Monday, June 18, 2012

Mexican Menu Kukulkan




I had fun faking type with my Mexican menu boards. Here I'm trying to do a Deco/Mexican squared-off letter style, with modest success. All these boards were done before the era of computer typesetting. You had to "spec" the type you'd be using, not only which typeface but what size it was, what words and what spacing. And you had to get the specifications right the first time so that you wouldn't have expensive do-overs, since the type got printed out in a coated-paper photostat that you had to stick down on the "mechanical," that is, the layout page of type, pictures, and text. These boards didn't need the expensive type creation because I did the lettering all by hand. Interestingly, at Trader Joe's I have just finished a sign series in which I imitate a formal typeface (Times New Roman) in large size, hand-crafted letters. 

Kukulkan was a Mayan snake god, who I added to my "authentic" Mexican menu repertoire. The "Dinner Special" type line was made to look like inlaid jade.

Kukulkan dinner special is markers on posterboard, 21" x 13", winter 1979. Extensively restored in Photoshop. 

2 comments:

Tristan Alexander said...

You should do some serious art based on Aztec stuff, it seems a style that suits you!

Pyracantha said...

Well, I still have all those Mayan and pre-Columbian design resources I collected way back then, so you never know.