Ace Jet 170

Waterworld

 

Oxfam Bookshop, some time last year. Two tattered volumes from around 1910 of technical data relating to the waterways of the UK. Edge to edge text. But…throughout one volume, maps. Flipping beautiful maps.

Annotated with proposals for new works, overprinted with routes, amendments and notable features, the maps looked as fresh and clean as the day they were born.

That overprinted text. Lovely.

 

 

The staff found them tricky to price, with no real precedent, and I actually paid more than they asked for. There's a bargain and then there's fair play.

 

Staples

 

I've just found this saved as a draft. Not sure why I never published it, but here it is, a few years late…

If you dig deep into the Ace Jet Archive, practically back to the very beginning, you'll find mention of a previous trip to New York City.

Then, it was when roaming the Upper West Side that I stumbled across an old office supplies shop with amazing dusty old stationery treasure stashed at the back; old stock, unsuitable for the modern office, that hadn't moved for maybe decades.

That's where I found the small box of staples with 'Ace Jet 170’ printed on it.

Fast forward many years and a return to the city. This time the stationery shop was Midtown — Phil's Stationery. Hope it's still there. The guy in the shop claimed they were the people that supplied the staplers for Mad Men.

A kick in the thread

 

I try not to buy everything I like the look of. Sometimes I just take a quick snap and post it somewhere then slip the thing back where I found it. And then sometimes I kick myself.

These were in one of my favourite charity bookshops. And we're still there when I left. But not when I went back later.

Kick.

Paris in your pocket

 

I've always said that I only really miss two things about England: Pubs and London. We took full advantage of both while we could, wandering and drinking as we went — the perfect way to enjoy a city.

I found this in the Oxfam Bookshop on the Portobello Road and snaffled it up for the surprisingly tiny price of £1.99. I have a weakness for pocket city guides. Imagine wandering the streets of Paris with this in hand instead of your phone. 

 

Visitor to Ireland

I somehow persuaded the family to go the the National Print Museum in Dublin the last time we were down there. They were surprisingly tolerant and displayed unprecedent respect for my personal interests. They even showed a little interest themselves. Remarkable.

Above all the lovely presses, type and print paraphernalia, on the mezzanine gallery thing, was a lovely exhibition of Irish label porn.

NYFlea

 

 

My tidy haul of ephemerality.

Part way between our Styversant Heights hideout and the big city was the Dumbo Sunday Brooklyn Flea, a small, well formed market of vintage goods. A perfect way to spend a morning before heading to Central Park for a family picnic (if a Saturday works better for you, then Williamsburg is the place to wander sinfully amongst the stalls of retro nonsense).

US FDC's and old school bingo cards were a dollar a pop.

Bowne & Co.

 

Bowne & Co. Stationers is billed as New York City's oldest continuously running business, founded as it was in 1775. Luckily for us, it happens to be a print shop.

If you're at the bottom of Manhattan, maybe to catch the free ferry to Staten Island or the not free ferry to Liberty Island, then you might as well take a walk up Water Street either before or after your voyage to buy letterpress prints from the shop and/or visit the South Street Seaport Museum which Bowne & Co partners. You can explore the museum's collections of photography, printing, ephemera, ship models and scrimshaws (carvings on marine mammal ivory) and the shops (there are two actually) sell a selection of irresistible and reasonably priced print porn.

It's a great location too, as you might expect right on the water's edge so there's plenty to see.

 

Ernest Hemisphere

 

 

Have I mentioned I love my job? Actually, have I mentioned what my job is? Yes, obvs, I'm a graphic designer but it would be more accurate to, now, describe me as an interpretation designer. I used to 'do brochures and stuff', now I do 'exhibitions and that'.

We (that is, Tandem) use the term 'Interpretation Design' (a specific discipline that I wasn't familiar with until I stumbled into my current position nearly five years ago) because what we do is much more than exhibition design. It encompasses exhibition design and lots of other disciplines too. As our Lord High Prophet of Interpretation, Freeman Tilden, described it, it is a discipline that encompasses many disciplines.

So now I design exhibitions…and visitor experiences and museums and interior spaces and interior interventions and architectural interventions and environmental interventions and wayfinding and public art and interpretive graphics…all underpinned by principles set out by the main man just over sixty flipping years ago.

Lots of what we do is connected to heritage or cultural stuff. So I often find myself rummaging through the kind of things I would love to rummage through whether I had this job or not. And often I'm lead down tracks I'm not meant to take.

Last week, I was looking for historical illustrated maps and found dealer in antique maps and atlases Barry Lawrence Rudermann. What an amazing image database Bazza has! Ever since I bought my first atlas I've considered the poles to be the finest of cartographic delights. While BLR may have a different preference there is much Pole action to be had.

 

博覧 会

 

I'm sure Expo 70 was a marvellous thing. I've never been to a World Fair – to me they seem like a thing of the Victorian era, full of fantastical inventions, sights and sounds. But of course they are as much a part of the present and the future…and the past…everywhen, really.

Expo 70 was held in Osaka, Japan and was where the USA displayed a lump of moon rock they'd picked up the year before. It's Landmark Tower inspired the designers of the Valley Forge from Silent Running and the site was used to film the final battle between Gamera and Jiger in the Japanese monster movie…Gamera vs. Jiger, obviously.

And then, there were these stamps.

 

Mountain

I can’t tell you very much about Hans Thoni except that he died in 1980 aged 74 and was a Swiss graphic designer. There are a few of his posters online and some stamps he designed. There’s much more online about Finsteraarhorn, the highest and less popular mountain in the Bernese Alps.

It’s nothing personal, Finsteraarhorn is, I believe, a perfectly respectable Alp, It’s just that it’s hard to get to. And I don’t mean ‘no public transport’ hard to get to, I mean it’s in the middle of flipping nowhere. It’s, what we explorers call, “a very very long way away”.

Of course, I’m an armchair explorer really and would much rather scrutinise the results of a tectonic uplift from the comfort and relative warmth of my living room, with or without Kendal Mint Cake…

Thoni’s economic illustration of Finsteraarhorn is as sparse as a mountaineer’s emergency rations after three days of blizzard-bound isolation. I count three colours and really, not much drawing. But everything is just right. Just as it should be.

I’m a little obsessed by this tiny depiction of a very big thing. 

Floral Tribute

Between the years of 1876 and 1890 Justus Oehler's great-grandmother Agnes Leibbrand made 42 flower pressings which she kept in a decorative envelope box and which, after her death, remained hidden away, as if forgotten in a drawer, waiting to be unearthed by Oehler decades later. In the latest Pentagram Paper (No. 46) all surviving compositions are reproduced at actual size and Oehler tells of discovering the treasure in his grandparent's house.

Agnes carefully labelled each piece with a number, a date and a description of the fauna's origin. Oehler reflects on his great-grandmother's meticulous work and on the 19th century pastime, "…an art whose delicate beauty and emblematic floriography reflected the social and aesthetic sensibilities of the time".

It's a touching collection, made all the more interesting by how Agnes seems to have stopped pressing when she got married…as if, perhaps, the activity represented a time that had come to an end. I don't know, the Paper's text is very brief but Oehler wrote enough to trigger thoughts on the collection's significance.

Over 900 Years Tall

In the May 6 edition of Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s Meanwhile (you do subscribe to Meanwhile don’t you?) he featured Jan Tschichold’s The Form of the Book. Amongst the details Daniel drew out of that was what Jan said about “Deviant formats” – formats that don’t work. JT mentions formats that are too big, too wide and too heavy. He doesn’t, fortunately, mention too tall.

[Screen goes all wobbly and we jump back in time].

In the dim and distant and dim past – so long ago, in fact, that no one quite knows when it was – someone or other decided it would be a great idea to put a church on a thirty acre island in the Thames known for its thorny bushes.

By the 10th century (those in the know now know) there’d been a Christian church on Thorny for quite some time although there’s no trace of it today. When Edward the Confessor ascended to the throne in 1042, Thorney’s status as a sacred place was well established and he saw to it that the construction of a new, more fancy church was begun. This grander building – probably the largest Norman church of its time – was consecrated on Holy Innocents Day 1065. And not a moment too soon! Just a few days later Edward made his last confession and departed for that even grander church in the sky.

The Abbey continued to rise in national importance as Kings were crowned and later buried within its walls. Although Edward is credited for establishing Westminster, it was Henry III who imagined what we can see today – partly because by Henry’s day, those pesky French were knocking up some really fancy cathedrals and we all know that kings are covetous creatures. So in 1245, Edward’s church was respectfully (Henry was one of Edward’s biggest fans) pulled down and construction of Westminster Abbey began in ernest. Not surprisingly, the building work took much longer than the time Henry III had on the planet and a whole bagful of kings and queens came and went, each making all sorts of additions and modifications to the plans, before the job was done.

[Screen goes all wobbly and we jump forward in time].

In 1965, the 900 year anniversary of that original consecration was celebrated in a year of events and commemorated in a very tall book that I suspect even Tschichold would have approved of. It's mighty tall but just a few pages in and it makes so much sense. Very tall photos of very tall things give way to very tall text columns and then more very tall photos of more very tall things. When tallness doesn't cut it, the designers (Roger and Robert Nicholson, London) turned to a 90° turn for a wonderfully long and shallow vista instead.

The book should have a fancy and rather audacious dust jacket but my low cost copy had already lost it's coat of many colour. No matter – the modest hard cover with that beautifully positioned and thrifty sans type will do nicely for me.

There's a few copies on eBay I notice and they don't all cost that much. Watch out though, there's a low cost paperback version but the overall design is lovely so even one of those would be good.

Getting under your feet

The latest (and over-sized) Pentagram Paper is a celebration of the ignored; ever-present but invisible to many, the ubiquitous maintenance cover is a hatch to a world below our feet that our feet will never explore. The paper is a collection of reproduced rubbings taken from street covers found around London. It was designed by Marina Willer and printed in dayglo inks. You can read more about it here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Damages

This years Pentagram holiday book records the strange case of the wild dog that sued the manufacturing giant. The plaintiff, one W E Coyote, disgruntled by the poor performance of products purchased from the defendant, the Acme Company, sought damages for loss of income and  personal injury suffered following the use of the afore mentioned items.

With supporting diagrammage and wit, it's a very funny little book. The text, by Ian Frazier, was originally published in The New Yorker in 1990 and re-purposed here with products designed by Daniel Weir and illustrated by Simon Denzel.

You can read more about it here.

Found Type Friday #103

We've been spending a bit of time in the past lately. Proper, personal, family past I mean. Not surprising. It started with me looking for a photo of my Dad but I soon got side-tracked. This is (mostly) my Mum's old Post Office book (with a brief appearance from Dad's). No forgotten fortune inside.

 

Punctuation

The peaceful land of Punctuation
is filled with tension overnight

When the stops and commas of the nation 
call the semi-colons ‘parasites’

In 1905, German poet Christian Morgenstern wrote a poem, In the Land of Punctuation. It told of an escalating fracas between certain marks and the bloody battle that ensued. It's a grim (and witty) tale.

Now translated into English by Sirish Rao and brilliantly illustrated by Rathna Ramanathan, Morgenstein's poem has a whole new lease of life thanks to Tara Books.

Fingerprints

Tara Books is a publishing co-operative in Chennai, Southern India. A group of writers, designers and artists, they produce beautiful books for both adults and children. Often politically or socially driven, Tara is a fierely independent group dedicated rich content.

Fingerprint, for example, is both surprising and impressive:

When designer and artist Andrea Anastasio visited the United States some years ago, he was fingerprinted (like everyone else) by the airport immigration authorities. This moment — both banal and ominous — stayed with him until it worked its way into his art. The result is Fingerprint, a visual fable that celebrates resistance to state surveillance and control. The artist’s fingerprints, screen printed onto the pages of the book, create progressively complex patterns and sequences, transporting the fingerprint from the world of forensics and law into the freeing world of art and imagination. 

Screen printing the book makes each fingerprint feel like the artist has applied his inky fingers to each leaf; prints stand off the sheet just enough. And where they are overlayed you can literally feel the build up of colour. But as the synopsis suggests, the pages tell a story. At first, one of oppression as a single black fingerprint becomes gradually overwhelmed by others but as the book progresses a more optimistic sense develops. A brighter future.

It's a beautiful, appropriately tactile and thought provocing book.

You can browse Tara's catalogue here.

Storehouse meets Oomph!

We've been working with Storehouse for a few years now. A foodbank, Storehouse take in donations of none perishable food stuffs and redistribute them amongst those that need it most. It's amazing (and quite sad) to realise there are people just down the road from you that really need basic help like this. So Storehouse encourages supporters to buy a bit extra when they shop and to leave it at predetermined collection points (lots are in churches).

There's probably a foodbank near you, it's a concept that's been applied all over the place and is a great way for anyone to make a difference to the lives of people in need within your community. I suppose that's "the thing", they're in your neighbourhood. There's more specifically about Storehouse here.

My colleagure Al is the main man for Storehouse; he's designed most of the stuff we've done. So when Jack from Oomph! got in touch and asked if we had any idea for their cards it occurred to us that a major challenge with Storehouse can be getting supporters to remember, long term, to pick up something to donate.

So Al designed a card and Oomph! produced it for us. It's a great use of the format and Oomph! make it really easy to use the credit card format in new and original way.

Find out more about Oomph! here.

A Creative Exploration

Another Escape sets out to capture the enthusiasm of others. Investigating the lives and pastimes of individuals who throw themselves, with zeal, headlong into the endeavours that they find the greatest affinity with. I get that. For a long time I've felt there's little difference between someone obsessed with, for example, the micro details of type and typography and those preoccupied with the intricacies of craft ales or the plummage of our feathered friends.

One man's nerdy obsession is another's passion and who are we to judge the validity of another's fixation. As the Another Escape team says themselves, "We can take away from these energetic individuals fuel for our own motivation".

In Volume One you'll meet, amongst many others: Jim and Lou from Brighton Miniclick, Amy and Claire from Super + Super, Ace Jet favourites Jane and Ben from Herb Lester, James from Boneshaker and Mike, from his allotment.

Best you go and buy it. From here.

 

Typoretum: A Letterpress Workshop

This is superb: Typoretum: A Letterpress Workshop from Jamie Murphy on Vimeo.

Based Upon a time in the woods

Issue three of GF Smith's Naturalis Works series, designed by StudioMakgill, is all about experitmentalist duo Based Upon:

Based Upon was founded by twin brothers, Ian and Richard Abell. They had long felt the instinctive desire to work together on something important, and when they chanced upon an undiscovered material, their destined collaboration presented itself. They heard about Liquid Metal, a substance that had been developed by an Australian company. It was being used and marketed as a skin to mimic metal, but Ian and Richard saw it through very different eyes. To them, its potential as a creative medium was fascinating.

I'm pretty sure it's the last in the series, which is a shame; each has been great in both design and content. GF Smith's website explains them all.

 

An Older Typophile in the Nineties

An accompanying pamphlet to that Tschichold text, this is as beautifully printed. An Older Typophile in the Nineties was printed using Linotype and Monotype Baskerville types on Mohawk Vellum paper. So it's everything you want from letterpress: a roughness to the sheet, nicely impressed letters, possibly once frowned upon but actually quite satisfying show through and hand tide string binding. It's lovely. You can get your own copy from the RIT Press.

Clay in the Potter's Hand

I can't remember exactly who it was (quite possibly Johnny again) but a year (or two) ago I sparked up a short exchange about the sad demise of the pamphlet. It's a delightful format, the pamphlet. Kind of like a decent sized blog entry in print. A forerunner to the blog really, the pamphlet embodies a small work, inexpensively produced that would often have delivered a text of some importance; a new idea, a political statement or a religious concept.

My all-time typo-hero Tschichold wrote Clay in the Potter's Hand for the 1948 edition of The Penrose Annual. This reproduction of the text forms part of the Red Cat Typography Set and is available from the RIT Press. It's beautifully letterpressed on a Golding No.7 press using (presumably) Linotype set Garamond No.3 (Morris Fuller Benton's version of Claude's original) and hand set Garamont (the italic headings?). A wholely appropriate choice for a Tschichold text; he based the roman weight of his own most famous typeface design Sabon on Garamond's.

Process

Richard Holt is a complete gent. He sent me these two lovelies. As a result, by mid-February, my penmanship will be improved ten-fold. I'll be scribing wistful and poetic correspondence like nobody's business.

Printing Processes is superbly illustrated and, as you'd expect from Ladybird circa 1970, explains with absolute clarity how it was done way back then…when letterpress and the likes of the Linotype/Monotype machines were still fresh in the memory.

Exercise

Just before Christmas, Nat in the studio, got a really nice package from the Italian paper manufacturer Fedrigoni. We all looked on enviously. But not one to let these things lie, I promptly contacted the company and they kindly sent me my own copy. Part calendar, part Woodstock paper range school exercise book style promo, the pack was design by The One Off. And it comes with a pencil and some string; it's lovely.

Chaps

Always feel rather privilaged to receive Pentagram Papers. They're often odd in their subject matter, always surprising, usually delightful; the latest is all of those things.

Cowboys and poetry aren't particularly familiar bed-fellows round these here parts but in the right circles, there is a long heritage of high plains wordsmithery. Designed by Austin-based partner DJ Stout, with Stu Taylor, Paper 42: Cowboy Poetry features stunning photography Jay B Sauceda and the lyrical ramblings of whole posse of veteran ranch herders.

You can read more about the book and the launch party here.

They're lovely…and they don't cost much.

Those ace people over at Herb Lester are now selling luggage tags. Printed onto what looks like Tyvek®, they're lightweight but robust. They're also lovely…and don't cost much.

The perfect accompaniment to…er…something else, this Christmas.

Archive

Has anyone bought the Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design? I was wondering what it's like, in the flesh. Partly because I wrote a few bits of it, but also because it was a long time coming and changed significantly during its development. I also wonder how the formats feels right now, in our diginetworld.

Smaller Than Expected

And it's not even real leather.

Creative partnership Asbury & Asbury have partnered with creative partnership Hat-trick Design to create, in partnership, a thoroughly disappointing piece of work. Your 2013 diary: complete with contact details of people who never call and those you owe money to; a place to note ideas you'll never follow up, a map of roads to nowhere and a page left unintentionally blank.

Lower your expectations and you may still be left wanting.

You may purchase your limited edition diary here.

Oh my!

One Point Oh design beautiful things. And sometimes, they screenprint their beautiful designs onto, oh, say, choppings boards, for example. And occasionally, every now and then, they stick dirty great big stamps onto the chopping boards they've screen printed their beautiful designs onto and they post them to some very lucky people.

Thanks One Point Oh!

International (Dead) Man of Mystery

Just over the road from the studio the shop with no name opened last month. That's not it's real name (that's why I didn't give it initial caps) but that is what it is. I asked the owner. I asked, "What's this place called then?", "It's not called anything", he said, "it's the shop with no name", and laughed.

There's all sorts of stuff in the shop with no name; load's of old stuff. It's not quite a junk shop, the stuff is more carefully selected than that. Neither is it a collector's emporium of rare delights, it's a bit too much of a mish-mash. But it's just over the road and it's perfect for a little lunchtime distraction.

On my first visit I bought two employment cards from the seventies. They were together and were clearly connected. Husband and wife perhaps? Relieved of a couple of quid I retreated back to my desk to absorb my vintage find.

Husband and wife? Hmmm…Well she's a little older. Then close examination revealed the unexpected: Mr and Mrs Employee were actually one and the same person. Not, as I intially thought, a cross dresser. Smart young made adopts the dress sense of a middle aged lady? No, that's not fair, Mr Employee's mop top and cravat suggest a more dapper demeamor. I think our man was really a bit of a dude. And with his exotic, Trinidadian background quite the hit with the ladies.

Temporary Herbster

Truly, madly, deeply honoured to be writing this month for Herb Lester's Journal. During October I'll be offering a smattering of sneaky peeks into some of my favouraite bits of Belfast, opening up with the easily missed but highly evocative Linen Hall Library.

Magic

That nice man Merrick has a new print out. About which he says:

You might be able to tell by now we like round things! This print came about from a brush with some old packaging - the sixties 'Magic Eight Ball' packaging to be precise. A perennial gee gaw, unwanted Christmas present, and collector of dust. Yet, weirdly iconic.

Print comes in A3 (11.7 × 16.5 inches) size. Part of a numbered and signed edition of 100. As ever, the prints are made to the highest quality possible - professionally printed with archival quality inks on 220 gsm watercolour paper, and shipped in the sturdiest of cardboard tubes.

Available here.

Truman Elliot Olivia

New from Fontsmith: This, this and this. With lovely specimens in our post hole.

 

 

"Violin makers do not retire, they fall off their stool".

Yet another reason to be on the GF Smith mailing list: a lovely piece to promote their Naturalis range featuring violin maker Juliet Barker MBE. It's one of a series "designed around our conversations with acclaimed craftspeople…", say GFS, "…They support our belief that selecting the perfect materials is a critical part of the creative process".

It would be easy to just enjoy the design of the piece but it's worth reading too. The text gives an insight into Barker's motivations for choosing her career and her passion for her craft. It reminds me, very clearly, of one of our clients who's in a similar field. A source of frustration for us as designers, his work is full of rich stories, craft and effortless beauty. Unfortunately, he's not willing, perhaps able, to invest in an effective expression of these values.

Anyway, this piece isn't credited but there's every reason to assume it's designed by MadeThought. Looking forward to the next one.

The piece was designed by Brighton-based StudioMakgill (with thanks to Stephen Hamilton for the correction).

 

1966

Applied Works (who, incidentally, do beautiful work) mentioned Retronaut's post of London Film Festival posters from 1957 up to 2010. It's a great collection if, as we agreed, a little patchy at times. For me, the best one was this one for the 10th festival in '66. Would love to know who designed it. Typical of the era's best graphic design it has a feel of Raymond Hawkey. If anyone knows who did design it, please let me know.

Istanbul Deko

Turkish graphic designer Geray Gencer develops typographic posters that focus on social and cultural aspects of his country. Geray explains one of his latest projects:

"Essentially 'Istanbul Deko' is a type design project with a common theoretical base of architecture and typography. It uses an original typeface inspired by the multicultural heritage of İstanbul and designed with details of the city’s historical structures. Then I have produced a typographic poster series about istanbul and its architectural heritage as well."

You can see more of Geray's work on Flickr. 

Collection Cligne Cligne

I hadn't heard from Loïc for a while. Then out of the blue, he emailed an interesting link through. Interesting but not quite AS interesting as what he's been up to lately. A little while ago, after setting up Cligne Cligne Magazine, he met the head of French publisher Didier Jeunesse Michèle Moreau. Interested in Loïc's knowledge of long forgotten children's books, one thing led to another and Moreau asked Loïc if he'd be interested in managing a collection dedicated to "awesome children's books, unknown to most".

He was.

The plan is for Didier Jeunesse/Cligne Cligne to, periodically, publish "lost" children's classics with two done and two or three more to come next year. Here's a little more, from the publisher, about the first two:

Ou est Maman Ourse

Isn’t it ironic? One of the oldest books by Ann Jonas is also the one that looks like it had been drawn this very morning. The editor Susan Hirschmann was already working with Jonas' husband Donald Crews when she asked graphic designer Jonas to create something for children. She devised two books: When You were a Baby and Two Bear Cubs. The latter was first published thirty years ago but, strangely, was never reprinted.

Un Garcon Sachant Siffler

Peter is back and he’s quite unhappy: he can’t whistle! This is the second of seven books featuring this young character written and drawn by Ezra Jack Keats between 1962 and 1972. And what happens? Almost nothing, or rather, a series of small experiences that make childhood rea. In this story, as in the others, the author gives back his own experience of the city as a kid.

Both books are skillfully illustrated: Ann Jonas' work clearly that of a graphic designer; simple black line work and flat colours from a limited palette. Meanwhile, Keats' illustration are beautifully textured and witty.

Colorplan at 40

Forty years after Colorplan was first developed, GF Smith have maked the occassion with a top notch promotional double act: An open bound tabbed reference piece showing the colour range paired with a playful celebration "in three acts". The former is straight forward, a little retro and useful; the latter is ingenius, tactile and witty; incorporating folds, cuts and contrasts. Fantastic work, designed by MadeThought, that continues the paper company's tradition of outstanding design.

And there's beautiful photos, by Lee Funnell, of Colorplan's manufacturing process on the GF Smith website along with some great videos.

Favourite Typeface #1

Franklin Gothic was my first favourite typeface. Way back in…ehum…19…ehum…when I was just starting out as a typographer it was Morris Fuller Benton's no-nonsense 1902 hit that became a staple for my enthusiastic Piet Zwart mimicry. Whether it was a technically correct tie-in, I'm not sure.

So I was delighted to see, a few months back, a homage to the condensed version of the typeface letterpressed by Blush Publishing as part of their Assorted Types series.

More recently, they've printed a sheet for Bauer Bodoni and the voluptuous Clarendon.

Of Screen and Semiotics

Pauline Clancy is an MA student at the University of Ulster studying Mutlidisciplinary Design. Pauline very kindly sent me a copy of her new self-promotional piece: A set of screen printed cards that piece together and reveal her pre-occupation with semiotics. Check out her website or blog for more typographics.

The delayed DC7C from Belfast

 

Last week I got an urgent email from Geneva. They needed a high resolution scan of my Swissair brochure for an exhibition of Swiss infographics. Happy to help I dug out the piece and brought it into work to scan. I was a bit busy so it took a few days to get on to it. An urgent call came in: they were getting impatient, could I get it done over the next couple of days. You know, the scans. The scans I was doing for nothing. For the exhibition I'd never get to. Could I get on with it? Of course! I nipped downstairs to our print shop friends who have a bigger scanner. But still, it could only be done in three sections per side. That was OK, I'd splice them together in PS. No problemo. Nearly done. One more section to join…

Another email came it: they'd found a copy of the leaflet. They didn't need mine anymore.

Now call me a grumpy old git but don't you think, after putting me under a bit of pressure, that was a bit rude? The fact that they'd found a copy, well, if that had been me, and I'd nagged someone I didn't know, who I wasn't paying…I'd have just kept quiet. Let it play out. If I hadn't delivered, it would have been OK. The onus would have been on me.

But I won't go on about it.

Anyway, if anyone would like high res scans of this, retouched and spliced togther, colours adjusted and images despeckled, let me know and I'll share a Dropbox folder with you.

 

Groundwork

I mentioned a week or so back that a few of us were in Belfast's Linen Hall Library for the launch of a book we'd designed. Well, Sam Irwin did it really. I can only take credit for supplying the vintage typewriter he used to tap out the entire text. It was a labour of love and it's a testimony to all his hard work, attention to detail and commitment to the cause that at the launch no one, I mean absolutely no one, mentioned either Sam or Thought Collective. No one.

We were sitting there, a few rows from the back. Smiling through the first set of thankyous, not worrying too much that we weren't mentioned because there was plenty of time left. They singled out all the other parties involved, quite rightly. Made a particular effort to thank the photographer involved. But when the final round came…nothing.

But the thing is, I'm not joking that it's a testimony to to Sam's diligent work that no one noticed the design. That's what we set out to do: undesign it. Only problem is, for that to be successful, it should mean it goes unnoticed. It wasn't noticed. Result.

To get the full story, pop over to the TC blog.

 

Favourite Film as Board Game

Around Christmas a mysterious package arrived at work. I often get brown paper wrapped stuff but it's usually small. Books. This was different. It was big. It was The IPRESS File, the board game. Circa 1966.

Now The IPCRESS File, if you didn't already know, is my all-time, tip-top, favourite book and film so even though I'm a fairly old and grumpy bloke, I felt like squealing like a little girl. It was from Johnny, from Euston, Do You Copy? He'd found it in a charity shop and very kindly thought to send it my way. I've got a few vintage games stashed away but this one is pretty special. So if you're reading this Johnny, thanks again!