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We Want Bread and Irvin, Too
Filed under: X-Rea: Irvin Type Watch Tagged: design, food, Jesse Ewing, Rea Irvin, typography
Hi Emily,Not sure if you’re still doing your X-Rea category, but I’ve got an entry that kind of blew my mind.
See attached picture. In our defense, we had to get white bread to make proper BLTs.
Jesse (and wife Chelsea)
I’d like a BLT right now, actually. Anyway, Gwyneth Dyer, writer for the communications design agency Larsen, has just noted this sliced Rea-lette on her marketing blog, mentioning (thanks!) our slow but steady X-Rea machine. She notes:
I’m wondering if this was a purposeful decision — to align a bakery brand with a sophisticated weekly magazine of literature, current affairs, and humor. Perhaps the brand manager’s thinking went like this: Customer needs to pick up some bread. Customer is overwhelmed by choices on grocery shelf. Customer spots a bread that seems somehow familiar, almost classic, possibly a bit more erudite than the other white breads….She goes on to ask, “What’s your opinion? Is this typeface off limits? Is using it unfairly capitalizing on The New Yorker brand?”
I’d like to toast Jesse, Chelsea, and Dwyer for this excellent find. Pictured is Jesse’s own photograph of the spongy bread; Dyer has a close-up on her site, too. Please email in your own Irvin-esque type sightings, and if you’ve got a photo, screen grab, or scan, all the better!
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Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
Thought I’d swing by and leave a comment. Let me confess: I bought the bread because of the font. (Not sure that was part of the Sara Lee marketing plan.)
I’d love to get a discussion going about the font and its appropriateness. Here’s the link to the MarketingProfs Daily Fix post where readers are already weighing in.
Please join in!
It’s one of the best fonts around - but how’s the bread?
How’s the bread?
Let’s go with the Sara Lee tagline: “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee”
I’m not sure I don’t agree with this!
I’d like to hear some typophiles ID the “Soft & Smooth” face. It sounds more like a description of Charmin than bread, but I do like to put my nose into some smooshy bread, I’ll confess. Soft & Smooth is not, however, very Irvin-like; his lines may have been wavy, but they were definitely edgy.
By the way, sometimes I happen on links that relate to stories I’ve already published (usually via google’s magic carpet), and I just landed on a blogger’s post from 2005 that noted the dinner rolls from this same Sara Lee “smartybread” line. Thanks, Randa Jarrar, retroactively! Also, do you have any of those packages of rolls around in 2008? Seriously, I could use them for something I’m working on. I’ll pay for the shipping!