When I used to live in NYC, I used to visit the Strands near Union Square all the time just to flip through old books. They just have a certain easy flair to them that just makes sense no matter what the subject matter is. From the old-school science fiction illustrations to the out-of-date typography, they all have a certain flavor that the computer age pretty much ended. Here are some old photographic manuals I came across that I took some photos of. The covers feature some great examples of sans-serif typography and wonderful textbook-like interior diagrams:
Wonderful, beautiful Helvetica… My precious…
Franklin Gothic with it’s awesome condensed versions featured on this cover. Notice how the “big C” has the end slope off in different directions?
This one is a bit tougher — can anybody guess? King of this post to the first to answer it correctly!
A photograph of a photograph of the definition of a photograph…
Don’t you love those lovely damaged edges on these books and that slightly sun damaged yellowed paper?!
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Very cool.
Jack, I totally GET what you mean when you say “they all have a certain flavor that the computer age pretty much ended.” Books sure have that tattered appeal.
Mind you, my monitor is a bit beat off looking, but I do not detect any curling, weathering or yellowing there!
I see that you are getting some serious depth of field with your photos.
Suggests to me that you are not enslaved to a digital auto-focus.
BTW, I am an artist/designer/inventor.
You can see some of my artwork @ http://artaffectsdesign.com/mgaudet.htm
As a sidebar, I am old-school re: typography. I actually ‘hand-paint’ letters on big signs. It’s a dying art…all CG vinyl now…but I’m still pretty busy with it along with murals, etc.
Thanks Michael! You gotta look closely but the damage is there. I do admit since some of the black text was fading losing contrast, I had to color correct just a bit so that the black on the diagrams had more punch so the yellowing is reduced a bit.
At another job of mine we tried to look for somebody who did hand-painted letterforms for us to a custom menu for a restaurant. We never found a person so we found a silk screen pro who screened our concepts for us. However, it totally loses that “human trying to paint a letterform” look that designers love…
[...] 3 Beautiful Retro Photographic Manuals [...]