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Wellington’s Blow Festival by the College of Creative Arts at Massey University hosted a Type-Walk this week on a blustery evening which lived up to the festival’s name. This didn’t deter the typo-centric amongst us who had turned up in numbers to the guided alphabetic amble. Highlighting the illicit alongside the historic – the walk encompassed character and characters from the Wellington cityscape.

Indicators of transitioning tenancy (above) were singled out on the Edwadian Baroque styled General Officer Commanding Building (1912) on the corner of Taranaki and Buckle Sts. It was originally built at the site of a former Maori settlement and is likely to be the country’s longest standing military administration building.
 

The Arthur St Boys Institute was built in 1906, in an interpretive Queen Anne style – which originally contained a gym, swimming pool and classrooms. More recently it has housed a printer and a musical institute and was moved 13 meters in 2005 to make way for the Inner City Bypass. It now attracts an abundant collection of street art.
 

Further down Cuba St was a coincidental sighting of Peaches & Cream set in Cooper Black – which had been referred to the day before in a public lecture by visiting Australian typographer Stephen Banham. He mentioned that he was initially so taken by the vibrant use of the 1920s typeface that he hadn’t realised that the sign (in a micro red-light zone) referred neither to seasonal produce nor dairy products!

Earlier this year Banham had devised his own urban tribute to type – Characters & Spaces: 1 City Block. 17 Stories. The comprehensive and highly successful initiative “takes one city block of Melbourne and peels back layers of graphic design. It tells stories we see in our visual environment, things we may pass every day… ”
 

Onwards on Cuba St we were directed to Catherine Griffiths typographic sculpture
A E I O U – 5 vowels in steel – launched earlier this year. Stitching together historic and contemporary buildings, the piece was commissioned by the local architects of the Cubana apartments (to the right of the sculpture). Catherine had been a significant driver of this year’s exceptional TypeShed 11 symposium at which I had the privlege of presenting.
 

On the corner of Cuba and Ghuznee, the former Hallensteins Brothers store was showcased. The founder Bendix Hallenstein had arrived in New Zealand from Germany during the goldrush and set up a menswear factory in Dunedin. This building was one of their 36 national branches, opened in 1920, which now houses Ernesto’s Cafe.
 

The Type-Walk made notable mention of various sightings of street art including the emerging form of urban or guerilla-knitting / yarn-storming or bombing. Its occasional inclusion of typographic characters and icons was discussed and I returned to the area today to snap this example on Vivian St.
 

Our typo-active guides were media designer Gerbrand van Melle and graphic artist Sarah Maxey. Gerbrand currently lectures at Massey University – a far cry from his native Dutch shores. He produced almost two decades worth of posters for the renowned Tivoli music venue in Utrecht which are being exhibited later in the week at the Blow Festival event: One Night Out. “Tivoli provided a playground to experiment with typographic and visual language and the opportunity to delve into experimental printing techniques.”
 

Sarah Maxey’s work has appeared across a range of print media from literary book covers to the New York Times and more recently in her fine stationery range . A fondness for hand-lettering features in both her commercial and exhibited work which often champions the happy accident. Earlier in the week she presented an exquisite selection of work while discussing the notion of Unexpected Outcomes.
 

Upon winding up the Type-Walk some of us headed down to the Matterhorn off Cuba Mall. I fondly remembered working next door some 20 years back when it was a kitschly Continental cafe which had been set up by Swiss brothers in its modernist building in 1963. (I still reminisce over their other-wordly asparagus rolls) It was later transformed by our good friends into the much-loved dining institution and wine bar that it is today. In keeping with its stylistic evolution, the Matterhorn was given a typographic make-over by my old pal and ever-talented colleague, Simon Endres, who has since ditched us to establish a design studio in New York. The Matterhorn provided us with a fitting spot to raise our glasses – for a celebratory toast to Type.

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