Twilight wraps the shore, and a small flock of cranes is silhouetted against the rising moon. The artist watches as light and wind and earth and water weave a wild and elemental tapestry at the end of a perfect autumn day. Perhaps the great birds above her head are "whoopers". The Whooping Crane (Grus americana), is one of the world's rarest and most endangered creatures, and it is one of the most beautiful. Setting her camera, walking stick and sketchbook down, she lifts her arms in jubilation and dances along the shore, kicking up the cool sand with her bare feet. The wind sweeps her up in its gusty arms, and she takes wing with the moondancing cranes, long gypsy skirts blowing.
For the ancients, the dance of the tsuru or crane was a celebration of life, and so it is for the artist on the beach. A symbol of good fortune and longevity because of its fabled life span of a thousand years, the crane also represented honor and fidelity because it mates for life. Cranes are a prominent motif in Taoist wisdom tales, and images of the magnificent birds have been found in Asian tombs as far back as the Shang and Zhou dynasties.The presence of cranes on this beach, or anywhere else for that matter, is a gift.
Banner text is set in Suomi Hand Script by Tomi Haaparanta of the Suomi Type Foundry, beyond a doubt, the most exquisite handwriting font ever crafted. Body text is set in Matthew Carter's Georgia, just because I like it. Matthew's creation is an exquisite sans serif "face" with a slightly traditional feel, and it has a true italic, one so fluid and graceful that it can be used all by itself, an uncommon state of affairs to be sure. Easy on the eyes, Georgia is just perfect for body text, and it is equally pleasing in titles, banners and captions. One of these days, Matthew's latest creation, Carter Sans will make an appearance here too.
For the lover of typefaces and lettering, the great wide world is full of wonders, and every single scrap of print encountered is a grand adventure in the offing. It helps to have a good guidebook along as one traverses the soaring peaks and pastoral valleys of the typographical landscape, and I recommend one work—book designer, typographer, poet, essayist and mythic historian Robert Bringhurst’s magnificent The Elements of Typographic Style. His Everywhere Being is Dancing and The Tree of Meaning are also favorites.