John Moore Williams

Decorative Initials Using Igino Marini’s IM Fell

johnmoorewilliams — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 21:27:22 +0000

s you can clearly see, I got a little out of hand with the A, allowing it to sprawl all over the page in a kind of organic explosion. Seems appropriate enough for its shape, which recalls a mountain erupting up through the earth of the baseline grid, at least to my eye. I’ve simply allowed time to drape it in greenery, adorning it with curves to match its natural sharpness and angularity.

Traditionally, such decorative initials aim for a squarer shape, allowing the accompanying text to run more closely against and around it. The shape for this A runs more toward the rectangular, allowing for more breathing room and creating an area of very light typographic color, calling a great deal of attention to itself.

eware the more upright and acute B, for it features less even color. Its counters explode with a riot of florid curlicues and fleur-de-lis, creating a dense and dark internal mass. That thickness and complexity also creates a subtle illusion of swelling, turning the normally negative space of the counter into a positive shape echoing the rounded three-dimensionality of the circular forms behind and before the letter. Outside, however, the space opens up, with a row of knocked-out flowers preceding a large row of circles, which two smaller rows echo after the letter.

I plan to continue this project to produce a complete set of decorative initials, one for each letter of the alphabet. In the meantime, feel free to use these, if you’d like, on your own blog or website. Doing so is quite easy: Just right-click on the image and select Copy Image Location. Alternatively, if you think you might use these on a regular basis, go ahead and download the image to your hardrive for easy reuse later. Once you’ve got the location or the image, just drop it in at the beginning of a paragraph, make sure it’s aligned left with zero padding on all sides. Enjoy!

If you’d like to find out more about Igino’s fabulous project, head here:http://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts/. If you like the fonts, you’ll be pleased to know that Google has been kind enough to provide it (as well as many other fonts) for free use on your site. If you’d like to find out more about that, head here: http://code.google.com/apis/webfonts/.

Cover Design for More Po/Ems by Richard Kostelanetz

johnmoorewilliams — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 21:34:38 +0000

Erg Arts, the online publishing arm of Cricket Online Review, asked me to design the cover and interior for their upcoming e-chapbook, More Po/Ems by Richard Kostelanetz, soon after publishing some of my visual poetry in a recent edition of Cricket.

Kostelanetz, a widely published and well-known experimental poet, had many highly specific demands for the layout, and, with a series of delays due to various exigencies, the design process has taken some months. Still, I regard the final product as a fine piece of work, and am especially excited that this will be my second interior layout credit. Here are a couple of shots of the interior and another look at the cover:

iu, a collection of visual poetry, is now available from Xerolage

johnmoorewilliams — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:02:28 +0000

Wanted to take a moment to announce my latest publication, iu, from mIEKAL aND’s superb Xerolage imprint. Head to the Xexoxial site to pick up a copy of your own.

What we have here are digital talismanic suggestions. In this series of vispo, design elements construct a place for you and eye to land. The dotted i returns u see. Letterforms conjure humanity in their very simplicity. These compositions rework certain concrete poetic ideas. The letters i and u undergo new permutations. It’s a satisfying jaunt through renewed verbo-visual possibilities. John Moore Williams is part of the next wave of visual poet.

- Nico Vassilakis

I didn’t know who I am before I saw iu. I didn’t know what I was, or the difference between I and U. I was continually thinking U were I when you were nothing of the kind. But in this book, in this John Moore Williams book, we discover that I am the mother of U, who is I bent in the middle and whose feet point up to the sky. Sometimes, I am a shadow. Sometimes, I is a change. Sometimes, I am in a pile of U’s and cannot get out. Sometimes, I is a whirling of shapes. Sometimes, I am spare. Because I go on forever, and I end at the end of each finger, each of which is just another I. I is clean. I am dirty. And in John Moore Williams’ hands of ten small I’s, I is everywhere and everything, the letter is examined as a meaning and a shape, the I is made into structures of beauty, and if you read the book you just might know what I am and you are.

- Geof Huth

iu is a textual journey that begins as a root, working its way up and around the viewer in a labyrinthine web of finely-woven vispoage.
Williams’ unending quest for uncharted wordscapes is most present in this newest work, uniquely and intricately grafted into a new flesh, begging exploration.

- Matina L. Stamatakis

from the introduction:

We are used to thinking of letters as merely media, as windows through which some message is conveyed without interference. They are the superconductors of significance, channels devoid of impedance or static, through which content is, ideally, passed with crystal clarity. This is perhaps most obviously true of the letter I, which has become so concretely associated with individual identity that it has practically disappeared as its own entity. The shape itself reinforces this disappearance; of all the letterforms it is perhaps the sparest, the most Spartan. Compounding this is the fact that it lends itself so easily to the conflation of form and content—it is, unlike most single letters, a word, and one that abstractly yet forcefully resembles its referent. It is the human form in hieroglyph, a body inscribed.

iu seeks to accept, complicate and reject this conflation, this crystal-clear union of sign and signifier. In accepting the sparest of letterforms as its subject, then attempting to create a wide variety of forms out of this simple cloth, the book embraces the generativity of restriction. At the same time, it attempts to explore the multifarious and complex meanings of identity and individuality through simple, iconic forms. Many of the pieces employ the archetypal forms and arrangements of the comic book, that most lyric and identity-obsessed of popular fiction forms, while others work through more concrete arrangements, attempting to graphically depict the semantic content in much the same way the letterform itself does. Oh, and then there’s the letter U, which our shorthand age has rendered nearly as pictographic as I.

Hitchcock—my first font

johnmoorewilliams — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:51:23 +0000

Given my love of language and typography, I suppose it was only a matter of time (and technology) before I’d create a font of my own. And here it is: Hitchcock, presented, naturally enough, through a few famous quotes from the man himself, Alfred Hitchcock.

Originally inspired by the silhouette the master of American cinema used in his films, the font eventually moved away from that concept (though I still glimpse the ghost of it in our A), developing a more geometrically rounded and less elegant, but bolder look. It’s designed to be a display font, and the close kerning makes it difficult to read at smaller sizes (though that can, of course, be adjusted by hand).

As of yet, I’ve only developed the capital letters, but I plan to move on to the lower case and, eventually, variants like italic and bold. Still, as a display face, I can see giving it some use even with no more than a set of capitals to use. If you happen to find yourself inclined to make use of it, comment to that effect and I’d be happy to send it your way.

modulations

johnmoorewilliams — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:48:12 +0000

Book Cover Design for Marton Koppany’s modulations for Otoliths

This is just a corner of the cover design for Marton Koppany’s latest book from Otoliths, modulations. I’ve just agreed to become the staff cover designer for this fine small press and I couldn’t be more honored to have been asked to fill the role. This is a very visually conscious press headed by a renowned visual poet who often publishes visual and concrete poetic texts by some of the most respected names in the field, both through his online journal and his print press.

Waste

johnmoorewilliams — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 01:23:44 +0000

Cover design work for Thierry Brunet’s Waste, published by the ever-innovative BlazeVox Press, one of the small press world’s most successful imprints. Thierry requested that I create the cover for this publication, and provided detailed feedback and direction regarding the style. While I now regard it as a somewhat misguided early effort, I do feel the piece is effective and am proud to have my name in a BlazeVox Press book.