Graphic Journey Blog

LOVED COVERS No.21

I walked into my local bookshop yesterday and was struck by this book on the table amid the multitude of screaming covers surrounding it. It shone like a beacon. There's no book jacket, just tiny black typography blocked onto a cloth binding case. How can this be, I thought. It turned out Rubin hooked up with Pentagram's Paula Scher Hon RDI. He said, "Paula's gravitas as a designer helped keep the corporate representatives at bay and willing to take risks...' and went on ...' no quotes, descriptions or any other marketing material printed in the book or on the cover. You'll be hard-pressed to find another book by a mainstream publisher for a general audience with these allowances made". It has been a great success. There you go. Canongate Books 2023.

Marion Duchards: Playtime

This is the designer, illustrator and author Marion Deuchars RDI. She is known around the world for her creative activity books for young and old alike. They are full of colour and ideas to help awaken and promote the inner creativity locked away in everyone.

Her mantra is,

"everyone should lead a creative life".

I had the pleasure of interviewing Marion last month in my long-running podcast series, RDInsights. In this 52nd episode, Marion talks about her Scottish childhood and early creative blossoming that propelled her through art school and to eventually land her a place at the Royal College of Art in London and onto the illustration landscape. To hear her story click HERE.

Art Tails

A few months ago I took part in Art Tails (my contribution above and below). A project set up to help the people of  Tohoku - the hardest hit area of Japan by the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.  

A group of Japanese artists joined together in an effort to help Tohoku in a simple, yet creative way. They in turn reached out around the world to the wider creative community.

The result is an astonishing body of work donated freely by all concerned to help with this needy cause.  You too can access this work by downloading an Apple App. It costs only 1 US dollar.

It will go towards the many volunteers still working hard to help alleviate the plight of the people of Tohoku.  So instead of having that next café latte or bottle of Bud please donate the money to the Art Tails project right here. 

Dyslexia: God's gift

For years I went through school-life thinking that I was educationally inferior to many of my friends. I was a painfully slow reader. Maths was a complete mystery to me and generally, I was happiest doing practical things. I excelled at art and spent much of my time daydreaming – I hasten to add that we are talking the 1950s here; a period when the term ‘dyslexia’ was unheard of, and teachers would single out people like me as ‘thick’. In recent decades the condition was quickly identified and there is now a lot of help and strategies in place to help overcome the problem. If it is indeed a problem... 

Working in this creative world of ours, I have discovered an amazing concentration of dyslexics. So many of the designers I have written about or interviewed are who they are, precisely because of their 'gift' of dyslexia. And it would seem that we are all the better for it. These days, dyslexics are described as ‘Creative Thinkers’. And we even have a list of likely strengths and weaknesses...

Strengths: Persistent, concentrated, perceptive, vivid imagination, creative, drive and ambition, curiosity, think in pictures instead of words, superior reasoning, capable of seeing things differently from others, love of complexity, quickly mastering the new, aware of everything, able to do multiple things at the same time, capable of intense short-term focus, quick decision-maker, highly intuitive, learns best by hands-on, rather than lecture or reading, realise that you are different from others, able to create a complete mental picture from pieces and always active-constantly thinking. 

Weaknesses: Easily distracted, seek stimulation, immature social behaviour, says what comes to mind, difficulty remembering names, seek immediate gratification, impulsive and impatient, suffer from motion sickness, bored by ordinary tasks, inattentive, sense of underachievement, reverse letters and numbers, slow reader when young, difficulty with mathematical concepts, problems mastering phonics and spelling, problems understanding the rules of grammar, somewhat disorganized, capable of changing on a moment's notice. Have phobias: fear of the dark, heights, speaking in public. Prefer unstructured situations with freedom. 

I found both lists very familiar in my own daily life.

I have always written but never felt I could share it with anyone because of my appalling spelling and grammatical faux pas. But I have thank Lynda Relph Knight, editor of Design Week, who in 1987 encouraged me to write for the magazine. I have been doing so ever since and in the process, it has so opened up a whole new passion for me (thank you, Lynda). I still have trouble of course — and as regular readers of this blog will know I have committed some real howlers to print. But I now have someone to cast her eyes over my musings to make sure that I am not making a fool of myself. But often in my impatience, rather than wait for her, I'll go ahead and end up with silly mistakes. If I occasionally do this, please forgive me. 

So if any of the above strikes a chord welcome to our club. You're in good company. Here are some pictures (I know you prefer them) of some right-brained comrades…

 Leonardo da Vinci / Genius

 

Steven Spielberg / Film Director

 

Pablo Picasso / Genius 

Keira Knightley / Actor

 

John Lennon / Genius

 

Richard Ford / Writer

David Bailey / Photographer

 

Tom Cruise / Actor

 

Lewis Carroll / Writer and humorist

 

Jamie Oliver / Chef

 

Walt Disney / Genius 

Steve Jobs / Mr Apple

Eddie Izzard / Comedian & Actor

 

 

They are all in our club. You are not alone. And remember...