South 12th

Windsor in the news.

Anonymous asked: What is your opinion of Cooper Black? This font that looks pretty similar to Windsor to my eye, and appears to have been a staple of a similar vintage.

In the past, I have referred here to Cooper Black as Windsor’s “good-for-nothing, hard-partying half-brother.” That may be somewhat true, but it’s probably not entirely fair. Cooper Black is simply used and abused more often than Windsor. 

In my opinion (which becomes more and more worthless the less I post here on South 12th), there are three great old-style typefaces, all created in the 1910s, revived in the ’70s, and all of a similar look and feel: Windsor, Cooper Black, and Souvenir. Windsor is the most elegant, Cooper Black is the most overused, and poor Souvenir is a little of both. (Wikipedia says: “Due to its enormous popularity in the 1970s, Souvenir has become associated with the typographical excesses of that era and subsequent generations of typographers have come to loathe it.” Ahem: citation needed.)

Anyway, a nice example of Souvenir used well is in the cover design of the Alec Soth book the Walker published a few years ago. In fact, I remember reading a review of the book, and the reviewer made a crack about the design, but in doing so mistook the Souvenir for Cooper Black. So you see the three of them are very easy to mix up. Windsor, Cooper Black, Souvenir, together forever. 

Among the great Windsor sightings of all time.

(Thanks to Noah.)

Let’s say you’re running a novelty mesh cap business in the 1970s. Maybe it’s called “Novelty Hats International, Ltd.” You have a hilarious idea for a hat that a guy that’s going hunting could wear. It’s a little class warfare-y, a little tongue-in-cheek. It suggests an absurd reality — a world turned upside down — where, upon entering the ranks of international finance, one is issued a red mesh cap that reads “INT’L FINANCE” on the front. And you, a hilarious 1970s dude with a mustache, have been entered into those ranks. 

(An aside: here’s a thing people forget — the ironic mesh cap is not an original product of the ’00s. There were armies of future dads walking around in the 1970s and ’80s with ironic mesh caps that ironically suggested that their bald spots were solar generators for sex machines, or that their beer bellies were fuel tanks for sex machines. The fact that their future children would co-opt these same ironic hats their fathers already wore ironically doubled the irony back on itself, creating a feedback loop of overpowering misunderstandings of the very concept of “ironic,” which is why you probably sometimes feel as if you’ve spent the last twelve years living inside a 30-page term paper written by a first-year cultural studies major at a “safety” east coast college. I know I have.)

But anyway, what typeface would you use, were you to design, create, and market such a hat?

Well, I guess you’d use Windsor.  

(Via iteeth, via Meshcaps.com)

Natalie Kane went on a Brighton-area Windsor rampage. She is a hardworking street photographler!

This is entirely for the benefit of Andy Sturdevant. I once commented on the fact that I’ve never seen this in the UK, and only seen it in relation to America, or American culture (e.g. Woody Allen, Fake Americana inspired Photobooths), even though it’s from Sheffield. It’s on Pulp’s Different Class album, and that was about it.

This therefore asked the question of why I’ve rarely seen it in the UK, in comparison to its much used brother Cooper Black. Then, after a couple of months of paying attention, I found these four in Brighton (where I live), two of which are where I work. 

Andy, sorry for stealing an obsession, but I hope this contributes to the Windsor defense fund.

Locations:

1. On the postcard wall, Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 9-12 Middle Street

2. The Izzy Store (There are two of these, both with Windsor.) 2 Queens Road

3. The Hard Working Cobbler (And I suppose he is), 1 Castle Square

4. One of our Ale pumps. There’s also a small plaque at the front but my camera is rubbish. Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 9-12 Middle Street.

Once you start seeing Windsor out there, you can never stop. Thanks, Natalie!

Attention, reader! I am interrupting my blogging vacation for a very important announcement. Read this message above from Natalie Kane, a writer and self-described troublemaker living in the United Kingdom whose blog I admire very much.

Her question, which she asked some weeks ago, is a good one. I haven’t known how to answer it. The only time I ever had seen Windsor, a typeface invented on the mean streets of Sheffield (a city I have been told is the UK equivalent of Cleveland in its temperament, weather, general downtroddenness, historic reliance on mining and steel manufacturing, and surprising number of excellent 1980s-era rock bands), appear in a British context is on the cover of Sheffield-based Pulp’s 1995 record Different Class.

But look at this photo, courtesy the great London Shop Fronts blog!

There she is. Windsor, in the wild, in the UK. Northwold Road, Stoke Newington, Hackney, London N16. If any of my London readers want to hop off the Stoke Newington rail station that is located point-one miles away according to Google Maps and snap a photo with your smart phone of you outside the storefront, maybe giving a thumbs up or something, I will personally send you a huge box full of shit from South Minneapolis in gratitude.

Now, back to my blog vacation. I need my rest, because I have to be up all night tomorrow riding a steamboat full of artists and scientists up and down the Mississippi River. See you later this month.

Arnold Jennies is my very own personal Mr. Sparkle, and guess which typeface he uses for the logo of his eponymous macaroons manufacturing concern?

“You don’t piss on typography. I won’t allow it.”

Unicornery with the Windsor find of the week from Troll 2:

Naturally the vegetable cookbook in the anti-vegetarian propaganda film uses Windsor on the cover.  Full size image here, and for sale here.

On a semi-related note, did you see Best Worst Film and Winnebago Man the same week? I did, and I don’t recommend it. I liked both of them just fine, but the next week, I kept remembering one or the other and thinking, “Which was the one with big scene at the Alamo Drafthouse where the movie nerds finally got to meet those people from the movies that they had been making fun of for twenty years?” And then I’d think, “That was both of them.”

Oh, I see her typeface everywhere I go

On the street, and even at the picture show

Have you seen her?

Tell me, have you seen her?

Windsor, reader! The universe turns it up everywhere I go lately. Here are three instances in the space of just a few hours, on one errand, this past Wednesday afternoon. Is Windsor just a much more commonly used typeface than I initially thought?

I captured them all utilizing the sort of cutting-edge telephonic photography technology that has made S. 12th a household name.

First: The Northwest Graphic Supply Company on East Lake Street in Seward, while picking up screens and ink. It’s up there, sort of small, in the window; it’s also used for the logo on their website. Very high marks for both encroaching obsolescence (non-digital printing services) and deadpan cosmopolitanism (selling art supplies, really cute employees, posters by DNML prominently located throughout the store, East Lake Street / Seward location). This may be my favorite art materials retailer in town. They also are celebrating their 50th year, having been founded in 1961.

Second: the Lerner Building, in the Warehouse District, which I passed on my way from the Warehouse LRT station to catch the 14 going down Washington. Based in this building is Lerner Publishing, a leading independent publisher of children’s educational books, founded in 1959 by Harry Lerner and still run today by his son, Adam Lerner.  Wikipedia: “The company has expanded to encompass four offices: the main Lerner building, Lerner Distribution Center, and Muscle Bound Bindery, all located in Minneapolis, and a New York office located in the Empire State Building.” Well. If a multi-generational independent children’s book publisher with three offices in Minneapolis and one in the Empire State Building isn’t not a perfect 10 for “deadpan cosmopolitanism,” I don’t know what it is.

Third: On a chain link fence on a parking lot near Kickstand Press, where, with the help of the awesome Joshua Norton, pulled 180 screen-prints for the Potboiler show opening next Saturday. Kickstand is in that odd part of downtown on Washington Avenue just north of Broadway near the Old Colony. Midwest Fence is, according to their website, family owned and operated since 1947. Midwest Fence is, also according to their website, “a member of the American Fence Association, assuring that you are dealing with a fence company that is required to adhere to the Association’s code of ethics.”

Interestingly, all three of these entities were founded within 15 years of each other, and all are still owned and operated by the same families that founded them. Amazing! I had always thought of Windsor as the mark of midcentury organizations that were on the verge of collapse. All three of these seem to be doing just fine.