#160 LGBTQ&

Chaz DeSimone 3 Comments
#160 LGBTQ&
Click image to view full size or download poster for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

My parents were told that I was mentally retarded.

I don’t know if it was the fam­i­ly doc­tor or the school coun­selor, but they def­i­nite­ly said I was men­tal­ly retard­ed (back when that term was acceptable).

I walked retarded-​like, as if I was going to fall over & I did not like play­ing sports (I was even afraid of the dodge ball) & I doo­dled & stared out the win­dow in class.

My dad would not stand for what he was told! He demand­ed a sec­ond opinion.

That expert said that I walked fun­ny because I was born with a sway back. He got me doing some exer­cis­es to cor­rect it. (I still don’t have the best pos­ture but peo­ple don’t laugh at me any­more.) He said I sim­ply don’t like sports. I’d rather be think­ing and draw­ing, which is why I stared out the win­dow and doo­dled. (Lat­er on that doo­dling turned into let­ter­ing & graph­ic design, but I do still over­think my lay­outs and logos…or maybe not.)

Point is, I know how it feels to be con­sid­ered dif­fer­ent. I was ridiculed, always picked last for sports (did­n’t mind that one bit), and was con­sid­ered the school nerd. I was dif­fer­ent and knew it. I had to deal with it. 

That’s why I am empa­thet­ic to any­one who is dif­fer­ent and has to deal with it. Among oth­ers, that includes the LGBTQ& com­mu­ni­ty which cel­e­brates their “dif­fer­ent­ness” every June — with pride.

June is LGBTQ& Pride Month 

That’s LGBTQ& for amper­sand fans. For every­one else it’s LGBTQ+ but it means the same exact thing. The plus sign is a just a sim­pli­fied amper­sand — see?

plus sign is just a stripped down ampersand

This Amper­Art piece was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in May or June 2020, but I got so involved in select­ing & posi­tion­ing the let­ters of the acronym, & then spend­ing lots of time research­ing the ori­gin of the flag & oth­er his­to­ry about LGBTQ&, along with relat­ed ter­mi­nol­o­gy, facts & feel­ings, that I told myself “to be con­tin­ued next year.” 

Then in 2021 I dis­cov­ered all sorts of new acronyms (includ­ing LGBTQIA& which is com­mon today, but also extend­ed ver­sions such as LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA+) & a whole slew of gen­der icons (take a look at the back­ground of the art­work), think­ing I need­ed to start over with design. But I liked my orig­i­nal art­work, how every­thing fit, & the fact it was a spec­trum of exact­ly six col­ors, same as the cur­rent LGBTQ& flag. So what to do? After heavy con­sid­er­a­tion I had the “aha” idea: Leave the main art­work alone, but add the var­i­ous gen­der icons to the back­ground. (I chose from what appeared to be an author­i­ta­tive source. If any­one wants to sug­gest more or dif­fer­ent icons I’ll glad­ly con­sid­er mod­i­fy­ing the back­ground pat­tern. I feel it’s impor­tant to be rep­re­sent­ed accu­rate­ly & respect­ful­ly. Just leave a comment.) 

Well, you guessed it: it took awhile to make those revi­sions, then to write about them & what each sym­bol means, so half-​way into June 2021 I once again shelved this piece until this month, LGBTQ& Pride Month 2022. I got back to work on the edi­to­r­i­al in mid-​May so it could be released as my May 2022 Amper­Art (which it was, today the 30th). Prob­lem was I still had the sto­ry to write & a ton of ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al to sort through, and that would take days.

History of the Flag

The orig­i­nal con­cept for the LGBT flag, designed by Gilbert Bak­er in 1978.

Picture now & 1000 words later

A pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, they say, so I’ve decid­ed to post the pic­ture now — the final Amper­Art design #160 LGBTQ& — & con­tin­ue adding to this sto­ry as I write about each topic:

  • (post­ed 5/​30/​22) My empa­thy with those who are “not main­stream,” because I’ve always been a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than my peers (even diag­nosed as men­tal­ly retard­ed, when that term was polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect). I’m straight, but I have a lot of gay (& oth­er gen­ders, I’m sure) friends & tru­ly enjoy their com­pa­ny. I under­stand what it’s like to be con­sid­ered “dif­fer­ent.”
  • (post­ed 6/​15/​22) The his­to­ry of the first Rain­bow Flag, which is inter­est­ing & a bit amus­ing why it had to be changed slightly. 
  • The grad­ual accep­tance lead­ing up to — final­ly — the Supreme Court “affirm­ing that every human being should be treat­ed with respect & dignity.”
  • A look at the oth­er sexual-​orientation terms & icons.
  • Final­ly, my one & only rant against the LGBTQ& com­mu­ni­ty, which has to do with my spe­cial­ty, brand identity.

I can’t promise when I’ll get to these top­ics — this June or Pride Month next June, or some­where in between. But the issue & the peo­ple are impor­tant to me, so I will keep adding to the arti­cle right here. I will also send out a newslet­ter at the con­clu­sion of each topic.

The orig­i­nal con­cep­tu­al devel­op­ment for Amper­Art #160 LGBTQ&, 2020
LEAVE A COMMENT—who­ev­er’s in that skin of yours
Production notes for #160 LGBTQ&:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Programs: Adobe Illustrator
Fonts:
L: Benguiat Charisma
G: Dyer Arts & Crafts
B: Monoton
T: Poppl Residenz & Rockwell (modified)
Q: (custom)
Ampersand: Palatino (modified)
Credits:
Background image: deposit​pho​tos​.com (modified)
Original flag reference: https://​myfopin​ion​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​6​/​2​3​/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​p​r​i​d​e​-​f​l​ag/
Note: “&” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
Original flag reference:https://myfopinion.wordpress.com/2019/06/23/history-of-the-pride-flag/
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster suitable for printing & framing, click on the image.
Visit DesimoneDesign.com

Chaz DeS­i­mone, design­er & typog­ra­ph­er, is the cre­ator of Amper­Art & own­er of Des­i­mone Design. He was adding ser­ifs to let­ters when he was just a lit­tle brat scrib­bling on walls. Now he’s a big brat & his entire career is design, so long as each project requires the most sophis­ti­cat­ed, log­i­cal, cap­ti­vat­ing results. Con­tact him at chaz@​desimonedesign.​com.

Thank you for sub­scrib­ing to Chaz’s per­son­al design project, Amper­Art. Please invite your friends — those who are fans of the fun & fab­u­lous amper­sand — to sub­scribe at amper​art​.com.

Chaz sez...
Want more?
Rants & raves mostly about design, sometimes about the universe.
An occasional bit of useful advice.
Read the blog:
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez
Desimone Design
Desimone Design

#187 Each & Every

Chaz DeSimone 1 Comment
#187 Each & Every
Click image to view full size or download poster for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

When the idea for #187 Each & Every came to me, I thought there would be nothing to write about

I recalled about a few instances where I’ve heard the term used, such as:

Each & every time there’s a tight dead­line, the com­put­er crashes.

We should exer­cise, even just a lit­tle, each & every day.

Each & every pen­ny counts. (This was espe­cial­ly true when our mom raised 4 young chil­dren on her own after our dad passed away at an ear­ly age.)

My favorite teacher gave each & every stu­dent extra spe­cial attention.

Each & every dessert was tempting.

Then I realized there are lots of things I can personally relate that phrase to:

I don’t actu­al­ly inspect each & every pix­el in my work, as I am known to pro­fess. (You know how micro­scop­ic a pix­el is?)

I have loved each & every cat I’ve ever owned that’s ever owned me: Tiger, Black­wolf, Amos & Andy, Bri­quette, Bebe, Jeep­ers Creep­ers, Lil’ Lion, & S.F.Squiggles

I love each & every one of my sib­lings deeply and equal­ly: Roz, Andy, & Rob

I am grate­ful for each & every one of my very best friends, clients, & vendors.

I appre­ci­ate each & every one of you, my Amper­Art subscribers.

& finally:

Each & every month I’ve cre­at­ed a new Amper­Art issue for the past eleven years.
Each & every month? Whoa.

You did sub­scribe to receive each & every Amper­Art issue, did­n’t you?

Concept & design

The con­cept came instan­ta­neous­ly: spell out the words, let­ter­spaced, & cir­cle the let­ters indi­vid­u­al­ly or col­lec­tive­ly with a pen. But uh-​oh, the last time I used my Wacom draw­ing tablet was before a major com­put­er update & now the tablet’s a high-​tech triv­et. (I’ll donate it to some­one with an old­er OS.) I just hap­pened to pur­chase an Apple Pen­cil with my iPad, so this would be a good time to give it a test run. I cre­at­ed the typog­ra­phy in Illus­tra­tor on my large mon­i­tor, then to add the scrib­ble around the let­ters with the pen, I saved the doc­u­ment to the cloud & opened it on the iPad with a lighter ver­sion of Illus­tra­tor (devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly for such a device). After a small learn­ing curve, I was able to scrib­ble around those let­ters on a sep­a­rate lay­er, try­ing sev­er­al times until it was just right, then sent it back to the large mon­i­tor for final tweaks. That was a very suc­cess­ful cre­ative process. & all I thought the iPad was good for was bing­ing on too much TV & inspect­ing my web­site layouts.

Got­ta go binge now…

Production notes for #187 Each & Every:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Illustrator
Font: Agency
Ampersand: hand-​scribbled
Credits:
No production credits this time, but inspiration credit goes to each & every one of you, ampersand fans!
Note: “&” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster suitable for printing & framing, click on the image.

Chaz DeS­i­mone is the cre­ator of Amper­Art and own­er of Des­i­mone Design. He was adding ser­ifs to let­ters when he was just a lit­tle brat scrib­bling on walls. Now he’s a big brat and his entire career is design for clients who desire the most sophis­ti­cat­ed, log­i­cal, cap­ti­vat­ing cre­ative. Con­tact him at chaz@​desimonedesign.​com to dis­cuss your project, pick his brain, or just talk shop.

Chaz sez...

Who banned the ampersand?

Whoever thought up the syntax for Universal Resource Locators (URLs) was 100% coder & 0% copywriter. No foresight whatsoever. We can’t even use common punctuation in a URL except for the hyphen & underscore. It sure makes all the AmperArt URLs ugly & hard to understand—no ampersands allowed!
This is just one of the rants on my blog, chaz sez.
Rants & raves mostly about design, sometimes about the universe.
An occasional bit of useful advice.
Read the blog:
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez
Desimone Design
Desimone Design

#144 Meet & Greet

Chaz DeSimone Leave a comment
#144 Meet & Greet
Click image to view full size or download poster for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Meet & Greet & Skype & Zoom

This #144 Meet & Greet piece wThis #144 Meet & Greet piece was cre­at­ed way back in June 2019, just wait­ing for the per­fect time & place for its debut. Then came the pan­dem­ic, & no one dare meet & greet, not in per­son, any­way. A lot of peo­ple learned how to Skype, Zoom & Face­time dur­ing the last cou­ple years.

Meet & Greet & Greet & Meet

I was very busy dur­ing Feb­ru­ary and March of this year with two back-​to-​back projects, each for I was very busy dur­ing Feb­ru­ary & March of this year with two back-​to-​back projects, each for upcom­ing con­ven­tions. Busi­ness cards, web­sites, brochures, posters, ban­ners, & give­aways — both projects with impos­si­ble dead­lines. That was in between two oth­er projects that I’ve been work­ing on for sev­er­al months.

Double Duty

Nor­mal­ly an Amper­Art piece such as #144 Meet & Greet is on stand­by until I need some­thing for a last-​minute issue when I have no time to cre­ate some­thing new. This is one of those times. I had to get back to those oth­er project with dead­lines just around the cor­ner. But there couldn’t be a more appro­pri­ate theme than meet & greet, hav­ing just fin­ished those two con­ven­tion projects.

Concept & Design

I used to be a sem­i­nar junkie, and I’ve attend­ed my share of design sym­po­siums, print­ing con­ven­tions, and cham­ber mix­ers. So design­ing this one came easy. A lit­tle too easy, as the image on the left I used to be a sem­i­nar junkie, & I’ve attend­ed my share of design sym­po­siums, print­ing con­ven­tions, & cham­ber mix­ers. So design­ing this one came easy. A lit­tle too easy, as the image on the left demon­strates. After I com­plet­ed it, ready to pub­lish, I real­ized we could dress it up a lit­tle with a fine-​tailored suit (not that I would wear any­thing like that, being the res­i­dent nud­ist — and you know I’m going to miss those Zoom meet­ings). So I redesigned the piece to be the final #144 Meet & Greet that you see on the right.

Orig­i­nal con­cept, left, and then after a cup of cof­fee, right.

Typography

The type­style is Trade Goth­ic, which along with Folio, were the fore­run­ners in the 1950s & 60s of what would become the most pop­u­lar & refined of the mod­ern goth­ics, Hel­veti­ca. Back in mid-​century 1900s type­set­ters still relied on what­ev­er was avail­able in their fonts* as there weren’t thou­sands of styles avail­able by com­put­er. As for the amper­sand & words out­side of the badge, I used some­thing authen­tic: a good ol’ Sharpie mark­er, scanned into place.

*Font: what the term really means

The true def­i­n­i­tion of font is best com­pre­hend­ed if you can visu­al­ize draw­ers of indi­vid­ual met­al type, where each draw­er con­tained a sin­gle font. That would be the type fam­i­ly (Trade Goth­ic, for exam­ple — we’ll use the word “HELLO”), its weight (extra bold), its slant (roman, mean­ing not ital­ic), & its mod­i­fi­ca­tion in width (extend­ed), & its point size (36 pt. would be a good guess for the name badge). That’s a lot of job cas­es (type draw­ers) for just one type­style fam­i­ly. It’s sim­ple enough to real­ize you’d have a sep­a­rate case for each of these criteria:

nor­mal
ital­ic
bold
bold ital­ic
light
light ital­ic
medi­um
medi­um ital­ic
heavy
heavy ital­ic
black
black ital­ic

con­densed
ital­ic con­densed
bold con­densed
bold ital­ic con­densed
light con­densed
light ital­ic con­densed
medi­um con­densed
medi­um ital­ic con­densed
heavy con­densed
heavy ital­ic con­densed
black con­densed
black ital­ic condensed

extend­ed
ital­ic extend­ed
bold extend­ed
bold ital­ic extend­ed
light extend­ed
light ital­ic extend­ed
medi­um extend­ed
medi­um ital­ic extend­ed
heavy extend­ed
heavy ital­ic extend­ed
black extend­ed
black ital­ic extended

But wait, there’s more! Ten to twenty times more!

Remem­ber, this was when type was cast in lit­tle met­al pieces (or wood for larg­er sizes, usu­al­ly reserved for posters & pack­ag­ing). Take anoth­er look at the 36 styles above. Those are not yet fonts. Each sin­gle font con­tains one of those 36 styles (or more or less, depend­ing on what the type­set­ter’s clients needs were) in sev­er­al point sizes: 5, 6, 7, 8 (busi­ness cards & foot­notes), 9, 10 (typ­i­cal book text), 11, 12 (larg­er book or print ad text), 14, 16, 18, 21, 24 (sub­heads), 27, 30, 36, 42, 48, 60, 72 (titling, approx. 1 inch). Let’s mul­ti­ply the var­i­ous styles list­ed above by all these sizes. That’s 36 styles X 20 = 720 fonts for just one type fam­i­ly (such as Trade Gothic). 

Add to that small caps, frac­tions, ding­bats (sym­bols), & spe­cial char­ac­ters for each style and size. 

But wait, wait, wait! That’s just one type family — there’s LOTS MORE!

Those 720 fonts are for just one type fam­i­ly. A large type­set­ting shop might have 30 or more type fam­i­lies (here’s a sam­pling from mid-​century, when agen­cies were in full swing with met­al type): Trade Goth­ic, Futu­ra, Gara­mond, Caslon, Bodoni, Chel­tenham, Coop­er, Hel­lenic, Craw Mod­ern, Bem­bo, Claren­don, Wal­bum, Kabel, Cop­per­plate Goth­ic, Tem­po, Kauf­man, Palace Script, Old Eng­lish, & many more. This was when type design was tru­ly pro­fes­sion­al, not the crap than any­body with a com­put­er can churn out today.

Some on this list have only 2 to 6 vari­a­tions, such as the scripts, & most type­set­ters wouldn’t have a com­plete fam­i­ly in all the sizes. So let’s take an aver­age of 20 fam­i­lies & mul­ti­ply that by a rea­son­able 12 styles & 16 sizes. You’re look­ing at 3,840 fonts (they came in lit­tle pack­ages wrapped in paper inside a card­board box) plus spe­cial char­ac­ters & wood type for titling. That’s a lot of inven­to­ry — with a job case draw­er for each font!

So when today’s design­ers use the word “font,” they’re only par­tial­ly right about what it used to mean way back when. (Way back when is also when you’d hear lots of curs­ing when a com­plet­ed gal­ley of hand-​set type “pied” — spilled onto the floor.) Today, “font” seems to refer to a type­style, peri­od, like “Hel­veti­ca.” But is still would be more accu­rate to spec out a “font” as Hel­vetic bold extend­ed. Maybe even include the point size if you’re that famil­iar with the medium.

It’s amaz­ing how sim­ple typog­ra­phy has become today — that is, select­ing “fonts” & not hav­ing to keep a phys­i­cal inven­to­ry. But it still takes tal­ent to choose the right type­styles, treat­ments, & sizes, not to men­tion a keen eye for prop­er kern­ing, track­ing & lead­ing. (Yes, more terms…for the pros.) Typog­ra­phy has always been my favorite type of art & design. My favorite type fam­i­lies are Micro­gram­ma & Craw Clarendon.

What type of Meet & Greets have you attended?
Production notes for #144 Meet & Greet:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Photoshop
Font (text): Trade Gothic
Ampersand: hand-​lettered (with a Sharpie, of course)
Credits:
Photograph: deposit​pho​tos​.com
Note: “&” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster suitable for printing & framing, click on the image.

Chaz DeS­i­mone is the cre­ator of Amper­Art and own­er of Des­i­mone Design. He was adding ser­ifs to let­ters when he was just a lit­tle brat scrib­bling on walls. Now he’s a big brat and his entire career is design for clients who desire the most sophis­ti­cat­ed, log­i­cal, cap­ti­vat­ing cre­ative. Con­tact him at chaz@​desimonedesign.​com to dis­cuss your project, pick his brain, or just talk shop.

Chaz sez...

Who banned the ampersand?

Whoever thought up the syntax for Universal Resource Locators (URLs) was 100% coder & 0% copywriter. No foresight whatsoever. We can’t even use common punctuation in a URL except for the hyphen & underscore. It sure makes all the AmperArt URLs ugly & hard to understand—no ampersands allowed!
This is just one of the rants on my blog, chaz sez.
Rants & raves mostly about design, sometimes about the universe.
An occasional bit of useful advice.
Read the blog:
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez
Desimone Design
Desimone Design