TDC/Medina and Sahre Salons, Farewell: 2017

2017 concluded with two great salons in one week at Type Director's Club featuring artist/designer Pablo Medina and The Story of DeKalb and artist/designer Paul Sahre's A Graphic Memoir? with Debbie Millman as interviewer.

My wife and I happened to be the first to arrive for Pablo's salon and received two fantastic DeKalb font t-shirts (which are VERY soft!). Pablo started his studio in Bushwick in 2014 and became fascinated with its history and the naming of DeKalb Avenue, which runs across it entirely. He blended the colorful local signage and atmosphere with the rich history into the font DeKalb.

The history is fascinating! In 1638 the Dutch secured a deed for the Bushwick area from the indigenous Lenape people. Chartered by Peter Stuyvesant in 1661, it became Boswijck, a 17th-century Dutch term for "Little Town in the Woods". Boswijck was the last of the original six towns established at New Netherland which the British somehow obtained in the 1680s, renaming it Bushwick Green ultimately Bushwick.

Pablo originally wanted to call his font Bushwick, however the name was already being used so DeKalb became his second choice. DeKalb is named after Baron Johann de Kalb, who was a Franconian-French military officer who served as a major general in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and was ultimately killed fighting the British.

A Graphic Memoir? with Paul Sahre was a very special event for me. Paul does things I really don't expect and that fact makes me love figuring out where he's coming from! I'm really looking forward to reading his book Two-Dimensional Man, which he signed for us using cool-shaped ink stamps (see below). He also went to Kent State which is practically where I lived for 20 years.