Our boys were delighted to get hold of an advance copy of The Extraordinaires Design Studio, the new game from The Creativity Hub (of the award-winning Rory's Story Cubes fame). It's brilliant fun and great for channeling their creativity.
We were lucky enough to play test it during the development stage. You can find out more about the game here or watch the video:
We all love him don't we? David Gentleman is a national treasure, like Searle or Steadman or Blake. His work is woven into the fabric of the UK, it's part of the country's DNA. Hardly surprising that Penguin got him to illustrate Shakespeare's entire works back in the sixties/seventies.
I recently picked up a copy of the Gentleman covered edition of Macbeth and it struck me that I haven't been looking closely enough. You need to scrutinise these covers at super-close-quarters to really appreciate their beauty I think; to really appreciate his workmanship; the way the line work interacts with the colour work. It's masterful.
My Flickr set is in need of an update but this is most of my collection.
Another Escape sets out to capture the enthusiasm of others. Investigating the lives and pastimes of individuals who throw themselves, with zeal, headlong into the endeavours that they find the greatest affinity with. I get that. For a long time I've felt there's little difference between someone obsessed with, for example, the micro details of type and typography and those preoccupied with the intricacies of craft ales or the plummage of our feathered friends.
One man's nerdy obsession is another's passion and who are we to judge the validity of another's fixation. As the Another Escape team says themselves, "We can take away from these energetic individuals fuel for our own motivation".
In Volume One you'll meet, amongst many others: Jim and Lou from Brighton Miniclick, Amy and Claire from Super + Super, Ace Jet favourites Jane and Ben from Herb Lester, James from Boneshaker and Mike, from his allotment.
Best you go and buy it. From here.
Do designers like an aphorism more than most? I'm not sure. We certainly do love a pithy truth about the nature of our work don't we? Whether it provides valuable insight into the inner workings of design practice and principles or reassurance of the validity of our most treasured points-of-view, a few carefully chosen words from a pier or hero can resonate. Letterpress it and hang it on a wall.
Handsomely bound and stylishly typeset (using a generous selection of Hoefler and Frere-Jones' Knockout) "The Designer Says" is packed to the rafters with the wit and wisdom of luminaries from design disciplines. Thoughtfully paired, each spread presents ideas either in tune with one another or at opposite poles.
If it were close to Christmas I'd say this is the ideal Yuletide gift for the designer you love. But it's obviously not so just buy yourself a copy – or surprise the creative you treasure most.
I was ever so slightly bowled over by this package that arrived last week. Superbly packaged in a bespoke printed envelope and wrapped in it's own unique tissue paper, my special letter forms part of Pauline Clancy's Wood Type project. You can find out more about it here. While you're over there, check out Pauline's other work. You might remember Pauline from this piece she did last year.
It was my birthday on Monday. No, please, there's no need to apologies, when you get to my ages, you kow…something, something. Anyway, got some nice presents. A sea fishing rod, Iron Man on DVD, a four-pack of Cadbury's DoubleDeckers, a part-used pack of crayons that was actually given to us last month on the ferry to Scotland (special thanks to Seth for that one).
I also got a rather lovely mini Dufle — for my pocket-sized device — from super-talented/would-be-nothing-without-her Edie Sloane, aka Karen, my wife.
Casual Optimist, Friend from the Internet and all-round nice chap, Dan Wagstaff, pointed me in the direction of Ulrich Planer's typewatching blog. It's refreshingly simple and is packed with great examples. Being European, there are loads of great script logos. Ulrich very kindly agreed to let me bring some of his images over here.
It's an interesting fact that artist/illustrator Paul Hogarth was an actual decendant (albeit a distant one) of more historically noteworthy artist William Hogarth. In a way, it's such an obvious idea that you might think in actual fact that it's unlikely. But there it is. It's true. I looked it up.
Until recently, that's about all I did know despite being an admirer of Hogarth The Younger's compelling artwork; largely because my admiration of his work has been such a slow burner. You see for once, the first Hogarth covered books I bought were actually purchased for their content; I've been a Graham Greene fan for many years and Hogey was Greene's illustrator of choice. It took me a while to work that out.
Once I got that and once I caught the Hogarth bug, I looked out for more. There's obviously just a few here, you'll find more on Flickr. Some are "conventional"; straightforward scenes inspired buy the text and some feel more "designed"; the construction of the work hinting at a draughtsman-like approach coupled with something not unlike collage – only using drawn fragments.
I've hardly scratched the surface of Paul Hogarth, I suspect someone better qualified and equipped will capture a more fitting record of the man's life and work at some point. His obituary from 2001 reveals much about his fascinating life.
Not much has happened around these parts since last Friday. Just a massive pile of work to consume very every waking hour and then some. I did stumble across Tom Gifford's excellent gathering of found type over on Flickr. Tom very kindly said it would be OK if I snaffled some for here. Thanks Tom!
I'd kind of forgotten all about FTF. And we were so close to a century. So I'm going for one last push; just a few more to go.
I don't think I'll ever tire of the ferry. I'm sure I've mentioned it before so I won't bang on about it too much. The newly refurbished, wifi-enabled, still crappy fooded, now even faster ferry is great. And we got a superb day for our crossing; beautiful, bright and absolutely freezing out on deck. One of the best things about this ferry is how much "on deck" there is. Expansious and multi-floored; on a warmer day you can even visit the sun deck. This wasn't one of those days. What you do get outside though is a real sense of scale. Standing under the…er…big thing at the back, you feel dwarfed.
I stumbled across The Salvage Press the other day. Lovely work…
The Salvage Press is devoted to preserving, promoting and pursuing excellence in design, typography & letterpress printing. It is the name under which artist & designer Jamie Murphy produces his letterpress printed books and broadsides.
Take a look. Or follow them here and/or here.
Deborah from Point dropped me a line earlier, with details of the conference running in May. It's a stella line-up…
Between 2–3 May, the Point London conference explores the theme of 'Authenticity'. Point is a non-profit organisation of designers raising awareness of the power of great design to change business, education and society.
Through over thirty presentations, screenings, performances, workshops and events, conference delegates can interact with design heroes, thought leaders and innovators. The line-up of inspirational speakers includes, amongst others: Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden, Olympic Torch designers Barber Osgerby, Seymour Chwast of Push Pin Studios, Jonathan Barnbrook of 2013 Bowie album cover fame, Font Shop founder and typographer Erik Spiekermann, digital innovator Nicolas Roope of Poke, Blackpool Comedy Carpet designer Andy Altmann of Why Not Associates and BCC artist Gordon Young, Matt Webb of enabled product and service designers Berg, Adidas brand director Gary Aspden, public space designer Morag Myerscough plus exclusive screenings of filmed interviews with design icon Milton Glaser, Magnum photographer Elliot Erwitt, and the late graphic design master Alan Fletcher.
If you follow me on Twitter (What do you mean you don't?) then you may have noticed that every now and then I tweet links to old blog posts. It struck me a while back that there's loads of stuff buried in the archives that many might have either missed or forgotten. On a personal level I've really enjoyed re-visiting all the old stuff. Stuff of days gone by. From back in the day…etc, etc.
Some of the really early stuff, I think, warrants more than just a tweet. Way back then I only posted a few images. This pack of maps for example, from when Czechoslovakia was still a Central European Sovereign State was barely covered.
I picked it up in Prague when I was on my Stag Weekend. By day, we stalked secondhand bookshops; by night we got rat-arsed on Absinth and inexpensive Czech beers. Ah, if these maps could talk…
Easter Weekend and we found ourselves on a sightseeing bus in Glasgow. It's been a while since I've been to a city I haven't visited before and even though one or two people had rained on the parade we were about to embark on, by dissing Scotlands largest city, we soon came to realise they were wrong and Anne was right: Glasgow's ace!
Lots to see. From the bus, it was largely the large stuff we took it.
Published by the RIT Press Vignelli Transit Maps tells the rise and fall story of the celebrated New York subway map, from its preliminary sketches, through its publishing and on to its demise. Lavishly illustrated, the book is an appropriately dignified and detailed monument to a significant icon of graphic design history.
Catching up with the New Aestheticists and Mr Barnes kindly introduced me to Rainer Kohlberger's brilliant pxl app. There are other things that achieve similar effects, like Poly and Dmesh. With Poly you have to do some actual real work (although not much and it's fun); I'm going to try out Dmesh next. But pxl stands out because you can export your auto-processed artwork as a vectorised pdf file, which makes the results much more useful.
It's effortless, which reduces the perceived value of the outcomes, but the results are, as you can see, great.
