Gordon Young, a mason typographer!

05 March 2018 | 0 Comments | |

The letter in the public space

For over 20 years, Gordon Young has been working on the border between art, graphic design and typography.

To his credit, he has created dozens of art installations in public spaces, a forest of typographic trees, a Wall of Wishes in a school and a cursing stone in Carlisle. His most ambitious project to date remains the Comedy Carpet, a 2200m² granite typographic pavement of jokes, songs and slogans by comedians and writers on the seafront promenade in Blackpool (northern England).

At the heart of his work are "words". Words that give form to the work of art. Words that seduce, fascinate and amuse the viewer. Gordon is particularly attracted to vernacular typography and the materiality of text in the open air. The result is a visual production that is simple, playful, powerful and poetic...

For 20 years, Gordon Young is still young!

The comedy carpet

Le Comedy Carpet est une célébration l'art de la comédie et du divertissement populaire. Il se réfère au travail de plus de 1 000 comédiens. Le tapis présente des blagues, des chansons et autres slogans qui remontent aux débuts de la variété jusqu' à nos jours. Il est située devant la Tour Blackpool, l'œuvre de 2 200 m² contient plus de 160 000 lettres en granit encastrées dans le béton, repoussant les limites de l'art public et de la typographie.

Concrete typography

For this project, Gordon worked with the designers at Why Not Associates, fine specialists in typography. The scale of the project is mind-boggling. 160,000 letters, cut from granite, cast in concrete, then sanded.

At first glance, the Comedy Carpet looks painted. In fact, each of the 160,000 letters is made of 30 mm solid granite cast in high-quality concrete panels.

To realize the project, Gordon transformed a former factory into a bespoke studio and recruited and managed a production team. After months of research, with the help of chemists and engineers, the Comedy Carpet team developed new production techniques and recipes. The red granite comes from India, the steel from China.

Each of the 320 slabs was made by hand, by typographer masons!