I know, it just sounds wrong and this booklet makes it clear that's it's downright dangerous too, "A momentary lack of care may lead to tragedy". So be careful what you do with yours. I'm keeping mine in a locked cabinet until I need it.
Remember progress from a month or two back? Well I've found his ever so slightly older brother modernisation. There's just a year between them and they're as alike as two peas (er...that is, two peas that are different colours). I can't help feeling the older sibling is the confident one, while his little brother is just a little smarter.
Certainly, when it comes to a tipple, mod looks much more fun.
I don't know about you but I just can't resist a dial. Dig way back in the Ace Jet archives and you'll find two fine examples; back in the days when I had little to say, when I was a fledgling blogger and I favoured a more refined, oak back drop. So many years ago...well, er, two.
This one comes complete with bonus postcard depicting the where's-the-nose-gone, how-did-it-get-off-the-ground, Strato Clipper.
Last night on BBC4 Stephen Fry and associates recreated the Gutenberg Press.
It was excellent.
Talking of things Shakespearian, found this Graphic Thought Facility designed season programme for The Globe. A lovely typographic cover, the insides are OK but less interesting. The work they've done for The Globe is superb though and it's great that they've put more on their new(ish) website, here and here.
I don't often post about new stuff. It's not, as someone has suggested, because I don't like new stuff. I like a lot of new stuff. New stuff is great.
For example, this bit of new stuff came through the door recently (actually, a few months ago but I've been too busy looking at old stuff to get round to it). If you're in the UK you've probably had one of these yourself but for anyone who isn't or who isn't on the Zanders mailing list it's a new edition of the long running "Printed On" series that the paper merchant has been sending out. I've always liked the series but this one is a departure from what was a pretty basic format.
Designed, as always, by Roundel it's still dead simple but clever: the outer, address carrying wrap reveals a beautiful image of a white dove in flight, printed on the inside; while the inner A5 leaflet/folder has that sinister crow printed on the reverse, matt side of the Cromolux sheet.
It's lovely and, I think, a nice example of what I'm guessing was a careful use of the designated budget; perhaps I'm wrong, but there's something about it that suggests they didn't have pots of money to spend; they've just used what they had imaginatively.
The photographer, by the way, was John Ross who also did those brilliant ink-in-water things with SEA and GF Smith.
I've been itching to get this posted. The cover and title pages were designed by George Mayhew while everything else was done by John Goodwin. But the cover! A masterful bit of overprinting; the still vivid colours (just good old cyan, magenta and yellow) retain a really physical presence on the paper. Close scrutiny reveals delightful subtleties; like the eighth of an inch (this was pre-decimal of course) of pure magenta down the left-hand edge of the otherwise red colour bar, barely discernible against the yellow overprinted section and that word "Macbeth" just not quite aligned to the dark, purple panel where magenta and cyan coincide.
And inside it's just as good with heavy colour bars working with gaping white spaces. Even the back cover is intriguing with coloured inks overprinting solid black to create subtle changes in darkness.
When I found that British Railways booklet a while back it was really this one that I was interested in, attracted by its cover. As it turned out, the other one was much more interesting inside but the cover of this one uses that classic 50s/60s colour overprint technique.
In essay number four of Michael Bierut's book he talks about having something cool-looking to do when you can't come up with any other solution – sound advice if you ask me. Well, I have to admit that a psuedo-classic 50s/60s colour overprint technique is what I do, that and setting type at a 15° angle. Actually, I love the classic 50s/60s colour overprint technique so much, I sometimes don't even wait to see if I can come up with something else. It looks damn cool and it works.
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