Sep 2

00

HYPE, ANNOTATED

From an article by Trevor Boddy in the Vancouver Sun.

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Another local member of the type-over-hype contingent both of us is Cardigan Press’s Dean Allen. “Book design is not an advertisement, but rather a transparent shopping bag translucent was the word: it’s an ad not so much for the book but for the lifestyle choices of its owner. We are in a period of too much design, not enough type,” he says what the fuck? I said “too much design, not enough book,” which actually makes sense and is kind of funny, and I credited Peter Cocking for coining the phrase. Notes, Trevor, consult the notes. Allen, who does much of his work for Raincoast, Jesus Christ! Haven’t so much as dialled their phone number since I quit working there three years ago got into the trade as a truck driver oooh, rugged colour. A natural intellectual who managed to bypass college, colour! colour! Allen now believes that many of his own early book designs were heavy-handed in fact I said I’d rather look at a thousand corpses than many of them. He counts himself a zealous convert to the reliance on the pure power of type rather than zingy visual effects. “I have disavowed my connection to graphic design,” he says, no he doesn’t then brings the point home: “Let’s blunt the leading edge.” how the hell does “I’m eager to blunt the cutting edge” get mangled into that?