Typeface

A co-worker came across this flick. We rented it on Amazon and watched it at work today. Good shit!

It's a one hour long documentary about a wood-type museum in Wisconsin. That probably sounds boring to you. I don't blame you...but it's not. Well, from my perspective as a designer it's certainly not boring. We often think about metal type when we think about movable type, but here we have wooden type. It's an artform within an artform, with its own idiosyncrasies. It seems rather wabi sabi to me. Part of its beauty is the inherent flaws in the wood that accumulate over time. Or the uneven and unreproducible distressing that occurs from print to print. It's definitely a respectable yet endangered artform.

So, here we see the museum, the scant few who frequent the museum, and some of the artisans who worked at the wood type factory when it was still operational. It's all pretty cut and dry. No frills documentary. I wouldn't suggest this wins any awards, but if you're in the design field then you should see this flick. That's all there is to it. Everyone else...well...it's only an hour!