the new decade. Nobody tells me what to do.” He truly evolved with the times and like the 1960s and ‘70s during which his fame peaked, he was as idealistic and anti-establishment as hippies in the Haight. Like most great designers, Lubalin experimented with his work throughout his life and having reached a very high level of success, was astute enough to recognize his luck, “Right now, I have what every designer wants and few have the good fortune to achieve. The AIGA explains, “(I)t is Lubalin and his typographics-words, letters, pieces of letters, additions to letters, connections and combinations, and virtuoso manipulation of letters-to which all must return.” He designed the letters individually and had a playful approach to design, marveling at how letters’ shapes changed the weight and meaning of words.
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Indeed, he didn’t create eye-catching layouts simply by dropping blocks into a press. Aaron Burns called it, ‘typographics,’ and since you’ve got to put a name on things to make them memorable, ‘typographics’ is as good a name for what I do as any.” Lubalin said, “What I do is not really typography, which I think of as an essentially mechanical means of putting characters down on a page. However, it’s only with hindsight that we can see just how misunderstood the font was and how sublime a typographer Lubalin really was.īut he would bristle at the use of that word. There seems to have been a backlash against him in the 1980s however as the typeface he created for Avant Garde magazine (ITC Avant Garde) was in such demand and so overused by people who didn’t understand it and consequently misused it, that it became a cliché of the 1970s.
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Ralph Ginsburg on a series of magazines ( Eros, Fact, and Avant Garde) each seemingly more controversial (and more well-renowned) than the preceding one due to nudity and issues stemming from “taste”. Starting his own company also led to his collaboration with Mr.