again,” Chwast recalled. Glaser’s proposals are lost and his ideas forgotten,
but Chwast recalled doing a few variants on his best sketch showing a large
a,which, though not directly copied from an existing alphabet, echoed the
fluid art nouveau/Jugendstil lettering he had seen in vintage issues of
Jugend, the turn-of-the-century German art and satire magazine. In fact,
the letterform was based more on the idea that “marks had to be simple
and straightforward,” than on replicating art nouveau conceits.
The curvilinear awas contrasted by a delicate, lightline banknote
script used to communicate the other pertinent information. Unlike typical
art nouveau/Jugendstil packages known for a preponderance of florid
decoration, Chwast favored an unencumbered box. The only decoration was
three rows of nine smaller a’s—designed with a Zen-like simplicity—on
the box top. Chwast insisted that using the aby itself was not a radical idea
since making a simple, identifiable mark on a package was a proven way of
establishing the identity for a product. “I knew it had to be something with
graphic impact,” he said. “In contrast to Winsor-Newton [a competing
brand], which took a different approach by having full color paintings on
their packages.”
Printed on a white background, the awas the most identifiable
element. In addition to being the first letter in the alphabet, and therefore
memorable in its own right, its curved form was at the same time
reminiscent of the Artone ink bottle and a drop of ink. Chwast, however,
had acted entirely on blind intuition since he admitted that he did not even
realize the strong symbolic relationship until another member of the studio
pointed it out to him before the client ever saw it. “Somebody said ‘its sort
of like an ink drop,’ and I thought that was a pretty good way to sell the
idea to the client.”
Chwast used an existing script as the secondary typeface but
realized it would be useful for future advertising and promotional purposes
to have a complete alphabet and a set of numerals. So he sketched out the
capitals, lower case, and numerals over the course of one week and had a
designer in the studio render the finished drawings. Chwast said the awas
easy, while the idiosyncratic nature of some of the other letters made them
more difficult to work out. After the design was resolved, it was offered to
Photolettering Inc. as a display face and was immediately accepted. Yet a
potential problem having to do with fashion arose in Chwast’s mind. “The
art nouveau thing had reached its peak [by 1964 ],” Chwast recalled, “and I
thought it might be too late to put this alphabet on the market.” He was
wrong. Artone became very popular, if not overused. It was so popular that
at least two pirated versions were issued by other phototype houses. And
the pioneer psychedelic poster artist Victor Moscoso credits Artone
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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