Elanso

I’ve now been involved in magazine making for over 15 years, starting with Chicken Sandwich in college and progressing to Dodge City Journal, LIMN, Dwell, and now American Craft. Spending so much time around the printed word, it would be hard not to have a soft spot in your heart for typography. Working with the handmade, it would be hard not to have a soft spot for hand-drawn forms and patterns and one guy in particular, Brooklyn-based Mike Perry, has been screaming his allegiance to the hand-drawn as of late.

Perry comes from a talented crew of Midwestern designers who have ended up in New York in the past decade. But Perry has distinguished himself with his obsession with how the human hand continues to play into modern communication. His first book, “Hand Job: A Catalog of Type” was published by Princeton Architectural Press last year and his most recent book, “Over and Over: A Catalog of Hand-Drawn Patterns” was just published in the past month, also by Princeton (who I must commend for putting out really beautiful and surprisingly edgy books as of late ­ well done!).

In “Hand Job” Perry delves into the current crop of designers and typographers working to bring the unique perspective of the hand (the “maker’s mark” as it were) back to what can often be a horribly stale world of graphic communication. In “Over and Over” Perry takes this a step further, exploring the hand in pattern making. Both books (and Perry’s work in general) have been a great inspiration and have kept me continually on the look out for similar work.

I think I’m so drawn to hand-made type (and hand-made anything) because it really points towards a spirit of individualism that seems to be fading fast as an important characteristic in our society. But all the same I’m still fascinated by group dynamics and it seems that type somehow strikes a balance between the individual and the group. This can be seen walking around any city and observing signage (particularly older signage) and how it plays into your perception of a place. While this is easy enough to do in your own town, it’s always fun to see how it manifests itself in other places. One website that has piqued my interest in these regards as of late is called Chicago Type and is put together by designer (and friend) Shawn Hazen.

And if we start to see people caring more about everything around them, it won’t be long before we start seeing improvements in everything-from the food we eat to the type we read. Or that’s the hope anyway!