Lorraine Wild

"Edward Fella, a former commercial artist, creates posters that break every known rule of typographic convention and designer good taste," says Rick Poynor. Ellen Lupton has written, "In Fella's work, the unfettered mind of a Dada/Fluxus hippie confronts the dextrous hand of a traditional commercial artist." Bruce Mau calls him "brilliant." Peter Hall says Ed Fella is "an agitator, an experimentalist, an educator, and an inspiration to a new generation of type designers" and says his "anti-slick, rule-breaking designs" are "eccentric to the point of being impossible to imitate." Clearly everyone agrees that Ed Fella is one of the most daring and extreme graphic designers in America today.Famous for his obsessive hand-drawn alphabets and glyphs, Fella creates work with the power and spontaneity of raw art that nonetheless is born from a great knowledge of the theory and technique of typography and graphics. As Rick Poynor says, "Fella doesn't so much take his line for a walk as force-feed it hallucinogens and release it babbling on to the page." This first book on Fella, designed by Lorraine Wild, contains numerous examples of the designer's work, including his radical typeface designs, which have been described as "spun, tilted, stretched, sliced, fractured, drawn as if with a broken nib, and set loose among fields of ink-blotter doodles and networks of rules." This title also features Fella's collection of Polaroid snapshots of the signs and symbols he sees on the streets. These photos, taken over a period of many years, serve as a record of vernacular architecture around the world as well as inspiration for Fella's own designs. The result is a book which will appeal to all designers and art directors, whether their love is photography or fonts, art direction or art.

Letters on America : Photographs and Lettering

Edward Fella

Louise Sandhaus

Michael Worthington

Denise Gonzales Crisp

According to the cliche, California is the place where anything goes and everyone does their own thing. Maybe that's because everyone knows that in California there's no terra firma: earthquakes, mudslides, fires, and the occasional civil uprising cause constant upheaval and change. It is also legendary as fertile ground for creativity, freedom, and social consciousness, where the status quo undergoes constant renovation. This book is the first to capture the enormous body of distinctive and visually ecstatic graphic design that emanated from this great state throughout most of the twentieth century. Edited and designed by graphic designer Louise Sandhaus, this raucous gathering of smart, offbeat, groundbreaking graphic design from the Left Coast will amaze readers with its breadth and richness.

Lorraine Wild

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