Bathhouse, Meatpacking District and the Dream Cards. New York Underground 1973–90 was a solo exhibition by Jimmy Wright, held June 3–July 15, 2016, at Corbett vs Dempsey gallery, Chicago. The exhibition catalog has 136 pages and measures 9½ × 12½ in.

This work charts the secretive subculture of gay bathhouses and clubs, as well as the seedier – and more colorful – side of street life on the lower East Side. An insightful observer of human behavior, engaged with the scene’s action himself, Wright was the fascinated documentarian of a fleeting, often extremely erotic scene. By the 1980s he turned this attention inward, to his dream-life, which he religiously charted in sketches and annotations on what he called dream-cards.   

The project, titled “FAGS”, the plural of the word “fag”, which in English slang is equivalent to the Italian slur “frocio”, takes on a new meaning here. “FAGS” becomes an acronym for “Fightin’ Against Gay Slurs”. Just as in the 1990s, the LGBTQIA+ movement reclaimed the word “queer", which was initially used with a negative connotation meaning “strange, unusual, eccentric”, with this work, I wanted to reclaim the slurs that I and so many others like me have heard repeatedly throughout our lives.

The project consists of 28 artworks presented in the form of manifestos. The choice of the manifesto format is rooted in its social and political tradition as a tool for propaganda and raising awareness. The visual and conceptual contribution of the magazine FUORI! (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano) and Marco Petrucci’s Testi Manifesti were particularly significant.

The central element of each manifesto is the slur itself, reinterpreted through the lens of irony and pride. The texts within the posters are in various languages (Italian, English, French, German, and Japanese), with a special focus on Italian and its dialects (Sicilian, Calabrian, Neapolitan, Roman, Tuscan, Bolognese, and Piedmontese) to emphasize the widespread nature of these types of insults.

The design of the posters is deliberately pop: the backgrounds, images, and fonts are crafted to capture attention and stand out from their surroundings. Two fonts were chosen: Milligram by Zetafonts for its readability and immediacy; and Brass by Fantasia Type, used not only for its bold and ironic shapes (deliberately reminiscent of intimate parts and acts) but also for the presence of an asterisk in every letter—a symbol typically associated with censorship, but here transformed into a symbol of uncensored expression.

Poster and communication for Dôme d’Amour, a queer party at Silodom in Saarbrücken, Germany. Illustration and hand lettering made for a nice pairing with DJR’s flamboyant Megascope.

In 1978, Gay Freedom Day was the name of the march and celebration now known San Francisco Pride. The event that year, attended by an estimated 250,000 to 375,000 people, marked the debut of the original rainbow flags.

As Pride is a Protest explains, the 1978 Gay Freedom Day was also a major political event:

It featured a central rally against California Proposition 6, a.k.a. The Briggs Initiative, which aimed to bar gay teachers from the classroom. […]

1978 Gay Freedom Day also featured a newly elected Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay government official, who rode down Market Street in a convertible wearing a pink triangle arm band and a shirt that read, “I’ll Never Go Back!”

It featured a boycott on Coors Brewing, which “put prospective employees through a polygraph test to determine, among other things, if they were homosexual. […]”

That year, the identity design for Gay Freedom Day prominently featured Aldo Novarese’s Stop typeface along with a rising sun motif. The design featured prominently across the celebration: on buttons, T-shirts, flyers, printed programs, and a hand-made parade banner for the Gay Freedom Day Committee. I haven’t been able to track down any credits for the design so please comment below with any leads you may have.

Pride events are taking place around the world this month for Pride Month, including SF Pride and NYC Pride this weekend.

A fundamental text in the history of queer literature, Asas (English: Wings; Russian: Крылья) is the first Russian novel to openly address homosexuality.

With the air of a formative novel, the plot has as its protagonist the young Ivan Smúrov, or Vánia, who leaves the countryside to study in Saint Petersburg, where he goes to live with a tutor's family and is introduced into a cultured upper-class environment. In it, Stroop stands out, a refined and easy-going man, who does not hide the nature of his relationship with other men and will become a kind of mentor, at the same time feared and admired by the boy.

This project was inspired by the adornments, stained glass, objects and tiles of traditional Russian baths (banyas), an environment frequented by characters in the novel and by the author himself, Mikhail Kuzmin. The red background is reminiscent of Russian imperial theaters, frequented by artists from the country’s Silver Age. The silver elements connect with an eccentric description of Kuzmin: “A ‘silver’ man”, according to Marina Tsvetáieva. The folding screen on the cover evokes the subtlety of the homoerotic representations of Asas, in which everything happens in the details and small gestures, revealing or masking the characters’ passions.

This limited and exclusive edition of Asas uses ToY by Swiss designer Philipp Herrmann (for the titles and cover) and FF More by Polish designer Łukasz Dziedzic (for the main text).

Asas was published by Editora Carambaia.

READY FOR IT is a series of animated posters, and a sexual health campaign by The Love Tank (UK):

This year’s kink, fetish, and BDSM festival season, be ready for it with preventable shots for MPOX, HEP A, HEP B, and HPV. Visit queerhealth.info/ready for everything you need to know about these free vaccines and where to get them. By kinksters, for kinksters.

Creative direction and design by Richard Kahwagi
Illustrations and animation by Fetish Doodles

Hole is a gay hook-up app. Indgila Samad Ali and Shuka worked on the identity design and conceptualized the mobile design, using Aeroport by Brownfox.

Bona was “the magazine about guys for gays and girls”, Edited by Grant Brodrick and Terry de Ville, it was published in the UK from around 1975. The logo uses Colin Brignall’s Octopuss Shaded ( Letraset, 1974).

Robbie Conal, Holy Homophobia, 1990. LGBTQ Poster Collection, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries

Info via Days of Rage:

As one of the mainstays of the Los Angeles street art scene in the 1980s and 1990s, Robbie Conal was known for his satirical images calling out hypocrisy and skewering right-leaning political figures. Here he has reproduced the visage of Jesse Helms—a republican senator from North Carolina, and a leading figure in a years-long charge to severely restrict, if not outright eliminate, arts funding for artists addressing LGBTQ themes or stories in their work—creating a damning portrait of the sanctimonious language the legislator used to agitate for his homophobic worldview. As Conal told the L.A. Times: “[Helms is] an icon for the mean spirit that’s sweeping the country. We in the arts community are just getting a dose of it now, but poor people—and people of color—have been suffering through it for the past 10 years.” The image of Helms superimposed on an artist’s palette (where the thumb-hole creates a void in the senator’s head) was also produced as a billboard, which was located in West Hollywood and initially carried the tagline of “Artificial Art Official,” (Conal’s plan was to change the caption multiple times over the course of three months).

The title is set in caps from ITC Caslon No. 224, with the H in “Holy” added in Linotext. Copies of the poster are available from Robbie Conal’s Art Attack website.

Windsor and ITC Souvenir for the poster of A Very Natural Thing from 1974. “A film that wouldn’t have been made yesterday and won’t be on T.V. tomorrow.” Directed by Christopher Larkin and starring Robert Joel, Curt Gareth, and Bo White, it was “one of the first films about gay relationships intended for mainstream, commercial distribution.” – Wikipedia

[More info on IMDb]

Film/Art Gallery has a copy of a rare NYC premiere poster for sale. This variant reads “David & Jason’s relationship … it’s the same only different” instead of “David & Jason … If you cut them they bleed.”

ITC Novarese (1980) with its peculiar mix of roman caps with an italic lowercase, for the cover of Jack Fritscher’s “Memoir-Novel of Gay Liberation in San Francisco 1970–1982” [Fritscher]. First published in 1990 by Knights Press, this is the cover of the 20th anniversary edition from Palm Drive Publishing, 2010.

Retrogay is my third zine and the first one released while I lived in Japan. Being a voice for the LGBTQA+ community was always my main focus since I identified myself as a gay man. I believe it is my mission to show and talk about same-gender love wherever I’m living in. That’s why I decided to create this zine to show that you can be gay and be loved just by who you are.

Retrogay was self-published on the occasion of an exhibition held in Tokyo. All printed copies are currently sold out.

Macho Man was the second album by the Village People, released on Casablanca Records in 1978. The album was successful due to its two hit singles “Macho Man” and “Key West”. The cover shows the band as shot by John Galluzzi.

The album title is set in Rusiñol, a rarely seen brush script issued by Fundición Tipográfica Nacional. Rusiñol was designed by Carlos Winkow shortly after moved from Germany to Spain a second time in 1940. Following early stints at Berthold, Genzsch & Heyse, and Klingspor, the German-born designer worked for Richard Gans in Madrid from 1909 to 1934. From 1936 to 1939, Winkow was back in Germany. His Cursiva Rusiñol can be regarded as a case of self-plagiarism. He had explored the same idea before with Reporter for Norddeutsche Schriftgießerei in 1938. [Klingspor-Museum] There is no digital version.

The band name is in tightly set and contoured Harry, a composition that was copied from the band’s eponymous debut EP record and which remained in use as the band's logo from then on.

[More info on Discogs]

Rolling papers designed for Pussys, “an Irish group producing exhibitions, talks and a magazine reflecting the changing of youth culture, sexuality and gender roles in Ireland as it shifts away from a religious state to a more open-minded one. Highlighting the underground club spaces where these ideas grow.”

Marsha is a fictional magazine about the violence and misconduct against the LGBTQ+ community. Marsha P. Johnson has been a key figure in the Stonewall Uprising who fought police as they raided the gay bar on Christopher Street. Marsha fought and died for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. This magazine is dedicated to her.

The magazine was created at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium and was part of a zine project.

The fonts used in this magazine are Suisse Works and HK Grotesk. The use of a sans serif like HK Grotesk together with a serif like Suisse Works creates a mixture of modern and classic magazine style and goes together with the older and newer articles in the magazine.

From Dark Entries Records:

Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem Records have teamed up once more to release the final volume of gay porn soundtracks by San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley. One of the most revolutionary and influential figures in the canon of disco, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music, “The San Francisco Sound.” […] The vinyl is housed in a gatefold jacket designed by Berlin-based artist Gwenael Rattke, featuring black and white photos of Patrick in his studio that opens to a full color array of x-rated scenes from the Fox Studio vaults.

Rattke paired Sinaloa and Microgramma Bold (or Eurostile Bold Extended) for a convincing 1980s DIY look. Both faces used to be available for rub-down lettering from Letraset.

LP cover (front)

Motter Tektura is used for Mechanical Fantasy Box, a collection of 13 unreleased songs by Patrick Cowley (1950–1982), recorded between 1973 and 1980, and released by Dark Entries Records in October 2019.

The double vinyl LP comes housed in a black and white gatefold jacket designed by Gwenaël Rattke featuring a photograph by Susan Middleton, an essay from bandmate Maurice Tani, and an 8.5×11″ insert with notes. […] [It is] released in tandem with Cowley’s homoerotic journal of the same title. […] — Dark Entries Records

Tektura was designed by Othmar Motter in 1974. It was popularized through the use by Reebok (1976), Apple (1977), and Trapper Keeper (1978), and later also appeared for the logo of audio software producer Steinberg. The sci-fi face is a brilliant choice for a throwback to the late 1970s/early 1980s in general, and for a pioneer of electronic dance music in particular.

It comes with a number of unusual letterforms, like the single-legged A or the headless S. Its w/W might be the hardest to swallow (unless you happen to aim for a pretzel-themed identity). This album cover features not one, but two substitutes for the unwieldy glyph. The artist’s name includes a customized form with diagonals that might have been made from a double v. The track list on the back cover shows another, simpler, and more convincing approach: The w in “breakdown” is an upside-down m.

Read more about Cowley and the Mechanical Fantasy Box.

LP cover (back)

Softcover. Tektura’s descending s is hyper-extended to form an underline.

The text face used in the journal is ITC Korinna.

Hardcover, made in a limited edition of 100 copies.

Gay Times is the magazine that amplifies the voices of the LGBTQ community. Each month, Gay Times magazine delivers you the latest celebrity interviews and high-quality photo shoots of the most influential figures of the moment. You’ll also find plenty of articles to keep you up-to-date on issues affecting the LGBTQ community with hard-hitting comment and opinion. — Gay Times

The cover for the 500th anniversary edition of the magzine comes in four different designs, each featuring a portrait by Ryan Pfluger, showing one of the main interviewees (Aaron Philip, Rickey Thompson, Blair Imani, Chella Man). The magazine logo is based on Neue Helvetica Extended Black; the names of the portrayed are set in GoliaGolia, designed by Alex Valentina and available from TDF.

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Gay IPA is a 6.7% DDH Hazy IPA with Lactose, loaded with Simcoe and Amarillo cryo powder and fresh Chinook. Smooth mouthfeel with notes of pineapple, grapefruit, papaya, and oranges. We asked four artists to make labels for this year’s edition (...) Proceeds from the sales of Gay IPA will be donated to Chicago organizations whose mission is to support LGBTQ communities. — Marz Community Brewing

Marz Community Brewing paired the four different artworks with their brand typeface Calibre (Klim Type Foundry). Designer/art director/illustrator/animator Zipeng Zhu submitted a penis rainbow which is used on the label in two versions – on a white and on a black background. On his Instagram channel, Zhu shared a few animated rainbows.

Source: www.instagram.com License: All Rights Reserved.

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Source: www.instagram.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.reddit.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Watch Zipeng Zhu talk at the Typographics conference on June 14 about animating type. Fonts In Use is a media partner of Typographics. See more work by speakers of the 2019 edition.

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White.

June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library’s archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. — Penguin Random House

Alias Cactus and Futura are used for a special over-cover. The cover underneath again uses Futura, paired with Mrs Eaves Italic.