#dead mule

Gunslingers and ranch-hands, dusty deserts and Navajo rugs - the Wild West presents a wild mix of type and color that is rugged, dynamic, and sultry all at once.

The period between 1800 and 1880 in American history is one of expansion westward into mostly uncharted territory, conflict with indigenous peoples, and a lawlessness made famous in film and literature. The most notable type style of the period is the slab serif, appearing in myriad styles as early advertising spread across the landscape from small cities into smaller cow towns. Slab-serif faces, in all their varieties - often with details or slight degradation that refers to their early production using type cut from wood rather than metal - are instantly evocative of the American West. The slabs may be squared or pointed, crimped or dimpled, but they are consistently pronounced and often dominate the stems of the characters on which they appear. Condensed and extended are equally common; slab serifs of all styles proliferated during this time. Glyph-like variations, more geometric and sans serif in their form, borrow from the language of cattle branding. Additionally, condensed gothic sans-serif faces, such as were used in newspaper and early catalog printing in the latter part of the nineteenth century, are stylistically in tune with the Wild West era.

Dead Mule School of Southern Literature » Fiction

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature will be publishing my story, The Subway Bride, in their November issue! I’ve been getting more interested in storytelling through magical realism, and The Subway Bride blends Southern gothic and the Brooklyn start-up scene. I’m very excited to share it.