{"id":5037,"date":"2009-10-15T07:50:57","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T14:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/?p=5037"},"modified":"2009-10-19T18:01:01","modified_gmt":"2009-10-20T01:01:01","slug":"alta-california-the-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/archives\/5037","title":{"rendered":"Alta California: Named after a newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nAlta California office, San Francisco 1851; found via Flickr<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

At one point in my life, I was going to be a journalist. So folly along  . . . .<\/p>\n

I love history, so every one of my fonts falls into some historical category (or categories,<\/em> if you look at Jeanne Moderno<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Alta California<\/a> is my artist’s response to Susan Kare’s<\/a> early Macintosh font, San Francisco. And it was a tricky build, as I was literally going thru book after book after book of old types – then messing them up, then messing them up more; and redrawing the edges until I had what I wanted. <\/p>\n

(Please note, when it comes to ‘grunge typography’ – I don’t trust anything automatic; I’ve always gone in and tweaked the edges until I have something that looks – printed. Printed poorly, but printed.)<\/em> <\/p>\n

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\nAlta California font specimen<\/em><\/p>\n

moniker<\/strong>
\nSo when it came to naming the font, I selected a newspaper I knew from college: San Francisco’s Alta California<\/em><\/a>. The Alta<\/em> was published c.1849-1891.<\/p>\n

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For my very last research paper as an undergrad, I wrote a detailed report on the daily community findings of San Francisco – from one month in 1863. <\/p>\n

And since I love to obsess, I actually skimmed almost all editions<\/em> of The Alta California<\/em> from that month – via microfilm (which did give me quite the headache; one has to really experience old microfilm equipment to understand why). I waded thru the bias, the hype and the oft butchered writeups to build my report. 19th century San Francisco was quite the bawdy town.<\/p>\n

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the dude<\/strong>
\nFound out years later that Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, wrote for the Alta California<\/em> – and his book The Innocents Abroad or, The New Pilgrims’ Progress<\/a><\/em> (1869) was culled together from letters sent to and originally published in the Alta<\/em>. <\/p>\n


\nThe Innocents Abroad Vol. I Harper’s Library Edition (1903), from my own collection<\/em><\/p>\n

archive<\/strong>
\nAnd today, there’s some great stuff online. But it’s buried a bit. Check out the newspaper archive here<\/a> (just do a search for Alta California). <\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

And, of course, aside from my Alta font,<\/a> you can also snag some Alta merch here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So that’s why it’s called that, where it came from and I’m sticking to my story. Like any good journalist. Like glue.<\/p>\n

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\nMerch from the Alta California Vintage line<\/a> by mehallo <\/em><\/p>\n

Original Alta California newspaper images found via CDNC<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\t

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