Moving Closer

It's getting closer. Art. Art is the hangup.

One of the things I want to see with Sholari, Volume 2, will be strange and foreign. Stability. I would like to see the same logo on at least three issues - the three we have planned and which are getting real.

So I got the next-to-final of the art for the wrap around cover by Steve Devaney (beautiful wrap-around artwork based on an ancient shanthic monument - at dawn) and I was trying to settle on a real logotype. I had one that I really liked based on the old Jungle comics logo, but that was really out of line with Steve's art. So I am looking at a variant of that for the new GOMO GUIDE series. Each of the three issues published in the 1990s were kind of a surprise. Two were "Church Bulletin" format - 8 1/2 x 14, folded in half. One was docu-tech, a new technology that predated Print-on-Demand, and published as US Letter standard - 11 x 17, folded.

Sholari Magazine Volume 2 will be Print on Demand US Letter format, and I would like them to look like they belong together.

I want a logotype with some visual feel of real handwork, like the original Miles Teves handbrush technique (which I converted to a .ttf font for experiments), but ... no the same. So after a number of attempt, I came up with...

The font is one of the new style of retro with swash. Readable, aged, looks like someone spent some time on it with the intent of it being around for a while.

This does not come from nowhere. I have been doing some tracking of Jorune for tech levels and culture, which included the revelation of Thriddle of Earth 19th Century mass publication with powered presses (water power, but Jorune may be reaching the point where steam is a consideration). Thriddle have produced books on a more 17th Century level of carved block pages used for mass production, and distribution to limited 'subscribers'. A new cermamic-plate process where a slip is poured into the mold created from a very doable handset type (do some web search for "California Case" and "Proofing Press"), but revelations from one of the unearthed Cryo-Bins would have included whole libraries of information, including ways to read them. This was follow by long, Thriddle analysis of transfer into their own libraries (with the control of what is or is not included), indexed, and then shared on a restricted method (such as the libraries of the "initiated" in the more secret circles of Tan Iricid, like the Black Hall, and the pledged servants of the Somar). A cheap process of printing and some new types of cheap paper resulted in an explosion of cheap reading material, which boosted pride in getting new information through reading as a reliable technology, and the financial opporunities of cheap publications. A 'pulp' explosion of popular, trashy literature that went to feed the imagination of the newly educated, the backlash of the long educated classes, and the hidden information that is real hidden among the dross.

For me the whole idea began with British "boys papers" of the 1960s, my own interest in pulp era publications, and the offhand comment of Chris Williams, publisher of VERTEXT magazine, during a Jorune game. He quipped about the adventures of "Slam Desti, Boy Yord" and my brain was off and running. That was in the 1990s and resulted in the concept of cheap entertainment: Slam Desti, Pibber Man, Copra Denn, and Allidoth Confidential. Pulpish, noir, comic book, big little books...

So that tone has shaped my idea for published Jorune. I have continued my own autodidactic studies on publishing and technology histories, particularly on how they effected 20th Century popular publications. Which is where I lived.

Jorune to me has harmonics with various stages of Earth world history. They are experience an expansion based on old technologies effecting modern political thought that would be like the period just before the "discovery of the New World" (I have so many problems with that phrase, but let's let that go at the moment). Before the opening of incredible new reserves of resources, labor, and space, which created what we call the Modern Age.

So my design for Jorune tends to echo previous eras, but also reflect a much large context of the Marshal McLuhan idea that "The Medium Is The Message". The information, and the way it is delivered, reflects the cultures, education levels, fears, and political aspirations of the age.

So I would like the new Sholari, the Gomo Guides, and the Sholari Adventure Kits to reflect that. They will NOT all look the same. But I would like some stability in the presentation.