Wie Zeichne Ich

A substantial pause. Some work posts soon but it's useful to give some time here again to looking and thinking. This, passed to me by Josh Walsh (about to graduate from Camberwell Graphics), is one of two from a series of 25 published in the early 1960s by Musterschmidt, Göttingen (Germany). The series, by the mysterious Sigmund V. Weech: Wie zeichne ich... (How I draw, or, How I design (I think)), tackles portraits, hands, ballet, flowers, cars, interiors and so on.



This, Bd. 25, could be the last; perhaps there are more. Tackling letterforms. It's interesting, without being able to read the text, to see the exercises' emphasis. Given that the series is non-specialist or 'amateur', some of the optical considerations are interesting. Also, the characters drawn in the context of 1962 (I've included here the more geometric forms out of bias).



I guess there is a venacular/modernist odour here, the essence of my interest in type. In the absence of a formal training, does one remain only an enthusiast, no matter how much reading?






File alongside Fairburn? Emberley?



I enjoy the manual generosity of spreads like this, somehow harder to find in typography booklist books. I know this is something else. Not making much sense but something with which I'm struggling at the moment, in the sense of perceivedly illegitimate texts.



I also have the loan of Wie schreibe ich schrift, to be posted imminently.