Thursday, May 27, 2010

Acapulco!

You might have heard about my main mang Steve Luker's main squeeze, Mexico (second to Miss Rachel). See, Steve love's Mexico, he loves taking extended vacations to it, he loves basking in the sun on its warm beaches, he loves surfing its perfect swells and he loves sipping on its world-famous Tequilla. He also appears to be incredibly inspired by its beauty and aesthetic.

About a year and a half ago Steve took one of his infamous trips to Mexico, Acapulco to get specific, and got an idea. "I think I want to make a typeface!" he exclaimed, eyes darting from hand-painted sign to hand-painted sign. But what kind of typeface would it be? Should it be a beautiful serif or a gorgeous sans-serif? Should it be a display face or would publishers use it when printed books and periodicals? Then he saw it, carved from massive slabs of concrete were the words, "Acapulco Centro Deportivo."



See, it's majestic. After a few weeks of enjoying time with the two loves of his life, Steve was back to work at Mutt, tan and motivated. Shortly thereafter Luker became acquainted with a young man by the name of Nick Olmstead, a local hand-letterer, artist and velo-enthusiast. Jazzed on the idea of creating a beautiful font the two began work. But keep in mind, creating a typeface isn't an easy task, it takes a lot of time, a lot of work and a lot of patience. The two had to decide how Acapulco joints look. What's the tail on a Q shape up to be? After revision upon revision Olmstead settled upon a set of sketches that would become the skeleton to Acapulco.



The next, and possible the most heavy-handed step was vectorizing the inked type and perfecting everything about the type, ensuring perfect connections between stem and spur, the ideal x-height and so forth. Cut to Olmstead twacking out in illustrator for several months and cue Mutt winning a few more clients, winter taking its toll on the pack, and fun side-projects falling to the back of everyone's mind.

But that's wack, nah what I'm sayin' mang? Side-projects are important, they keep you alive and fresh as a creative and Acapulco needed to be finished. And that's also the point at which we learned our boy Olmstead was planning a move to the Big Apple. With a single month to finish the type Acapulco got the attention it deserved and finally became fully-digitized. It may have been the day before his planned departure, if not the day when Nick had the unveiling. Now it's time to share it with you. Feast your eyes friends!
The future of Acapulco is still undecided, but we'll keep you posted. Either way, we're going to make this thing huge.

1 comment:

Mutt said...

Acapulco was my idea. Really sad how far Luker has fallen.