Graphic Journey Blog

Things I like...

Pure graphic design. This poster by Werner Zryd, produced in 1964 for the Swiss Alpine Club for an exhibition on mountaineering.

Things I like...

Image courstesy of Paula Snell

Unadulterated graphic design at its very best. The beautiful Canadian National Railway symbol designed in 1959 by Allan Fleming (1929 - 1977) while at Cooper Beatty.

Allan Fleming

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On one of my resent second hand bookshop trawls I stumbled on these two delightful book jackets …

The above, from 1963, was designed and photographed by Larry Carter and featured in the very first D&AD annual. I love the fact that it uses just in one colour and utilitarian typogrphy. Carter makes the maximum from the production restrictions. The image, using macro photography, gives a wonderful graphic feel and reminds me of the opening titles of To Kill a Mockingbird released in 1962 and influenced many graphic designers at the time…

Above Stephen Frankfurt's ground breaking film titles.

The other cover is by Nicholas Thirkell, my one time business partner at CDT.
Designed in 1967 when he was at McMillan publishers as Art Director. Printed on coloured cartridge paper it created a facsimile of a railway ticket, complete with punched hole and print on the reverse side.

So few covers have this sort of inventiveness these days.

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Tipton Lakes Corporation: designed by Paul Rand 1980. Simple wit down to a T.

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This poster was designed in 1968 by the then ‘enfant terrible’ Alan Aldridge for Andy Warhol’s film Chelsea Girls. I know it’s very un-PC in this 21st century, but for all that, I still like it. And it has to be compared with this earlier 1967 work by the American Illustrator Tomi Ungerer...

for his own moving card. Plagiarism or great minds and all that?

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Designed by Oskar Altherr 1952

John Sewell: Cut and paste

This is John Sewell…

Born in 1926, he was a key figure on the British graphic scene in the 1960s.

His work was included in 17 Graphic Designers, which was published in 1963 and was the precursor to D&AD – a rare find if you can lay your hands on a copy.

Sewell studied at Hornsey School of Art and then at the Royal College of Art. In 1954, he became the first graphic designer to be employed by BBC television to take charge of on-screen graphics. He also directed a few experimental films, which have been recently released on DVD by the BFI:

 

Above two frames from Everybody's Nobody (1960) directed by John Sewell. The bottom image clearly shows Sewell's fascination with graphic abstraction, something that was to dominate his later print work.

But for me it is Sewell’s later publishing work that I have found most rewarding. His dynamic low-tech approach, using vibrantly coloured paper cut-outs, letterpress print and simple textures, gave his work a distinctive style.

Not only did he design many book jackets and covers but he also designed identities for independent bookshops, Better Books and The City Bookshop, both now long gone.

Better Books at 94 Charing Cross Road, London in the late 1960's which features Sewell's fascia graphics.

Sewell's cover for Design Magazine 1967

The following run of Penguin covers from the mid 1960’s Writing Today series really crystallises his distinctive graphic approach:

Sewell died in 1981 at the young age of 55.

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This is by Swiss designer/illustrator Celestino Piatti (1922 – 2007). In the 1960s and 70s you couldn’t open a copy of Graphis magazine without seeing his work.

Image via Joe Blogs

He was a prolific book cover designer, being responsible for most of the German publishing house, DTV’s covers for three decades.

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Poster designed by George Mayhew 1965. George was a member of the design group, BDMW Associates. In their short time together in the 1960's they produce some wonderful work and George was the undisputed king of the graphic poster...

Things I like...

Poster for Robert Fraser Gallery 1963, by Robert Brownjohn. Startling and brave at the time.