Edward Fella: Letters on America

by Lewis Blackwell

"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.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2000

About the author

Lewis Blackwell has worked as a leading author, editor, and creative director in photography, winning international recognition for his talks, exhibitions, and books. Blackwell is the author of the bestselling The Life & Love of Trees, The Life & Love of Cats, The Life & Love of Dogs, and Rainforest.

Reviews

[Liz Dohrmann]

For a graphic design studio class in college.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you like taking pictures of strange hand-painted signs? Yeah? Well too bad cause Ed Fella already did it and better than you. And 10 years ago…