Turner Kopecky | Futura Typeface Poster

Futura Typeface Poster © Turner Kopecky (2015)

Above Poster by Turner Kopecky, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in commemoration of Paul Renner and his design of the typeface Futura.

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Morris Horowitz [pseudonym], a peddler and Russian-Jewish immigrant, recalling what he witnessed in Chicago in 1871 on the night of the Great Chicago Fire, as quoted in Ann Banks, ed., First-Person America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980, pp. 32-33—

No one slept that night. People gathered on the streets and all kinds of reasons were given for the fire. I stood near a minister talking to a group of men. He said the fire was sent by God as a warning that the people were wicked. He said there were too many saloons in Chicago, too many houses of prostitution. A woman who heard this said that a fire started in a barn was a direct warning from God since Jesus was also born in a barn. I talked to a man who lived next door to Mrs. O'Leary, and he told me that the fire started in Mrs. O'Leary's barn. She went out to milk the cow while it was beginning to get dark. The cow kicked the lamp over and that's how the fire started. There were all kinds of songs made up about the fire. Years after, people were still singing songs about it…