The Mario Blog

05.29.2015—3am    Post #2210
Roger Black: digging into the boxes as his memoir comes to life

I felt as if I was popping out of a chapter (or two) of the new Roger Black memoir this week.  First, I had a great dinner with my long time friend and much respected colleague.  Then, as members of the Poynter Foundation Board, we had a meeting at Poynter, which is, by the way, the official “headquarters” of a mini Roger Black office devoted entirely to the work he is currently doing on what promises to be an exciting, fun filled and maybe tell all memoir of one of the editorial design's world best known designers.

This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, June 1 where I will be reporting from the WAN IFRA Congress in Washington D.C.

Roger Black: Collecting the visual memories of a 40-year career

I can only imagine the stories popping out of all those boxes waiting to be unpacked as Roger goes into the attic (or basement) of an illustrious and well documented career that has seen him work with The New York Times, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, among other titles.

“Here is a relic, Mario,” Roger said as he pointed to a slide carrousel full of slides.

Along the way, sketches for Newsweek, or The Hollywood Reporter.  Also an exciting prototype for a Spanish language paper, Rumbo, which published for two years.

As we flipped through the various projects and sketches all I could think about was: These are still good, timely, even fresh, including those of the 1980s and 90s.

Roger agreed.

The memoir is in the makings, but the spirited Roger is already telling us that it will have plenty about design, but also the personal, and, he adds: “All those stories that you and I have shared along the way through all of our global journeys.”

I can't wait to see the Roger Black memoir, titled Laying It Out.

Today, as he invited me into his small Poynter Instituter office, I felt the excitement that will come when he gets down to showing us the Roger Black way of doing things.

 

Roger Black and I enjoyed good food and conversation in Tampa this week!

Typographics conference

While on the subject of Roger Black, he will be participating in Typographics, “a conference for people who use type.”  That means, all of us and most of you, by the way.
The conference is in New York City, June 8-18.
For more information:
http://typographics.com
 

TheMarioBlog post #1762

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