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Looked Into
The Invisible Man: Finding Rea Irvin
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Chris Ware, covers, Pollux, Rea Irvin
Pollux writes:
What does Rea Irvin look like?
In this post on the New Yorker site, Chris Ware explores the difficulties of finding a photograph of the New Yorker's first art director.
(continued)
Rea Irvin's Birthday Today
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: birthdays, celebrations, Eustace Tilley, Pollux, Rea Irvin, Thomas Edison, Wikipedia
Pollux writes:
On this day, a hundred and twenty-eight years ago, Rea Irvin was born in a Californian town named San Francisco. A hundred and three years ago, Irvin traveled to the East Coast to assist in a birth that occurred eighty-four years ago--the founding of The New Yorker.
Thomas Edison invented the Kinetoscope as well as the lightbulb, and Rea Irvin did more than simply create the Eustace Tilley cover portrait.
Irvin lent his good taste and good sense towards the creation of The New Yorker's page design, headings, spot illustrations, as well as the archetype of the typical New Yorker single-panel cartoon.
As Emily writes in her important and much-needed article on him, "it was Irvin's own intimacy with classic form and craft, and his genial willingness to share that expertise, that allowed him to create a complete device: a design, a typeface, a style, and a mood that would be instantly recognizable, and eminently effective, almost a century later."
Emily and I have worked to pull Rea Irvin out of the shadows that seem to enshroud his life and his work. I wrote the initial Wikipedia article on him, and, in the true spirit of Wikipedia, others have contributed to it, the latest contribution being a series of Irvin drawings.
Rea Irvin is one of our heroes, and one of the patron saints of this publication that we love so much.
In his honor, we declare August 26 to be Rea Irvin Day. Celebrate accordingly.
(continued)
Cocktail Contriver: Rea Irvin's Illustrations for Crosby Gaige's Cocktail Guide and Ladies' Companion
Filed under: X-Rea: Irvin Type Watch Tagged: alcohol, Alexander Lawton Mackall, beer, cocktail, Crosby Gaige, Lucius Beebe, Rea Irvin, whiskey, wine
"Beer drinkers lead a dreary and gaseous life ... Whiskey enthusiasts are ... confined to a three-lane highway - straight, soda, or just plain water. But the cocktail contriver ... has the whole world of nature at command..." So declares Crosby Gaige's Cocktail Guide and Ladies' Companion, published in 1941.
Crosby Gaige (1882-1949), a book publisher and book collector, had help from fellow travelers in the world of potent potables: Lucius Beebe provided a foreword; Alexander Lawton Mackall an afterword or "final insult."
And, lucky for Emdashes, the center for all things Irvinian, Gaige employed the talents of Rea Irvin, who "richly embellished" the book "with drawings almost from life." Check out Lady Brett's post on her copy of the book.
(continued)
Irvin on a See-Saw: Two Rea Irvin Magazine Covers
Filed under: X-Rea: Irvin Type Watch Tagged: cartoons, covers, Rea Irvin
Everybody loves Rea Irvin. It's true. Liza Cowan, lucky enough to own two original Rea Irvin magazine covers at her shop, writes about Irvin at her blog. And if you haven't read it yet, Emily's article on Irvin is required reading for anyone interested in Irvinian Studies. You can minor in it here at Emdashes.
(continued)
Staten Island Yankees Catch Irvin Fever
Filed under: X-Rea: Irvin Type Watch Tagged: baseball, design, Rea Irvin, typography
Martin Schneider writes:
Yesterday I went to see the Staten Island Yankees host their crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Cyclones, at beautiful Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George. (The Yankees won, 4-1.)
I couldn't help but notice that all visitors are greeted with a big blue blast of Irvin type (or something close). I asked my friend Seth Davis to snap a few shots for evidence; they are presented after the jump.
(continued)
Who we?
Emdashes, founded in 2004 by Emily Gordon, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.
We welcome tips, questions, and comments about The New Yorker past and present, plus related events, links, typeface sightings, &c. To contact the magazine or send a submission, click here.
No fear: Everything you say or send is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.
This site is neither owned nor operated by The New Yorker magazine or Condé Nast Publications.
Some writing by Emily Gordon
- Review: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (for Newsday)
- Annotated slide show: a wet, festive 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for nycgo.com)
- Proposal: A better-looking MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: Does a redesign of The New Republic mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: four online obsessives and visual cataloguers, Kate Bingaman, Nicholas Felton, Ellie Harrison, and John D. Freyer (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Interviews: winning New Visual Artists Eleanor Grosch, Zigmunds Lapsa, Christian Cervantes, and Kate & Camilla (for Print)
- Profile: lindy hop legend Frankie Manning (for Newsday, with Robert Fouch)
- Feature: Rea Irvin, illustrator, bon vivant, and The New Yorker's first art director (for Print)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World by Julian Dibbell (for Newsday)
- Review: Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley (for Newsday)
- Review: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Report: The New Yorker's redesigned website (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
- Interview: Matthew Diffee on the appropriately inappropriate cartoons of the The Rejection Collection (for Print)
- Interview: Roz Chast on Brooklyn, pysanky eggs, and animation (for Newsday)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Interview: Edward Gorey (for Newsday)
More clips.
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.
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Founded by Emily Gordon, edited by Martin Schneider, designed by House of Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
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