Bryan Connor - Young and Freelancing

The Shadow Knows : Briem Akademi Type Specimen Book

“The Shadow Knows” a typographic profile of Briem Akademi (with help from Univers) set to the words of Walter Gibson. Who Knows What Evil Lurks In The Hearts of Men? The Shadow Knows. The legendary pulp hero lives again in the form of a type specimen book.

Description

The type specimen book has a long history as the source and sample book for graphic designers and typographers to choose their next font purchase. Type foundries would produce these small booklets to promote and market a newly released or created font to graphic designers. The books could also be more cumulative and contain many fonts from a type foundry or printer in order to illustrate the wide variety and quality of typefaces offered. They have been an essential part of the printing trade since soon after the invention of printing with movable metal type in the 15th century.

My type specimen book is a modern adaptation of the long history of the type specimen book. Its content and formatting have been updated to include specific content rather than alphabets, short sentences, and letter spacing studies in a range of sizes. “The Shadow Knows” contains original content written by myself about The Shadow as well as an excerpt from Walter Gibson’s The Shadow episode #219 from April 1st 1941 called “The Time Master.”

Some History

Beginning in 1931, The Shadow pulp fiction magazine was published by Street & Smith Company and continued for 325 novels until it’s end in 1949.

In 1855 Street & Smith embarked on a publishing mission that remained remarkably prolific and profitable for over one hundred years, one of their most popular fiction products being The Shadow.

Walter B. Gibson came up with the character of The Shadow in 1931 and wrote two thirds of the pulps, inventing countless other characters along the way. He was aided in his efforts by other authors to write 18 years worth of monthly or bi-monthly pulps all of whom operated under the nom de plume – Maxwell Grant. These other authors included Theodore Tinsley, Bruce Elliot and Lester Dent of Doc Savage.

Just as was the case inside the pages of the pulp, The Shadow magazine had a big list of enemies. The magazine created much competition within the industry and created a boom of pulps featuring titles like Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Spider, The Black Mask, The Phantom Detective, and The Ghost.

Goals

The type specimen book is meant to show off the font and its versatility with compatible content. In this case I wanted to use typography to tell a story and set the mood for the book. When paired with this type of content I wanted the book to take on an older and more classical feel, much like some of the pulps that were produced during The Shadow’s heyday. The first part of the book informs readers about The Shadow which is followed shortly thereafter by some content by Walter Gibson all wrapped up in a nice book.

Concept

The first page sets the mood of the book with The Shadow’s catch phrase; “Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?  The Shadow Knows.” This is followed by a short intro section about The Shadow and its history in the world of pulps including a graph of production rates during the life of the magazine. It lists the “agents” or other characters in the pulps that help the shadow solve crimes and bring evil doers to justice and lists the villains who are causing all of the problems.

The next section is an excerpt from The Time Master with the text as it was originally published in The Shadow. It contains all of Chapter 20 “Grand Central Battle,” the exciting conclusion of “The Time Master”. The excerpt gives a good sample of the type of writing common to these pulp magazines and pulls out the important and exciting parts of the chapter with the typeface Briem Akademi.

I used a few colors that represent the magazine hero and were common in the pulp covers. I used subdued purples and greys to represent the shadow imagery common in the pulps and few highlight colors are also integrated.

Process

I had read a few books previously whose plots centered around the story of The Shadow and the life of Walter Gibson. They inspired me to do a bit more research about The Shadow and eventually to use it as the content and centerpiece for this type specimen book. The inspiration for the spreads came from other pulp magazines at the time, visual research on the history of The Shadow.

The book is bound accordion style with three pages on one section of the accordion. With wrapped book board covers and a spine wrap, the book is cohesive and easy to read and flip through. The paper is grey Reves BFK and it was printed here in the art tech center at MICA.

Solution

The final result is a 14 page type specimen book about The Shadow in Briem Akademi and Univers. The making of this book has subdued my obsession with The Shadow for now and I think it’s a nice finished product. Please leave you comments.