VISUAL COMMUNICATION HISTORY BLOG

A selection of images from the blogpost entitled Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Typography published on the BibliOdyssey blog earlier this week in which title pages, headings and letterforms of maps issued between 1880 and 1920 by the Sanborn company are shown. The images below are from the Virginia map from October 1907 (top); the South Carolina map from June 1919 (middle); and the Washington DC map from1903 (bottom).

... is the name of the typeface which Francesco Griffo , working for the Aldine Press under Aldus Manutius , cut for Venetian scholar Cardinal Pietro Bembo in 1495. One of the noteworthy things about Bembo is the  fascination which contemporary graphic designers show for this 500+ year old typeface. Below are an anonymous poster based upon Bembo (top), "Bembo Type Work" by *Xantiel (middle), and "Font Poster" by creativespiri…

Founded by producer Manfred Eicher in 1969, ECM has issued over a thousand albums spanning many idioms, including standard-setting jazz recordings by Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and others: http://www.ecmrecords.com/Startseite/startseite.php Importantly, for the field of graphic design Ecm has also pursued a consistent visual language based upon an interpretation of Swiss Style in…

http://www.trautrimas.ca/ David Trautrimas takes the components of familiar household appliances and transforms them into ironic/iconic architectural landscape paintings such as top secret Cold War era military outposts or residential building sites. The images below are "Micro Re-Instigator" from the The Spyfrost series (top), "The Fishing Complex" (middle) and the "Coffee Pot Towers" (bottom) from the Habitat ser…

http://www.fulltable.com/CA/index.htm : Fabulous resource on mid 20th century living, told through all kinds of visual material, mostly advertisements and editorial design. Here is what Chris Mullen has to say about his own site: "Welcome to Chris Mullen's website, The Visual Telling of Stories. You can go to the main gate or shuffle about in the Samplers till you get some hang of the place. It was started in 1996. Material is added ever…