Ace Jet 170

Ou Est Le Garlic

Len Deighton has written many ace spy stories. It's a little less known that he wrote a number of innovative and brilliant cook books. First published in 1965 by Penguin (of course), Ou Est Le Garlic features Deighton's own "cookstrips" that illustrate basic French home cooking techniques, processes and dishes. It's not surprising to learn, when you see them, that the man had worked as a graphic artist and his strips had been featured in the London Observer before being published in book form.

How appropriate that the cover was designed by a French man, Jacques Dehornois, in Paris. Although not the prettiest design when viewed today, I really admire it; trying hard as it does to look like the window of an authentic French bistro rather than a book.

Related trivia I know about Deighton:
In my favourite film of all time, The Ipcress File, you can see Deighton's cookstrips pinned to a post in Harry Palmer's kitchenette and when Palmer seduces Courtney with his culinery prowess and cracks an egg into his frying pan with one hand, Caine was unable to do it so the hand you see is in fact Deightons.

Two conversion dials

These are great. There's something about their complexity but also just how useful thay are. They apeal greatly to my technical side.

Penguin Education

Much has been said lately about the cover designs of the Penguin Education series, largely designed by Derek Birdsall and his Omnific studio; what with the publication of his Notes on book design, Penguin by Design: A Cover Story by Phil Bains and a current exhibition at The Design Museum in London. Nevertheless, as I'm in Penguin-mode right now, having rummaged through my sadly loft-based collection recently, I feel moved to pay tribute to them myself.

For me, it started with Juniors, which I stumbled across in the bargain bin of a secondhand bookshop in Leicester. I've always liked typographic trickery, so the cover leaped out. So simple and clever, so seemingly effortless. Genius!

I went looking for others and over time found these: Poverty is perfect, with its small, pre-decimal sixpence, not only replacing the "O" but it's even "too little"; Personality, with its highlighted "i", the style of which I personally don't like but can't ignore that it just works; and, Psychology and Religion which, interestingly, is a forerunner to Birdsell's cover design of Common Worship for the Church of England.

Then there's: Ageing and its well burnt candle; the half coloured-in Comprehensive: Half Way There; and Family, with its cunning use of different brackets.

The Econosign

A great boot sale find and a beautiful bit of silver foil script blocked onto a snake skin effect board folder that holds a set of acetate lettering stencils.

Two Penguin Specials

During the sixties Penguin published "Specials" that dealt with topical issues. By their nature, they had to be written and published very quickly. The cover designs were often very strong, again reflecting the nature of the subject matter. The cover for "The Stagnant Society" (designed by Richard Hollis) is brilliant, I think, for a number of reasons: of course, it's conceptually spot on; the graphic element is in such a surprising but effective position; and the title just leaps off the page.

"persecution 1961" was designed by the very great Germano Facetti, who sadly died earlier this year and who was the major force behind Penguin design of this era. Italian born Facetti was Art Director at Penguin between 1960 and 72 and was responsible for commissioning Romek Marber who developed that wonderful grid.

The Independent

This is perhaps not in keeping with the usual ephemeral nature of entires but it just struck me yesterday, when I saw it on the news stand, as just an outstanding and powerful way to get the idea across. It did it for me totally; it stopped me in my tracks and was on my mind all afternoon.

Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera

Can't believe I haven't thought to log this before. It's been sitting on my Mac at work for nearly a year, since I bought it on eBay. I needed it for a photo shoot but the project was shelved. The concept involved a set of images of diverse individuals taking photos of a person facing them, who turns out to be (thanks to a little Photoshop work) themselves taking a photo of the person opposite (a picture within a picture within a picture etc). It was for an "intelligent" call centre, who not only recruited staff of a much higher level of education than your average call centre, but also endeavoured to adopt the persona of the client. Hence a "we are you" concept.

Regardless of all that, what a beautiful camera!

Folded flat, there's little clue as to what it is. The brushed aluminium casing, clad in mock leather is just so very cool. Then, popped up, the contrast is startling; so simple closed, so monumental open.

Helvetia 3

Three more very cool Swiss stamps.

Small is beautiful

Picked these up at a boot sale last week. Not much to say about these enamel badges and pins because it's not their specific subject matter or purpose that makes them so attractive, it's the use of materials and their precision at such a small scale.

Penguin Crime: Ed McBain

There's part of me that is a stickler for consistency and then there's another part that enjoys the intelligent subversion of the rules. That's partly why the Marber Grid era Penguin Crime covers appeal so much. The grid dictates the layout but every now and again you find a cover, like Killer's wedge that tries to break out of the mould, all be it subtly. The line below the author's name has been removed and although the montage below forms part of the image area, the space to the left spills out. On 'Til death, the confetti spills into the title area.

OK, perhaps they're subtle but I imagine when Alan Spain first presented the ideas eyebrows were raised in the Penguin office all those years ago. And I also imagine them saying, "why not?".

Back to my inner stickler; it soon becomes evident that not only did a single designer often become responsible for the covers of a particular author, but the designs often feature consistent elements. In the case of Spain's McBain covers there's the black and white photography, the precinct sign and an element in red - sometime minimal like the red pupil on The mugger, sometimes more prominent like the confetti.

Penguin Poets: Contemporary Verse

This was actually my first Penguin Poet; the one that caught my interest. It's a Stephen Russ pattern and amongst my favourite colour combinations: Ochre, Black and White. The motifs are rather like Emigre's Whirligig font. Like many PPs, this startling design is particularly appealling and whenever I stumble across a copy I find it almost impossible to resist shelling out the one or two pounds that they usually cost.

Ace Prefect

The mighty Ace Prefect, bought from a small stationery shop in NYC a few years ago, is the rightful and true partner of the Ace Jet 170 staple. With its hefty palm contact heal, its sturdy metal body and non-slip, rubber grip underbelly, it fastens like no other.

Bei & Nannini

The best cup from our honeymoon. We'd stopped for some lunch along the way to San Gimignano, I forget the name of the town but remember parking in it's square and sitting outside the nearest cafe. I used the most diabolical Italian to ask if I could have it, made a total idiot of myself, but not only did the waiter give me a clean one, he gave me the matching espresso glass too. He seemed genuinely please that we'd asked for a souvenir from his bar. San Gimignano was too commercialised and over-priced, although this lettering is very cool. The B&N sign was in Cortona (which in stark contrast to SG was a wonderful place).

Czech Match Labels 2

Here's some more of those match labels (as always, click to enlarge); just a selection of oddments really. Others, that I'll post later, form sets.

Penguin Poets: Robert Graves

Talking of repetitive patterns: during the 50s and into the 60s Penguin published their poetry series wrapped in sometimes beautiful, sometimes surprising and always stylish covers featuring such patterns. Without doubt the most interesting and creative patterns (and as far I can tell from the 20 or so Penguin Poets that I've found, the only ones credited to a designer) are by Stephen Russ.

This one isn't credited so perhaps isn't by Russ but is one of the most startling, non-credited covers and as good a starting point as any for what will be an irregular series of posts.

But it's not just the patterns that make these so striking, it's the combination of the ivory coloured, uncoated paper with it's subtle texture; the black black type with the subject set in a "Modern" italic and the credit and publisher set in it's equivalent Roman; that discrete and perfectly positioned star and Tschichold's logo printed in the lead colour; all set within the multi-line bordered label-like box.