Ace Jet 170

The Penrose Annual 1976 Volume 69

For most of my Penrose Annual collecting career, to date, I've concentrated on the 60s. But I've come to realise the following decade has lots to offer. As phototypesetting took hold, memories of letterpress-as-standard still prevailed and also the 70s witnessed some amazing designers at work in various graphic arts.

Paul Piech had began to publish from his private press in 1959, his wood and linocuts full of purpose and protest. Follow that link, from his name, and you'll see what I mean. For this edition of Penrose, he cut motifs to illustrate an article on Caxton as well as being the focus of a piece by Kenneth Hardacre.

Tom Eckersley was in his sixties by now but his poster work was still breaking ground. There's plenty of supporting evidence in this edition to prove that.

A superb piece on the Kelmscott Chaucer gives background on the original and goes on to describe the production of a facsimile copy of the Morris/Burne-Jones masterpiece. I'm going to do a separate post about that.

David Gentleman's here, thanks to Mel Calman who wrote the article which is illustrated with finished work alongside examples of Gentleman's design developments.

As is standard with Penrose, there's a ton of other stuff including an article on the reproduction of old maps and graphic design from Canada – and then the usual technical developments of the day.

I've uploaded more highlights to Flickr.

Sensations of London

Three things converged recently…

We went to London to start with. Haven’t been for ages and it was so good to be back, wandering around the city. Hope to be there again in the summer.

Then I began to read the book I’d been given at Christmas, Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road. It’s a lovely book…well, books really. The volume – the one I have – is made up of the original 84 – a collection of correspondences between Hanff in New York and her antiquarian book dealer at Marks & Co Ltd, at the title’s address – and her follow up, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, an account of her first visit to London, a city she spent years longing to see.

Both are fabulous to read. The first follows a touching and ultimately tragic friendship between the author and the staff of the bookshop. It’s funny and super-charming and a bit sad. In The Duchess, we accompany Hanff, at a mature stage of her life, on her adventure in and around the city. Her fascination for London soon becomes infectious as you experience a view of the city that only a visitor can have.

That’s two things…and neither are the point of this post. The third thing, and the point, is this: Buildings of London, published by Artifice, is another wanderer’s view of London. Roger FitzGerald is an architect at one of the country’s top firms ADP. Working in London, he clearly has a love for it that, though different to Hanff’s in nature, is at least on a similar scale; it’s clear from the pages of his book, that FitzGerald shares a fascination for the city.

The architect’s eye is obviously at work here but what struck me is how it takes the compositions of paint and collage – FitzGerald uses fragments of printed matter in amongst his brushwork – beyond physical structures and into the realm of ambience; they capture the sensation of each place. Paintings of places we visited just a few weeks ago, take me back there. In paintings of others places, I felt a sense of what it must actually be like. They made me want to be there.

Just like Helene Hanff’s book did.

 

You can get a copy of Buildings of London from you know where.

Catch of the Day

Not bad for an amateur: reeled in a one pound Bass…of the Saul variety.

A Shallow and Wholly Inadequate Survey of Classical Record Cover Design between 1959 and 1982

When it comes to vinyl, jazz is my first love. With the exception of one or two important album’s of a more contemporary genre from my youth, it was the jazz LPs I kept at that time when the medium was deemed obsolete.

Obviously, there’s no shortage of cool jazz album covers. Jazz begs for cool covers, like a short black hairy schnauzer begs for a Rich Tea biscuit every night around 7pm…as they say. But when it comes to charity shop vinyl pickings, jazz is a bit thin on the ground. And when I say, “thin on the ground”, I mean as thin as thin can be. Thin.

I’ve only been looking at charity shop vinyl since Christmas (since my family bought me a record player and my interest in spinning black discs was rekindled) and I can’t recall seeing any jazz beyond the softcore Kenny Ball and his Jazz Men kind of jazz.

Classical, on the other hand, is present in abundance. Where there is vinyl, there is classical. If there’s nothing else, there’s probably classical. No jazz. Lots of classical. I wonder why that is? What does that say about anything? I don’t know.

What I do know – have learned – is that when classical music record labels were commissioning cover designs, all the good designers were out to lunch…smoking…drinking…and listening to jazz. Leaving those record companies with no option but to stick a photo of the conductor or, if he's out smoking and drinking with his designer mates, a photo of some vaguely related landscape or some random piece of art on the cover.

 

 

Finding anything more interesting is quite a task. But not, I'm happy to report, an impossible task, as the examples here demonstrate.

Now, I'm not an expert in the field of classical music LP cover design but Prokofiev seems to fair well, inspiring some great cover art or, at the very least, the use of a Lissitzky painting.

 

This cover has nothing but Czechoslovakian all over the back so until I finish my intensive lifelong learning class in that particular language I can't tell you  anything about the top notch cover design. Bartok is excellent too.

 

This one, on the other hand, is by Rudolf de Harak. I wasn't familiar with de Harak but a quick Google reveals…well, take a look. Flippin' amazing!

 

And finally, this absolute triumph from 1964, another from Czechoslovakia, is credited to the mysterious Frantisek Novy who appears to have gone on to become the Pope. Go figure.

 

Beachy

Everyone loves a pebble, don't they? In fact, I would go as far to say that if you don't like pebbles, you don't like life. You are a fool. A fool!

I will concede though that 'pebbles' is personal. My wife, for example, being of pure heart and mind chooses the whitest of white examples. Immaculately cleaned by the violent salty tumult, their chalky surfaces seem quite unnatural to me. No, the impeccable stone is not for me. Tainted by the mess of life I favour a beach gem to mirror my scarred soul.

A couple of weeks ago we were up on Northern Ireland's north coast for a few days. Man, it's a remarkable coast! And with a land-locked upbringing behind me, living so close to the craggy land edge of this island is all the more exhilarating.

A Guide to Creative Thinking

Maybe it's different now but when I set out into the world of creative things I was singularly ill-equipped. Ignorant of techniques, I thought it was all about in-built, natural talent. No one talked about techniques for creative thinking. I'd like to think it's different now. Over time, I stumbled across strategies and I learned, by trial and error, how to approach a problem. Bit by bit, I collected techniques – "I wish I'd known that years ago" techniques. I have them all written down in a little black book that I carry everywhere I go.

Ideas are the single most valuable commodity in the design world so why rely on what you were born with. Why think that's all there is – especially when there's so much more. And if you don't think you're that creative, what then? Maybe, just maybe, you simply haven't worked out how to be really creative yet. 

What you need is some technique. You need to get meta. You need to think about thinking.

John Ingledew's new book, How to have great ideas, brings together many strategies to unblock your creative pipework; to release your shackled genius… 

Commit time to your creativity. Invest in it. The least you can do is read a book or two. Ingledew suggests much more: question, act, hoard, leap, fix, get outside and explore…my personal favourite: Go to the factory. Always, go to the factory. Then sleep, daydream, take a chance; swap, combine. Fail.

Crucially, on page 176, he says, "Understand your process", that's what it's all about really – find what works for you; equip yourself, "To have ideas quickly and repeatedly it's vital to understand which conditions make you personally most creatively productive". Ingledew quotes Tchaikovsky, "If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it halfway, we easily become indolent and apathetic".

 

How to have great ideas: A guide to creative thinking
was published this month by Laurence King.

Hachette Job

'Twas the tenth year of the second millennium whence I happened upon a somewhat modest volume inside which there was to be found, described in line and word, a city so French it is now known by some as…Paris. 

Remarkably, by an unholy coincidence, by fortuitous happenstance, exactly and precisely five years, two months, one week and three days later I chanced upon this quite different and similar bound collection of papers that describes, in word and line, the very same different land of somewhere else. Italia.

You can click on each image for a closer look.

Clan Wars

If you go down to the woods today…then make your way through the trees…and pop out the other side (just like the Ancient Clan O'Neill probably did around the middle of the thirteenth century) you might find yourself (if you happen to be near Cookstown, County Tyrone) at Tullaghoge Fort. 

I've been working as an interpretive designer now for nearly two years. It's been great. Revealing. I've learned all about Irish history and have some grasp of the whole Northern Irish 'situation', something that we can all have an opinion on but can't understand, in a fair and balanced way, unless we have some insight into its origins. Tullaghoge played no small role in Ireland's story – a fascinating story of intrigue, general sneakiness and skulduggery – the stuff of legends.

If there's an overriding thing I've learned over the last two years it's how certain forgotten, hidden or just carelessly misplaced episodes in our collective past can hold their own against the most thrilling works of fiction. In many ways, the job of the interpretive designer is to present these episodes as such – as thrilling works. That's how we approached the Tullaghoge story; a story of conflict, conquest, betrayal and, well, more conflict.

Enter the fabulous work of Will Freeborn. When we looked for an illustrator to help us tell the Tullaghoge story, we didn't want to commission technically accurate historic reconstructions, we wanted to capture a sense of drama…that sense of legend…a ghostly dream-like peek into a sensory past. The illustrations Wil gave us are mean, moody and messy.

The project involves much more than these illustration. It's a whole outdoor visitor experience with landscape architecture and sculptural interventions. Our hope is that it'll feel like a story book brought to life. Not 'Disney-fied' though, it's gritty and, probably, quite mudding – this is, after all, Northern Ireland. By the spring, it should all be finished and I can show you the whole thing.

Rule #1

I was in Belfast city centre just before Christmas, panic buying (as you do) and I stumbled across the Linen Hall Library charity bookshop. I spent far too long sifting through the mishmash of rejected, obsolete and generally disappointing volumes. I was beginning to resent the time I'd wasted, lamenting how I would never get it back and that, really, I'd been quite foolish in getting distracted from my true, less selfish seasonal mission. The last book I looked at was a defaced children's book about bees and beekeeping. Inside the front cover was this inscription.

I think that's my mantra for life, right there. Repeat after me…

In Memoriam

It's coming up to two years since my Dad died and in a way I'm more aware of his presence than ever before. Memories of Dad and tools go together like 'Spear' and 'Jackson'. As those two years have passed I've had numerous reasons to reach for one thing or another. My Dad came from the look-after-your-tools-and-they'll-look-after-you school of hard knocks, as opposed to our use-it-and-throw-it-away kindergarten of fluff.

These tools feel like they are engrained with the imprint of his hands. That bradawl and the carpenter's pincers down below go with the mallet I posted ages ago. That serious looking steal contraption below is a ratchet brace. I have no idea what I'll use it for but I'm itching to put holes in things with it.

I have a friend whose Mum died this week. That's terribly sad. Everyone's experience of loss is different so I can't imagine how he's really feeling right now. He shared a beautiful photo of her and (I hope he doesn't find the comparison offensive) it connected with what I'd already started to write here.

Whatever you believe or don't believe, I think it's a blessing that the memory of our loved ones live on not just in our minds but in the artefacts they leave behind. Photos are vivid – for me, my Dad's tools say as much about him as anything could. My friend is unlikely to feel this right now, with his Mum's passing so sharply in focus, but these things can bring great comfort as they conjure warm memories of the times we spent with those no longer here.

Prequal

I've heard of Insel-Bücherei but until last week I haven't actually seen any. First published in Leipzig in 1912 their aim was mirrored by Penguin in 1935. That is, to bring affordable books to the common man. Their design obviously influenced the Penguin Poets and Scores although Insel-Bücherei's books were hardback, rather like the original Ladybird books, and the spine and cover labels were actually glued on labels.

There's been talk of them in The Penguin Collector but from before I was a PCS member so I may need to order back issues to find out more. A quick Google reveals the extent of Insel-Bücherai issues. I picked these up for £1 each. Not sure that'll be a common occurrence.

There's a digital collection here.

Illumination

According to our go to guy, our trusted fount of all known knowledge, the word ‘illustration’ comes from the latin word ‘illustra’tio’ or ‘illu’stro’ meaning ‘enlighten’ or ‘irradiate’ – ‘irradiate’ meaning ‘illuminate (something) by or as if by shining light on it’.

Thought as much.

Since I became an interpretive designer – since February 2014 – I have commissioned more illustration than I have during the rest of my long, roller-coastering career. I've worked with visualisers before, to capture concepts, but not so much illustrators, to capture stories. As interpretive designers though, a large part of our remit is to bring stories to life – to shine a light on them. To, as the godfather of this discipline put it, 'make the remote, coherent'.

And boy, what a tool illustration is – what a pleasure it is to commission illustration and what a joy it is to see the work of amazingly talented artists. With illustration we can visualise the impossible to see; the legends and maybe-truths. The romantic I-hope-it-happeneds or the horrific how-awful-that-must-have-beens.

With illustration we can capture not just scenes beyond our time and vision but imagined emotions – we can fulfil the primary directive of interpretation, to paraphrase Tilden, we can, 'relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor'.

We can compress and combine ideas – illustration is an extremely pliable tool. But that's not all, illustrators can add more than just their ability to render a scene in a technically acceptable way – they can do it in style – with their own style.

These pieces are by a local illustrator, Sam Hunter. I've had the pleasure of working with Sam a few times since I moved to Belfast but over that last year Sam's done loads for us. And he's done it with a startling panache, a 'flamboyant confidence of style or manner' (seeing as we're using definitions a bit here).

His linework astonishes me. Each piece is more than fit for purpose and more than answers the brief well, they delight. They also baffle me. How does he do it? Sam's illustrations display such flare (such 'flamboyant confidence of style or manner'). How come those squiggly, scribbly lines work so well? It's alchemy to me. Delightful alchemy.

We're using these on outdoor graphic panels that will be installed at points along Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way. The illustrations will bring local legends or unique episodes in history to life. One shows how children used to stilt-walk across a shallow causeway to school everyday; another is about an evil, poisonously spinned wart hog that, it is said, would emerge from the sea with murderous intent; another depicts a town's worst fishing disaster, which happened when a storm was summoned by a rather unneighbourly sorceress.

I could go on but maybe you see my point. Illustration may be one of the simplest tools for interpretation – the discipline is, after all, 'an art which combines many arts' – but it's also one of the most accessible and, perhaps, most powerful thanks to how varied styles can be (we can choose what best suits each opportunity) and how pliable the end piece can be (we can make it do what we want it to do). The key to all this, of course, is the skill and flare of the illustrator.

 

More Scores

A few more scores in now. The patterns are beautiful but every time I pick one of these up I marvel at the exquisite typography. Can't remember if it was Tschichold who was responsible for these – or maybe it was Hans Schmoller – but when I see them I see that photo of Jan in my head. This one.

Scribbling

I've found myself, in recent times, drawing for a living. Not good drawing really but now that I'm an interpretive designer and what I design has changed, the need to capture ideas quickly has become more pertinent. At first, I was a little reluctant; nervous at my ability; rusty. But needs must and two things surprised me: the first was that I wasn't awful and the second thing was that I enjoyed it.

Over the last eighteen months I've used a pencil to design sculptural lectern panels for an ancient fort, I've scoped out interior spaces for a derelict textiles mill and I've conceived physical interactive installations. With a pencil.

Back in the day, when I worked in England, I art directed an old-school marker visualiser to do this kind of thing. Boy could Jeremy draw. I'd poorly scribble an idea in front of him and he'd go away and perform magic with his markers. It was by far the best way to capture an idea – unhindered by the toil and tyranny of so called 'Mac visuals'.

I don't know how much value is given to the ability to draw these days in the world of graphic design. That's not a rhetorical statement, for all I know it's still prized like it used to be. My view of the world is distorted, what with my field of endeavour, being a bit out of touch and being blessed by working with a number of illustrators that can draw the crap out of me. And then there's the tech. Ever new ways to manipulate and originate an image – all those apps!

This all sprang to mind as I pondered why I'm obsessed with making these images on my phone. They couldn't be easier but I'm often surprised by the results. Mere mirrored images take on forms I was not expecting and with hardly a thought – serendipitous dark bits become alien eyes. Sticky out bits become limbs.

I use Diptic and make them quickly in batches once I stumble across source material. These are made from the annual debris found in our greenhouse. The realism of the original stuff, even after it's been abstracted, retains a foot in the real world and adds to the strangeness.

What's this got to do with drawing? Maybe not much but maybe a bit. Perhaps in the future we'll hark back to these days and lament the demise of Diptic or Brushes or, dare I suggest, Photoshop – because we'll be originating and manipulating images in all sorts of new ways. And it occurred to me that we're just using a tool to make an image. You might choose a pencil, you might choose a stylus. Messing about with a photo and Diptic is a bit like doodling with a pencil. It's fun, uses little brain power and can reap surprising results. It's not unlike what Alan Fletcher used to do, only he used scraps of print.

Extract No. 214/167

Popped into my favourite secondhand bookshop this morning.

Who knows what you might find?!

Shelves of partly thumbed, half read chick-lit and abandoned Harry Potters. Classical vinyl and the same reference books that were there one, two, four, eight years back. Series' on popular art and travel books for everywhere except where you want to go.

An OS Extract Sheet of Salisbury.

Where I've never lived.

 

 

The Hounding of Baskerville

The new Pentagram Paper is out.

Back in 2012 American film director Errol Morris posted a quiz online in The New York Times. On the surface it appeared to be testing whether the participant was an optimist or a pessimist but really Morris was testing typefaces. He was toying with an idea: does the choice of typeface influence the credibility of a statement. Well of course it does. Anyone half interested in typography knows it does but Morris approached the task anew and concluded, rather precisely, that the most 'believable' typeface is the one from Birmingham, my home town.

I've always liked Baskerville. Not because it's from the city of my youth, but because of those lovely wide capitals, those round C's, O's and G's; the forthright stroke contrast; and those cheeky italics. Maybe, unknowingly, it's because of the authority that comes built into the design.

Fuelled by his findings, in the Pentagram Paper version, Morris dwells on Mr B. In Chapter 4 he takes a spin around the life and times of the man who, it turns out, was not too popular in his day. Baskerville had made his money in japanning and spent his spare time on his more calligraphic yearnings. Shacked up in his mansion with Mrs Eaves, JB indulges his love of the printed page while outside his reputation was being sullied. His republican views were not popular, nor was his atheism or his sleeping arrangements. As Morris reports, even after his death, "Baskerville stands accused of most everything: priggishness, arrogance, immorality, even illiteracy." – apparently the badly dressed man's correspondents were grammatical disasters.

Baskerville died in 1775 and his house was left to Sarah Eaves. After her death it passed into new hands and in 1791 it was destroyed by what seems to have been slightly ungracious party goers who got totally pissed in the wine cellar and set fire to the place. Several singed bodies were found in the remains.

The story continues, as does the cursed connected bad luck but I'll stop there because I need to take our hound for a walk.

It's a most interesting account with Ben Franklin, Voltaire and Beaumarchais all playing their parts perfectly. Although it occurred to me, right at the end, that the whole thing might be Morris taking his test to a whole new level. Perhaps the PentaPaper was just 76 pages of bullshit, beautifully typeset in Baskerville to see if anyone would respond to it all, say in a blog post for example, convinced of its validity.

I bumped into Alan Fletcher in Cortona…

Thirteen years ago we honeymooned near to Cortona, in the Italian province of Arezzo. We were staying near the top of an adjacent hill and most evenings would drive down from our love nest and up into the birth place of Futurist artist Gino Severini. Cortona was also the setting for Frances Mayes' 1998 International Best Seller Under The Tuscan Sun which was adapted into the damn awful film of the same same. Mayes must have been raging. I didn't read the book but I did eat the peach tart that Karen made from Mayes' recipe and it was excellent.

About four weeks ago we went back.

Cortona was and still is a beautiful hill top Tuscan town. It's busier than it was thirteen years ago, maybe a little more highfalutin, café prices a little higher. The main street has a few new shops including a fascinating den of objet d'art and ephemera. Mostly way out of our price range but I did fork out a handful of euros for two maps, neither of which featured Cortona but nevertheless held cartographic delights amongst their folds.

Both from the Touring Club Italiano, I can't find a print date on the older sheet but the younger espresso-stained sheet is from 1967 and comes complete with a pre-Pentagram Alan Fletcher designed Pirelli ad on the back. The ad was first seen in 1962 when Fletcher brought his tyre company client back to the UK as he joined up with Forbes and Gill.

I was checking out my facts when I stumbled across the Alan Fletcher Archive. Well worth a few hours of your time. For me it all brought back memories of that other trip.

Millennium Falcon

I don't really go in for Penguin's Peregrine series. The books are too high-brow for the likes of comprehensive school educated me and I've never really felt that the cover designs hang together or stand out that well, unlike their aviary-mates. But Graham Bishop's cover for Y4 (Shakespeare's History Plays), first published by Peregrine in 1962, caught my eye and makes me think further investigations might change my mind. '62 was the year Peregrine's were first published, The Penguin Collectors' Society's Penguin Companion describes them as, "uncompromisingly academic", AKA "a bit dull". To start off with they were all about literary and historical criticism then in the '70s, the focus turned to more sociological matters, AKA "still a bit dull".

OK, "dull" is probably quite unfair but what definitely isn't dull is that lovely mark by the masterful Hans Schleger. If you're quick you could pick up a used copy of Pat Schleger's book on Hans for a ridiculous 98p on Amazon.

Houston, we have a problem…

They said it couldn’t be done. They said, it was impossible. They said that 'The Thing' could not ‘travel’ to 'The Place'; that it could not happen. It was impossible.

Even now, some claim that it did not happen. They claim that it could not have happened. But let me tell you, with complete certainty, that it did happen. I know. I was there. I saw it.

Yes…the postman really did post a commemorative 45” single from 1969 through our letterbox. A letterbox, notably, not big enough for this vintage News of the World give-away. A letterbox that measures less than the requisite 7” across, at its widest point.

So how did he do it? I here you ask. HTF? (As the younger generation might abbreviate). How was it possible to bend the laws of physics, to pervert known science – to make something so big, fit through something so not big? How?

By bending it. By fecking bending it.

 

But this was no flexidisc, oh no. This disc did not flex. Or bend. It did not bend and it did not flex. It did not fold and it did not contort. It did, what it had to do. All that it could do.

It fecking broke.

We can send a man to the moon. We can record the account of that journey and we can press that account into a disc of plastic to be played back using a turny thing and a needle. We can package that disc of plastic inside a printed account of the remarkable happenings of that time. We can slip both disc and leaflet into a printed space map depicting the journey made all those years ago. And we can stick all that stuff into a specially manufactured glossy card sleeve with a moon boot on the front.

But we can’t post all that shit through a hole smaller than it without something happening that is not supposed to happen. It's a scientific fact.

[Report Ends]

About a Buoy

For the last lots of months I’ve been immersed in the wild and wind-sweaped world of the Irish lighthouse. It’s been a challenging project, to say the least, and has involved many varied interesting things and not much time.

During the research period, I got my hands of a copy of Brown’s Signal Reminder – essential seafaring documentation. Now I can semaphore, code like a Morse, run alphabetical flags up my rigging whenever I feel like it and, crucially, harmonize my system of buoyage.

Found Type Friday #104

Well, it's Friday so why not – the last FTF was way back in January 2014. As Ms. Fili knows much better than I, Italia is awash with typographic joy. If you follow me on Instagram you'll have seen these and more, but I think they're worthy of another showing.

Cross

In Umbria €3, after a little accidental haggling, gets you a Nurse/Nun's vintage Red Cross ID card at the local flee-sized flee market that you accidentally pass on your way to buy your hungry family breakfast. Printed interestingness aside, the photo adds a whole other dimension to the ephemeric provocation: Who was this Nun/Nurse/Nurse-Nun? I don't know. But I do know my family is hungry so I'd better get a move on before they twig I'm taking too long.

Colosseo

This time last week it was the day after we'd caught the train from Trevi, in Umbria, to Rome. The 6:42 to be precise. It's no small thing, getting up so early when you're on holiday and generally haven't awoken from your vocational slumber until after eight but we did it and by that precise time we were settling into a poorly air-conditioned carriage. I'd packed books for everyone and breakfast that no one liked so we were sorted for the two hour, nine minute journey.

Upon our arrival we wisely decided to flout all advice and ignored the tourist buses, there to carry you around the ancient city in comfort whilst on the streets the extreme heat cruelly beat down on the over-heated pedestrians, in favour of being pedestrians.

The advantage of our strategy was that we got to see things you don't get to see from the bus; the back street stuff which in a city like Rome is not your run-of-the-mill back street stuff. We also got very sore feet.

For our first destination, after arriving at Roma Termini, we high-tailed it over to The Coliseum (or is it Colosseum?), Rome's most obvious and top old spot. I assume that most people that have been to Rome have been to The Coliseum. I've been in the city before but that time didn't get off my hire-scooter. The Coliseum is old. OLD. And big. There's lots of old stuff around nowadays, and there's older stuff than The Coliseum that you can go see, but maybe not that many things that are both as old and as big.

Before, during and after our visit I read up, which really helped. And I was struck, as we strolled through the ancient archways and that, by how this thing had survived nearly two thousand years. It's heyday was quite short-lived really. Conceived about half way through the first century AD and developed over a number of decade, by sometime around 523 AD, the great amphitheatre was no longer the stage for death and glory it was originally conceived for. Largely because Rome had become Christian and battling savage beasts was just not very…well…Christian.

After that the building was repurposed and pilfered – at times looking more like a building site or quarry. Materials were removed to be used for other constructions and artefacts were snatched.

But somehow The Coliseum prevailed so we can explore it's millennia-old corners and crevices today. 

We were quite fortunate in that we found ourselves at one point standing next to another tourist who had either done some serious homework or was an academic of such matters and we followed him, stalked him really, listening in to his insightful descriptions of the bloody and/or theatrical spectacles performed when The Coliseum was in its prime. Yes, there were all those gladiatorial shenanigans going on but the space was also used to present more narrative-based performances, with elaborate sets, such as mock hunts with exotic beasts shipped in as unfortunate and unwitting prey. Or so our unknowing teacher informed us, as we shadowed him.

I've thought about The Coliseum a lot since last week. We walked down corridors that were there nearly two thousand years ago – that's practically biblical. I've had similar feelings in the less developed corners of Greek islands, where time feels like it's stood still, but The Coliseum is different because it's an intricately and intelligently designed space in the heart of a sprawling metropolis.

I bought this book in the gift shop. It's really nice. Spaciously designed with just enough content for the novice to consume and enjoy. Just €10.

Large Output

We're just back from none of the places on these particular maps. We were in Umbria. Under the 38°C rays I had plenty of time to contemplate life, the universe and orange coloured drinks served with salty snacks. In that delightful and alien environment I had a thought: I'm going to start blogging again. Not that I'd actually, really, formally stopped. But I had drifted away, got side-lined, became distracted. By life and children and work.

We came back with a bunch of stuff worth capturing in the digital form so I'll get it up here over the next week or so.

 

 

 

 

These maps are from a German atlas, from 1958, that I picked up a little while back and have leafed through during occasional spare moments. I think the photos are a bit dodgy because I just used my phone but it's really the colours and diverse cartographic styles that interest me most and the images capture those details reasonably well.

Field Work

I went back to get this last week. About two or three weeks ago I saw it in the Oxfam bookshop, Instagrammed it but left it on the shelf. It haunted me so the next time I was in the neighbourhood, I secured it with two and a half pounds. Published in the mid-sixties, the cover design is, sadly, uncredited. 'Sadly' because it's been so thoughtfully crafted, I'd love to know who did it: The way that type on the cover lines up and then how it's stacked on the spine; the ever so clever diagrammatical design; the careful choice of colours…so thoughtful.

Mountie

I tend to keep my stamps loose or mounted onto small white cards that I file in a box. I'm fighting the conventional and accepted forms of stamp collection/preservation, in my own small way. Maybe one I'll curse my chosen path. I think I'm going to frame these and leave them to the ravages of everyday light attacks.

Physics | Weaponry | Chemistry

And with 'Physics' that's the first series complete. The New Illustrated Library of Science and Invention was published by Leisure Arts during the first half of the 1960s. Designed and produced by the astonishingly skilled but scandalously under appreciated (in print) Erik Nitsche, it was released in two series of 12 volumes.

They are beautiful books. Striking full bleed image dust jackets contrast with elegently foil-blocked cloth bindings. The typographic layout inside is rigid but quiet, allowing the diligently handled content to sing out: Cleverly positioned cut-outs, revealing diagrams and dramatically framed photography all contribute to the visual feast.

Nitsche's other work for General Dynamics is equally astonishing. In fact, a quick Google will deliver an amazing array of Nitsche fruit. I'm waiting for the monograph – someone MUST be working on it.

 

Snippets from my collection are all mixed up here.

You can read Steven Heller's article on Nitsche here.

Or Rick Poyner's here.

And another article here.

Or just look him up on Pinterest.

 

The Penrose Annual 1973 Volume 66

 

There's a few more photos here.

Dipticstagram

Photoshop it ain't…But I love seeing what you can do with limited resources. In this case my phone, Diptic's pretty rudimentary editing functions and Instagram for some subtle colouration.

Design and Content

Way back in 1999 I was reading Design Writing Research – Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton's collection of essays on graphic design (and also the name of their design practise at the time). This was the first time I'm read anything from either author – to a large extent, it was the first time I'd enjoyed writing of this kind. It was Lupton's name that had drawn me in – I wasn't so familier with Miller – and semi-youthful enthusiasm for the subject (I wasn't that young) drove me on to consume both author's nuanced thoughts and ideas. It was full of insightful articles that helped me view the discipline of design in a more informed way.

That same year Abbott Miller joined Pentagram and slipped off my radar. Well, that's what I thought. His new book, Abbott Miller: Design and Content reveals a slightly different perspective. It turns out, I've been well aware of Miller's work throughout the last fifteen years, I'd just been missing the credit.

Written and designed by Miller, Design and Content shows diverse and intelligent design; mature work that demonstrates both masterful visual creativity and skilful wordsmithery – an essential and balanced approach that can be sadly under appreciated by those with a bias towards one or the other.

Miller and his team have worked across many specialisms which Design and Content bears witness to. Projects include branding, print, editorial and exhibition design and features collaborations with artists like Yoko Ono, Philip Glass and Nan June Paiik. Miller's work is introduced by Rick Poyner and includes essays by Miller and Lupton – and converstations with fellow Pentagramers Michael Bierut, Eddie Opera and Paula Scher.

It's a handsome volume too.

Wheat Germ

Everyone's got it, haven't they? It's a piece of graphic design history and a super-fast/low-cost read. And a useful reminder of what it's all about; I for one benefit greatly from this kind of reminder, distracted as I can be by technology and the latest this and that. Rand's "Thoughts on Design", first published in 1947, is like the Hovis bread of the design world, "As good for us today as it's always been". It reminds us, succinctly and intelligently, of the importance of study, observation, relevance and purpose; the nutrients of good design.

Grafica della Strada

For over twenty years Louise Fili has been snapping away at Italy's signage. 440 of those photos have now been wrapped up in a rather handsome hard cover and published. Grafica della Strada celebrates the display typography of her favourite European destination.

No Jacket Required

Secondhand Bookshop loiterers will relate to this:

I was at a nearby National Trust property, mooching around the secondhand bookshop, when I spied a scruffy oddity. A strangely tall volume wrapped in an interesting elk-based photo dust jacket that was topped off with a nasty piece of outline type.

If it wasn't for the unusual format I'd have passed it by but it was poking up, head and shoulders above the other odds and ends. So I did the thing you do – we all do it, don't we? – I slipped its jacket off.

Boy am I glad I did.

Mortices and Markings

I've got this side project on at the moment; a writing project. It's taking me flippin' ages to be honest but it's bringing me into contact with some really interesting people. People I have to interview, about their jobs. So far, I've met a few people in the film industry, a basket maker, a theatre lighting technician, a set designer and last Friday, a joiner working on restoration projects for the National Trust. We met in his workshop. His workshop made of wood, that smells of wood and is full of tools…and wood.

Now you may remember, I have carpentry in my blood. Sawdust runs through my veins. The sight of a vintage Spear & Jackson saw or a handsome flat blade wood plane is enough to make me reach for my beechwood mortice and marking gauge. It's THAT exciting.

Designers, writers, coders; we're all making stuff. We all manipulate materials – either physical or metaphysical – chiselling away at things, dovetailing seperates into connecteds. Sawing things into sections before shaving away layers. Drilling into the undrilled. Finely sanding before waxing and polishing.

Whether it's words, pictures or commands, it's not that different to wood. Not really. It's just less natural, less grown. Manufactured material instead of harvested material. A few more steps away from the natural order of things.

I think the reason why woodwork has prevailing appeal, to me at least, is because of its proximity to nature and our more instinctive side. It's hunter gatherer stuff and once we've grown weary of the glossy mass produced world, the hand made and downright wonky, if I have anything to do with it, tuggs at our hearts.

Tooled Up

You can’t hope to improve, significantly, as a designer by merely practicing design. You’ll get better at Photoshop as you find your way around its hidden depths, your typography might creep forward with exposure to its challenges, you might have a natural grasp of colour, but progress will be slow unless you look further afield for your influences. Latching onto a sage-like mentor of some kind or bathing in the foamy mix of design history are hard to better.

Same goes for writing. Writing in isolation is unlikely to lead you along the twisty-turny, bramble-blocked path that the writer has to follow in order to hone his or her wordsmithery. Better to latch onto a sage-like mentor or bathe in the foamy mix of literary history.

Maybe, even, read a book about writing.

A friend of mine, clearly trying to tell me something, sent me Roy Peter Clarke’s book Writing Tools at Christmas. Never has a book sustained my interest so effectively. Juggling a few volumes on unconnected subjects, my pace through Writing Tools has been gentle. But that’s just heightened my enjoyment. I’ve been taking each chapter, each strategy, slowly. And with each comes a beautifully useful nugget of writing wisdom.

I’m a better writer for reading Writing Tools.

Postcards from the Hedge

There I was, minding my own business, searching the outer reaches of the digital realm for post-1922/pre-now images of Dublin's O'Connell Bridge and where should I find myself? Only on John Hinde's really quite marvellous postcard archive, that's where.

Interpretive design is a great field of work for a graphic designer. By it's nature you're more than likely to be delving into the printed past for artefacts, references or relics. There's almost always some moment in the past (or for that matter, the present) that leads you to some interesting image, design or whatchamacallit.

I'm all over Dublin at the moment: either fighting the damned oppressive British or annoying the intolerant Irish; ousting uncooperative tennents or trembling at the might of those inconsiderate and really quite rude Vikings.

And, as I've mentioned before, it's hard not to get distracted by the other stuff you pass or trip over along the way.

Pot Heads

Back in November 2012 I posted about Faythe Levine and Sam Macon’s book, Sign Painters. It’s a fabulous book, you should probably buy it. But the book was really a mere forerunner, a prelude, to their film of the same name.

The film, like the book, is a celebration of the challenged world of hand-painted signs in the US. As it says on the movie’s website, “What was once a common job has now become a highly specialized trade, a unique craft struggling with technological advances”.

With contributions from some of the trade’s most skilled practitioners and characters, Sign Painters is beautifully filmed and gives brilliant insight into a hidden culture of craft, adversity and precariously balanced paint pots.

The book is superb – the film is even better. You can watch it now online here. 

The Penrose Annual 1965, Volume 58

I shouldn't reveal my sources really. But then this was an exceptional case and I don't expect it to be repeated any time soon. 99p. OK, plus £5 postage but still, 99p. Ebay. Expect to pay more. I could not believe my luck. 99p and with it not only did I get Volume 58 but I also completed the 1960s section of my collection. Probably the best era for Penrose…maybe the best era for the graphic arts in general (at least from an historical point of view).

Process

In The Design Method Eric Karjaluoto meticulously and generously details the journey he and his team at smashLAB follow through the creative quagmire. From a project’s early research stages; through strategies and cunning plans; past top-level conceptualisation and onwards, far beyond the edges of iterating, prototyping and more iterating; Karjaluoto’s design methods, rightly, leave little to fortuitous happenstance or creative genius.

It's tough out there. When you’re being paid to deliver great creative, on demand, everyday, you need a system. You need a design method; to manage the process, your client, your employer, your stress levels and your sanity. Methodology guides you through the blocks, around the obstacles and under the aquaducts of distraction.

I’ve introduced methods and systems into studios. Some have even worked. Some have been welcomed, some rejected. Others have been fought and a few have been embraced. I believe in processes because I’m not a creative genius; I’ve experienced the pressure and stress of demand. Due diligence has helped me to deliver sound creative – on time and to budget. What’s that thing Einstein said? About spending most of his time thinking about the problem and only a tiny bit of time thinking about the solution. The Design Method is all about that sort of thing. It's about following sensible procedures to take care of the business of design.

The Design Method describes more processes than you may ever be likely to eat. In doing that it might just help you find the ones that will work for you. It touches on things you’ll know, that’s what it did for me – Karjaluoto describes much that I already do, more that I wish I did do and a lot that I know I should do. On top of that it did one really great and helpful thing: it reaffirmed my faith in systems.

The Design Method provides the designer with the opportunity to find order in the creative mess. Not to stifle or restrict but to enable and liberate. If you’re starting out it could prove especially helpful – although it's likely to require discipline and diligence if you are to benefit most from what it offers. If you’ve been at it for a while, it might help you fine tune how you practise your craft.

There and brack again

Spring. And with it returns more opportunities to scratch around the shoreline for discarded bivalve mollusc casings; washed up from their brackish habitats for macroscopic scrutiny.

National Library of Ireland

We're just about to start work on a project for the NLI. In preparation for this I dived head first, into their digitised archive – their online catalogue – of print material. They have loads of stuff archived and much more still to do. It was hard not to get distracted. So I did…get distracted I mean.

Tilden

One of the first really interesting things I learned about the discipline of interpretive design was that it has principles – and I love a principle: fundamental, underlying, guiding ideas. The six principles of heritage interpretation were first expressed by Freeman Tilden who is basically the father of interpretive design. He is The Man.

A couple of weeks ago I delivered a lecture to first year IMD students, introducing them to the idea of art direction. When I was preparing it; trying to find ways to describe the art of art direction; one of Tilden's principles sprang to mind. All six go like this:

1. Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.
2. Information, as such, is not Interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based upon information. But they are entirely different things. However all interpretation includes information.
3. Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical or architectural. Any art is in some degree teachable.
4. The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.
5. Interpretation should aim to present a whole rather than a part, and must address itself to the whole man rather than any phase.
6. Interpretation addressed to children (say up to the age of twelve) should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults, but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.

Number one is brilliant. In number two, the idea that interpretation is "revelation based on information" is equally powerful. But for the task at hand, number four jumped out. Paraphrasing somewhat, I concluded that "the chief aim of art direction is [in a way] to provoke".

Patatap

@fehler just tweeted this (via @xz). Full screen version here.

Historic Overlay

Just for the record – and in reference to yesterday's post – I found what I was looking for on the marvellous Ordnance Survey Ireland website.

Accidental Ohio

I mentioned a while back that I'm working in a studio that specialises in interpretive design. There aren't really that many specialists in the UK; in Northern Ireland, Tandem is the only one. I'm there for just a while and the specialism is new to me – but I have to say, it's very interesting work.

The discipline of interpretive design is, in itself, interesting and I'll say more about that another time. What's immediately interesting is the material it brings you into contact with – whether by chance or by design (pardon the pun).

Earlier today I was trying to find a map of Dublin, circa 1916. What I found was an online archive of historical maps of Ohio (there's a Dublin in Ohio) from the early part of the twentieth century.

If you click on these snippets of mappage you'll be able to scrutinise the beautiful details.

 

Earley Works

We were researching illustrators recently, for a project we might be working on. Can't say much about the actual project but it could be amazing. While I was digging around, I remembered Eyvind Earle.

Artist, author and illustrator, you might know Earle's work for Disney from around the 50s; he worked on background illustrations and styling for things like Sleeping Beauty.

Earle died in 2000 but he left behind a stunning legacy of artwork. You can see lots of it here and  watch a revealing autobiographical video. I think it's his serigraphs (screen prints) that are the most remarkable. Astonishing work.

Rolf

It was ages before I got around to buying Lars Müller's Lufthansa + Graphic Design – edition 05 from their A5 series. And I completely missed edition 06: HfG Ulm. Well, I wasn't going to make the same mistake with edition 07.

This is from the Lars Müller website:

This book is the first monograph dedicated to the designer Rolf Müller who is known above all for his design of the visual identity of the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Shortly after graduating from the famous Ulm School of Design, his former professor Otl Aicher entrusted him with this work, which set new standards in international design. In parallel, he established his design firm Büro Rolf Müller in Munich.

On the basis of selected projects, the book attempts to sketch the mentality and methods of his design: For nearly four decades, the firm developed corporate identities, books, magazines and signage systems on the highest level. The firm’s projects include the visual identity of the City of Leverkusen, forged over several decades, and the magazine HQ High Quality for the company Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, of which 39 issues were published.

As a storyteller and system designer, Rolf Müller has left his mark on international design history with his work. His stance has had a decisive impact in shaping the way in which today’s communications designers view their profession.

Hard Graphed

It's as if I planned it. Following up the Avant Garde emblazoned presentation pack with Unit Editions simply marvellous compact version of their Herb Lubalin book. For a while, maybe five or so years back (maybe more) graphic design was all about Herb's most famous fonts, AG and semi-self-titles ITC Lubalin Graph. OK, that's a considerable exaggeration but the two fonts were pretty prominent for a while.

Way back in the mid-seventies it was the same. Good times for the International Type Corporation, co-founded by Lubalin at the beginning of that decade. The distinct thing about ITC was its house style. Even when re-issuing typefaces based on historical models, like Garamond, they imbued the design with a distinctly large x-height. Purists would argue that ITC Garamond is NOT Garamond. Controversial stuff.

The Unit Editions book is great; richly capturing the life and beautiful work of an important figure in typography and graphic design.

1975

I'm immersed in heritage-related projects at the moment. It's really interesting. The studio I'm working in has two "interpretive planners", who know tons of history and that. They're fascinating. It's all quite different to what I'm used to but refreshingly so. Lots of challenges; I'm covering for a super-talented creative with a real passion for history – formidable shoes to fill. Anyway, I was reminded of this, from when I was…oooh, about knee high.

It was during this year that SAVE Britain's Heritage was created, "the most influential conservation group to have been established since William Morris founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Beards", or something.

Knoxville

It was 1982…