Jack Yan on Vox

It’s not called Das Love Boot

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:59:33 +1200

I’ve been talking about all these remakes of late, but one I forgot to mention is a biggie: that time the Germans remade The Love Boat. There are a few differences: Das Traumschiff (it is not called Das Love Boot as The Simpsons once parodied) has been going since 1981 and it has never, unlike the original American version, been shot in a studio. Each season is short because of the lavish location filming—trust the Germans to take a formula and improve on it no end. I think they also managed to keep the cruise director off cocaine.
   The title sequence from the below 2007 special in San Francisco (found on YouTube) is awful, and set in the very un-German Arial Rounded, but even the late Aaron Spelling didn’t beat the money that has been poured in to the 50-plus episodes since the 1980s.
   The Germans’ approach to state TV is: if it works, and it pulls in viewers week after week, then don’t tinker and ruin it. Tatort has been going for God knows how long.
   I prefer my Alarm für Cobra 11, still the perfect car-chase cop show.

Das Traumschiff – San Francisco

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JY Aristi versus rivals

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:41:25 +1200

I did a bit more work on JY Aristi last night and today. Here are some test documents for it, now with a few revised characters.
Firstly, Hamburgerfonts (or, in this case, Hamburgefontsiv) is a common test word in typeface design. It shows the cap height, x-height (the height of a lowercase x), ascender height (b, f, t) and descender height (g) plus some regularly occurring letters and how the typeface fares with diagonals and curved letters.
The first graphic compares JY Aristi (first line) with some similar typefaces to check copyfitting and styles. The typefaces are JY Aristi, JY Ætna (on which JY Aristi is loosely based, but was designed for 14 pt settings), Monotype Plantin Light (a 10 pt master), Monotype Bembo (also based on a 10 pt master) and the ubiquitous Monotype Times New Roman.

Aristi test

   What is apparent above is that JY Aristi could work in text. There is little contrast between verticals and horizontals and it is largely legible. The new g is more robust. It can be an excellent text font with some oldstyle connotations.
   JY Ætna, because it was designed for 14 pt, appears lighter when set at the same point size. It also appears narrower. The idea is that when it is set at the size it was designed for, it should look like it has the same contrast and weight as the text. In this case, I think it would work with JY Aristi.
   The third typeface is Monotype Plantin Light. This version was based on drawings for a 10 pt model, so it should compete with JY Aristi. The x-height is greater so if we were to shrink down the point size to match the x-height, it would be more compact.
   Fourth is Bembo, which has the same roots as Ætna and Aristi. I normally like Bembo but I think this early PostScript version from Monotype is too light for text usage. Monotype issued a new Bembo Book some years ago, but I haven’t bought (a licence for) it yet.
   The last is Times New Roman, as installed on nearly every computer in the world. Times was based loosely on Plantin and it’s here for comparison. It also has a high x-height but its designer, Stanley Morison, was clever in having many of the common letters condensed, which newspapers love—that’s why, for so long, many newspapers used it—and many still do.
   JY Aristi is not meant to replace Times—I see it used more for magazine work (one of the aims) and my colleague Stanley Moss thinks it would work for academic usage as it looks historical enough.

Aristi test versus Bembo

Finally, here’s JY Artisti side by side with Monotype Bembo, set to the same x-height and leading. It’s not really a fair fight: Aristi is easier to read and more compact. Put Aristi alongside Times and I am sure it would not fare as well. However, I believe the two typefaces have a similar overall effect.

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JY Aristi, v. 1.2

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:29:48 +1200

I know, the 5 is still too heavy. But I like the g and y now.
Welcome to the world of type design—it’s all about fiddling around and making changes, though this is probably the first time I have done this publicly.

Aristi revised

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For the automobiliacs: Car’s best from the ’60s and ’70s

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:57:09 +1200

This was a great find at Take Note in Lower Hutt today. Take Note is a post office and gift shop run by my friend Mandeep but I have never bought a book from there before. I was surprised to find it displayed prominently and being an automobiliac I paid the $40 for it.

The Best of Car Magazine: The 60s and 70s

Car Magazine

   My cover differs slightly: the News Gothic-set headlines have been replaced by the same text in ITC Benguiat, while the lettering around the masthead is now Akzidenz-Grotesk. Inside, there are great Car articles from 1965 to 1974, covering the best of the first decade (I became a reader, thanks to Gary Hayvice, whose daughter was a classmate of mine, in 1981). I grew up with Llewellyn, Bishop, Setright and the rest; I remember Bulgin, and very briefly, wasn’t there a chap called James May? But some of the earlier talents appear in this compilation.
   Some articles are prescient—the warning that Honda could be a big player if it chose to build saloon cars, and the war for oil and how it might run out (from the first fuel crisis in the 1970s)—and others are less so, such as the warning that a Channel Tunnel would be a folly. Others are plain out of place in today’s politically correct world, namely the nude models that adorned cars at motor shows.
   There are even old advertisements, including one for women—flogging copies of Good Housekeeping. It was very sexist and the idea that cars were designed to pull birds was very much in evidence.
   It’s hardcover, so it should be a proud collection of 1960s’ and 1970s’ motoring journalism in my home.

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Vox Hunt: favourite font

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:48:32 +1200

Show us your favourite font.
Submitted by [this is connie].

You mean favourite typeface. There is a difference (font implies type style and point size).
Believe it or not, it’s not one from my own company’s range. I have always liked Helvetica and the Swiss school of design, and decided to improve on the design for Lucire. The typeface is called, predictably, Lucire. A 2006 advertisement follows (it’s the headline typeface).

The above was a re-type again. Why is Vox shutting down when I click ‘Save’?

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What? No Quinn Martin voiceover?

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:43:18 +1200

This wasn’t on YouTube when I last blogged about A Man Called Sloane, America’s coolest spy since Matt Helm pretended to be Dean Martin pretending to be Matt Helm, but here are some trips down memory lane for a few of you …

A MAN CALLED SLOANE - Robert Conrad

What was very odd, for trivia buffs out there: Robert Conrad’s name appears before the title, which according to the commenters on YouTube, makes this unique among QM productions. It’s just the highlights plus the opening sequence, but considering I hadn’t seen this since 1981, it was a lovely revisit. And that typeface would be considered very trendy right now.

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Rebranding the Alliance

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:45:22 +1200

[Cross-posted] This has been ofﬁcial for a while (or so I think—not that I ever heard what the Electoral Commission thought, but I did see it on its website). However, I wanted the party to approve the news ﬁrst before sharing it with you all. The following is the overseas release which was rewritten from the one sent to domestic newsmedia. One that includes a mention of the Bush–Cheney campaign of 2004 was sent to US media.

JY&A Consulting revamps logo for New Zealand’s Alliance Party

Wellington, May 9 (JY&A Media) New Zealand political party, the Alliance, is looking more modern and relevant, thanks to its new logo by JY&A Consulting (http://jya.net/consulting).
   Devised by JY&A Consulting’s Jack Yan, the new logo signifies a new beginning for the democratic socialist political party.
   Mr Yan says that he has been a keen observer of general elections in the UK, US and New Zealand since the 1980s and that played a part in his team’s design.
   He says the Conservatives in 1983, Labour in the UK in 1997 and 2002 and Labour in New Zealand in 1999 and 2003 had certain commonalties in their campaigns, centring around typography.
   He also said that in those years, the party’s name was important, not the symbol—hence the traditional Labour rose was not present on that party’s election materials in 1997 and 2002.
   By abandoning the old A symbol of the Alliance and concentrating on the word, Mr Yan says that the party looks more professional and ready.
   The Alliance has contested every General Election in New Zealand since 1993. However, due to party changes it is trying to rebuild itself for the country’s General Election later this year.
   ‘We have two major parties in New Zealand that vote pretty much the same on all issues,’ says Mr Yan, ‘and minor parties that get ignored because of a lack of visibility. I wanted to change that. Why should minor parties be laboured with second-rate brands?’
   The logo is based around the Frutiger typeface and its lettering is predominantly in red, with a red dot over the i in Alliance to signify its environmental awareness.
   He says the letter i also shows the humanizing aspect of the party.
   ‘As a piece of design I think it looks more cohesive than the committee-led logos of National and Labour,’ he says, criticizing the major two parties in New Zealand.
   ‘I was given a lot of freedom, which is a good sign of how the party leadership handles matters. It clearly believes in trusting the right people.’
   As well as heading JY&A Consulting’s parent, Jack Yan & Associates, Mr Yan co-wrote Beyond Branding in 2003 and is a director of the Medinge Group, a branding think-tank based in Sweden.
   In October 2007 he was a keynote speaker for the Alliance Party at its annual conference.

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‘My name is Alex Drake. I’ve just been shot and that bullet has taken me back to 1981’

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:41:03 +1300

Ashes to Ashes opening title

The opening title to Ashes to Ashes (BBC1, Thursday, 9 p.m.) has made it on to the internet and makes an interesting study.
   The comparisons to Life on Mars are obvious. Star Keeley Hawes narrates an introduction, as John Simm did with the original parent series. It’s taken from a line of dialogue that she delivered to herself in the mirror in the first episode—I think most of us saw that coming.
   Edmund Butt’s music is obviously a homage to his original theme for Life on Mars but with a more energetic electric guitar.
   The typeface chosen is interesting: the 1983-released Neue Helvetica. It’s not exactly what I would have chosen for the 1981 theme. However, this was also expected from the pilot’s opening, as well as the way the words Ashes to Ashes appear on screen, playing on a 1980s computer program.
   It’s clear that this is a related show even if you never saw the first episode and the designers have conveyed its feeling pretty well. Essentially, this is Life on Venus.

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Enter titles here

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:26:47 +1300

A YouTube member has been posting some beautiful Maurice Binder title sequences, including those from my favourite movies, Arabesque (mysteriously not released on DVD) and Charade. I love the modernist nature of Binder’s work, and while he is best known for the James Bond gun-barrel sequence, there was a lot more to the man’s designs.
The following two are mated to Henry Mancini scores for Stanley Donen films.

Charade Opening Titles

Arabesque - Titles designed by Maurice Binder

Another favourite (again with Mancini, and Donen producing and directing) is this opening from the Audrey Hepburn–Albert Finney film Two for the Road:

Two for the Road - Titles designed by Maurice Binder

A few more to round off this post. We have The Grass Is Greener, which shows that Binder could do a very cute sequence with babies. The second is Raquel Welch packing a parachute in Fathom. Ken Hughes’ Billion Dollar Brain is unusual and less pleasant, but it fits with the tone of the last Harry Palmer film. But even here, Binder’s sense of modernist typography continues.

The Grass is Greener (Title Sequence)

FATHOM Main Title with Raquel Welch by Maurice Binder

Billion Dollar Brain - Titles designed by Maurice Binder

His style continued into the 1970s and remained, in my view, current for that decade. The last for this post is from the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, and is closer to what some associate with Binder (girls and Helvetica). The Marvin Hamlisch song, performed by Carly Simon, is particularly fitting. The titles to Moonraker, which I find to be very 1970s and with a John Barry-composed song, are not yet on YouTube.
In all cases, there is a sense of timelessness, which shows just how suited the principles of modernism were to title design. These ideas are still often observed by some of the most famous designers out there, such as Wayne Fitzgerald.

the spy who loved me intro carly simon

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Web design today is like typesetting yesterday

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:03:58 +1200

For those who remember the pre-desktop publishing days, have you noticed that specifying type and doing CSS work is quite like going to a smaller typesetter with a limited range of typefaces? You are limited on what you can choose, use images when matching the client typeface is a must, and the results are not always what you predict.

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