this is a story about a woman who thought she'd scored
she'd gotten it all and then bam it all falls apart and in falling apart she discovers an
ambition a need to speak and a voice that she just frankly didn't know was there
my name is laszlo and i'm here to talk about the graphic design from the marvelous mrs maisel
hey guys welcome back to our channel the number one place for people who love design art and
all things creative you are watching Dantier & Balogh's channel and today as i said we are going
to deep dive into old school 50s inspired graphic design by analyzing breaking down
and tearing apart some of the greatest graphic elements from the tv series the marvelous mrs
maisel if you are unfamiliar mrs maisel is an amazon produced emmy-winning tv series about
an upper middle class jewish housewife who in the late 1950s after a series of
unfortunate events discovers that she has the talent for stand-up comedy and so us
the audience gets to follow her and her extended family around as she is getting hot and cold
for trying to make it in this business in a time period which is still very much of a
a man's man's world now if you are familiar and you've been looking for some marvellous content
while we all sit here and wait for the next season well look no further let's have a closer look and
find out how the graphic design work elevates the material of the marvelous mrs. maisel
jumping straight in let's start at the beginning the marvelous mrs maisel logo type elegant tall
crazy and for the most part unapologetically pink exactly like our main character Miriam Maisel in
the show what you see here is basically a font a free font mind you which has been designed
by a gentleman called Stuart Sandler Stuart is a well-known typographer who during his career has
created insane amounts of vintage retro americana inspired fonts and types whole font libraries and
this one here this is one of his most famous creations this font is his mona lisa you see
sandler launched his own retro font library website back in 1996 which he called fontdiner.com
now this font here was the crown jewel of this website and so just to make life a little bit
easier for himself and for better searches i suppose he named this font his main font
quite simply fontdinerdotcom now there is a great article on outliner's website written by Zoe Beery
who acknowledges that fondinerdotcom does a good job evoking that 50s and 60s american nostalgia
with all his burger and a milkshake-loving classic dinner signage wibe especially if you
remember that back in 1996 we are still in web 1.0 times when most websites were using fonts
which were well hella' boring most fonts back in those days just lacked..you know character
the outliner journalist is not a fan though in her article she states that this type of font
evokes the 50s as you'd like to remember them not as they really were fair enough comment but
i believe there is more to this story looking at this logo type i feel like we can't just pass by
without mentioning the obvious atomic era design references in it what atomic style glad you asked
the atomic age in design refers to that roughly 20 year long period between the 1940s and the 1960s
when western society and maybe the whole world started developing a very different attitude
towards the sciences and technology than ever before understandably since quite a lot has
happened in those 20 years which made ordinary people like you and me looking at science and
technology with a sense of wonder a sense of excitement but also with a sense of fear
news about breakthroughs in the atomic sciences utilizing nuclear energy a space race between
the east and the west just to mention a few key points just kept flooding in non-stop from these
little curious boxes called televisions now the artists and designers of the time took all this
beautifully confusing mixed bag of feelings they packaged it all up and they translated it into
a look a style which has made its mark on anything and everything from fashion to
interior design for me this is what this logo type and maybe the whole show actually represents
that things are changing and it's terrifyingly exciting now if you wanted to recreate
this design all you really have to do is type out the title using fontdinerdotcom
as your base font which you will find free for personal use if you look for it online
and then you play around with the sizes of the different words basically a little baseline
shift is also needed here and there if you want that hundred percent accurate letter placement
there are versions of the font which do actually include all these little sparkly bits as well
although these are nothing more than basic shapes you would be perfectly capable of
designing on your own by merging a few elongated diamond shapes and voila marvelous isn't it
okay now for this next chapter we need to travel down from the upper west side to greenwich village
let's talk about one of the key locations of some of the earlier episodes of the show the gaslight
cafe now the gaslight is this low key underground entertainment venue a bit of a rathole in the show
where the marvelous mrs maisel performs stand up for the very first time what's more intriguing
about this is the fact that the gaslight is a real location this was an actual bar which existed once
and has been functioning from 1957 to up until his closure in 1971. it was a real bohemian
type coffee slash bar which has changed hands and brands quite a lot as time went by but just like
in the show one thing never really changed about the place it was a haven for the outsider if you
wanted to see or hear something weird wacky barely legal off-beat entertainment this was the place to
be and as a performer this was the kind of place you would go to to test out your new experimental
material the beat poet jack kerouac or musicians bob dylan and jimi hendrix are none but a few of
the legendary characters who performed in this little secret bar in their early days
which is quite a lineup in my opinion now in terms of branding and graphic design a place like this
obviously took the minimalist brutalist approach and of course what i mean by that is the owners
seemingly didn't give a flying fork about how they would come across in terms of branding and graphic
design i mean come on in these old photos you can spot a couple different signage variations mostly
incorporating old english gothic type fonts in and around the entrance sometimes having a couple
different variations seemingly stacked in top of each other which is not uncommon of the time by
the way as film graphic designer annie atkins explained in her book about designing graphic
props for filmmaking having a consistent brand identity across multiple mediums is actually quite
a new idea before the computer age the average business might have had a big iron gate signage
which would have been designed by a blacksmith let's just say and this dear blacksmith was free
to completely disregard the style the business was using for its printed materials for example
now i feel like i should state that annie atkins has nothing to do with the marvelous mrs maisel
as far as i'm concerned but still i try to mention her and her work as often as i can
because she's just the best in the field and her book on film graphic design is by far the
best book i have ever come across with on this subject anyway moving on the cafe signage which
the show is utilizing in their version is based on a classic mexicana western style
typeface which i think can be perfectly recreated by the use of the font called 'saloon girl fill'
all you really have to do to recreate this logo type is write out the words gaslight and coffee
in two separate type boxes on top of each other using the saloon girl font give it a pale dark
purple color fill and include a thin black outline then what i would do is slightly bend them with
the horizontal arc tool which you can find in the warping effects the word coffee does need
a bit more open tracking to space out the letters a little bit there you go peeps offbeat or what?
now for our last destination we need to travel from manhattan way way up to the
catskill mountains because i want to get into the style of Steiner's summer resort steiners
is where the marvellous mrs maisel goes to spend her summer vacation with her family in season two
and while the actual resort does not exist in real life the idea is based on the very real
fact that the catskill mountains summer resorts where a huge part of new york jewish culture back
in the day between the 1920s up until the 1970s really jewish families who could afford to could
switch their new york-based jobs and lives to the idyllic mountain landscape for a month or two to
spend their vacations in one of these mountain resorts doing all sorts of fun activities with
family and friends and as charming as that sounds the real reason why the catskill mountains were so
often visited by jewish families back in the day is a little bit more um problematic the catskills
or as they used to call it the borscht belt or the jewish alps became a popular holiday destination
for jewish people as a result of anti-semitism in 1920s and 1930s america they came here and created
their own little holiday spots because well truth be told they weren't really welcome anywhere else
outside of this secluded area other resorts hotels even certain airlines used to have a strictly no
jews policy at the time rather shocking but you know what where there is lemons there's usually
lemonade as well so holidaying at the catskills became quite a hip thing to do and the area
became rather iconic for the real jewish comedians who were once here big names like joan rivers or
billy crystal had their fair share of performing in front of these vacationers while summering in
the catskills in the early days of making people laugh now in the show we see our characters doing
all sorts of eye-wateringly clichéd charmingly cheesy activities in this summer resort like
playing simon says or having a stargazing session with commentary mind you or being entertained by
a theatrical show put on by the catering staff at the end of their vacation stays just to mention a
few of my favorites now of course to reflect this old-timey goofy fun our characters are having the
setting had to match the vibe so naturally the set and the interior design is very playful here
for me this big painted welcome sign which arriving guests are faced with as their first
sight of their holiday is the crown the epitome of this whole silly summer fun vibe upon closer
look you'll see how this bold fun cartoony style is actually totally appropriate for the resort
playful colors bold shapes and of course our atomic design inspired elements are thrown
into the mix as well when you look at the typeface itself the font is nothing unique in fact i have
a strong suspicion that it is mostly based on this script font called 'coffee service' why do i think
it's coffee service well because coffee service is a font which has been designed by stuart sandler
you remember him now if you want to sit down and design something like this follow my advice and
combine coffee service with this other phone called 'letrista' to get the closest match
possible it looks like some of the glyphs are handmade you can have some fun with that as well
of course if you want to for the additional type i used the block capital font called
'bench grinder' and i twisted warped and bended my way to this composition
as for the background shapes apart from our characters on the far left
well they are a combination of simple rectangle and ellipse shapes as well
as some good old-fashioned pen tool magic just color it up nice and bold and you will get there
so how's that for marvelous content feel free to let me know if you enjoyed this kind of
half design history half nerding out type video cause if you did well i would love
to make more make sure you are following us so you don't miss out on any of that
our regular creative crew members know that this channel is not just about graphic design
and illustration but we also talk a lot about interior design architecture home decor and
everything else overlapping all these cool things so if that's your jam, watch this space feel free
to leave a like to help us reach even more people with this channel and i hope to see you next time
for some other cool creative stuff we could be talking about okay until then see you guys
you