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Distil: Muscle & Iron — Strategy and Specification. Joshua Hughes-Games

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Contents

StrategyPage sizeBase line gridMargin set upFoliosColums set upBody font specificationIndentsRag & kerningType variationsNotation / explanationsPull quotesList headersStrikethroughChapter TitlesChapter DividersHand drawn typeHand drawn type manipulationCameras

2 — 34 — 54 — 54 — 54 — 54 — 56 — 76 — 76 — 78 — 98 — 98 — 910 — 1110 — 1112 — 1314 — 1516 — 1718 — 1920 — 21

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S T RA T EG Y .

— 5 —

S T RA T EG Y .

Distil started as a personal search for the items in people lives that defined a moment or a choice, have the ability to re-kindle apassion or enable its advance. Or find the objects,like those in my life that remind me of my past and the experiences that I feel have shaped me. However during the timespent meeting of my chosen subjects and exploring them as creative and passionate individuals it quickly became clear to me that objects are meaningless. they’re merely memories or means to an end. I felt that it was more important for me to show the drive that goes into making someone work until his or her bones break. To shed a little light on the journeys, development & painsbehind these life long struggles for mastery over a discipline.

To represent my subjects words I chose a body font (Frutiger Next) that would hold their stories without imparting too much meaning or influence of its own. I coupled this with a style of brash hand drawn messy calligraphy that I hope screams the words I recorded. I also went to great pains to

make sure that my level of dedication did justice to the people that were kind enough to allow me a glance at their craft. Therefore all the imagery used was taken with various film cameras rather than digital, I learnt to use medium format cameras so as to be able to shoot portraits. All the hand drawn text is created using solutions of ink and water then scanned and edited. I also attempted to make sure that typographic handling was appropriate to each section and placement re-enforced the imagery and vice versa.

And while I’m really only knocking snow of the tip of the ice berg I have found myself enthused with other peoples passion. I hope this comes across.

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22

1.

2. 4.3.

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22

1. Base line grid set up

Relative to top of pageIncrement every 11pt

2. Margin set up

Top: 15mmBottom: 15mmOutside:15mmInside: 19mm

Bleed set to printer’s specifications: 2mm

4. Column set up

12 per spreadGutter: 4mm

3. Folios

Frutiger Next(Medium Condensed)

8pt

Colour — dependant on background either 100% Black or Paper

Page size — Height: 288mm Width:210mm

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— I played for years in a bunch of bands that never really did anything. We did a few singles, did a few 7” releases I think we did three 7” and I did a split with a guy Hugo from The Heads. It was a little experimental thing and we did a little 10” and it stared going towards an album and I was just losing faith in it and decided to knock it on the head. And I actually stopped playing for about five years, I just didn’t want to play anymore and that’s when the touring thing started and that was about ten years ago and I ended up picking up the bass all the time when I was on tour and I just missed playing it and the next thing I know I met a guy and he was just like ‘lets have a few jams’ and I just ended up playing again and then the amplifier fetish started.. (Laughing) well you know I bought an amp and you know I couldn’t get what I was trying to do out of it, and musically I was listening to, my musical tastes had really opened up as I got older as well which was a weird thing, a friend of mine Paul just got me into some really out there stuff and that really effected what I wanted to play.

— I was working in Replay Record shop* at the time and Neil and Hugo who used to work there always used to be hunting for really weird crazy stuff on little labels that would do like 500 copies on vinyl and stuff like that and you’d get to hear some really out there stuff, I just started thinking and I was like I want to go down that road and try and do something totally different and that pretty much was were it started or started again.

— I actually started playing bass because I thought it would be the easiest to learn, (laughing) well I’m pretty sure that was the reason, there were some friends of mine, when we were teenagers and they were doing a band, they were doing a metal band and they wanted a bass I think they wanted a bass player and I thought, ‘yeah I could’, because you know when you pick up a bass and you can kind of pay a few root notes and its just like ‘yeah this is alright!’ I just thought yeah I’d play the bass. I didn’t actually realize that its the bloody hardest instrument to master, it really is a hard one.

— But there’s something about it I love. and it was difficult to make it my own, to play it in my own way,

— I mean that took me ages.

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Typographic Choices: Body Font

Frutiger Next (Light) 8pt / 11pt Leading

Colour — dependant on background either 100% Black or Paper

— Chosen for its clear legibility even in its lightest variation. I also wanted to utilise a relatively neutral typeface that also creates a good contrast with the messy hand drawn text. As a large family Frutiger also has various weights and variations useful for createing clear typographic hierarchy throughout the book. (Variations used are fully explained on Pages 8 — 9,10 — 11)

5. Indents

Each section of text is begun with an Em Dash the reasoning behind this choice was an attempt to replicate the stuttered nature of conversation and interjection.

6. Rag & Kerning

Text was justified leftthen massaged to create a cleaner rag.

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— I played for years in a bunch of bands that never really did anything. We did a few singles, did a few 7” releases I think we did three 7” and I did a split with a guy Hugo from The Heads. It was a little experimental thing and we did a little 10” and it stared going towards an album and I was just losing faith in it and decided to knock it on the head. And I actually stopped playing for about five years, I just didn’t want to play anymore and that’s when the touring thing started and that was about ten years ago and I ended up picking up the bass all the time when I was on tour and I just missed playing it and the next thing I know I met a guy and he was just like ‘lets have a few jams’ and I just ended up playing again and then the amplifier fetish started.. (Laughing) well you know I bought an amp and you know I couldn’t get what I was trying to do out of it, and musically I was listening to, my musical tastes had really opened up as I got older as well which was a weird thing, a friend of mine Paul just got me into some really out there stuff and that really effected what I wanted to play.

— I was working in Replay Record shop* at the time and Neil and Hugo who used to work there always used to be hunting for really weird crazy stuff on little labels that would do like 500 copies on vinyl and stuff like that and you’d get to hear some really out there stuff, I just started thinking and I was like I want to go down that road and try and do something totally different and that pretty much was were it started or started again.

— I actually started playing bass because I thought it would be the easiest to learn, (laughing) well I’m pretty sure that was the reason, there were some friends of mine, when we were teenagers and they were doing a band, they were doing a metal band and they wanted a bass I think they wanted a bass player and I thought, ‘yeah I could’, because you know when you pick up a bass and you can kind of pay a few root notes and its just like ‘yeah this is alright!’ I just thought yeah I’d play the bass. I didn’t actually realize that its the bloody hardest instrument to master, it really is a hard one.

— But there’s something about it I love. and it was difficult to make it my own, to play it in my own way,

— I mean that took me ages.

22

5.

6.

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— Anyway, I luckily managed to get work experience with Monty Ball who worked from Winford. And I phoned up, I can remember, saying can I come work experience with you and he said

— ‘yeah, you better’ he had a real Somerset accent ‘You better come see I’

— so I said alright when should I come over?He said ‘come over, come over when Blind Dates on’

— I said where’d you live?He said ‘Winford’

— I said where in the Winford?

He said ‘ask

any bugger

they’ll know’

— an he just put the phone down.

40

1

The following is concerned with passion

Please note that all text apart from titles and

dividing pages have been sourced from the

original recordings of conversations between

Gareth, Dan, Matthew, Charlotte and myself.

I have attempted to replicate them as they

were spoken. At times this has over-ridden

the rules of grammar and punctuation.

Also please note that ‘Distil’ has been spelt

with a singular l. This is in accordance with

the British version of the word as opposed

to the American English version, spelt with

a double l.

DistilMuscle & Iron

7.

8.

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7. Notation / Explanations

Frutiger Next(Light italic)

7pt / 11pt Leading

Colour — dependant on background either 100% Black or Paper

8. Pull quotes

Frutiger Next (Bold Condensed)

34pt / 55pt leading

Underline: 3pt with an offset of 25pt

Colour — dependant on background either 100% Black or Paper

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16

Roland AP.7 Jet phaser 70’s vintage (1975)

Six way MODE selects between two clean phaser modes, and four jet modes. a combination of differently filtered distortion plus phase sounds. Also LEVEL (volume), RESONANCE of the phase and SLOW RATE. The final knob allows a “base slow speed” of the LFO of the phaser that is ramped up to maximum with a stomp of the FAST/SLOW. The take-off sound gives the Jet Phaser its signature sound.

Wattson Classic Fuzz FY-6 (Univox Superfuzz Clone)

Clone of the classic fuzz pedals from Shin-ei and Univox. stylishly captures the elusive tone of the sixties originals with fat compressed fuzz octave tones that have to be heard to be believed. A whole slew of original Univox pedals were dismantled, poked, prodded, and analyzed for R&D and comparison purposes.

Freeze Electro Harmonix (Sound Retainer Effects Pedal)

Trigger it during the decay portion of a guitar chord and it will loop the sound to form an indefinite, smooth sounding drone, with an almost organ like quality. very usable sound, with no giveaway end of loop glitches.

MXR Distortion + M104

Germanium-powered, soft-clipped distortion.Classic 70s distortion. originally designed in the 1970s by MXR Innovations.

Boss ODB-3: Bass OverDrive

An overdrive effect designed to cover the entire frequency range of bass guitars, including 5 - string basses. Overdriven sounds can be blended with dry bass signal for maximum clarity and punch.

Vintage Roland AD-50 Double Beat Fuzz Wah (1976)

Original Roland AD-50 Double Beat fuzz Wah. This pedal has a plethora of different vintage fuzz tones.

Fender Classics Series Phaser Pedal

70’s era re-issue phaser pedal.

Fender Blender Fuzz Pedal

The classic and coveted Fender Blender fuzz pedal in all its vintage-style growling glory, ’70s-era good looks combined with volume, sustain, tone and blend controls.

Boss Space Echo (Roland 201 Space Echo Clone)

One of the most beloved echo effects ever made, the Roland RE-201 Space Echo, has been reborn as the Boss RE-20 Twin Pedal! Roland and Boss have recreated every sonic detail and nuance of the original.

120

distill | disˈtil | (Brit. distil)

verb [ trans. ]purify (a liquid) by vaporizing it, then condensing it by cooling the vapor, and collecting the resulting liquid : they managed to distill a quantity of water | [as adj. ] ( distilled) dip the slide in distilled water.~ (usu. be distilled) make (something, esp. liquor or an essence) in this way : whiskey is distilled from a mash of grains | [as n. ] ( distilling) the distilling industry.~ extract the essence of (something) by heating it with a solvent.~ remove (a volatile constituent) of a mixture by using heat : coal tar is made by distilling out the volatile products in coal.~ (often be distilled) figurative extract the essential meaning or most important aspects of : my travel notes were distilled into a book | [as adj. ] ( distilled) the report is a distilled version of the main accounts.~ [ intrans. ] poetic/literary emanate as a vapor or in minute drops : she drew back from the dank breath that distilled out of the earth.

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin distillare, variant of destillare, from de- ‘down, away’ + stillare (from stilla ‘a drop’).

9.

10.

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9. List headers (pg.16)

Frutiger Next(bold)

8pt / 11pt leading

Colour — 100% Black

10. Strikethrough.

Frutiger Next (Light)

8pt / 11pt Leading

Strikethrough: 3pt with an offset of -2.5pt

Colour — Paper

35

D O WN T O N

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35

D O WN T O N

11. Chapter Titles

Duke (FILL) ~ ALL CAPS

188pt / 225 pt leading

Colour — Paper

— Chosen for its impact at large sizes and its angular aesthetic that create a harsh contrast with the rest of the content that follows it. The font needed to draw clear attention to the fact that a new section of the book had started this was also helped with chapter dividers (explained on pages 14 — 15.)

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12. Chapter Dividers

Bauer Bodoni (Black Italic)

1000pt

Colour — 100% Black

— Used to divide the book into its four chapters. I wanted a typeface that was totally different from the two choices I had made for body/titles. I also wanted something that I could utilise its features to create a bold divider. Bodoni’s Black Italic variation had interesting structure as well as working well at large sizes.

60

3.

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60

3.12.

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13.

14.

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13.

14.

— Hand drawn text throughout the book was created with a thin solution of water and ink. Neat ink was then dropped into the light grey trace. The ink disperses along the drawn lines and creates an unpredictable element to the text’s creation. Once dried the text was then scanned at 400dpi to retail all fine detail and manipulated to suit the images (explained on pages 18 — 19)

— Certain sections of hand drawn text were also manipulated during the scanning process. In these cases the drawn text was dragged across the face of the scanner whilst scanning. This was done to reflect the text’s content or impair legibility.

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15.

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15. Drawn type editing

— Text layers were added and fitted to the images in Photoshop and manipulated to suit the aesthetic and mood of the section or photo in particular. Using editing light adjustments, opacity and filters I tried to create a range of subtle & bold uses of the hand drawn text to reinforce certain pull quotes, ideas or a feeling of the interview or subject.

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16. Two Cameras were used to capture the images for Distil

Olympus OM-1 with 50mm f/1.8 lens (all mechanical SLR)Fully manual — 35mm

Film used was a mixture of out of date film stock (streched and damaged to create the distressed look in some photos) and various brands of 35mm

Zenza Bronica with stock lensFully manual — Medium format film

Used mainly for portrait and close up work the Bronica’s depth of field allowed me to capture some amazingly beautiful moments.

— 24 —‘Sic Vos Non Vobis’

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