Type tarts

Between September 2008 and April 2009 Type invited designers to have some graphic fun and at the same time help support the St Bride Library, London – one of the world’s most important resources for the graphics industry. Over 450 designs were recieved from stars to students from around the typographic wrold.

 

ST BRIDE LIBRARY

St Bride is the world’s foremost graphic arts library and a rendezvous for all those involved in contemporary graphic communication—designers, printers, publishers, journalists, academics and students. It is a place where anyone with either a professional or passing interest in design can meet and where all aspects of the practical, cultural and technical achievements of the industry can be studied. It is also a place of inspiration that has encouraged many designers, motivated generations of students and stimulated numerous authors.

By participating in the type-tart project designers around the world helped to maintain this vital and invaluable resource .

 

THE BRIEF

We asked designers to produce a type-tart card either for a typeface or a letter of the alphabet. If you are unfamiliar with these things. tart cards are the means by which London prostitutes advertise their services. So pervasive are they, and so curious is their typography, images and copy writing they are now regarded as items of accidental art and have something of a cult following. Once on the periphery of design, the cards have influenced the work of many mainstream artists including Royal Academician Tom Philips and Sex Pistols designers, Ray and Nils Stevenson.

 

SPECIFICATION

A6 (105 x 148 mm) landscape or portrait Typographic, illustrative, photographic: or a combination of techniques of your choosing hand- or machine-made; single- or full-colour. Side 1 – image and text; Side 2 – sign and date.

 

THE RESULTS

Wallpaper* carried a feature on the project in its first ever Sex Issue. which was published in July 2009. All entries were exhibited in London in July 2009.

 

WHAT NEXT?

Keep watching this space, but it is intended a book of the Project will be published, profits' to be donated to St Bride Library. We are also hoping to mount a touring exhibition of the work. At the end of the Project the collection will be donated to the St Bride Library.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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