Things to Make and POD
The lovely Miss Gemma Leigh recently pointed us in the direction of some ace (and totally official) prints you can now buy, that are taken from the Ladybird books archive [ladybirdprints.com]. Cabinet [picturecabinet.com] is the name of the company behind the venture. They reproduce the archival images on a ‘print-on-demand’ basis through memoryprints [memoryprints.com] and also offer image archival services. They certainly seem to be doing something right, having chalked up an impressive list of clients in a short space of time. The National Theatre [ntposters.org.uk] (the Eqqus poster from the 1970s is pretty cool), the V&A [vandaprints.com] and The Royal Photographic Society are just some of the organisations that very signed up.
in Illustration / Modern Relics / POD / Posters / Shopping
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AR @ NBD is A-OK!
I’m currently on assignment at Nick Bell Design [nickbelldesign.co.uk] where Mr Bell has the most awesome collection of The Architectural Review [arplus.com] magazines I’ve ever seen. They stretch as far back as the late 50s and were inherited by Nick from an architect looking to rehouse his collection. I took the opportunity to photograph a handful of covers which you can see over on [flickr]. Enjoy.
Time Keeps On Slipping Into The Future
Have you ever tried to pinpoint the exact time when you decided you wanted to be a designer, illustrator, blog host or whatever? You you ask me I’ll always cite i-D’s Heroes & Sheroes issue from 1989 [i-dmagazine.com/63] as the main reason I wanted to become a Graphic Designer. Under Terry Jones [wikipedia.org] direction, Stephen Male created a joyous riot of colour, imagery and ideas. Much of the graphic techniques employed came about from messing around in the tactile world of graphic reproduction, pre-computers. A mere two or three years later and everything had changed with the rise of the Apple Mac (I touched on this briefly in the Colophon2007 compendium, ‘We Love Magazines’ [gestalten.com]). It was during this period in time that I was studying Graphic Design at university and one of the first books I remember buying and making my own mini bible was Terry Jones‘ book ‘Instant Design: A Manual of Graphic Techniques’ [flickr], the back cover of which you can see above.
Inside Mr Jones outlined the many visual effects you could achieve with relatively little equipment and a whole lotta pace. These included using handmarks, stencils, typewriters, photocopiers, collage (or ‘montage‘ as he preferred to call it), polaroids and video. I remember finding photocopiers particularly intriguing (in a design sense, I wasn’t some wierdo photocopier fancier. Promise.) and experimented loads with cutting and pasting blown up typefaces all over the place (sometimes tracing and redrawing them with technical pens to get cleaner lines). Results were relatively instantaneous, but most importantly it was really fun.
Unfortunately my book got damaged by a pesky housemate towards the end of my studies when rain came in through an open window and we have remained apart even since, apart from a brief flirtation (with said book, not the housemate) a year or so ago at the Dover Street Market [doverstreetmarket.com] where expense dictated browsing to be the order of the day… until now. I found a copy in Brighton this weekend and we are now reunited. I want to share Mr Jones’ thought on time with you, dear friends. This text is taken from the back page of said book and goes some way to explain why he thought it’s good to consider design as being ‘instant’ in the first place…
“Time is our most precious commodity. I believe you can only live for the moment, learn from the past and work for the future. Time influences the human state of mind; friend or enemy, we make time or we lose it. Our lives are measured by it and history makes us feel guilty when we waste it…. Clocks are monuments to the world’s greatest commodity… Human preoccupation with time stops when we die and one of the greatest epitaphs, ‘I made the time’, is inscribed on the tombstone of the British painter Stanley Spencer… as Manley Buchanan said… ‘Time is running and passing and running so you better all get it right this time cos’ there might not be a next time’.
Side Notes: Steven Heller is a fan of i-D [aiga.org/defining-style-making-i-d]
A very brief interview for Eye Magazine [eyemagazine.com]
in Colophon2007 / Graphic Design / Ideas / Modern Relics / Publications
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Modern Relics: Young and Rich
Cover design for The Tubes‘ album ‘Young and Rich’ by band member, Prairie Prince [prairieprince.com]. Listen to some (only loosely recommended) vintage Tubes here [hushie.com]. A favourite of this man [nieves.ch].
Modern Relics: i-D #14
in Ephemera / Graphic Design / Modern Relics / Publications
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