Milton Glaser (1929-2020) was a longtime practitioner of fluid, hand-drawn graphic design. His eye for composition, artistic style, active materials, and tone shapeshifted organically with each project. He designed the poster (below, first) for a 1982 exhibition: Great Illustrators of Our Time—a group in which he's surely now a member.
.jpg)
Milton Mano (above, second) churns the essential ingredients of Glaser's poster—hand-drawn hands, eyes, and gradients—into a typeface suited for highly specific uses. This one? Perhaps birthday party invites, the type-setting of riddles related to the human hand... et cetera.
What did the doctor tell the graphic designer they were really designing by spending all their days clicking, dragging, typing, and drawing?
More of a medical diagnosis than a riddle.
In a typeface classified as mono, each letter is set at an equal width. Milton Mano is not a monospaced typeface, made evident by the image set below, in which all letters have been stacked in a pile and made translucent using different blend modes (an integral tool for creating each letter's unique background pattern).
.png)
A type-specimen booklet was produced in a run of 2.
Spiral-bound, 36 pages, 6x9" closed.
A fingernail-clipping apostrophe.