Winnipeg, Canada

The great Canadian educator, philosopher, scholar, literary critic, rhetorician, and communication theorist Herbert Marshall McLuhan was born 100 years ago today, in Edmonton—though he grew up and studied here in the ‘Peg before moving on to Cambridge, Windsor, Toronto… and the world stage. McLuhan was a man of idioms and idiosyncrasies, deeply intelligent, and a soothsayer… learn more about him here.

Anyone who follows this blog knows that I quote McLuhan regularly (almost an understatement)… as you can witness here. I regret that I never got to meet him in person, though I did become acquainted with one of his daughters and her husband some years ago…

Thanks for all you left us to ponder, Marshall!

Image: one of a special set of Millennium stamps issued by Canada Post.

Winnipeg, Canada

The great Canadian educator, philosopher, scholar, literary critic, rhetorician, and communication theorist Herbert Marshall McLuhan was born 99 years ago today and grew up here in the ‘Peg (he attended Kelvin High School). Fitting, then, that I would receive an e-mail today from good friend (and former Circle colleague) Kevin Guenther (who knows that I’m somewhat of a McLuhan fan)… providing a link to a video clip of a classic piece of Woody Allen cinema that Marshall makes a cameo appearance in (Kevin came across it via Boing Boing… Sorry link is broken).

Good fun. Thanks, Kevin!

Winnipeg, Canada

If you’ve ever sat through one of my lectures (or read my book), you know that I frequently quote Marshall McLuhan (an ex-Winnipeger). Enjoy these quick quips of his…

+  +  +  +  +

Whereas convictions depend on speed-ups, justice requires delay.

Money is the poor man’s credit card.

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.

We march backwards into the future.

Invention is the mother of necessities.

You mean my whole fallacy’s wrong?

Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth.

The trouble with a cheap, specialized education
is that you never stop paying for it.

People don’t actually read newspapers.
They step into them every morning like a hot bath.

Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade.

The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.

News, far more than art, is artifact.

When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body.

Tomorrow is our permanent address.

All advertising advertises advertising.

The answers are always inside the problem, not outside.

Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.

The missing link created far more interest
than all the chains and explanations of being.

When a thing is current, it creates currency.

Food for the mind is like food for the body:
the inputs are never the same as the outputs.

The future of the book is the blurb.

The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially.

A road is a flattened-out wheel, rolled up in the belly of an airplane.

I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.

This information is top security.
When you have read it, destroy yourself.

—Marshall McLuhan 

—Marshall McLuhan

—Marshall McLuhan

—Marshall McLuhan

—Marshall McLuhan

.

I have loved Gulliver’s Travels ever since I first encountered the satirical classic when I was a child. The cautionary part of the tale is that, ultimately, it was the love of travel that was to be Gulliver’s downfall… (how timely, somehow).

“Fish did not discover water.”

—Marshall McLuhan (among others)

London, United Kingdom

London-based designer Matthias Hillner (who has been on my radar since we met at the Oullim congress in Seoul, 10 years ago) uses a typography-led approach for developing multimedia and graphic design solutions. After earning a diploma in visual design (schwerpunkt Photography) from the College of Design Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany in 1994, he graduated with a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art, London, and subsequently launched the Studio for Virtual Typography. Since 2004, he has lectured at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in Kent, at London Metropolitan University, at Camberwell College of Arts in London, and at the University of Herfordshire; in 2006, Amersham & Wycombe College in Buckinghamshire appointed Matthias as Course Leader of BA Applied Graphic Studies, and in 2007 the Royal College of Art awarded him an MPhil (Master of Philosophy or Arts). Published in 2009 by AVA Publishing SA in Switzerland, virtual typography is Matthias Hillner’s first book—a “must-read” for any graphic designer or design student with interest in typographic communication and its effect on (and efficacy in) the frenetic world of information overload that surrounds us today.

Leaving few stones unturned, virtual typography examines “visual data that appears in a near-typographical form, operating on the borderline between image and text.” It defines virtual typography and analyzes it in the context of digital media (e.g. moving image and new digital contexts) and explores the visual interpretation of verbal language. It “reveals how virtual typography can help in the presentation of words, and avoid misinterpretation,” by including type in an image. Presented in a highly structured yet visually engaging style, the book is richly illustrated and supported by case studies and examples of work from artists and designers including (among many, many others) Joshua Reichert, Alexander Rodchenko, the Bauhaus, David Small, Why Not Associates, Tomato, Neville Brody, Reza Abedini, Channel 4, and Pentagram.

A key argument made by Matthias is that in an image-saturated world, type design can have a hard time standing out: “Over the course of the twentieth century, people’s lives have become so interlinked and information so accessible, that we struggle to put up with the infinite amount of information with which we are confronted every day. The exchange of information that once enabled us to enhance social interaction is now often seen as a burden. The growing information overload has led to a change in the use of language. Where there is no time left for reading, we return to the use of images as substitutes for words.” Quoting the great Marshall McLuhan, he drives the point home: “Information pours upon us, instantaneously and constantly,” and, “Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. ‘Time’ has ceased, ‘space’ has vanished. We now live in a global village… a simultaneous happening.”

My advice: 1) buy this book today; 2) savor and learn from it; 3) apply the insightful principles articulated in virtual typography to create more effective and more meaningful design solutions.

Congratulations, Matthias, and (on behalf of our profession) thanks!

+++++

virtual typography

Author: Matthias Hillner

ISBN: 2-940373-99-X, 978-2-940373-99-4

AVA Publishing SA, Lausanne CH (link)

Softcover, 184 pages, full color

Size: 160 x 230 mm (6-3/8 x 9 inches)

$29.95 US

+++++

Buy the book from your local bookseller (preferably) or on Amazon here. Visit virtualtypography.com. Contact Matthias Hillner directly: hillner [at] virtualtypography [dot] com.