Graphic Journey Blog

RDInsights: In conversation

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Then & Now

An occasional series linking past design thinking with the present, without comment.

Past

1979

Present

2019

 

Stanley Kubrick: Don't look back

Trying to recall my feelings about a film I first saw some 48 years ago is a little tricky. I was 26 at the time and around six years into what would develop into a lifelong passion for serious cinema. Anyway, last Wednesday, all those years later, I went to see the very film I had watched back then: A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Like so many devotees of cinema, I am a big fan of Stanley Kubrick, and at the moment in London, there’s a major BFI retrospective, along with an exhibition at the London Design Museum. Meanwhile, back in the cinema, sitting among a surprisingly sparse audience for the screening, the lights faded and the opening titles started. Two things immediately struck me. The aspect ratio was 1.66:1. My memory had tricked me into remembering a much wider format. It wasn’t.

The second thing was the opening title design. Large, bold, clunky, oddly spaced, slightly out of register, white, sans serif type pinging out of primary solid-coloured backgrounds. After this initial shock, I became hyper-aware of everything wrong with the film, including very patchy cinematography – started by Geoffrey Unsworth and midway handed over to his old assistant John Alcott, and even Kubrick shot a number of handheld sequences on his trusty Arriflex 35 (below). This may explain the erratic overall quality.

The Allen Jones table sculpture (1969) was a major inspiration for the furniture in the Droogs milk bar (below).

But Kubrick's copies are rather crude.

The ragged edges on the fibreglass pods.

A very unconvincing colour of claret.

The heat of the studio lights have bubbled up the silver wallpaper squares.

There were many badly made props, especially the phoney Allen Jones-style provocative tables, ragged-edged fibreglass pods, clumsy set dressing, widely varied performances, stock music running far too noisily over so much of the dialogue and some very naff graphics and type, badly imitating what was going on in the real design world at the time.

Bookcover Designed by Johnathan Miller 1966

Above type designed by Charles Front for the Beatles Rubber Soul album from 1965.

If you like, this was just the packaging of the film. But the content is shamefully and grotesquely misogynistic, so much so that I found it difficult to watch in parts.

That coupled with the violence made for an unsettling experience. It links with another film released the same year: Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs’– also a pretty horrid and misogynistic exploration into sexual violence. Clockwork Orange also has a lot in common and is much closer in tone to Lindsay Anderson’s If (1969). 

At the time of its release, A Clockwork Orange was criticised over the influence it may have had in a manslaughter case where a 14-year-old had been accused and the prosecution argued that the film A Clockwork Orange had relevance to the case. It was also linked with further cases, with ‘copycat’ crimes reported. Kubrick’s family home was raided by protesters. After its initial run in UK cinemas, it was pulled at the request of Kubrick himself. In true style, Kubrick never publicly explained why. But having watched the film again last night, I have a sneaking suspicion that it had nothing to do with concern about the gratuitous sex and violence but more to do with the production values, especially in comparison to his obsessively driven production design on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). 

Ridley Scott's famous Hovis commercial (1973) was helping to change the look of film.

Also, this was a time when British advertising was beginning to shine and young commercials directors were investing a lot of innovation and higher creative standards in production design, in particular cinematography. The London advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP) had amassed a stable of highly creative talent who were upping the ante, and the 60-second commercials emanating from the Young Turks at the time were outstripping the over-lit, predictable production of mainstream cinema. I think this must have had an effect on Kubrick because his next film after A Clockwork Orange was Barry Lyndon (1975), shot by John Alcott, and was a major shift in the ‘look’ of his films. And the look of feature films was being heavily influenced by British commercials at the time, with directors like Ridley Scott, Alan Parker and Hugh Hudson.

Kubrick’s meticulous attention to detail and overall production quality of 2001: A Space Odyssey made the look of A Clockwork Orange more akin to the polystyrene and Bacofoil-wrapped constructed sets of the early ‘Dr Who’ TV series. I’m only too aware that there are many Kubrick devotees who feel that A Clockwork Orange is his masterpiece. Well, I beg to differ. I put it with Eyes Wide Shut as his most disappointing films. The others are all genius.

If you are a lover of the furniture you spot in films, pop over to Paula Benson’s wonderful Film and Furniture website, where you will find a wealth of fantastically well-researched stuff and where to purchase.

 

William Gold: It's a wrap

Bob Gold 1921 – 2018

Bob Gold's 1942 poster for Casablanca.

Gold was one of America's best known graphic designers for his many movie poster designs over the past 70 years. He clocked up over 2,000 during the 20th and 21st century. He set the graphic style agenda for film industry promotion.

Here is just a small sampling from his hefty output...

Harry Willock: The man behind the curtain / Part one

Earlier this year, the light of one of the most flamboyant graphic stars of the 1960s was extinguished with the death of Alan Aldridge. But he left behind an astonishing array of mind-blowing work, born out of that special, psychedelic, drug-induced era of the 1960s.

But perhaps few know that many of Alan Aldridge’s wild imaginings were in a large part brought to life by Harry Willock: a man ten years Aldridge’s senior who spent three decades behind the scenes quietly beavering away. 

Born in West Bromwich in 1934, Harry Willock was a rather shy, lonely boy who spent most of his time drawing at home and at infant school. His ability was later recognised by a teacher when at secondary school, who suggested that he apply for art school. This led him to Ryland School, where he studied commercial art for two years. 

At Ryland’s end-of-year art exhibition, a local businessman spotted some of Harry’s work and offered him an apprenticeship at his printing firm Kendrick and Jefferson. It specialised in bespoke stationery. At age 17, Harry joined the company and systematically worked his way through the different craft disciplines under the eagle eye of his boss, who was a stickler for perfection. A quick learner, Harry mastered line drawing, hand lettering, scraperboard illustration and airbrushing. 

Above two examples of Harry Willock's scraperboard mastery.

1952, Harry in army uniform at the drawing board.

A year later, he had to break off for compulsory National Service. He was first attached to the Royal Engineers and, after some cajoling, he managed to get transferred to the mapmaking section of the Worcester Military Survey, where he would often find himself in mobile darkrooms learning the tricky art of reversed writing, directly onto film negatives.

Harry seated centre, with staff members at The Sunday Times Marketing Division around 1960. 

After completing his two-year army stint, he returned to Civvy Street and slotted back into his original job at Kendrick and Jefferson. But he soon became rather frustrated and, in 1959, through a fluke, he managed to get a job in London with The Sunday Times’ Marketing Division. He was disappointed at first, due to the lack of much to do, but that was to all change when Lord Thompson took over the publication and shook things up. This gave Harry a greater opportunity to show his array of craft-based talents. At one point, he was asked if he would like to be considered for the post of studio manager, but telling people what to do wasn’t in Harry’s nature and he much preferred to be on the ‘drawing board’ doing what he knew and loved. 

In 1964, a gangly young man sporting dyed-blond hair joined The Sunday Times’ Promotions Department. His name was Alan Aldridge, and little did Harry know that he would become inextricably linked with this eccentric-looking character for almost three decades.

Alan had a seemingly never-ending stream of fresh and varied wild ideas but often with the inability to craft them into life. But having seen some of Harry’s amazingly exacting work, he quickly realised that together they could make the perfect partnership to realise his imaginings. Another staffer in the Promotion Department was John Gorham (later to develop as a supreme talent himself). Harry recalls that John and Alan would often go to the pub after work and enthusiastically talk about all aspects of design. They would zero in on one of the Promotion Department’s projects that needed cracking. After the bell for last orders was rung, they would go their separate ways. The next day, Gorham would arrive still feeling a little jaded but would be astonished by Alan firing on all cylinders, bristling with a plethora of ideas he would have dreamt up overnight.

Two examples of Alan Aldridge Penguin covers prior his collaboration with Harry Willock. Top shows Aldridge working within the confines of Penguin's cover grid styling.

In 1965, Alan left The Sunday Times, having secured himself a new job via Germano Facetti at Penguin Books, at the time located in a house on John Street, Bloomsbury. At first, Chief Editor Tony Godwin, a Penguin long-termer with wide-ranging experience and knowledge of selling who was always on the lookout, employed him as an in-house designer for new ways of presenting covers. Alan’s early Penguin covers had to slot within the carefully controlled house grid styling created by Romek Marber in 1962 for the then overall Art Director Facetti. Alan found this very restrictive and at odds with his view of design. Tony Godwin had been promoted to perk up Penguin’s sales due to increasing pressure from other paperback imprints like Pan, Corgi and Fontana. As part of his new strategy, Godwin got Alan to produce some experimental fiction covers, freeing him from the carefully controlled cover house style. The story goes that at a Penguin sales meeting at which some of the new experiments were floated, and received well, Alan fielded the idea (with Godwin’s backing) that he should take over the art directorship of all fiction covers, much to the displeasure of Germano Facetti. But it was agreed and, apparently, Facetti never spoke to Alan again.

Now with a lot on his plate, Alan persuaded Harry, still at The Sunday Times, to join him at Penguin, where they began their partnership in earnest. In addition to commissioning covers from external artists, designers and photographers, Alan would design a lot of covers himself. An example of an Aldridge/Willock collaboration can be seen in Penguin’s science fiction series. Alan would come up with the idea, create a basic skeletal drawing and then hand it over to Harry to unleash his airbrush. As can be seen, Alan’s own drawing style had an almost childlike naivety at the time: something that would evolve as his and Harry’s partnership matured. 

Three examples of Aldridge's covers with the addition of Harry Willock's magic airbrush. All from 1967.

Soon, Penguin fiction covers were making waves, and approaches of work from outside for Alan were coming thick and fast. So began a lot of moonlighting for both Alan and Harry while at Penguin. This didn’t fit comfortably with Harry, as he was of that earlier generation where modesty and loyalty were the norms. As a long-term print trade union man, doing an honest day’s work for your employer was in his blood. Conversely, Alan was very much a child of the swinging sixties, where success and fame went hand in hand.

An example of an Aldridge and Willock moonlighting project for rival paperback house Panther 1967.

And the Who's A Quick One album cover 1966

Harry undertook the design of the Allen Lane hardback books solo.

Meanwhile, there were boardroom rumblings. Sir Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin, was very unhappy with the change of direction in cover presentation masterminded by Tony Godwin in league with Aldridge. Lane said, in a pointed remark at the time, “A book is not a tin of beans”.

The situation became exacerbated when Alan turned up for work with prison bars painted on the lenses of his round Lennon-style specs. Lane took this as a personal affront and set about planning to have Alan transferred to Penguin’s offices at Harmondsworth, out of harm’s way. Godwin saw the writing on the wall and resigned in 1967. This was shortly followed by Alan’s own departure, who by this time had external commissions from many quarters, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, making it possible for both him and Harry to embark on a new enterprise, shortly following Goodwin’s departure. 

For Part Two click HERE

More on Alan Aldridge HERE        More on John Gorham HERE

Things I like...

I have no idea who did this. Could be from the time the film (which I loved by the way) came out, although I doubt it. Or from the hand of a student experimenting with a 60's aesthetic. Anyway whoever cooked it up I like it. And if it was you, do let me know.

 

Things I like...

A cinema lobby card for the 1950 film No Way Out designed by Paul Rand. Strangely he didn’t get to do the poster. That was left in the hands of Saul Bass…

POST SCRIPT

I was contacted by Richard C Evans who pointed that there was an additional lobby card belived to be designed by Erik Nitsche. So it would seem that Bass, Rand and Nitsche all worked on the No Way Out campaign. I wonder how they split the fee?

Richard also sent the poster below by Edward McKnight Kauffer designed several years before  No Way Out and clearly an inspiration for Bass. Good to know that even our heros are not allways totally original...

Designed by Edward McKnight Kauffer

Richard also said that there was an additional lobby card belived to be designed by Erik Nitsche. So it would seem that Bass, Rand and Nitsche all worked on the No Way Out campaign. Very confussing. I wonder how they split the fee?

Above by designed by Paul Rand

Above by designed by Erik Nitsche

 

Raymond Hawkey: An eye for detail

A New Year with some old graphics. Only by studying the past can we fathom present and future trends in design. So here is another of the interviews I carried out for Design Week under the banner of 'Heroes'. This one is from 2001 with the graphic designer Raymond Hawkey.

Banner head for Daily Express, 1958

The always immaculately turned out Raymond Hawkey

I was first introduced to Raymond Hawkey's work at an evening class on a November evening in 1961. Our teacher - who during the day worked in the design department of the Daily Express - showed us examples of work produced there. This was a series of illustrated banner heads, an innovation that had been pioneered by Hawkey. These mini graphic triggers helped to direct readers towards a particular feature. They were produced using a simple photographic line technique, ideal for crude letterpress printing. They looked startling within the context of the paper's conventional layout. 


Fast-forward 40 years, and I am heading for the lift in an 18-floor, 1960s tower block that looms over London's fashionable Notting Hill. This is where Hawkey has lived for over 30 years and I am about to meet him for the first time. As he welcomes me into his flat, I am taken aback by the view from its panoramic window. It is quite breathtaking to see London looking magical on this particularly clear night with a stream of jewel-like twinkling lights from the constantly moving traffic below. 



The first thing I notice about Hawkey is that he is immaculately turned out. So much so that I became a little self-conscious about the state of my rather scuffed boat shoes and crumpled corduroy jacket. This attention to his appearance was just as evident in the presentation of his home. It reflected his vision and farsightedness in selecting Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen and Hille furniture when he first took on the flat. All looked remarkably current and orderly in this classic late 1960s setting. 


Most of the walls were taken up with Hawkey's passion for all things nautical; a ship's wheel, compass, figurehead, prints, photographs and paintings of tall ships, all beautifully arranged. As a boy Hawkey had lived by the sea, which he loved. I suspect this was his way of keeping that connection going in the heart of a throbbing city. 



Hawkey was born in Plymouth in 1930, an only child. His father worked as a commercial traveller. Neither of Hawkey's parents had any creative leanings. Indeed, his father had decided that he wanted his son to become an accountant, something he himself had hankered after. But the young Hawkey developed a natural gift for drawing, which must have been a genetic throwback to a creative ancestor. He was happiest with a pencil and paper, escaping into a fantasy world drawn from his fertile imagination. Hawkey was a bright boy and won a scholarship to grammar school. 



It was here that he was singled out by the headmaster--a man with artistic interests himself--who recognised Hawkey's creative ability. He greatly encouraged the young Hawkey and directed him towards a course in general arts at the Plymouth School of Art. From the ages of 16 to 20, Hawkey immersed himself in what had become an all-consuming passion. He achieved a National Diploma in Design and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art to study illustration. 



But Hawkey found the RCA illustration course in 1950 very dull, punctuated with endless life drawing classes and a distinctly nostalgic approach to the craft. He managed to persuade his tutor to let him switch to the graphics course. 



He quickly secured a post on the RCA magazine ARK as assistant art director. A little later he became its art director. He saw this as an opportunity to push the visual presentation of the magazine forward, which, until that point, had a rather classical dusty feel. He outraged the rector Robin Darwin by introducing illustration and photography to ARK's covers. To supplement his small grant, he took on illustration commissions from the Central Office of Information. He also helped out the picture editor of The Sunday Graphic--a long since defunct title. 



Towards the end of his time at the RCA he was increasingly moving in publishing and editorial circles. One evening when helping out at a literary launch party, a colleague noticed that a young man had gatecrashed the proceedings and he asked Hawkey to politely, but firmly show him the door. Hawkey, however, struck up a conversation with this eager young man - who as it turned out was also attending the RCA, was also studying design, was also an Aquarian, had the same fanatical love of detail, shared the same dry sense of humour and also the contempt for a lot of the pomposity evident at the RCA. A rare meeting of hearts and minds had taken place and there, amid the clinking wine glasses and literary banter, a life-long friendship was formed. 



As it turned out, this literary backdrop was going to have a dramatic effect on both of their lives. In particular the young gatecrasher's. His name was Len Deighton. 


Prior to graduating from the RCA, Hawkey entered a design talent competition organised by Vogue magazine. He not only won, but was offered a job by the magazine's parent company Conde Nast. Here he became art director of magazine promotion and he quickly familiarised himself with the editorial world. He spent three happy years there. There was a short period with the ad agency Colman Prentis and Varley as an art director. In 1959 he was offered a position with Beaverbrook Newspapers to art direct a new magazine that was set to rival the great American title Fortune. Alas, it never saw the light of day, but Hawkey's talents had not gone unnoticed and he was made design director of the Daily Express.

It was here that he quickly introduced graphic devices into the editorial pages. He trail-blazed the use of diagrams to help demystify complex news items. He often teamed up with a reporter and went on assignments to crime scenes. It was in this context that his work contributed to the arrest of a rapist and murderer through his accurate reconstruction of the attacker's likeness as described by a witness, before identikit pictures were the norm. Hawkey's graphic use of banner heads revolutionised the look of newspaper features and very quickly other major papers followed suit. 



While Hawkey was at The Daily Express, Deighton had established a career in advertising as an art director. This was a love/hate relationship for him as he found the profession overrun by ex-public school types, whom he found tiresome. However, he redirected this irritation into writing. Hawkey remembers being handed a draft manuscript by Deighton in 1960. It was called The lpcress File. On reading it, Hawkey realised that Deighton could afford to turn his back on the advertising world. Because, there on the page was Harry Palmer the bespectacled sophisticated working class antihero who enjoyed cooking and worked as an intelligence officer. 

Although very capable himself, Deighton asked Hawkey to design the cover of The lpcress File...

Jacket for the first edition of The Ipcress File designed by Hawkey in 1962

What Hawkey did with it was one of the key moments in design history. It is important to view this piece of work within the context of the period. Hawkey's photographic use of inanimate objects to give a narrative dimension to the cover was startlingly new and made a dramatic impact on the publishing scene. The publisher, Hodder, found the design too spartan with its black and white photography, plain background and small undifferentiated typography, but both Deighton and Hawkey held firm. They were right, because on publication in 1962, The lpcress File sold out within 24 hours. 



A few years later, Michael Caine...

Michael Caine as Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File 1965 directed by Sidney J. Furie

was to make Harry Palmer his own in the film version of the book. The image, so perfectly captured by David Bailey in his classic 1965 Caine portrait...

Photo copyright by David Bailey

still inspires many a young designer to emulate the look today. 

In 1964, Hawkey became presentation director of the Observer and its colour magazine, concentrating on enhancing layout and improving the quality of the magazine's covers. In parallel with this, he became a much sought-after book cover designer. He was always linked with Deighton's work...

but was also the favoured designer for the work of Kingsley Amis, Jane Gaskill, Ian Fleming, Thomas Hinde, Gavin Lyall, Frederick Forsyth and many others. 


Hawkey's dramatic influence and modern approach to book cover design spawned imitators that turned his simple graphic approach into a design cliche. To a certain extent Hawkey became a victim of his own success. The clarity and inventiveness of his later cover work was often defused by over-large typography brought about, I suspect, by the increasingly aggressive publishing sales departments who have always managed to dilute creative work. 



One of Hawkeys most memorable pieces came about once again through Deighton, who had formed a film production company. He had written the film script for Oh! What a Lovely War. It was to be Richard Attenborough's directorial debut and Deighton commissioned Hawkey to design the film's titles. He approached this with the perfectionism that had become his trademark. To convey the tragedy of the First World War, he used carefully chosen objects, sensitively photographed by David Cripps to create a building narrative over the sequence...

Above the front title sequence for Oh! What a Lovely War directed by Richard Attenborough 1969

 
Starting with items reflecting the jingoistic flag-waving, King and Country mentality, the images move on to symbolise the ultimate result of war. Death is represented by a skull and, in the last frame, a lone red poppy. Although a simple series of still images with the titles superimposed, the sequence retains its tragic impact. In another designer's hands it could have easily slipped into a nostalgic pastiche. 

In 1974 Hawkey turned the tables on the publishing world by becoming a thriller writer himself. Encouraged greatly by Deighton, over a ten-year period he has produced three novels, Wild Card, Side Effect and It. All have received glowing reviews and an option has been taken up on It for a possible feature film. 

Now into his seventies, Hawkey understandably takes things a little easier these days, but in addition to writing a new novel, he still occasionally acts as an editorial consultant. Having a bolthole in Brighton has enabled him to enjoy the lure of the sea with his charming wife Mary, whom he married 12 years ago. 


POST SCRIPT: Sadly Raymond Hawkey died on 22 August 2010 aged 80.

Final cut

This is the American film title designer Kyle Cooper... 

He gave a D&AD President's lecture last week. The day after I recorded an interview with him for my RDInsights series. I was struck by the similarity between him and  his most noteworthy title sequence for David Fincher’s Se7en  ; The  same hesitant, nervy, spontaneous edginess. The interview took place in his room at the Zetta Hotel. He’d phoned me at the crack of dawn to suggest that we put the interview off as he hadn’t been able to sleep. I managed to persuade him otherwise and out of it came a revealing and extremely honest exchange. Judge for yourself here.