Shadow Type
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Graphic Design
Shadow Type Details
About the Author Steven Heller is co chair of the MFA Design Department at the School of Visual Arts and the author of numerous books, including our bestselling Typography Sketchbooks.Louise Fili is director of Louise Fili Ltd, a New York-based design studio specializing in branding for food packaging and restaurants. Fili was art director of Pantheon Books for eleven years, where she designed close to 2000 book jackets. She is a member of the Art Directors Hall of Fame, and received the medal of lifetime achievement from the AIGA and the Type Directors Club.Fili is the author of Elegantissima, Grafica della Strada, and Graphique de la Rue. She also co-authored and designed Italianissimo and The Cognoscenti's Guide to Florence. With her husband, the design historian Steven Heller, she is co-author of Italian Art Deco, British Modern, Dutch Moderne, Streamline, French Modern, Deco España, German Modern, Deco Type, Design Connoisseur, Counter Culture, Typology, Stylepedia, Euro Deco, Scripts, Shadow Type, Stencil Type, and Slab Serif Type. She has also designed Perfetto, Tutti Frutti, and Brillante pencils. Read more
Reviews
Graphic artists await with bated breath any new book by Dr. Heller and Ms. Fili... Their books are just exquisitely, knowledgeably compiled worlds of eye candy, vivid history and inspiration.SHADOW TYPE: CLASSIC THREE-DIMENSIONAL LETTERING is another fabulous gem from these creative people: It is a lavishly illustrated compendium of a kind of treatment given to lettering and type, in the scope of this book, from the Victorian age, through Art Deco/Style Moderne, through Streamline; roughly the period of 1890---1955.Letterforms are given a bold, three-dimensional quality as if they have been extruded into blocky forms-- the sides of these letters given a realistic shading/modeling--- then shadowed dramatically as if raked from some unseen oblique light source.Nowadays, 3D softwares can readily create these kinds of letter treatments, but this book chronicles a time when this 3D modeling was done entirely as an illusion created by hand.As Heller/Fili often do in their books celebrating the best of 20thc letter and poster and ad treatments, SHADOW TYPE is chaptered by how different nations employed the style in their own idiosyncratic way: American, Italian, French, German, British, then by other countries.Americans my age-- I am 50--- will almost certainly recognize this kind of shadowed 3D lettering from the opening and closing titles of Hollywood movies of the 20thc, most prevalently during the 1930's and 1940's; something about the long dramatic shadows of this treatment is especially well-suited to the Film Noir genre.SHADOW TYPE is a cornucopia of inspiration for modern graphic artists, designers, illustrators and signpainters...(Restaurateurs and menu designers, too) and for lovers of Art Deco, Midcentury and Streamline design.As is often the case with the fine books of Heller & Fili, the book contains a concise, informed explanatory/historical text... followed by wall-to-wall, full-color illustrations. Their books are just all-eyecandy-all-the-time. Such a joy to peruse. It is apparent that the authentic period samples for this book have been painstakingly color corrected, so their printed versions included here are razor sharp, showing the saturated, wonderful vintage colors exactly as they appeared when new. The paper stock is rewardingly heavy, with a semigloss coating, showing off the designs as the treasures that they are.Heller & Fili also designed the book with "full bleed" on the picture pages; no white borders intrude upon the vivid closeups of these styles; The authors want the reader to be swimming in beauty, not coldly appraising these styles intellectually.We tend to think that "everything has improved" in modern times, with modern technologies and sensibilities; yet the wonderful, smart, stylish, hand-rendered examples presented in this book show that modern designers could do very well to study the disciplines of the past... starting with the books of Heller & Fili.Highly recommended.
