Type Tuesday: Vari-Typer

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This manic-looking machine would allow you to typeset with a variety of styles: "Vari-Typers were not ordinary typewriters but composing machines that made professional looking camera-ready masters for offset (photo-lithographic) duplication."



"This machine could use over 300 different type styles and write in 55 languages; it could adjust the space between characters, and even produce right-justified copy. Even though the Varityper enjoyed a successful career of about 60 years, you may never have seen one, for the machine was not generally adopted as a standard typewriter. Instead, it found a niche as a "cold typesetting" or "office composing" machine: it was generally used to produce neat, camera-ready copy for offset printing, at a cost much lower than that of conventional printer's methods."

Alas, the sad end of a Vari-Typer, photographed by Nivad on Flickr:

Type Tuesday: Bluebird

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Bluebird from Cameron McKague on Vimeo.

 

I recently received an email from Cameron McKague (his work was featured in our "The Lost Art of The End" makeover series in issue 2), to let us know he has partnered with designer Jennifer Griffiths to create a typography-driven film based on a poem by Charles Bukowski. "It's filmed in one continuous shot and all the lines from the poem have been integrated/designed into elements of the scene by both of us. We were trying to give it a timeless mid-century feel." It was an ambitious project that involved designing each of the artifacts and then filming it so that each would coincide with the narration of the poem.

Cameron has some beautiful business cards for his company, Vitae Design. Visit his site for more from his portfolio.

All the pretty typers...

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I would have titled this post "No typewriter for old men," but The Guardian beat me to it! Cormac McCarthy, author of aforementioned novel, All the Pretty Horses and The Road has auctioned off his trusty old Lettera through Christies. His workhouse machine since 1958, he has composed all manuscripts with it. It sold for an incredible $254,500 to an anonymous bidder: over 10 times the estimated price.

"I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not yet published. Including all drafts and correspondence I would put this at about five million words over a period of fifty years..." he claims in the accompanying letter of authentication. He also states that the only maintenance done over the years involved "blowing out the dust with a service station air hose." Hmmm, maybe that's how he came up with Anton Chigurh's murderous weapon of injecting compressed air into his victims?

Read more about the Lettera at The New Yorker.

Fringe

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In last night's season opener of Fringe, a typewriter once again played a pivotal role in the plot development. The model IBM Selectric 251 (not available in our reality) is a device that can communicate between alternate universes.

In the first season, an old typewriter held a clue to the authorship of an important manifesto.


"A New Day in the Old Town" was an exciting episode right from the start, but of course the visit to the typewriter repair shop with the darkly lit back room took it to another level!

I can't wait until next week. (Hopefully nice guy Charlie isn't lost for good.)