Dreamland Sam Quinones A detailed history of the ongoing opiate epidemic. Quinones traces the rise of OxyContin (which Pu...| reaganray.com
Sadly, Amsel's prolific and promising career was cut tragically short. He was diagnosed with AIDS in September of 1985 and died only three months later. His last poster was for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and he was slated to do the poster for Jewel of the Nile when he fell ill. Many lovely tributes to Amsel are floating around the web, notably richard-amsel.com, which includes a much broader collection of his work. A documentary and a book celebrating his life are in the works as well.| reaganray.com
Nick at Nite debuted in July of 1985, conceived as the first "Oldies TV Network." The programming and branding direction was created by the same team as MTV and used a similar style of commercial bumpers. Nick at Nite was every bit of a revelation for me as MTV. I grew up in a small town, and we only had about 30 channels, so pickings were slim. Discovering all these old shows opened up a whole new world, and there were times when I would sneak out of bed to watch in the middle of the night.| reaganray.com
Books about VHS| reaganray.com
This is a follow-up to my hair band lettering post. I enjoy connecting posts like this, and after a friend sent me the old Monster Ballads commercial, I immediately started digging into the old albums. I've got two shout-outs to give. The first is to Cinderalla for the purple color scheme inspiration. And the second is to Mathieu Triay for his beautiful revival of Marvin Visions. It seems like cassettes are somehow making a comeback, so all the physical links are to buy the cassette off the D...| reaganray.com
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story Sean Howe Probably the most definitive, well-researched history of Marvel out there (I ha...| reaganray.com
As usual, the early years did not disappoint. There's a lot of hand lettering, and I love how all the earlier movies had quotation marks around the title. I almost quit going after the 80s, but I got a kick out of the trends that started to develop. In the 90s, everyone loved their chunky, condensed fonts. The gritty texture starts to show up around Crash, and then there's the thin type on a colorful background (Moonlight, Green Book, etc.) of the late 2010s. The nominees for 2021 leaves a lo...| reaganray.com
I will say that comic books, in general, can be a challenging hobby to pick up. It's easy enough to go to the store and grab whatever jumps out at you, but all the authors, artists, storylines, volumes, issues, etc., can be intimidating to sort out, especially for a newbie like me. I quickly found that it would be impossible to do a general "comic book lettering" post. There's just too much out there. So I've decided to break it down into manageable chunks, starting with what I find to be the...| reaganray.com
A Colony in a Nation Chris Hayes The #BLM movement prompted me to learn more about the history of policing in America. Ch...| reaganray.com
My previous post was full of, for the most part, Christmas classics. Stuff you could listen to with your family. This post is much different. It's got Christmas raps, Beck's electronic version of "Little Drummer Boy", and what I consider the greatest Christmas song of all-time, Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas from the Family". For the lazy, here's a Spotify playlist of all the songs, and be sure the check out my Christmas albums post from 2017. There's also Discogs links if you want to tr...| reaganray.com
There's a popular theory that the hair band movement was ushered in by Van Halen. Although I don't think Van Halen is an actual hair band (though David Lee Roth fits as a frontman), they did set the blueprint by re-introducing hard rock to the mainstream. I also think that they set the blueprint for hair band lettering. The cover of their 1978 debut album had stylized chrome lettering (with wings!), and they took it a step further with their follow-up album in 1979. Van Halen II introduced th...| reaganray.com
Dr. No: A Visual Tribute to Sean Connery| reaganray.com
This is the second post in a series on jazz albums. You can check out the previous post previous post for saxophone albums, including some thoughts on shopping for vinyl.| reaganray.com
Jazz is a daunting genre. It's big and complex. There are so many musicians, recordings, instruments, etc. that it's almost hard to find a starting point. My wife and I started getting into jazz when our children were born (we love listening over dinner). But as we added to our collection, I began to get overwhelmed quickly. So I took a step back and started to think about the instruments and the styles. I've found that even with that simple mindset, it's much easier to browse through our LPs...| reaganray.com
The history of the album cover and show poster begins with jazz. Alex Steinweiss started creating the first album artwork at Columbia Records in the late 30s, replacing the brown paper sleeves that jazz 78s came in. David Stone Martin did early work for Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic, creating unique lettering and illustrations with a crow quill pen (his work is in the Smithsonian). But the most influential designer was probably Reid Miles, who created over 500 album covers for Blue ...| reaganray.com
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While I was working on the sci-fi lettering post, I did a ton of research that made me think about all the sci-fi movies out there that I haven’t seen. The sci-fi genre has one of the biggest cult followings around (rivaled only by horror) and has entire film festivals dedicated to the genre. Not only that, but there have been a ton of great sci-fi films coming out lately, from low budget cult flicks to big-budget blockbusters. It’s a big and diverse genre that really feels like it has so...| reaganray.com
The extraordinary thing about Milton Glaser is the depth of his work. You can stumble upon a piece that is so simple and iconic only to find that it has many more layers to it. I discovered a lot of these connections while researching his album cover designs. For instance, he would create custom type for an album that he would later turn into a font. He'd use that font on other materials, and then other designers would use it on their own albums covers. All of those connections make you reali...| reaganray.com
30 Black Illustrators| reaganray.com
Code| reaganray.com