Dennis Ichiyama | Curris Endowment for Design

Dennis Y. Ichiyama

Above Graphic designer, typographer and teacher Dennis Y. Ichiyama will speak at the University of Northern Iowa at 6:00 pm on Monday, November 12, 2018. The presentation will take place in the auditorium (Room 111) of the Kamerick Art Building. It is made possible by The Elena Diane Curris Endowment for Design and the UNI Gallery of Art in conjunction with the endowment's inaugural biennial exhibition, titled THE REACH AND RICHNESS OF DESIGN, in which the work of Ichiyama and other designers is featured. The event is free and open to the public.

Professor Ichiyama is widely known for his work in publication design, typography, and his active interest in the renewed use of vintage wood type in printmaking. He was featured prominently in the documentary Typeface, which includes an account of his efforts as an artist / designer at the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers WI.

Ichiyama earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. He received his MFA degree at Yale University, where he studied with Paul Rand. He also studied with Armin Hofmann at Allegemeine Gewerbeschule in Basal, Switzerland. Before his retirement, he taught Visual Communications Design at Purdue University for many years.

Font Specimen Poster | Rachel Bartholomay

Font Specimen Poster © Rachel Bartholomay 2016

Above Font specimen poster by design student Rachel Bartholomay (©2016) at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Recently while reading Nicholas Fox Weber, The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism (New Haven CT: Yale University Press), I ran across a passage about a class exercise that the painter Paul Klee witnessed in a course at the Bauhaus taught by Johannes Itten. It required his students to draw in the dark, and of course this reminded me of the later, related experiments by Hoyt Sherman at Ohio State University, which I wrote at length about in the early 1990s. Here is the passage from Weber's interesting book (p. 115)—

At 5 pm that same day, Itten gave another course in a large lecture hall constructed like an amphitheater, where people sat on the steps rather than on seats. This time the master projected on the wall a large image of Matisse's La Danse and had the students draw its essential compositional elements in the dark. Itten's wife sat at his feet, with everyone else huddled in close. The sole exception was Klee, who sat as far away as possible, at the very top of the amphitheater, in a proper chair. Looking on from this perch, he smoked his pipe.

Typographic Poster | Hastings Walsh

Poster © Hastings Walsh (2016)

Above Typographic poster (©2016) by Hastings Walsh, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh. New York: Dover Publications, 2004—

He [Ernest] was, however, very late in being able to sound a hard “c” or “k,” and, instead of saying “Come,” he said “Tum, tum, tum.”

“Ernest,” said Theobald, from the arm-chair in front of the fire, where he was sitting with his hands folded before him, “don’t you think it would be very nice if you were to say ‘come’ like other people, instead of ‘tum’?”

“I do say tum,” replied Ernest, meaning that he had said “come.”

Typographic Poster | Stephanie Berry

Typeface Poster © Stephanie Berry 2015

Above Poster by Stephanie Berry, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, in celebration of the typeface Futura (2015)

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Kate Learson, quoted in Remar Sutton and Mary Abbott Waite, eds., The Common Ground Book: A Circle of Friends. Latham NY: British American Publishing, 1992, p. 181—

So many people who say they are artists are just technicians who are trying to capture the PR wave of something avant-garde; the work may be different, but the intention sometimes looks so shallow. So many people now, not only in painting and sculpture but in music and probably literature, seem to be producing cheap knockoffs and are into just promoting themselves.

Typographic Poster | Samuel Garwood

Typographic Poser | Samuel Garwood

Above Poster by Samuel Garwood, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in celebration of the typeface Helvetica.

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James Joyce—

Come forth, Lazarus! But he came fifth and lost the job.

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Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor. New York: Viking Penguin, 1997, p. 135—

The raising of Lazarus from the dead is the subject of today's Gospel. The current sub-supermarket translation has Christ asking, "Where have you put him?"—as if Lazarus might be a basket, and later, "Lazarus, here! Come out!"—as if calling a terrier digging in a rabbit warren.

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Robert Byrne—

Cogito ergo dim sum: Therefore I think these are pork buns.

Typographic Poster | Erin Keiser

Typographic Poster © Erin Keiser 2015

Above Poster by Erin Keiser, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in celebration of the typeface Myriad, designed by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly.

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Samuel Clemens, The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Charles Neider, arr. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959, p. 3—

For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whiskey toddy when I was six weeks old but I don't tell about that any more now; I am grown old and my memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not, but my faculties are decaying now and soon I should be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.

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Franklin P. Jones—

Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.