Bingo: Another cover by Joe Brainard

Here's another cover by Joe Brainard, for Bingo, a play by Dick Gallup (Mother Press, 1966).

I love the hand-lettering, of course, but especially that g. The comics-style solid-not-solid black is really good too. The idiosyncrasies in the drawing offset the formality of the geometric bingo grid, as does the pink square. And of course the title is playful, as is the way he's broken Gallup at up, and then dropped that down.

So there's his tension, as well as the tension created in the variable heights of the letters in the title—the way the i and g get a little shorter to fit the box. I like the way the letters in the title are more perfectly drawn than the small caps in the byline, which though regular in height and positioning within the grid avoid becoming totally stiff because of their intentional imperfections.

There's so much personality in these, don't you think?

Brainard also had illustrations inside. Excerpts from the play had previously appeared in issues of C Magazine (which also had Brainard covers).

Read more about this cover at Mimeo Mimeo.