Graphic designers, like most different people, can not reside on sort and letterforms alone (not less than in keeping with my major care doctor). However that’s not what I believed on the time that plans have been made with Rob Saunders, founding father of the Letterform Archive, which regularly serves typographic feasts for gourmets and gourmands, for a forthcoming go to to my condominium final week. Letterform Archive had simply printed its gorgeous, lengthy awaited monograph Solely on Saturday: The Wooden Kind Prints of Jack Stauffacher edited by Chuck Byrne, and was on monitor for the scheduled July launch of an beautiful facsimile of the revue Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902-1911. So, I assumed he would convey alongside treats for my hungry eyes.
Upfront of Rob, Letterform’s editorial director Stephen Coles and his illustrator and letterer spouse Laura Serra arrived.
“Do you want meringues?” Coles requested earlier than sitting down. “In fact I do,” considering nostalgically of the lemon meringue pies from my youth. “Effectively, these aren’t simply any meringues; you’ve by no means tasted one like this earlier than,” then instantly took two elegant packages from the fashionable purchasing bag. Certainly, I had by no means seen something like these little mounds of deliciousness. I stared longingly in anticipation.
“Will Rob arrive quickly?” I questioned and hoped.
Then got here the knock on the door. Rob! Ultimately! I used to be anticipating the delicacy that awaited my over anxious palate, when Rob pulled out a set of freshly printed folded and gathered proofs of Die Fläche, which set off a delight sensor in my mind. I didn’t know what to do…
The meringues—in a wide range of flavors with a tough shell, specked with shavings of coconut, chocolate and toasted almonds—had a tender creamy, flavorful filling destined to spill onto something in my palms or lap if I didn’t swallow it down complete. Die Fläche, printed in ravishing colour on cream paper, was ready to be caressed and fawned over. My choice appeared Solomonic: Paper or pastry?
I selected… a espresso meringue. Ohhhhhhhhhmygod!!!
It was like nothing my style buds had ever skilled. I savored it for seconds that appeared like hours. With the meringue safely consumed and the hint reminiscence of the flavour intact, I turned to the opposite deal with, the gold and black cowl and full colour pages of Die Fläche, the revue that launched the world to Austria’s Jugenstil/Artwork Nouveau design avant garde. To say something greater than WOW would end in verbose extra. You’ll should expertise it.
To say that the wedding of meringues and Die Fläche was heaven on earth is an understatement.
This may without end be my Proustian second, eternally remembered. Nonetheless, I nearly forgot, to say that the pastry comes from Aux Merveilleux de Fred in midtown New York, with areas elsewhere too. Make sure you watch all of the movies on Fred’s web site for the vicarious pleasure. And for best publishing of sort and typography books go to Letterform Archive. Satisfaction assured.
