Emdashes—Modern Times Between the Lines

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Pollux writes:

While waiting for the arrival of a female urologist, George Christopher (played by Ted Danson) flips through an issue of The New Yorker in the latest episode of HBO’s Bored to Death, “Make it Quick, Fitzgerald.”

Danson’s character is a magazine editor (of the fictitious Edition), and thumbs through the issue of The New Yorker with apparent relish.

We see a fairly convincing New Yorker cover, featuring what appears to a cyclist rendered in strong shapes and bold colors. If this is an actual issue, my apologies, Emdashes readers. If it is, it isn’t a recent issue. Doctors never keep their piles of magazines up-to-date.

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Pollux writes:

Sharp-eyed designer and art director Lindsay Ballant has spotted the use of Irvin type on streetwear for the hip and cool.

The Rocksmith York St. T-Shirt (available in black or white) features Irvin’s lettering, allowing its wearers to swagger in style. “The New Money”? Perhaps. A classic font? Absolutely.

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Pollux writes:

I saw Cold Souls on Pay-Per-View tonight. It stars Paul Giamatti as Paul Giamatti, a man who literally unburdens his soul in a Soul Storage company run by Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn). How does Giamatti hear of the Soul Storage company? A friend calls him and tells him to the read the latest issue of The New Yorker.

Unable to sleep, Giamatti trudges into his living room and picks up the “latest issue” of The New Yorker. The issue that Giamatti picks up features Barry Blitt’s actual cover for the May 28, 2007 issue, called “Half-Staff.”

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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.

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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.

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2008 Webby Awards Official Honoree