Client Various
Art Director & Letterer Michael Bierut
“Designers often draw upon the artless vernacular for sophisticated design. This is apparent in Michael Bierut’s poster for the Seventh Annual Book Fair to help the homeless, which injects an artless childlike script into an otherwise conventional layout.
The script is not as free flowing as informal handwriting, but Bierut conveys the idea that he probably failed his school penmanship class.”
(p87 Escrito)
As an artist, Bierut seems to enjoy combining simple image with handlettering to convey his message, usually in monochrome to deliver immediacy, or perhaps to make the background as stark as possible in contrast to his handwriting, which, in his poster for the Seventh Annual Book Fair to help the homeless, takes some deciphering to read. Though not illegible, his layout and the angles he has set his lettering on often make the task of immediately reading the copy that much harder.
The skewed italic handwriting Bierut employs for this homeless poster is very clever; without being comical, it is artless and childlike with short descenders and ascenders coupled with a blatant disregard for consistent spacing, (leading, if such a term could be applied to handlettering), work together to suggest the sort of handlettering that is often seen on a cardboard ‘homeless-please help’ sign.
The lettering works on two levels; an immediate empathy towards the subject, as the lettering begs for pity; and it compels you to pay attention to the copy by forcing you to decipher the type.
After having seen this poster, it could be argued that handlettering is the only choice for this subject; conventional type has no place here.
The composition is seemingly messy, but there is most certainly as definite thought- out method to the placement. There are some very intelligent uses of image in this poster; an opened book becomes a roof, housing a single chair, whilst in the top corner another book becomes a house with the addition of a door and window. These illustrations could be considered too artful for the subject matter, however they are perhaps intentionally this way; by having the Illustrations beautifully drawn, the viewer of the poster understands that the product on sale is top quality, despite the desperation of the cause, which is implied by the handlettering.
This makes the style of lettering Bierut has employed all the more integral to the message. The interplay of the lettering and illustrations combine, again on a subliminal level to allow the viewer/prospective client deep insight into exactly the message the designer wants to deliver.
Comparing his poster for the homeless book fair with his poster for a production of Edward Albey’s “The American Dream”, it is easy to confirm that Bierut intentionally made his letterforms childlike and artless, as his letterforms for “The American Dream” are much more refined.
The layout of the lettering again appears to be quite disorganised, with the title being the only really legible item, on first view, and even the title takes some deciphering.
There is no apparent ordering of information and the Bierut’s layout appears less considered than even his homeless poster. The letterforms are, however, beautifully rendered in an elegant script, written close to each other at angles so a pattern is made from the body copy.
By making the lettering so disorganised, yet elegant, it invites the reader to intensely work at making sense of the copy. This leads to an intimate relationship between viewer and poster; time is spent, and what has been read is a challenged accepted and passed. Conversely, setting in this way could deter potential readers from reading at all.
Again, Bierut makes use of the interplay between image and lettering, matching the ornate swirls of the lettering to the intricate details of the illustrated fork, which pierces through an illustrated silhouette of the USA, dominating the bottom and the centre of the poster.
In perhaps a link to the context of the play, the headline lettering appears more wobbly than the body copy, alluding to the fact that when viewed from afar, America may seem like perfect and beautiful, but when viewed up close, cracks begin to show; things are not as perfect as they seem.
"[It is] an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, emasculation, and vacuity; it is a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen." Wikipedia (Edward Albee)
“Stylised penmanship is used to emphasize the impropriety of this poster promoting veteran playwright Edward Albee’s dark and satiric play on American morals and mores.”
(Escrito)
The manner in which the body copy is tangled and jumbled, is conceivably a nod to the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ style that Albee was writing in, which is "an absorption-in-art of certain existentialist and post-existentialist philosophical concepts having to do, in the main, with man's attempts to make sense for himself out of his senseless position in a world which makes no sense”
Allegory in Edward Albee's The American Dream by Ervin Beck,
Professor of English Goshen College (c)1996
http://www.goshen.edu/facultypubs/DREAM.html
Similar then in composition, greyscale colour scheme, and tough to decipher copy layout, Bierut obviously enjoys making his posters an experience rather than a legible and easily accessible information sheet. He displays a keen sense of which of his l
letterforms and styles will suit a certain subject matter, and uses these various methods of handlettering to create hidden messages and sublevels of meaning.
Though his ordering of information is perhaps intentionally dysfunctional, it still leaves a lot to be desired and ultimately perhaps lets the design down.
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