Design a type-tart card

You are invited to have some graphic fun and at the same time help support the St Bride Library, London – one of the world’s most important resources for the graphics industry.

ST BRIDE LIBRARY
St Bride is the world’s foremost graphic arts library and a rendezvous for all those involved in contemporary graphic communication—designers, printers, publishers, journalists, academics and students. Located in Fleet Street, the traditional heart of the UK’s printing and publishing industry, it is a place where anyone from Britain or abroad with either a professional or passing interest in design can meet and where all aspects of the practical,cultural and technical achievements of the industry can be studied. It is also a place of inspiration that has encouraged many designers, motivated generations of students and stimulated numerous authors. (www.stbride.org)

Please help to maintain this vital and invaluable resource by participating in the
type-tart project.

THE BRIEF
We would like you to design a tart card either for a typeface or a letter of the alphabet. If you are unfamiliar with these things, tart cards are the means by which London prostitutes advertise their services. Step in to any Central London call box and you can contemplate up to eighty cards inviting you to be tied, teased, spanked or massaged either in luxury apartments, fully-equipped chambers or the privacy of your own hotel room. So pervasive are these things, and so curious is their typography, images and copy writing they are now regarded as bona fide items of accidental art and have something of a cult following. Once on the periphery of design, the cards have influenced the work of many mainstream artists including Royal Academician Tom Philips and Sex Pistols designers, Ray and Nils Stevenson.
Perhaps they can inspire you too? Maybe Sabon would invite you to caress its counters, or Palatino would advertise its ‘Mega Serifs’. Bodoni boasts some magnificent finials, Baskerville’s swash can really inflict some pain, and Century Schoolbook would undoubtedly keep you in after class. Perhaps you see something seductive in the curves of the ‘S’ or the ‘A’ exhibits dominatrix tendancies. However you see the alphabet there is a type-tart in every letter.

SPECIFICATION
A6 (105 x 148 mm) landscape or portrait
Typographic, illustrative, photographic: or a combination of techniques of your choosing
Hand or machine made
Single- or full-colour
Side 1 – image and text
Side 2 – sign and date
Supply hard copy only, electronic versions will not be accepted

THE RESULTS
All entries will be exhibited at the Plus International Design Festival, (www.youplusus.net) Birmingham 5-8 November 2008 and the St Bride Institute, London in early 2009; after which the collection will be auctioned and proceeds donated to the St Bride Library. Prizes will be awarded for the top 3 entries, which will be assessed by a panel of judges from St Bride Library and Plus Expo Ltd.

CLOSING DATE
30 October 2008 (individuals) 15 December 2008 (universities)
All entries to be sent to Type LLP, 1st Floor The Toll House, The Bond
180-82 Fazeley Street, Birmingham B5 5SE

ABOUT US
Type LLP promotes typography - its history, development and application - through
researching, writing, lecturing, teaching and consultancy as well as organising events both professional typographers and enthusiasts of the subject. Type also works to raise public awareness of the role of typography in society and aims to develop an appreciation of the link between art and cultural typography. (www.uktype.com)

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Caroline Archer | 0121 766 7948 | caroline@uktype.com | www.uktype.com