Graphic Journey Blog

Fifty years on No. 2

The year: 1964

The Beatles took America by storm…

 The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show

By 1964 I’d moved on from being a general dogsbody at the first studio I worked at and ended up, albeit briefly, at a so-called advertising agency, but it was more of a classified ad sweatshop. It was situated in one of the side streets of Smithfield Meat Market. At the time, it was rather like Covent Garden, with much of the surrounding area being a major infrastructure to the market.

The studio I worked in looked down on to a meat processing company: directly on to a line of large galvanised wheeled bins full of the most horrific looking entrails and offal. I have always been a vegetarian so found the whole environment quite disgusting. Needless to say, I only lasted there a couple of months. But while there my day was lifted by listening to this…
Radio Caroline started broadcasting and was the first of the pirate stations and a breath of fresh air to the grey, claustrophobic BBC of the time.
 
Meanwhile, this new programme appeared on TV, complete with its first presenter. Yes him, now slowly crackling in hell…

Top of the Pops 1964

And for me this was the film of that year…

 Stanley Kubrick's Dr Stranglove

I moved from that Smithfield hellhole to Ludgate Hill close to St Paul’s, to a firm called Chevron Studio: an intimate little set-up where I assisted a ‘commercial artist’ called George Smith. A man with a passion for using Arbutus and little else (see my earlier post here). Here is an example of the kind of thing I had to do there…

 
A catalogue cover for a model manufacturer that I produced while at Cheveron Studio.

But my evenings were spent pursuing a new book that I had bought…

 
It ignited my desire for the potential of a new world. I was on my way.

Related Post Fifty years on No.1

Anyone interested?

Some of you may know that I have been recording interviews with designers from different disciplines for the past seven years. They are called RDInsight and are available to listen to or download on the Royal Society of Art’s website. I now intend to not only bring all of those RDInsight recordings onto this site but I also want to expand the idea into Graphic Journey Radio exploring wider areas of interest for the design community. But I don’t want to, and can’t, do it all alone. That’s where you, dear readers, just might be able to help.
 
But let’s get one thing out of the way first. There’s no money. OK, so I’ve lost 75% of my readers already. For the remaining 25%, I need a handful of enthusiastic creatives who are into sound design, audio recording and editing. And thinking longer term budding producers, writers and even presenters. I know it all sounds a bit grand. But with help I think we could create something really special that doesn’t currently exist.

So if you, or someone you know, has experience, energy and enthusiasm in any of the areas above, I’d love to hear from you. [email protected]

Fifty years on No. 1

I realised the other day that 2013 marks the 50th year that I have been working in the world of design. So I thought it would be interesting, even fun, to show you a job by my very own hand from every one of those 50 years: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Year: 1963
And a very dramatic one. This happened…

And this was first shown…

The first episode of Dcctor Who was screened.

This was in the charts..

The Beatles From Me To You

And I looked like this 50 years ago...

I was finding my feet as a messenger in a small jobbing studio situated in Ludgate Circus, London. Here it would be my job to deliver finished artwork to advertising agencies and block makers dotted around Fleet Street, when it was affectionately called ‘the street that never sleeps’. It was the beating heart of the newspaper industry and our studio produced artwork for a range of advertising agencies that would send their rough scraps to be transformed into finished, pasted-up artwork. Essex West Studios, with its unglamorous name, was squeezed into a narrow Edwardian building.
 
It consisted of a photographic studio, a compositor’s room and a photographic retoucher’s floor along with the illustrators, scrapper board and lettering artists. As well as being the one and only messenger, I was the tea and coffee maker and general dogsbody. I spent every spare moment in the studio absorbing all of the different disciplines. I would then practise at home in the evenings at the kitchen table. This went on for months until finally the boss relented and gave me a job as an assistant in the studio. This is the very first thing I was given to do…

We produced all of the artwork under one roof for the shady tycoon, John Bloom Rolls Razor, twin tub washing machine  advertisements.
 
Humble beginnings, but for me it was the beginning of my graphic journey.

Things I like…

In fact this is something I’ve always loved. It was designed by the late Philip Thompson (1928 -2007) as a universal label to be applied to whatever. Here’s an example of how it could be used…

See, good aye?

There are so many horrors in the design world today that I’d like to have a wallet full of these delightfully witty little stickers.
 
For those who are not familiar with Philip Thompson’s work, let me fill you in. He was one of those self-contained graphic designers like David Gentleman. No need for assistants, writers, illustrators, typographers or photographers because he could do the lot with great aplomb. And Thompson did it brilliantly.

Above just two of hundreds of book covers that Philip Thompson designed. As you can see he was fond of stickers.

Above illustrations for the RSA Journal from 2000

             Childproof packaging

He was also a one-time political cartoonist, teacher and hoarder of printed ephemera. In the 1970s, Derek Birdsall gave Thompson a stream of work, from book covers to magazine illustration commissions. In 1980, along with one-time colleague Peter Davenport, he collaborated on this long out of print but wonderful A to Z of visual clichés and more…

Long out of print, this is a great book if you can get your hands on a copy. The co-author, Peter Davenport has been working on a new edition. Watch this space.The above it is dotted with many more examples of Philip Thompson's work.

Over his lifetime he produced masses of work, but sadly little can be found on the internet. He worked right up to his death; a modest, unpushy character that, unlike so many designers who spout on about how great they are (they are usually not), just quietly got on with it. But he was very appreciated by those who knew just how talented he was. The RSA made him a Royal Designer for Industry in 2000. If you have any examples of Philip’s work, do email them to me and I will add them to this little tribute post.
 

Sorry.

Radiolab: A playground of sound and much more

Illustration by Drew Shannon

Radiolab is an American, non-commercial, non-profit public broadcast show.
 
It sets out to demystify the world of science, philosophy, human experience and everything in between. It does it in the most inventive way, using the addition of sound to illuminate ideas in a highly original way.
 
I have always been interested in the use of sound design, long before it had that title. Back in the ‘50s, you’d find me glued to the radio listening to the inventive sounds created for Journey into Space – if you are up for a long read, take a look at an earlier post of mine on the history of sound design (link at foot of this post) .

Anyway, back to Radiolab. It is the brainchild of Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich (above) and has evolved over the past decade, building up a loyal following of fans. The programmes are like listening in on an intimate conversation with friends and, as a listener, you feel like you are being embraced. Now, as many regular readers of this blog will know, I love radio. And I am in love with Radiolab and that is thanks to good old BBC Radio 4, which ran a documentary on Radiolab here.  (don’t know for how long it will be up for). The main website for Radiolab is here. Do give it a listen. It’s well worth it.

And here is the link to my 2008 post on the history of sound design: Sound Barrier

Things I like...

Untitled by Dirk Van Dooran 1989

Schmalfette: Tall, dark and handsome

I know a lot has been written about this…

Twen's Art Director, Willy Fleckhaus 1925  - 1987

The ground-breaking 1960s German magazine Twen, including on this blog. But then again, you can never get enough of a good thing.

When I first got into this funny old business of graphic design way back in the ‘60s, the high point of the month was picking up a copy of Twen magazine from the international newsagents in Old Compton Street, Soho. I couldn’t speak a word of German but that didn’t stop me from shelling out a not insubstantial amount for a mint copy of Twen. Apart from the visual delights of much nudity (it was the ‘60s, after all), along with Willy Fleckhaus’s dynamic layouts, there were two other important dimensions for me. The first was this typeface…

It is called Schmalfette Grotesk and was designed by Walter Haettenschweiler in 1954, a Swiss typoholic. Willy Fleckhaus used Schmalfette Grotesk as the main headline face for Twen and it worked wonderfully.

 

Many designers in the UK at the time wanted to use it, but couldn’t as it wasn’t available here, even via the early iterations of photo setting. So, what to do? Easy: I’d have line photo prints made of the blocks of copy as they appeared in Twen and, with my trusty scalpel, cut the individual letters out for my own use.

Here is a book cover I designed in 1965 that uses cut-up Schmalfette for the title.
Such innocent, hands-on days.

The second aspect of Twen that gave me a very big buzz was the work of Heinz Edelmann. His illustrations peppered the magazine more than any other illustrator’s. Fleckhaus’s art direction and Edelmann’s illustrations made for a startlingly fresh look for the time. Here are some examples of what made it great…

Heinze Edelmann 1934  - 2009

Twen also released albums graced with Edelmann’s work…

And of course it was Edelmann who created the look of The Beatles’ 1968 animated film, Yellow Submarine,

for which Edelmann was not only art director but also created a myriad of exotic characters, including the Blue Meanies…

Above Edelmann’s Blue Meanies

I am pretty sure that Ridley Scott must have been taken by them, as his coterie of characters in his 1982 film Blade Runner had very similar traits…

 
Looking at Edelmann’s and Fleckhaus’s work, now some five decades later, one can see the influence that the US creative powerhouse Push Pin Studios must have had. Especially their late 1950s The Push Pin Graphic newspaper, which was an experimental treasure trove of techniques and visual ideas.

Above The Push Pin Graphic newspaper from 1957.  Below spreads for Twen 1960's

It is always fascinating to see how the inspiration of others filters through the creative bloodstream to resurface through the generations. Anyway, here is more of Edelmann’s wonderful later work from the 1980's for Theater der Welt…

You can see a very short interview with Heinz Edelmann here

Things I like...

David Gentleman 1972...

The ultimate solo, self-contained graphic designer. Wonderful.

Michael (Bernie) Bernard: Graphic wisdom: No1

Above: Bernard's isolated home on Fraoch-Eilean

The highly talented, but little known designer of the early 1960's, Michael Bernard ('Bernie' to his friends) has spent a large part of his life on Fraoch-Eilean, the smallest of the Outer Hebridian Islands (population 55).

Bernie moved away from London in 1969 after completing work on his book A Life in Colour. It was to be the definitive work on the theory and emotional value of colour in design. However, due to a fire at his publishers Hamish Hamilton, the manuscript was destroyed and Bernie was unable to locate his only carbon copy. It had taken him seven years to write.

This event was a catastrophic blow for Bernie, he descended into a deep depression and became disillusioned with the creative world. He travelled to India and then on to Tibet, finally ending up in Scotland.

Above Bernie's caravan home at the Findhorn Community

Living at the Findhorn Community he became close friends of founders Peter and Eileen Caddy. While there he helped build some of the very early eco houses, and in the process, rediscovered his love of colour. An unconventional figure – he was a vegan, committed naturist and an experimenter and advocate of mind altering substances - he started to teach conceptual colour theory and analysis during his stay at Findhorn.

Bernie (far right) with naturist friends in Scotland

Bernie left the Findhorn Community in 1979 after 2 failed relationships. He finally settled on the beautiful Island of Fraoch-Eilean where he has remained ever since, leading an almost monastic life.

I had the privilege of meeting him earlier this year when I was visiting the Outer Hebrides, he allowed me to make a series of short recordings. Now in his late 70’s he felt it time to share some of his inspiring wisdom, to help make us all more thoughtful and sympathetic designers in these challenging times.

                                                

Bernie today, still a sensationally colourful figure