Herb Lubalin

d'image,musicand
.air?
mAhan de station can be cleaved from connotation
TE BY MARGARET RICHARDS**
IPLA;'H
The collaborative affinities of Steve Tomasula and Stephen Farrell alchemize on the page. Tomasula writes profoundly
and passionately on ideas; Farrell transmutes these into designs inspired by typographic magic. The chemistry
between the writer and designer fuses two distinct disciplines into a new form, the manuscript as art, as rich
interpretive text.
EP (OR AS liVILLIAIYLGASS_ASKSJS_IT_PDSSIBLEIO_WRITE TRAGEDY IN LIMERICK?)
— Steve Tomasula
Tomasula, meta-fiction writer, essayist and critic, is published in literary journals like The Review of
Contemporary Fiction and Black Ice. He teaches creative writing at Notre Dame University in South Bend.
Farrell is the principal of Slip Studios in Chicago, and a designer of typefaces for T-26 and his own
Manuscripts Folio. He also teaches at The Illinois Institute of Art. Both work with other collabora-
tors, but when they have the opportunity to work together, their complementary talents mesh to
produce unique experimental creations.
One such project is "TOC' which appeared in the Joint Venture issue of Emigre magazine "TOC"
is a 17-page meditation on the concept of time paralleled by a compelling narrative of a woman in
crisis. Farrell's empathetic response to Tomasula's layered text—using expressive typography,
evocative and effective horological images draws us into the collaborators' world. The writer and
designer worked for two years on this project.
Tomasula's voice is authorial. His spiraling conversations reflect his
writing style, which is compelling, elliptical, philosophical, theological,
literary and, often, very funny. His interests range from a preoccupation
with medieval sensibilities to an analysis of contemporary literary criti-
cism. His reviews often convey these preoccupations, including a recent
account in Private Arts 8/9 of Raymond Federman's Double or Nothing: A Real Fic-
titious Discourse and Critifiction: Postmodern Essays (again painstakingly designed by
Farrell). Collaboration for Tomasula is a dialogue of sorts. He resists design when
it is unsympathetic to the meaning and feeling of the text. The act of prettifying
text arbitrarily or a reducing of ideas to mere visual elements is, to Tomasula, the
encroachment of the enemy. He is interested in design as image intertwined with nar-
rative. He also expects design to be sensitive to the evocative nature of fonts. His rela-
tionship with Farrell is based not just on respect for Farrell's expressive use of type and
dramatic setting of text, but on a shared intellectual vision and belief that design can be
inherent to the effective presentation of ideas.
Farrell's Chicago firm, Slip Studios, has been involved in a series of joint venture projects
that support writers and artists. Occasionally, these predominantly print projects will be
published and distributed by the studio itself. Farrell describes the process of collabo-
ration with a metaphor. "If the writer is the mind, the designer fashions the body and sets
it in motion: he says. Design, the body language, literally embodies the text and makes it
come alive. Farrell responds to ideas with a dramatic sensibility, reacting to the text in terms
of meaning and emotion and imbuing the words with typographic resonance. He likens
designing to directing: "It is about pacing and drama. In response to the text, I want to create