Ace Jet 170

Urinating Spiekermann Incident

So, it's the interval of last night's KUTV: Libby Carton had over run a little and while the brilliant Chris Murphy (of here and here) tried his best to claw back time we only had a 5 minute "comfort break". Off everyone goes to the toilet. I'm standing just inside, behind the door in a gig-like queue waiting for a free spot when the door opens, bumping my shoulder. And who should poke his head around the door but Spiekermann.

There I am, standing next to the man who's informed my work, who's inspired me, who I've admired for years. What do I say?

There's only one thing I can think of. So I lean towards him, "Corrected you on Typophile a couple of weeks ago". Doe! (But I don't leave it there). "It wasn't Frutiger, it was Avenir...blah, blah, blah".

He doesn't remember. I think I've caught him off guard. Perhaps it's the location. Perhaps it's just the oblique remark. I, for one, am feeling uncomfortable. It gets worse. Suddenly, I find myself standing next to him at the urinals, still talking, still trying (and failing) to get myself out of a hole, trying hard not to look such an arse. And guess what? (And most men, I hope, will be able to relate to this) I can't go. I'm trying to urinate with Spiekermann and nerves have got the better of me.

So I fake it and get out of there - but still talking! I just won't let him go. Across the corridor, back into the lecture theatre. Still talking! Drivvle!

Thank god it's time for him to go on. I nip back to the toilet, get back to my seat, colleagues laughing and on he comes. Brilliant!

Agence Eureka

There's all manner of wierdness over on Agence Eureka. It's a lovingly managed blog of fascinatingly odd stuff.

Rhyme & Reason: A typographic novel

A long, long time ago, I did a bit of stuff on the side for some friends who had a small studio in a less desirable part of Birmingham's city centre, made a little more bearable by the proliferation of cheap but good Indian restaurants.

They had a silent business partner who ran what was then a "conventional" typesetter and who provided their studio space. It was a large, only partially used building and in our more quite/bored moments we would go snooping. And that's when I tripped over a box full of these.

Rhyme & Reason: A Typographic Novel is Erik Spiekermann's fore runner to his widely read book about sheep. It's an equally well written, entertaining and above all informative book about the finer points of typography. To my shame, I lifted a large pile of them. But to be fair, I did it for altruistic reasons and over the years have distributed them to junior designers in need of a little gentle encouragement over their attention to detail.

The reason I'm posting this now is that next week the man himself is in town as part of the ISTD's UK Tour (very rock 'n' roll), so we're off to see him.

There's a good interview with him here.

Personally, when I first read the book, I found it quite inspiring and it helped fuel my enthusiasm as a young typographic designer. I've really enjoyed hearing him speak a few times too and he's one of the names on my list of graphic and typographic design heros.

Imagine then, the uncontrollable excitment I felt, when I dipped into Typophile's Type ID Forum, to discover his incorrect identification of a font. I couldn't resist it; I corrected him (Frutiger? Surely it's Avenir!). I was right but unfortunately, I corrected him in an uncharacteristicly (I hope) pompous manner.

Two Random Penguins

Glad the last post was a biggy because this week is proving to be a slow blog week due to pressure from work (late nights etc). Perhaps a good time to put up a couple of random Penguins.

Not sure if either fit into any series but I think both show exceptional layouts.

He and She is by Bruce Robertson (seen here sporting a fine, William Morris-style beard) who designed many brilliant covers for Penguin's non-fiction sister brand Pelican (which is a rich source of currently loft-based blog stuff yet to be tapped). Robertson was a co-founder of the Diagram Group and, as you will see (one day) from his Pelican covers, was a bit of a pioneer of information graphics. He really did do some ground-breaking stuff and without doubt could knock up a good diagram, unfortunately the Group's current output, while very informative I'm sure, are less than stylish publications. He also wrote this.

I think this cover design is ace. It's so up. All that grass! And the old focal point picked out in black and white trick, which was relatively new in the 60's probably.

Nasser's Egypt isn't credited but reminds me of The Stagnant Society by Richard Hollis, so perhaps there's a link. Great, low position for the photo and interesting, at first glance random but probably hanging off some part a grid, your guess is as good as mine, position for the bird.

View-Master Stereoscope

When I was about 10 I got a View-Master for Christmas. It was beige plastic and came with a few Loony Tune reels. I thought it was ace; 3D Daffy Duck in space. A little while later my Mom came home from a jumble sale* with a battered leather case and inside were two vintage View-Masters, along with a whole pile of old reels.

Now this was something else entirely. To be honest, it took a while for it to dawn on me that these were much more interesting. One View-Master was made of steel with a black enamel finish, a Model C, the other was a brown bakelite Model E.

The reels showed me the world in all it's 3D glory: lots of US landmarks and cities, European capitals, fiords of Switzerland, even pictures of the Queen's Coronation. The age of the slides giving all these places an odd yellow tinge.

As an adult, I found this Model C complete with it's original box and insert leaflet. A little digging around and you can find all you would ever want to know about them here including a really great image library of original packaging.

* Indication of the origins of Ace Jet.

See also the Typepad View-Master.

Texcel Tape

In the old days you got sellotape in tins or, if you prefer, Texcel Tape. So I did a bit of digging around and found a Texcel Tape poster by Herbert Leupin along with lots of others at the International Poster Gallery.

National Trust Hallowe'en

I don't often post current stuff I see but I pass this on my way home every night and think it's brilliant. It's a really nice, simple idea but what I like best about it (and forgive me if I'm stating the obvious) is the effective use of the backlit Adshel site. At night it gives the pumpkin an essential eerie glow.

I presume it's a national campaign for The Trust, with details modified for NI in this case, but if anyone knows anything about it I'd appreciate more info.

With apologies for the less than great pic.

Action Cookbook

Back in July I posted an entry about Deighton's marvellous Ou Est Le Garlic. What I love about his Action Cookbook is how it tries to monopolise on his success as a thriller writer. This is very much a cook book for "real men", published at a time when it was uncommon for men to be seen in the domestic kitchen. You've got to love that sprig of parsley.

As well as excellent recipe strips to help you cook seductive meals for your latest romantic interest, there's good, manly stuff like where to buy the best cigars.

The cover design is by Raymond Hawkey (a friend of the novelists who studied with him at the Royal College of Art), a seminal cover designer of the sixties who also designed Deighton's novels, like my personal favourite...

Gregynop Press

More letterpress loveliness over at the Gregynop Press. Link courtesy of We Made This, who, amongst lots of great stuff, have an excellent Ephemera bit.

Russian Stamps

I feel I've gone off an a bit of a tangent recently, so here's a return to the more normal entry. Whatever else you might think of them, those communists couldn't half design good stamps.

Turner Prize 2006

I would like to explain why I like the Turner Prize in a suitably intellectual way but the simple fact is that I just like a bit of weirdness. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I always like everything. Yes, sometimes it's just too wierd, but more often than not I find it funny or interesting or surprising and sometimes brilliant. I also enjoy the furore.

Anyway, I'd vote Titchner.

The winner will be announced on December 4th, which is good timing because a couple of days later we're shutting up shop, jumping on a cheap flight and flying to London to see the Alan Fletcher show so, hopefully we'll do the Tate as well.

Science and Society

A recent entry on Noisy Decent Graphics linked to a source of vintage rail posters. It reminded me of a job I did a while back: We do a bit of work for one of Northern Ireland's oldest linen producers (they probably supplied the Titanic or something) who had an operation in India. They asked us to develop a piece of promotional literature that their sales guys could use as a leave-behind.

I had an idea to hark back to bygone days of travel and researched vintage travel posters. This one stood out as particularly suitable and I showed the client. They loved it. I explained how we would commission an illustrator to create something in the same style but with modified subject matter.

Big mistake.

Generally, the artists that created these wonderful things were highly skilled and would have spent a considerable amount of time on each piece; in the days when everything took longer than it does today. Our illustrator tried hard but just couldn't match the sheer quality of the drawing. She gave up!

After a momentary panic, it struck me: Why don't we just use the image we'd already shown the client? A little more research brought me to Science and Society. This is a fantastic image library of both photographic work, posters and advertising. Amongst all the other stuff they look after, they represent the party that own the rights to all these old rail posters. They don't even cost that much to license them either.

One small problem: although they thought they held electronic versions of almost everything, and what they didn't have they could find, they couldn't find mine.

I'd found it on All Posters, an american poster site which although has a lot of trashy stuff also has loads of brilliant vintage posters, like these:

We ordered our poster and photographed it. Even though they didn't actually have it on file, Science and Society still held the rights to it, so we paid a modest fee and got a license agreement off them. They were really nice to deal with.

So it all worked out nicely in the end: I was happy, the client was delighted and the piece went down very well. (Oh, and I got another entry for Ace Jet 170 out of it).

Ken Garland

Over on the brilliant Design Observer there's a link to Ken Garland's website. It's largely a retrospective of work carried out by Garland and his studio, some of it dating back to the late fifities and there's some fantastic stuff there.

As well as being a, now, iconic designer of his generation, Garland has been politically active throughout his career; most famously as a devoted supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He believed passionately about using graphic design for the greater good. Read about the First Things First Manifesto here and read it here.

Penguin Poets: Stephen Russ

"I'm not worthy" springs to mind: A little while ago I mentioned that Adam Russ, grandson of Stephen, had got in touch and had very kindly offered me scans of the unbound covers he has framed on his wall. Well here they are. I'm very excited and grateful to Adam.

Poetry of the Thirties, Adam's favourite, is particularly interesting and is a bit of a departure from the more usual* repetitive patterns.

Click on each cover to see them in much more detail.

* "Usual" seems such an inapropriate word.

Who is Ray Fenwick?

I've not really warmed to flickr. Perhaps it's just unfamiliarity but I've found the interface lacks elegance and is clumsy to use. Nevertheless, spurred on by the Trip Press find I went searching for other letterpress-related stuff.

I didn't find anything (or rather, I gave up after half an hour). I did, however, find Ray Fenwick, artist, illustrator, letterer and printer. I feel that I should know more about him, think I've seen his work somewhere else. Fenwick hand draws these fantastic (and funny) typographic compositions, but also has letterpress tendencies. See more here (there's lots to see) and read a bit about him here.

I wish I'd done that...

...and that and that.

If, like me, you dribble uncontrolably at the sight of a nice bit of letterpress then you'd better get a mop and bucket before you take a look at the Trip Print Press flickr sets. Thankfully, I have a wipe clean keyboard.

Special thanks to port2port for: a) pointing this out, and, b) mentioning Ace Jet 170.

Great Pan Bond

Amongst my favourite blogs is an American site dedicated to book cover design. It's dead simple: A cover is posted and comments invited. Recently, a set of covers for a reprint of the classic Bond novels was posted. The designer gave them the pulp fiction* treatment. I commented, but was less than complimentary. In retrospect, I may have been a little harsh but I still think my comments valid. During design development the designer, he explained in an interview, researched earlier editions and you can see that in the end result. Here are some early editions that I have.

* That's pulp with a lower-case "p", i.e. the fiction, not the film.

Pan Books of this era had a clear and strong identity; heavily reliant on well executed, dynamic, full colour illustrations. Personally, I favour Penguin but still think these Pan paperbacks are brilliant. For some reason none are credited.

I've grouped these by editions. You can see how the precise cover design evolved. Don't you think Bond's gun is too small on the Dr No cover? Not surprised to see it bigger on Goldfinger.

Czech Match Labels 3

Haven't posted any of these for a while. Here are 3 odd ones, I'll post some sets later.