Ace Jet 170

Fletcher Week Part 7

To polish off Fletcher Week, here's his cover for Wallpaper, one of his last comissions. You may have seen this on the Creative Review Blog a couple of weeks ago (finger on the pulse then!). It's a particularly interesting cover because they left off the mast heading as a kind of tribute to Fletcher (e-cr explains it). Someone commented that it wouldn't make the news stands, presumably because of this, so it was only available through the Wallpaper website or through boutique outlets like Magma.

So that was Fletcher Week. Any good? A bit too much Fletcher? Too much collage?

Back to normal next week.

Fletcher Week Part 6

This is Fletcher's Wonderwall. He explains, in a bit of film, that he designed this for a school and how it could be used as a teaching aid; for counting (How many animals are there?) or for languages (What's the French for this thing here?) and how he imagined it being painted a new colour each year to refresh it.

These images are just details; the actual thing is about 4 x 2 metres. Looks pretty impressive in the flesh.

(That's Jodie peeking through the moth. Still no luck).

Fletcher Week Part 5

There's a surprise, some more collage. Think these and the illustrations below are from Pentagram calendars. Nice.

(Now that's what I call an incisive critique).

Fletcher Week Part 4

A liking for the red stuff, an obsessive nature and some glue.

Fletcher Week Part 3

Mr Fletcher loved a bit of collage (and so do I). The first image above is of his bags of letters. Stands to reason really doesn't it? He had to have them all stashed somewhere but it hadn't occured to me before.

"&drew" is very cunning, but "Stupid" is my favourite.

Fletcher Week Part 2

Look! That's us lot at the Design Museum. I'm taking the picture of course.

Would ramble on foolishly about how great Fletcher was, but we all know that by now so I'm going to cop out and let the pictures do most of the talking. Anyway, it's pretty much been covered here, here and here.

What I will say, briefly, is:

a) We all thought the show was bloody brilliant

b) Fletcher Forbes and Gill looked dead cool in the 60s

c) That Graphis 119 cover shows why it's good to collect stuff

d) Most of his stuff still looks good today

e) I didn't appreciate him fully when he was alive

f) He didn't 'alf do alot of stuff

These points are amongst the reasons why this is probably the best graphic design exhibition you will see.

Fletcher Week Part 1

So last Thursday we took a bleary eyed flight from Belfast to London to see the Fletcher Exhibition. (Up at 3.30am for a 6.15am flight!)

Not surprisingly then our first stop was for breakfast. Because we like their branding, we went to Smith's of Smithfield. Now we like their double bacon and fried egg sandwiches too. Should know, but can't remember, who did the branding (anyone know?) but it's nicely carried through. The place is run by John Torode, the surly faced chef from the BBC's MasterChef Goes Large (although he looks quite cheerful here) and while the fodder was excellent and very welcome, they wouldn't give me one of their ashtrays, which was a bit tight.

Fortified, we jumped on the Tube for Tower Hill.

(By the way, we didn't drink that beer, just spotted it in the bin outside).

Actually, I should add now a very special thanks to Kenney and Mark for paying for, well, pretty much everything.