Ryan Standfest

Notes:

1. The Naked Modern City—Naked City was a police drama television series which aired from 1958 to 1963 on ABC. It was inspired by the 1948 film noir The Naked City, directed by Jules Dassin, which depicted a police investigation into the murder of a young model. The television series mimicked the semi-documentary style of the film with an off-screen narrator dispassionately presenting the facts of the case.
   
   
2. A High-Rise—The setting of The Naked Modern City is modelled after the interior of the 860 Lakeshore Drive apartment building in Chicago. One of a pair of glass and steel towers designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1951, the buildings (an example of what Mies called “skin and bones architecture”) are now considered a crucial step in the development and implementation of Modernist design principles.
   
   
3. SS4830M Lounge Bed—The descriptions provided, are sourced from a 1953 catalog for the Modernmasters Inc. Collection, in reference to a daybed designed by Clifford Pascoe.
   
   
4. CHOKE—The speech bubbles and the exclamations within them, are sourced from horror comic books produced by the American publisher EC (also known as Entertaining Comics), such as The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt. Due to censorship pressures of the day, EC ceased the publication of its horror titles in 1954-1955. The type used in The Naked Modern City is based upon the Leroy Lettering system, a mechanical typesetting tool that was used by EC rather than hand-lettering (the comics industry standard at the time), as a means to produce a clear, regulated and consistent type. Although originally used to produce legible text in blueprints, the Leroy lettering contrasted nicely with the horrific images and situations in the pages of EC publications.