ArrowDeco meets Bird and Beckett

Michael James Armstrong — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:42:19 +0000

sometime in the middle of last year i was asked by a friend of mine if i might like to contribute some drawings to a new editorial venture he was about to undertake – an annual publication of poetry/creative writing with art mixed in amongst the text. no theme, i could do whatever i wanted, he simply wanted “my style”. the only restriction was that the finished product was to be printed in grayscale (no problem, since i almost immediately knew i’d be doing straight black and white line drawings). i said “of course”, asked for a deadline, put it off for awhile, and then forgot about it. when he emailed me a few weeks later for a progress report, i had to ask for a more specific deadline than the general one i was originally given. it’s funny how when given a deadline i can be relatively disciplined – without one, i’ll procrastinate (ugh, i hate that about myself). i then, naturally, waited until the last possible day to do the six drawings i had promised. the next day i shipped them off to nick in san francisco and then put it out of my mind. i did email once to see how the printing was progressing, was told it’d be about a month. sure enough, a month rolls by and nick emailed me for my address. a few days later i received the book.

i was already impressed by the cover. i had no idea this publication was going to be so…well, like a real book i guess. not that i thought it would be some stapled xerox copies, but i didn’t expect it to be so substantial. but man, this thing looks great. the paper, the scale, the type, the design..all look fantastic, really nice quality all around.

then i opened it up to see how my drawings looked.

holy cow, they looked better than i’d imagined!

the print quality was really nice. the drawings are rapidograph on mylar, and on some of them i used spray paint on the back to fill in some of the black areas. so naturally when you look at them from the front, those spray paint areas have a sort of frosted look to them. that look totally comes across in the printing – and the paper that was used for the book has a similar transparency to the mylar used for the drawings, so the printed drawings look really close to the originals.

and the rest

so yeah, i’m very pleased with how the book turned out. the only thing i’d change about the design of the book would be to replace all that superfluous text on the back with the bird and beckett logo (a very nice logo).

by the way, not only do i love the title “amerarcana”, but “bird and beckett” is a great name for a book store.

want to own one? check out the amerarcana website for more info. thanks for including me nick, i’m proud to be a part of your debut publication.

and check out bird and beckett books and records while you’re at it.

click (below) on this scan of one of the originals to go to my flickr site where you can see scans of all the originals plus larger versions of the images above.

ps – hey, i guess that makes twice my work has been published in a book.

hand drawn deco font

Michael James Armstrong — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:44:39 +0000

there aren’t enough art deco fonts in the world. so, i thought i’d add one.

i can’t even say i drew this the old fashioned way. type designers of the eighteenth century probably had more sophisticated tools than i used to create this drawing. i had fun with it anyway.

after it was done i scanned it, took it into photoshop, filled it in, and then utilized the old copy and paste to “type” it into a word. “decography” isn’t the name of the font – just a word that popped in. i’m still working on what to call it.

turned out pretty cool, i think.

can anybody help me take a pencil drawing of a font and make it a typable reality?

michael james armstrong » typography

ArrowDeco meets Bird and Beckett

hand drawn deco font