Graphic Journey Blog

Capturing the past

Why is it, that when it comes to capturing the past in drama, it often goes spectacularly wrong? In 2010 we had Sam Taylor Wood’s lamentable film  Nowhere Boy...

Nowhere Boy 2010.

wildly over art directed. Plus the equally dismal BBC drama about John and Yoko, Lennon Naked with Christopher Eccleston decked out in a ridiculous ill-fitting wig. 

"I'm John Lennon. Honest, I really am."

And just last week the BBC aired We’ll take 'Manhattan, a drama centring on the love affair between photographer David Bailey and model Jean Shrimpton. 

We’ll take 'Manhattan 2012

It was so bad I burst out laughing in disbelief ­– I was in bed at the time watching it on my iPad, which catapulted off the duvet. 

Mad Men 2007. The grandaddy of the current 60s frenzy
 
Since the success of the excellent Mad Men, every TV and film executive has been clamouring to jump on the 50’s and 60’s bandwagon. As in BBCs The Hour last year…

The Hour 2011. Imagined BBC studio life in 1956, featuring a telephone not introduced until 1959. It's the little things that really count.

The real thing. The BBC in the 50s with the correct telephone. 

Out come the black horn rimmed glasses, pipes, shift style dresses, Dansette record players, overly immaculate vintage cars and trucks, along with a scattering of period magazines, conspicuously displayed in shot.  I wonder if any of the directors of these efforts ever bother to talk ‘in depth’ to people who lived through the period they are trying to evoke? Only the recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy got near a 60s feel. 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 2011

But even that featured the most bizarre sound proofed portacabin affairs placed in the middle of the spy headquarters. They were far more suited to the set of Doctor Who.

The original Tinker Tailor Solider Spy 1979 BBC series with Alec Guinness

 In 2009, An Education was passable with its 60s look...

An Education 2009, with the ubiquitous Dansette  to set the 60s scene

and Anton Corbijn’s 2007 film Control was an extremely good rendition of mid 70s mood, but opted

Control 2007

 for a more 60s Dick Lester, Hard Days Night cinematic quality rather than the more appropriate grainy pushed coloured film stock of the 70s. 

Hard Days Night 1964

We also have the current TV series Call the Midwife  featuring the cleanest 1950s East End slums I have ever seen.

Call the Midwife 2012.  The cosy myth...

and the harsh reality.

I recently went to see Mike Leigh’s new play Grief at the National and, although it only had one static set, it manage to utterly capture the sprit of the late 50’s middle class…

Grief 2012.

Just as he did so wonderfully in the working class world of Vera Drake…

Vera Drake 2004

It is directors of a certain age and experience, like Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Alan Parker, Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick and Terrence Davies who tend to get things right when it come to evoking a period. 

Terence Davies's perfect The Long Day Closes 1992 

Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory 1957.

Birdsong 2012.

A refreshing exception was the 2-part dramatisation of Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong a stunningly realised evocation of the First World. Made possible by the perfect sets designed by Grant Montgomery, beautiful cinematography by Julian Court and costumes design by Charlotte Walter. Plus the sterling work of the many make up artists involved. But I feel it would have been even better if they had shot it on film rather than HD. The dancing grain of film just adds the magic and takes away that 21^st century hyper pristine clarity. Capturing the past is a combination of period detail, casting - especially the extras, who often stand out for being so wrong. Costumes, make up, the overall look of the period -  often everything is far too clean and shiny. And the voices and language, overlooked by many directors. It's rare to to see a film where all of those things in sync.

We seem to be drifting deeper into a world of nostalgia. The Oscar nominated The Artist (a perfect example of getting it right) is testament to this along with a myriad of period TV dramas.

The Artist 2011. A love letter to the silent era.

When things are depressing in the present, we seem to take solace in the past. It seems more comforting somehow. 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

Sam Serif # 32

“We few. We happy few. We band of brothers...”

So said King Henry when calling the English army to arms before the Battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare’s Henry V. 

As our little island becomes more disenchanted with the European community, it reminded me of a time when middle England positively relished the idea of not only being cut off from those dastardly ‘foreigners’ across the Channel, but also our close neighbours the Scots and Welsh.

An example of this mindset was the above book, The English Difference published in 1973.  

It presents the quirky and eccentric word of the English with their Morris dancers, village fetes and pubs. There was a clutch of books in the 70’s that featured a mélange of contributors from the design and illustration world. An idea for a book would be conceived, then the author and designer would set about commissioning a multitude of creatives to each produce a spread. They would first secure a ‘personality’, say Alan Fletcher. This would ensure that everyone else would want to take part and the taking part would, more often than not, be on a 'no fee' basis for the considerable effort involved.  

Designers and illustrators have always been generous folk. And because of their sweet nature and natural enthusiasm to do what they love, money or no money, they just well, do it. Can you image a banker, barrister or anccountant being so amenable? Also those involved rarely got their original artwork back, they always got mysteriously ‘lost’ at the printers. 

Anyway back to The English Difference. Designers John Gorham and my old business partner Ken Carroll along with writer Paul Jennings collaborated on this little extravaganza featuring a wealth creative contributors including George Hardie, Peter Brookes, Alan Cracknell, David Gentleman, Bush Hollyhead, Tony Meeuwissen, David Pocknell, Alan Fletcher, David Hillman and even me among many, many more.

Take a look at some of the delightful spreads from this long forgotten book…

Contributors from top to bottom: Cover: Tony Meeuwissen. Spreads: David Gentleman, Paul Leith, Michael Farrell, George Hardie, Alan Fletcher, Donna Brown, Mike Dempsey, Keith Bowen, Peter Brookes, Bush Hollyhead, Athur Robins, Adrian George, Ann Winterbottom, Harri Peccinotti, Keith Bowen, John Gorham, David Pocknell, Alan Cracknell, Bob Lawrie, John Gorham, Ken Carroll, Tony Meeuwissen, Howard Brown.

 

Graphic Journey film club

If you are into gritty crime, then The Friends of Eddie Coyle is for you, a forgotten little treasure of the 70's. It is about an over-the-hill small time gunrunner. Eddie Coyle discovers that he's facing long jail sentence with no appeal. Torn between turning police informer or preserving his loyalty to the Mob, Coyle moves slowly towards his final decision, while unbeknownst to him, the machinations of others in the criminal network are setting an unwitting trap from which poor Coyle cannot escape.

Robert Mitchum, who plays Coyle, gives a wonderfully understated performance full of pathos and gravitas, accentuating the weariness of a two-bit loser looking to check out before it's too late.

British director Peter Yates (who died last year) handles this genre with great panache as he did on two early films Robbery 1967, Bullitt 1968.

Have a peek here and here.

 

 

Carroll & Dempsey – 1978 two’s company. Part One.

I'm going to tell you the story about the creation, and ultimate demise, of a design company. It's about the one I started in 1978. To set the scene here is a little of what was going on back then...

It is the summer of 1978. Two fresh-faced 30-something graphic designers are sitting in the one-time ballroom of an elegant Georgian house in St James’s Place, Mayfair. It belonged to the publisher William Collins. There, over a light lunch, these two animated figures decided to start a design company. They were Mike Dempsey, (me - I worked as art director of the William Collins paperback imprint, Fontana.) and Ken Carroll ex-publishing, freelance designer. At the time we were inseparable, best friends with a healthy professional rivalry and also completely void of any experience of running a company. We were about to plan our journey into the unknown.

It is rare in life to find a real soulmate, someone whose thoughts, interests and passions mirror your own exactly. That was how it was then with Messers Carroll & Dempsey. 

During the latter part of 1978, Britain was engulfed in what was called ‘The Winter of Discontent’ – an ongoing saga of strikes as a result of the Labour  government's attempt to control inflation by imposing rules on the public sector...

The scene in London's Leicester Square, in February 1979 – just a month after we'd opened our doors – during the "winter of discontent" as public service workers went on strike, leaving rubbish piled up in streets.

It was in this deeply unstable economic climate that we opened our fledgeling design company, with the added dimension of an exceptionally bitter cold end to 1978. 

Our first studio was located on the top floor of this small building in New Bond Street, in London’s West End…

A pure fluke to be situated at such a prestigious address. As it turned out the space  had been rented to an abortion referral office. They had left in a rush, fleeing rent and leaving behind furniture and files, the contents of which revealed a procession of young women, mostly from Ireland and Italy, who had undergone abortions. It was a harsh reality. The files all ended up in black bin bags. And in that freezing December of 1978 we painted out the rooms’ horrid past, added floor to ceiling felt pin boards and a wall bedecked with Victorian enamelled advertising signs and got on with our dream. This is the very brass plate that I screwed to the front door of our entrance at 76 New Bond Street in January 1979 at the opening of our little company….

I retrieved this brass plate when we moved from New Bond Street.

This was our first business card. Two interlocking chain links summed us up perfectly.

In the beginning, it was just the two of us, plus Paula, our secretary- she couldn’t type that well, but was delightful and had great hair and fingernails.

Paula Ng our first secretary and employee.

Our days were spent listening to a combination of soundtrack albums from famous movies, Eric Clapton and Elvis Costello, interrupted only by daily liquid lunches at a nearby hostelry. In between, we worked on a diet of books, book covers, television promotional material and the odd magazine or two. And we loved it. Ken Carroll had a very open, warm and rather dynamic personality – having attended 18 schools, due to his father being in the RAF and subject to regular reposting – with the ability to befriend almost anyone. But due to slight deafness in one ear he tended to speak rather loudly and this, coupled with his sometimes outspoken views, could be highly embarrassing (more of this later). 

In the early days, it was Ken who would phone around, fix appointments and show our work, more often than not he would land us some work. What you have to get your mind around here is that everything was arranged by phone i.e. a landline. There were no mobiles, faxes or computers then. All of our work had to be physically mocked up using colour prints, rub down transfers and hand finished. Everything took ages to do. Finished artwork was the same slog with the tedium of cutting and pasting – If anyone tells you this was a great time of craft and design integrity, shoot them. It wasn’t.

During the first six months, we slowly built up a new clientele, moving away from our staple diet of publishing…

Some  of the covers I produced at Fontana Books prior to starting Carroll & Dempsey. (bottom) a series designed for my old publishing house William Heinemann.

Television was a natural home for us, and we had landed some projects from Thames Television just as they embarked on industrial action about pay...

TV blackouts during the ITV strike. This was our little studio Sony portable set in glorious black & white.

This resulted in a strike, which dragged on for 10 weeks. But Penguin Books kept the wolf from the door. David Pelham, Penguin’s then Art Director was incredibly supportive and provided us with a generous flow of work.

We designed hundreds of Penguin covers in out first five years.

Eventually, the television strike was resolved and we were back in there and now also working for Yorkshire TV. Projects started to pick up...

Just a little of the work created for Yorkshire Television in the early 80's. 

and soon we added an assistant, one Peter Barwick who arrived looking like he’d just walked off the set of Brief Encounter. A charming, movie-mad eccentric who fitted in like a glove.

When we were not busy Peter would find things to do like repainting the studio or fixing cupboard doors and playing his Hank Williams albums. Things were beginning to happen.

Our canteen, just a short walk away from our studio, was a bustling restaurant called  ‘La Brasserie’. We were such regulars that we had our own table, with a bottle of wine already ‘breathing’ on our arrival. There we would lunch, talk, drink and talk and drink and drink even more. How we ever managed to work after those leisurely liquid lunches I’ll never know, but somehow we did.

A little later two more assistants arrived,

Paul Jenkins installed in our first studio. A refugee from the British Gas Board.

Paul Jenkins (now of Ranch) whom we’d liberated from an in-house studio at British Gas, where he spent his time designing mindless forms whilst going slightly mad. And with him came new music to the studio in the shape of Kraftwork. Then came the neat and homely Karen Wilks. She brought an orderly calm to our little creative family and endless cups of tea. We were all very happy and beavered away at making a name for ourselves. In 1981 we received a D&AD silver award for this…

Our first D&AD silver. A rather macho looking piece now. But 30 years ago it seemed to cut the mustard.

With more work coming in, we needed more hands and a larger premises. In 1982 we moved to Regent Street and took the top floor of the building where the Apple store now is. The next five years were to be a turning point for Carroll & Dempsey.

Part 2 here.

 

 

 

A question...

Michael Wolff in conversation

For more of the thoughts, views, wisdom and fascinating life of Michael Wolff,  listen to my recent recorded RDInsights interview with him right here.

 

 

Out & about

A few images snapped over the holiday period for no other reason than they either amused or caught my eye in the moment.

An unusually overt presentation of a very discreet business.

With all those Christmas present delivered even he needs to stop and take stock.

One of London’s prettiest shops. It has been trading since 1830 and surviving in this super fast digital age. I can vouch for the quality of their umbrellas. I’ve had one for 25 years and it’s still perfect.

Richard Seifert’s much reassessed Space House in Kemble Street, Kingsway London.

And this rather sad sight while I was waiting in A&E at Weymouth hostpital. An imate from Portland prison.

 

Don't give up

Before I ever got into the business of design, I had 4 jobs. 4 mind bogglingly awful jobs. The last of these was working in a warehouse situated in a narrow, cobbled stone lane not far from the shadows of St Paul’s Cathedral. This was in 1963. City buildings were still blackened by years of ingrained chimney soot and the age of steam, which was still in operation at the time.

The age of steam was still in evidence.

The warehouse belonged to a Londonderry based shirt makers. Each week, a large truck would arrive from Ireland, packed high with a new supply of freshly manufactured shirts…

The location of my last sole destroying job, Black Friars Lane near St Paul's.

My job, as assistant warehouseman - kitted out in a starched brown overall - was to offload endless boxes from the truck and transfer them to the racks of the cavernous warehouse. This was the major event of the week. The rest of the time I was treading water. I worked alongside a man in his late 40s (I was only 17). He was from Northern Ireland and had been a career soldier, until he sustained a back injury and had to leave. This made him very bitter. He seemed to hate everything and everyone, and always had a smell of beer and tobacco about him.

During the long cold winter’s days we would sit, side-by-side in old captain’s chairs, our feet propped up on the edge of a cast iron coke burning stove. We’d drink endless cups of tea, eat buttered buns and read the daily rag…

The most dramatic news of that year as we consumed our buttered buns and mugs of tea.

Above our heads an old station style pendulum clock ticked away the endless days. Outside it always seemed to be raining. Suddenly this would ring…

The main mode of communication. No faxes, computers, mobiles or pagers back then.

‘Hello, warehouse.’  ‘Moss Brothers on the line’. This was the other event of the day, an order for various shirts from the company’s biggest client. So we would spring into action walking down the rows of brown boxes, cherry picking the different shirt styles and sizes required. Then it was back to the chairs, ticking clock and utter boredom. So it went on hour after hour, week after week, month after month.

When I first started I noticed that my ex solider compatriot would disappear at around 11a.m. each day for an hour or so. At the time I was very into the author John Wyndam and would wile the hours away reading. One morning deeply engrossed in ‘Day of the Triffids’, I was disturbed by an eerie breathing sound coming from somewhere in the bowels of the warehouse. I closed the book and made my way along the racks of shirts. The noise increased. As I turned to walk down the next row, there he was, lying on a shelf, cosseted on a camping mattress fast asleep. So that is where he would go each day. Appalled at such a waste of time I went back to my book without disturbing him...

The world to which I escaped.

Even more disturbingly, just a few weeks later, I too had cleared a cranny for myself in another part of the warehouse and initially would read or draw in the womb like space. But slowly I would succumb to sleep or just lay there aimlessly listening to the wind whistling through the ill fitting windows. This was my lowest point and I could see no end and no future.

But I had been attending evening classes where I was studying calligraphy and illuminated lettering for no other reason than it seemed artistic and I needed an outlet for whatever creativity I knew was lurking inside me. Whilst there, I befriended another guy who was attending a course in layout and typography - so I joined that class too. He worked in a small commercial art studio. I begged him to let me know if there were ever any jobs going. Months later he asked, ‘Are you still looking for a job?’ A short time after, I started as messenger, van driver, coffee and tea maker, sweeper and any other lowly job going. But I’d arrived on the first rung of the ladder in what seemed to be a creative world.

 Moral of this story: Believe in yourself. Never give up. To find out what happened next click here

 

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