From Bruce

We get all sorts of comments, mostly complimentary which we rarely publish… don’t get us wrong we appreciate the feedback, however with a family moto “Don’t believe your hype”, one is programmed with a brutal modesty filter.

Infrequently we get some comments like Bruce’s that get us thinking. One face value Bruce’s comment was a little alarming, with a little more thought Bruce’s comment raised an interesting line of thought – who own things that we all own in a way?

From wiki:
An asterisk (*) (Latin asteriscum “little star”, from Greek ) is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often pronounce it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C* algebra). The word “asterisk” is often mispronounced as “asterick” or “asterix”.

The asterisk is derived from the need of the printers of family trees in feudal times as a symbol to indicate date of birth. The original shape was six-armed, each arm like a teardrop shooting from the center. For this reason, in some computer circles it is called a splat, perhaps due to the “squashed-bug” appearance of the asterisk on many early line printers.

Many cultures have their own unique version of the asterisk. In East Asia a character with a similar use (?) looks like an X with dots surrounding it. This mark looks like the Chinese character for rice: ?. The Arabic asterisk is six-pointed. In some fonts the asterisk is five-pointed and the Arabic star is eight-pointed.

In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, pointers, repetition, and multiplication.

Written text

• The asterisk is used to call out a footnote, especially when there is only one on the page. Less commonly, multiple asterisks are used to denote different footnotes on a page. (i.e., *, **, ***)
• Three spaced asterisks centered on a page may represent a jump to a different scene or thought. See Horizontal rule.
• One or more asterisks may be used to strike out portions of a word to avoid offending by using the full form of a profanity (f**k), to preserve anonymity (Peter J***), or to avoid profanation of a holy name (G*d).
• Asterisks are sometimes used instead of typographical bullets to indicate items of a list.
• Colloquially, asterisks can be used to represent *emphasis* when italics are not available (e.g. email).
• Asterisks are used to represent ratings of movies, restaurants, etc.: see Star (classification).
• A group of three asterisks arranged in a triangular formation ? is called an asterism.

Sorry Trees by Frost Design

The …anyhow* campaign of 1974 for Winfield cigarettes

Wallpaper Magazine Cover

Tea towel by Pip and Co, indicating linked text

Tea Towel detail

It is amazing how compelling design can be, take a studio like Frost who has adopted a typographic mark like an asterisk, then fill their world with it’s simple black and white form, until people disassociate the original intention of the mark, as a open usage typographic tool open for for anyone’s use, and see the graphic as a brand. Frost also use the sticky dots with a turned up corner, they also love bright colours like day-glo orange yellow and green.

It is not uncommon for studios and other organisations to adopt such things, we love to use similar devices – at the moment a collection of eyes, ears and mouths as our new web masthead, Cornwell Design love to use a tight gallery of fonts, Design by Pidgeon use geometric fonts which they have developed in their research, guess what colour Yello likes to use for their branding? In the instance of this series tea towels we used the asterisks to link., or footnote a prominent image with a narrative contained in the detail of the overall image.

Getting back to the asterisk. The truth of the matter is that it is such a common typographic tool that no one could possibly own it. Winfield cigarettes adopted an asterisk in the 1970s, Wallpaper magazine adopted an asterisk, Frost have adopted an asterisk, and we adopt it in it’s traditional form – to link or footnote ideas, thoughts and narratives together type set in the fonts we selected, which happen to look similar.

The overlap of ideas and forms used by any organisation is infinite and it is something that we all have to get used too. The context of expression is what makes an idea, form and notion unique, and for now we will continue down that path of activity.

Visit Frost here, Visit Wiki’s excellent asterisk article here

* only kidding Bruce, however we enjoyed your comment.