I threw away my computer in February of 1987. Not metaphorically — I physically carried the thing down three flights of stairs on West Vernor Highway and left it at the curb with a cardboard sign that read "FREE — WORKS SOMETIMES." My landlord called it a health hazard. I called it liberation. That spring the Corktown Design Space gave me my first show of hand-drawn work, and I walked in with forty posters where every single letter had been pulled from my own hand, not a digital typesetting library.
The Grid Cannot Hold a Human Hand
For twenty-five years before that, I had made a living as a commercial illustrator doing things that looked correct. Perfect kerning, clean vector outlines, the kind of typography that gets you repeat clients but never a second glance. The problem with computer-set type is not that it is ugly — most of it is perfectly pleasant. The problem is that it is identical. Every lowercase 'a' in a given typeface is the same 'a' whether it appears on a gallery poster in Hamtramck or a detergent label in Tulsa.
"The flyer is a diary entry disguised as public address."
My Corktown pieces were dense. Title blocks jammed center-page. Margin annotations — dates, signatures, page numbers — squeezed into corners where no rational grid would place them. I drew frames around text that needed no frame. I signed each piece differently because I believed every encounter with a poster should feel like meeting a person, not processing a brand.