Ed Fella was born in 1938 in Detroit, Michigan. He is an artist, educator and graphic designer whose work has had an important influence on contemporary typog-raphy. He practiced professionally as a commercial artist in Detroit for 30 years before receiving an mfa in Design from the Cranbrook Acad-emy of Art in 1987. He has since devoted his time to teaching at the California Institute for the Arts and his own unique self-published work which has appeared in many design publications and anthologies. His work is in the National Design Museum and moma in New York. In 1997 he received the Chrysler Award, in 1999 an Honorary Doc-torate from ccs in Detroit and in 2007 the aiga Medal.1

Artist

Educator

Graphic Designer

CalArts program event poster from Letters on America,Princeton Architectural Press, New York

CalArts program event poster from Letters on America,Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Over the years, Fella has created a body of work that’s as compel-ling as it is unique. Prodigiously mashing up low-culture sources with high-culture erudition, Fella’s work—perhaps more than that of any other contemporary designer—makes visible the postmodern concept of deconstruction, which recognizes that behind every articu-lated meaning is a host of other, usually repressed meanings, some antithetical. By battering and mix-ing fonts, engaging in visual puns and generally violating the tenets of “good design,” Fella lets a thousand flowers bloom. His designs don’t cut through the clutter, they revel in it. Now over 70, Edward Fella dubs himself an exit-level designer, but is tirelessly pursuing his person-al explorations as well as archiving his own output. Fella has created a body of work that’s as compelling as it is unique.2

SEe IT

sAY It

SeE it-Ed Fella

CalArts faculty lecture poster from Letters on America,Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Even his high school level educa-tion set the stage for later devel-opment. “Cass Tech taught the Bauhaus foundation method, where the art schools at the time in Detroit were steeped in the Beaux Arts,” Fella says. “So I actu-ally got a more advanced educa-tion in high school than I would have had I gone to college at that point.” One of those lessons was the Bauhaus credo of eliminating the line between the so-called fine and applied arts. Hand-painted

messages, stick-on letters, graffiti and neon, even initials and names cut into the bark of trees by amo-rous lovers, have captured Fella’s attention. He meticulously crops his subjects, selecting particular phrases or letters to render his photos ambiguous, humorous or full of hidden meaning. Words float behind the reflections of storefront glass, are faded by the sun, are cracking, flaking and fall-ing off. or are obscured by Fella’s own shadow. The square polaroids

are reproduced at nearly exact size, arranged on a grid of nine photographs are numerous typo-graphic doodles and snippets from gallery invitations, faculty events at CalArts and other projects. Bold images chronicle the cross-country proliferation of signage. Inspira-tion from signs translate into his typography illustrations. These collages mesh neatly together with the images and provide and ex-ample of how Fella’s photographic archive informs his unique style.3

Polaroid photographs from Letters on America,Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Forget historyso you canrepeat it

Forget historyso you canrepeat itCopyright © 2012 Hannah J. Sherwood,

Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art

Printed from a Canon Image Runner onto 40# text

Photos: Ed Fella pp. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11 from Two Lines Align, California Institute of the Arts4

1Blackwell, Lewis and Lorraine Wild. Letters on America. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.

2aiga. “Ed Fella” aiga Medal, http://www.aiga.org/medalist-edfella/.

3Krayna, Philip. Book Reviews. Photog-raphy Annual 42: Communication Arts, 2001.

4Disney, Roy and Edna. Two Lines Align. California: redcat, 2008.