Ace Jet 170

On rescuing mass production from the ugliness and aesthetic emptiness which has so far characterised the greater part of its output, and other stories.

Design Research Unit deserve their near mythical position in design history. I first wrote about the "Practical Idealists" four years ago here. More recently, Johnny kindly wrote a guest post here after seeing the exhibition that toured a year or so ago. And a little before that, Eliza Williams wrote this for the Creative Review blog.

Anyone working in design today owes a debt to this amazing collection of disciplined and creative planners and smokers. Back in the day, barely a day went by when the besuited gentlemen of design didn't gather together to flame up a tab and plan a brighter future for us all.

I don't think I've anything to add to what's already been said. Except to say that the new book provides a rather convenient introduction to anyone less than familiar.

Just look at them: It's like Design Avengers Assemble circa 1970.

Of Screen and Semiotics

Pauline Clancy is an MA student at the University of Ulster studying Mutlidisciplinary Design. Pauline very kindly sent me a copy of her new self-promotional piece: A set of screen printed cards that piece together and reveal her pre-occupation with semiotics. Check out her website or blog for more typographics.

Henri's Walk To Paris

After reading that great big book about Saul Bass, and thinly disguised as a Valentine's present for Karen, I bought this lovely thing a little while back. Classic.

David Pearson at Walker Art Center

Groundwork

I mentioned a week or so back that a few of us were in Belfast's Linen Hall Library for the launch of a book we'd designed. Well, Sam Irwin did it really. I can only take credit for supplying the vintage typewriter he used to tap out the entire text. It was a labour of love and it's a testimony to all his hard work, attention to detail and commitment to the cause that at the launch no one, I mean absolutely no one, mentioned either Sam or Thought Collective. No one.

We were sitting there, a few rows from the back. Smiling through the first set of thankyous, not worrying too much that we weren't mentioned because there was plenty of time left. They singled out all the other parties involved, quite rightly. Made a particular effort to thank the photographer involved. But when the final round came…nothing.

But the thing is, I'm not joking that it's a testimony to to Sam's diligent work that no one noticed the design. That's what we set out to do: undesign it. Only problem is, for that to be successful, it should mean it goes unnoticed. It wasn't noticed. Result.

To get the full story, pop over to the TC blog.

 

Cuts and Colours

The latest gift book from Pentagram dropped through the door last week. Always interesting, this new one attempts to, once and for all, assign a more comprehensive colour system to common moods and emotions. French folded pages with perforated edges hide within the mood/emotion the design team felt best matched the hue.

Only trouble is, if you want to know what it really means to feel kind of brown, slightly purple or seriously orange, you have to break the perfs. Nightmare. Still, out came my Swiss Army Knife and in slipped the clean, sharp blade. Slit, slit, slit.

Smile

Birmingham-based designers Smile sent me their super deluxe promotional box of awesomeness before Christmas. Dive in and you get to scratch beneath the surface of their means and methods.

Own Label

Back in the sixties Sainsbury's played a big role in the development of the retail experience. Arguably the first UK supermarket, it set the standard others would reach for. I guess it was a model-shifting time for the graphic design business too.

Own Label, the new book by design company Fuel and Jonny Trunk is a vivid celebration of an important instance for retail packaging design as well as a broader cultural shift.

A few things helped:

Clearly, the times they were a'changing and the public were hungry for a tasty new shopping experience. This was also the time when foreign travel was becoming way more accessible to many for the first time and with that came tasty overseas delights. A prime time for the more adventurous.

Technical advancements in graphic reproduction must, I imagine, also have played its part - it was Penrose Annual's heyday, with the printing industry forging ahead at quite a pace.

And then there was that one vital component for this kind of thing to achieve momentum: a forward thinking champion at board level. While much credit can be given to in-house design supremo Peter Dixon, his work would has soon floundered without the full backing of company director John Sainsbury.

Clearly, the Sainsbury organisation had the right idea at the right time and it looks like the superretailer took full advantage of the opportunity for own label products to become a core part of their business, fuelled (pardon the pun) by exceptional graphic design.

It's a great book: a fantastic snapshot of an optimistic time.

 

10 by 10

I won.

FS Clerkenwell, to be precise. If you follow Fontsmith on Twitter you'd have enjoyed their anniversary typocompetition a couple of weeks back. It was simple but tricky at times: throughout the week snippets from their beautiful 10 years in type anthology teased us with abstracted font features. 

I was delighted to win, Clerkenwell is awesome. But even better, I signed up for a copy of the celebratory box set and it arrived at the tail end of last week. It's an amazing thing: superbly printed by Team Impression and stupendously designed by Thompson Brand Partners. Ten booklets tell the stories of ten unique fonts. This morning saw the launch of an accompanying microsite so if you're not able to get your hand on the real thing, you can still learn about Fontsmith's dedication to their craft and find out what makes them such exemplars of the fine art of type design.

The Lesser Spotted Bass

There's no point me spouting on about the genius of Bass. We all know it. Even if you only know a few posters or title sequences, if you're a graphic designer of at least "a certain age", you know how important Saul Bass is. If you're lucking, some time in 2004 you were at the Design Museum for the exhibition. Jonathan Jones, writing for the Guardian, slagged it off a bit at the time. I thought it was amazing. Perhaps Jones had a point but I didn't care - it was a ton of Saul Bass, on show, together. Wow.

I vaguely remember there was some promise of a book after the show. I think (and I could be getting mixed up here) you could even pre-order it on Amazon. But it didn't happen. Perhaps somewhere out there, there's a proper explanation of what happened.

Of course, fast-forward seven years and here it is. A mightly volume. And even if it doesn't read well (I've yet to test that) it's a ton of Saul Bass, on show, together. Wow.

As I've just hinted, I haven't had time to explore the book in any detail but one thought did occur: if you remove all the stuff we all know, take out all the film stuff, what's left is still pretty amazing. So rather than dwell on the posters and titles you may already know, here's some quieter things I at least had never seen before.

It's a hefty book but with a relatively modest price tag so I'd say it's more than worth buying. It's an essential chunk of graphic design history and it's beautiful.