Typographica’s food for information design

Typographica sketch

I don’t visit art exhibits however today I attended a UX Field trip event ,organised by Alice, exploring local art. Today’s visit took us to the Kemistry Gallery, in Shoreditch London to see Typographica (11 September – 31 October). I walked away feeling inspired by the cleverly curated collection of photographic pieces. I enjoyed the company of like-minded folks from our local London UX/IA social group http://london-ia.ning.com too.

The journal (Typographica) was founded by a 25 year-old Herbert Spencer, who went on to become one of the most influential British communication designers and typographers. Typographica’s pioneering content included concrete poetry, avant-garde type experiments and photo-documentary, all highlighting Spencer’s ability to fuse images and words in meaningful new relationships, and featured the work of, among many others, Dieter Rot, Robert Brownjohn and Alexander Rodchenko.

We spent time admiring and ‘seeing’ the many visual stories of snippets from 32 publications (two 16 part series: Old and New series) presented as re-prints around the gallery. I particularly enjoyed Hernert Spencer‘s “Mile-a-Minute” edition as well as his “Piet Zwart” piece. Robert Brownjohn’s “Street Level” was seriously inspiring too. I managed to take some sketch notes of interest bits. It gave me a chance to think a little harder stand-out snaps… one in particular was about the “juxtaposed, accidental or design” question posed after a photo appeared of a shop sign ‘ACCESSORIES’ with the first ‘C’ lying at an odd angle provoking that very question (juxtaposed, accidental or design).

After the viewing we spent some time catching up on studies, work and our mobile worlds… with special attention being played to the new social network iPhone/Android app, Foursquare.

Typographica Exhibit

Typographica Exhibit

Tags: art, gallery, herbert spencer, information design, photography, typographic