AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Chop suey font12/7/2023 ![]() ![]() Rammstein Logo Liebe ist für alle da Tour Decal Sticker, rammstein logo, angle, text, rectangle png 570x708px 4.09KB.Facebook logo, Facebook Messenger Logo Social media Icon, Facebook icon, blue, text, rectangle png 1000x750px 10.19KB.Calendar icon, Calendar date Computer Icons, calendar, blue, text, calendar png 863x726px 10.61KB.Paramore The Self-Titled Tour Logo Musician After Laughter, Paramore, angle, text, rectangle png 450圆00px 36.17KB.Paramore After Laughter Logo Hard Times, others, angle, text, monochrome png 5498x1465px 271.14KB.black calendar, Calendar Computer Icons Symbol, calender, text, rectangle, logo png 512x512px 6.11KB.round musical notes template border, Music, Notes ring, angle, ring, text png 694圆76px 187.18KB.Solar calendar Symbol Computer Icons Encapsulated PostScript, calendar icon, text, calendar, rectangle png 874x980px 23.4KB.pink line illustration, Paramore Logo After Laughter Drawing Alternative rock, hayley williams, angle, text, rectangle png 500x500px 80.76KB.Musical note Musical notation Sheet music Staff, Music notes, angle, white, text png 1300x1800px 540.76KB.Paramore Logo Symbol Bar, wanted, angle, text, rectangle png 1151x1500px 16.54KB.But the mash-up of word and letter equals a mental picture that is hard to irradicate. He argued in an email that using blackletter should not be ‘a priori, considered White Supremacist. Steven Heller, an art director and graphic design historian who’s written extensively on fascist aesthetics, said that White Boy Summer’s merch ‘speaks more to tone-deafness than racism.’ The Guardian noted that it resembled Fraktur, a style of script used on Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and early Nazi letterhead. Internet observers were quick to opine that, while not quite a Camp Auschwitz hoodie, the text on the clothing, in Gothic font, appeared to be a bit… well, Nazi-ish if not just flat-out racist. White Boy Summer is a bad idea - but are its shirts racist?ĭespite Hanks’ protestations that the white boys in question were white hip-hop artists like himself, the phrase certainly seems like it might appeal to the Charlottesville and Capitol Siege crowd, and the clothing isn’t helping. Now the cliché has been repeated so many times that it’s hard to unsee. Could the name have led graphic designers to assume that the typeface has Mexican provenance? Over the last 30 years this typeface has become a signifier for all things Mexican: Desperados beer (launched in the 1990s), tequila, movie posters, Mexican restaurants etc. This particular one was randomly named Mesquite, a plant found in Mexico. All the typefaces in this collection were named after kinds of wood to reflect their wood type origins. My theory is that it began when a digitised version of a C19th Antique Tuscan wood display typeface was released in 1990. When I asked a Mexican friend she said ‘only tourists would expect to find that in Mexico’ and the type experts I’ve asked have been unable to shed any light on the mystery. Maybe the silhouette could be a little reminiscent of traditional hacienda architecture, or the letters are spiky like a cactus, or Hollywood has taught us to think of these ornamental wood display types as being ‘wild west’ or ‘western’? But these aren’t genuine or authentic historical links to Mexico, it’s more like a fancy dress font. Since writing my first book I’ve tried to find out why decorative Antique Tuscan letters, hugely popular in the Victorian era, have become shorthand for ‘Mexico’. Or a typeface that suggests ‘gravitas’ on a newspaper masthead, ‘authentic German recipe’ on a beer, conjures up much darker associations when combined with words like ‘White Boy Summer’. Why does context matter? Because what might have been quick visual short-hand for something that seemed exotic and new in the 1950s becomes an outdated or offensive cliché when used today. But it’s not the typefaces that are at fault-it’s the context they’re used in and the associations that are forged through repetition. We live in a global and nuanced world in which naive cultural tropes from the past feel lazy or out of sync with our values today. The terms we use in this conversation even originate with printing-the word stereotype comes from making identical solid pieces of metal type for printing from a mould, and the word cliché is a French term for this process. It documents cultural attitudes and narrates social change, so it’s no surprise when it becomes a part of the conversation. ![]() This is a question I’ve been asked a few times recently because the discussion is currently bouncing around social media. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |