Olivetti braggadocio

Having previously pooh-poohed the Olivetti logo of the 50s, 60s and 70s as being neither pictorial nor consistently applied, the celebration of Giovanni Pintori's work by ninonbooks prompted a revisit. I don't know if it was drawn by him but my conclusion: it is a glorious logo.

Have a play with it. Right click to download your very own hi-res bitmap here.

I don't have access to the fonts used in the advertising, though Bodoni italic is a good start for words like Lettera etc. The namestyle on Sottsass'es Valentine is appropriately, for a red plastic typewriter with orange bobbin-knobs, set in Braggadocio. On contemporary machines, so's Adler. And cruelly mis-applied in Boston.

Channel blues

Have good photography and an active Typosphere helped to inflate prices of used typewriters? You quite often see people on ebay offering, say, a Remington Noiseless Portable with a reserve of £300 - needless to say, they don't sell.

I was I was keeping an eye on a Corona 4 in Duco Channel Blue on ebay - just idle curiosity, you know - and which did sell for a very high price, as did this pretty ordinary-looking Underwood from the same seller.  I have ones just like them which cost around £20 a few years ago.

Then there's the article posted yesterday on Technorati about old typers being a good investment. Anyone starting to think about insurance yet? And so much for my dreams one day of finding (and affording) a Lavender and gold C4! 

Has the sad day may have arrived when a used typewriter costs many times more than the postage?

This is what a £113 Corona 4 in Channel Blue looks like and...

...this is what a £20 Corona 4 in Channel Blue looks like

Flat Lake

This coming weekend 3 June:
Irish literary and arts festival Flat Lake discounts entry fee if you bring a typewriter.

...and a Malling-Hansen reference for Richard.

What's new?

Is there a name for a blog post which shamelessly re-hashes other people's stuff? Anyway, when I saw this Royal advert posted (can someone remind me who?), it triggered an instant recall of...

...Todd McLellan's image of the disassembled Smith Corona which, in turn, reminded me of ...

....a Keith Haring painting...

...who's style was ripped-off rather poorly for Her Majesty's Government's Change 4 Life campaign to combat obsesity. Pity the imagery relates less to health-giving vegetables and more to...

...Jelly Babies! The only food you'll ever see Time Lords eating. There's been a bag in the Doctor's pocket for, well, millennia. Which brings us nicely back to typewriters. 

This season's redecorated TARDIS must have picked up its new typewriter in the Typosphere :-)

Orwell's long shadow

A neighbour of mine was helping out at The Orwell Prize awards evening in London on Tuesday this week (17 May 2011). Here's an author who was not featured in the LIFE gallery a month or so ago: George Orwell (Eric Blair) at work on an unspecified typewriter. He's reported to have owned a Remington Portable...any ideas?

His work lives on through The Prize, and in his still-popular political novels, for example The Road to Wigan Pier. His books were certainly part of my political education. Although he died in 1950, you can subscribe to his 70 year-old blog (which he wrote longhand) of world events during WW2. And as you do, take note of how his reporting resonates to this day.

He's buried just upstream in All Saint's churchyard in the village of Sutton Courtenay.

© Unknown. Possibly The Manchester Guardian