Not exactly Irvin Type—not Irvin Type at all—but Irvin-related: artist Daniel Adel‘s amphibian version of the original (tongue-in-cheek, etc.) E.T. Adel has actually contributed to The New Yorker, so as you can see, it’s a meta-Quaker Oats, post-postmodern Circle Game moment for me. Thanks to the multitalented Newyorkette (who reviews a giant history of Vogue in the new issue of PRINT) for the tip!
And now for the fairness and balance for which Emdashes is known: Here’s someone’s story about cranky readers of the magazine. I’d be cranky too if someone did to me what this person claims to have done to someone’s blissful magazine-reading experience, and if I ever catch them doing it, I’ll show them what real crankiness looks like!
For the record, I don’t believe for a second that any New Yorker readers are shoving people on the subway. I think they’re absorbed and distracted, dulling the pain of their stifling routine with mesmerizing (if horrifying) pieces about our impending water catastrophe; also funny cartoons. You should try it sometime, haughty nose-thumber of the “intelligentsia.” It really helps!

But perhaps Rea Irvin’s type? After the jump, you be the judge. Thanks to the savvy reader who sent this in; she notes, “Saw this book featured prominently in a Minneapolis B & N.” Rea, what do you say?

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I was looking, hungrily and with joy, at the conveniently downloadable PEF of the Film Forum schedule and noticed that the titles of the films seem, to my semi-tutored eye, to be in Rea Irvin’s signature type. Take a look:

Is this Irvin type? If not, why not? While I do work at a graphic design magazine and could solicit the opinions of my fellows, I will present the question to you, possibly even better informed readers, first. This will be a recurring feature, which means that if you spot any type in the wild that you suspect to be a Masked Duck, I mean Irvin type, by all means, take a snapshot with your phone or make a screenshot with your mouse. I welcome your submissions! (Oh, and I’ve already got the one from Jane magazine’s website, and will post it soon.)
Previously in Irvin Type Watch:
Who Is Behind You, NewYorkerFilter? [A mysterious new blog in our little family]
Make Your Address The New Yorker’s [Irvinesque house-number signs]

I’d like to know more about this Goofy as Eustace Tilley image by John Sparey I just landed on. “John designed his version in the middle fifties,” writes Steve Hulett, but for whom, and what else did he do? Let the googling begin! If this isn’t a Eustace Google candidate, I don’t know what is.

I’ve suddenly become the doddering grandma of the New Yorker blog genre, and I welcome all who are similarly inclined to the fold. Aha, NewYorkerFilter is the creation of Ed Foley. Come over and introduce yourself, Ed Foley!

Conveniently enough, this also becomes the newest entry in our occasionally featured but rapidly growing collection of Rea Irvin type sightings where you might not expect them, that is, anywhere outside the actual magazine. Send in digital photos of any examples (the more you look, the more you’ll see) that you spot in the wild, and I’ll post them here. After the jump, check out the canny logo.

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Since the dust is still swirling from the showdown at highbrow noon between The New Yorker‘s Alice Quinn and Helen Vendler, Princess Stanza of Stanz, over Quinn’s collection of the late Elizabeth Bishop’s previously unpublished poems, I say it’s time to ditch our passé Team Lachey buttons and wear something we can believe in. I present these hastily but lovingly constructed ribbons. Note that our friends at The Sign Generator provide the Irvin typeface as a design option! It was tough to choose a good face for Vendler that didn’t seem editorial on my part (“Karloff,” “Braille,” “Ransom,” etc.—I’ve decided I won’t judge the poems till I’ve read them all; anyway, the people quoted on both sides of the Times story made me feel much friendlier toward the idea of going all Sappho-fragment on E.B.), but I settled on Juliet and Chalkboard. The purple is the closest thing they had to crimson.

Print ’em, cut ’em out, stick a pin through ’em, and affix according to your allegiances. If you believe everything you read in the Times, you may fear that the pin will end up in a wrong place indeed if you go around wearing the wrong ribbon when either Vendler or Quinn is in the Poets House, but that’s a risk you—the courageous scribbler as unafraid of retribution as you are of consumption, though both are inevitable in some form—will take. If your poetasterous rival should find him- or herself wearing a certain ribbon on his or her back unawares at the National Arts Club some night, however, that will be on your conscience forever. Be not afraid! You may have an Alice Quinn in your future, as Vendler warns, but that might be pretty cool. Either way, you can have a proud ribbon pinned on your chest in the present.

…typeface: