Dangerous Typography

Leave it to typography to stop me dead in my tracks ... despite the rain. Despite being on my way to a party at a New York museum to meet other designers. I had to move fast to catch this bus before it was gone; and the real truth behind this photo is I immediately e-mailed it back to my junior designer, Laurie, who turned me on to Showtime's Dexter just months previous. I knew she'd get a kick out it. Most of us designers are sucker's for faux magazine covers. For the instant gratification of using a resplendent and distinctive combination of text and type that just screams "__fill in the masthead__". Are we as serial as the cable killer in our grandiose imaginations? Looking back on this photo, taken Oct. 2008, I am seeing what a luscious mash-up of letterforms surrounds the subject. The art nouveaux shape of the Roxy; the compressed grotesque of the municipal fire lane; the modernity of the window graphic in the foreground. So much to take in. I remember the rain, and the prank. I had to rely on a snapshot to really see how much else I was missing. Including the continuity of type through the ages, both real and imagined.