Pimp my type.
Did ‘Type Tart Cards’ face the grotesque reality of prostitution?
With a brief set by UKType [correction] and later continued in collaboration with Wallpaper*, both professionals and students alike were asked to produce a tart card ‘either for a typeface or a letter of the alphabet.’ Hundreds entered the challenge and their work can be seen in the recent ‘Sex Issue’ of Wallpaper*.
Top: card by ABAKE
Below: a selection of Type Tart Cards from (l to r) Amit Patel, Alasdair Boyce, Sam Grey and Chelsea College.
Many of them use wit (we will never be able to look at Mrs Eaves, Georgia or Cochin in the same way again), some are tasteless, crass or oblique, but only one card questioned the reality behind these aesthetic objects.
Mike Dempsey’s card (below) and response to Wallpaper*’s request went straight for the jugular: ‘He towers over me. He is fat. Pushes me down on all fours. Yanks back my hair. I feel his saliva on my back. He grunts like a pig. Smells like a pig. He is a pig…’
[See also Mike Dempsey’s blog, ‘Not a trivial subject’.]
Almost all other cards skimmed the surface in what seems a complacent attitude to a graphic design brief. No other cards touched on the grotesque (not Grotesk) reality of life as a prostitute (although we cannot say how many of those asked simply did not undertake the task as a stance in response to the brief).
Society’s attitude to prostitution varies considerably, and the old adage that ‘it’s the oldest profession’ allows us to disengage from this highly complex and emotive issue. A look at the history of the tart card (below) underscores this complexity: the reason they were so prevalent in London in the first place was because the law forbid prostitutes to advertise in the yellow pages. Yet a crack down on this means of advertising in 1999 meant that the ability to operate off the street and out of the pimp’s hands was severely restricted, exposing women to further danger.
Whatever your opinion about prostitution, it is surprising that the brief – and most entries – appear to accept this form of selling sex. So while we could discuss, given this premise, whether tart cards succeed in their mission, the project makes us wonder instead at what point a designer’s moral viewpoint meets such a brief.
When architect Arne Quinze designed a brothel in Antwerp, it provoked vehement debate. This project, however, provoked little more than embarrassed amusement among some, and (according to Wallpaper*) little negative feedback. As one viewer at the opening recalled, never had she been to a private view where people were trying so hard not to look at the work. Or did they not want to be seen looking?
Faced with a project based around such a difficult social question, would it not be better to tackle it with more circumspection? Although MagCulture’s Jeremy Leslie went slightly off-brief, he contributed a set of cards that highlight the similarity between the words used on tart cards and the mastheads of women’s magazines (see magculture.com). This avoided complacency (and naïvety), while cleverly using the tools of the trade to provoke debate (below).
See also: ‘Tart art’ by Tom Phillips, Eye no. 34.
July 30th, 2009 at 10:30 am | by Caroline Archer
Many thanks for carrying this item about the Type Tart Project.
If I may I would like to correct a couple of misapprehensions.
1 The type tart brief was not set by Wallpaper*; it was an original idea conceived and set by UKType (www.uktype.com) in September 2009.
2 The Type Tart Project was not about prostitution.
The purpose of the Type Tart Project was to allow designers to have a bit of graphic fun whilst helping to raise awareness of St Bride Library (www.stbride.org), which is the world’s leading resource for the typographic industry.
Wallpaper* has been a great supporter both of the Project and St Bride, carrying an article of the Project in it’s recent Sex Issue and generously organizing the recent exhibition at KK Outlet.
TART CARDS
Tart Cards is a phrase I coined when I published a book on history of tart cards in 2003. Since then the term has been generally applied to those cards found in London call boxes offering sexual services.
Some of the tart cards offer the services of prostitutes; many advertise more bespoke services such as the skills of a dominatrix: a professional dom does not consider herself as a prostitute.
My curiosity in tart cards goes back more than 20 years, and it’s been fascinating watching the genre evolve. I’m interested in how a group of individuals with no design knowledge, no experience of typography, advertising, copywriting, illustration or printing techniques have managed to create such a strong, instantly recognizable, and influential graphic style which has warmth, humanity and wit. To do this I spent time with the girls, their clients, and the various services industries behind the profession.
TYPE TART PROJECT
The Type Tart Project was not about designers creating cards for prostitutes! It was however about designers being inspired by the tart card genre and applying it to a typeface. The vocabulary we use to describe typefaces is very anthropomorphic: a fount has a face, a body, it has arms, eyes, legs; we give typefaces names and bestow them with characteristics to which we have an emotional response. By default, therefore, a typeface has a sexual identity, and it is the eroticism or quirky sexuality inherent within a typeface that designers were asked to portray.
The project was therefore about design and type, about visual and verbal wit. It is also about having some good, straightforward fun – and in the process hopefully making more people award of St Bride Library, which incidentally, provided the foundation of my original tart card collection!
July 30th, 2009 at 11:14 am | by Pimp my type. Did Type Tart Cards face the grotesque reality of prostitution?
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July 30th, 2009 at 1:26 pm | by KTY
it’s not about prostitution?
not even a tiny bit?
August 14th, 2009 at 7:59 pm | by AJ
With a potentially large audience and in the context of London, a concentrated area of the sex industry, why was there no acknowledgment, not even a small aside, of the cold reality behind the cards?
This conception and the responses reinforce my disillusionment with the majority of designers who seem to be an overly self-absorbed crowd.
I think such a narrow minded project on this scale devalues design.
August 26th, 2009 at 3:57 pm | by Alex Cameron
Unfortunately the ‘ethical designer’ had to rear his patronising head through the ‘contribution’ of Mike Dempsey in the form of an ‘alternative’ tart card.
The ‘Tart Card’ project was never about the issue of prostitution or sex trafficking – it was supposed to be about type and graphics.
The ethical designer is the moody son of a society that can’t trust people to make their own minds up about issues without being hectored and berated if we seem to stray away from the illiberal and right-on centre-ground.
What has always excited me about graphic design is the very opposite of the ethical designer – the place we occupy between an idea and the people that idea is aimed. Graphic designers are mediators of other peoples ideas, if we try and set ourselves up as judge and jury, with respect to the content of the idea, we are killing that which is at the heart of the role of the graphic designer.
I for one am comfortable dealing with difficult ideas. Furthermore, I trust other people to be able to deal with them too.