Royal Mail has issued a set of 6 stamps featuring original designs from their archive by David Gentlemen RDI. They are in celebration his outstanding contribution to the development of modern British stamp design from the 1960s to the present. In 2010 I recorded a candid interview with him about his life and work. (See link at foot) Here are four of the six.
To hear the interview click HERE
After sharing a slice of life through the eyes of Ken Loach's Sorry We Missed You last week, with his uncanny ability to hold up a mirror to the ‘have-nots’ in our society, my latest film experience was far removed from that modern-day reality.
I attended a pre-release screening of Terrence Malick’s latest work: A Hidden Life. At two and a half hours long, it is a magnificent, towering piece of cinema, harking back to the sweep of his early masterpiece Days of Heaven.
Malick’s beautifully crafted script, of which 70% is delivered in voiceover, is based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), a WW2 conscientious objector. With his wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner), he lives in an Austrian alpine farming village where time has stood still for generations. In a series of visual vignettes, we are shown the first meeting of the couple and their immediate attraction and deep love for each other. Hot summers, village festivals, snowy peaks, dancing and cascading waterfalls pass by. Children are born to the couple, and Franziska’s sister comes to live with them. Working the land is hard but the villagers are close-knit and help each other, and they seem unaffected by the distant war.
But, inevitably, the war creeps up on them, and with it the spreading cancer of Nazism. The young men of the village, including Franz, are called up for a few months of military training, after which they return to their idyllic village in the mountains. Gradually, allegiance to the fatherland permeates through the community and the sound of “Heil Hitler” becomes commonplace, but Franz cannot bring himself to utter the words. Because of his refusal to show allegiance to Hitler, he and his family are increasingly ostracised by the villagers. But Franz and Franziska’s strong family bond enables them to battle on together against the villagers’ contempt for them. The local postman gradually delivers call-up papers to all the young men, including Franz. He leaves his family and smallholding to join the war in the hope that he can secure a non-combatant post. On his first day at the barracks, the new intake is addressed by the salute “Heil Hitler”. Everyone responds in kind except Franz. He is arrested and sent to a conscientious objectors’ prison, where foreign nationals and the mentally deranged are also kept. It is here that Franz is humiliated and brutalised on a daily basis.
The film is then conveyed through an exchange of letters between Franz and Franziska. We see them living their separate lives: Franziska with her sister, children and mother-in-law up in the mountains, battling against the increasing hostility of the villagers. With no help to toil the land, the two sisters knuckle down to work alone through the seasons. As with all Malick films, the themes of nature, family, love and tenderness are ever present and beautifully expressed through the stunning cinematography of Jörg Widmer, greatly helped by the stunning Austrian mountain location.
The production design by Sebastian T. Krawinkel and the costume design by Lisy Christl seem so authentic. Malick’s direction of the two main protagonists, Franz and Franziska, is amazing. The film is punctuated with original wartime footage showing the population’s chilling euphoria for Hitler and Nazism. Malik’s preoccupation with the natural environment and its ability to renew itself is given full rein in the majestic mountain location, seen through the varying seasons – from the hot, golden summers to the snowiest, most bitter winters. As with most of Malick’s films, much of the music is selected from existing works for the emotional underscoring; this film features a lot of Henryk Górecki’s and Arvo Part's compositions to great effect.
For me, this is cinema at its most stunning and thrilling. It is beautiful, poetic and moving. Malick is 100% back on form. And it’s wonderful that films like this are still being made. I found it mesmerising.
An occasional series linking past design thinking with the present, without comment.
Past
1978
Present
2019
An occasional series linking past design thinking with the present, without comment.
Past
1978
Present
2019
Noma Bar’s beautiful 2017 hardback edition of The Handmaid's Tale with its blind embossed type.
The Testaments: probably the most eagerly anticipated book since – well, the last Harry Potter? Anyway, more about this later.
This is one of my now occasional posts on Graphic Journey. Most of the traffic has been swallowed by Twitter and Instagram these days. But there are times when I need more than 280 characters to make a point.
If you are a follower of this blog, you will know that I have a bit of a thing about book covers. It stems from a ten-year stint in publishing back in the mid-1960s to ‘70s and after that period when I ran my design consultancy. These days, I regularly comment on Instagram and Twitter about the covers I see during my slightly obsessional weekly visits to bookshops. In the process, I seem to have upset many designers with my views. Conversely, many have agreed with me. The only reason I bother is that I have enormous affection for the design discipline when they are good and respect for their creators.
So, back to The Testaments. Do I have a beef with it? I do. The recent hubbub of Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, including the attempted cyber-attack, Amazon’s cock-up, the linking illustration with the first novel, the shortlisting for the Booker Prize, along with Atwood’s recent unveiling of the new cover design... you’d have to be living on Mars not to be aware of the media buzz.
Noma Bar’s lastest outing for Margaret Atwood's new book, with the most unnecessary typographical intervention.
Why then the need to partially obscure Noma Bar’s clever illustration with type? Was it even necessary to have Atwood’s name on the front at all? Bar’s illustration, linking with the original Handmaid’s cover, would have done the job perfectly without it.
A more sensitive approach.
Even better would have been to confine author and title to the spine – now that would have been an audacious move, especially as the cover is now in every bookshop window throughout the country. It’s all over the internet and in all the literary sections of the newspapers and magazines. To have been brave enough to run with an image-only front cover would have added to the publicity buzz.
And a more audacious approach.
But, these days, no one dares to stick their head above the parapet. Instead, they follow the predictable rules of the unadventurous publishing marketing departments, with their ‘belt and braces’ formula of unadventurousness. Their raison d’être seems to be to screw up covers during the creative process.
And just to remind you, there have been some brave exceptions...
The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ cover, designed by artist Richard Hamilton 1968.
And David Pearson’s wonderful redacted Orwell’s ‘1984’ cover for Penguin 2013.
Being able to draw is one of the most beautiful and useful gifts to possess. All you need is the back of a discarded envelope, a pencil and your imagination. No need for power, Wi-Fi or a laptop – perhaps a cup of coffee, but that’s it.
Like music, drawing can instantly break down the barriers of language, religion and ethnicity. It communicates clearly and instantly and can touch the heart.
See what I mean. This is the work of the Japanese writer/illustrator Tarō Gomi. Now in his mid-70s, he has been a favourite of mine for many years. Perhaps not so known in the UK, but he has clocked up over 400 books since he started back in the early 1970s. Many of his books have been translated, giving pleasure to thousands of children across the globe, or adults like me – and an old one at that.
The much-imitated charming, childlike naiveté of Gomi’s work belies its sophistication. With just a few strokes of a brush, he can conjure up emotion of such touching delicacy.
When armed with a whole palette of colour, his work is astonishing.
The Japanese have always had such an innate ability to evoke the world of a child, as in their many animated films, especially those of Studio Ghibli. Tarō Gomi is still working away, encouraging children to participate in drawing with his ‘Doodle’, ‘Squiggles’ and ‘Scribbles’ colouring books (above), and involves himself with workshops and bookshop appearances to meet his enthusiastic young audience. And long may he continue.
This is Tarō there seems to be very few photos of him so I suspect he is a little camera shy. But his work is for everyone to see and enjoy. Here's some more...
I love him.
I design the above paperback cover for publishers, Beautiful Books in 2008. I had the bitten corner effect die cut, and was rather pleased with the result.
That is until I was in Daunt Books yesterday and spotted this on one of their tables...
Similarity in thinking. It was designed by Paul Belford, for Headless Chicken Books in 2014. He has managed to create a far more convincing chewed corner than I had. It must have been done by hand, using some kind of horrifically violent machine, as each one is slightly different. It is a delightful cover.
Mrs Wordsmith
Being designers, we like to think that our work can have some sort of benefit to society, no matter how small, rather than harm it. It might be a book cover that encouraged someone to pick up a book to read or a poster that moved another to attend a music concert or film. But, occasionally, you come across something really special that combines wonderful creative thinking and design and is of real benefit to society – and you just wished you had done it.
I spent the bank holiday with my son Joe and my ten-year-old granddaughter Yoko. Joe produced this wonderful series of workbooks called ‘Mrs Wordsmith’. It had been recommended for Yoko by her schoolteacher. A passing glance at this little learning kit really intrigued me. Digging a
little deeper, I was mightily impressed.
As a child, I struggled with what we now know as dyslexia. Back in the 1950s, the phrase used was “you are a slow learner”, or more unkindly “you are thick”. That is why I was constantly drawing – something I could do with ease. It became my world and a form of expression.
So, studying ‘Mrs Wordsmith’, I realised that it would have been a godsend to the likes of me back in the dark days of the 1950s. It’s a simple, clear method of learning a vocabulary of the 10,000 most academically relevant words. And yes, that could be presented very boringly, if you think about how this kind of information used to be taught. Mrs Wordsmith, however, is fantastically inventive and is overwhelmingly aided by the brilliantly energetic illustrations by Craig Kellman, Mrs Wordsmith’s Art Director and the award-winning artist behind the films Madagascar and Hotel Transylvania, along with his team.
Through a £2 million crowdfunding investment, Mrs Wordsmith was launched in 2016 by Sofia Fenichell. The idea came to her one night when helping her own children to improve their writing skills.
The whole system is based on solid academic and scientific research. It builds on transforming the way the young learn, retain and use the kinds of words that deliver literacy and academic success. A big part of this is the brilliant visual presentation, based on engaging the young reader with intelligent storytelling humour. So, looking becomes a big part of the process to trigger the answers to the questions posed. For example, take a word like ‘deflated’. This is how Craig Kellman visually expresses it.
There are hundreds of these wonderfully witty illustrations by Craig Kellman.
Humour and visuals are a proven way to help with effective learning, boosting children’s involvement and retention. Mrs Wordsmith’s words are arresting because they are so visually stimulating.
So, for any of you parents keen to promote your children’s learning skills (ages 7–11), I would highly recommend this imaginative scheme. I only wished that Mrs Wordsmith had been around when I was a kid.
For more on Mrs Wordsmith (aka Sofia Fenichell) click here.
And here is a highly enthusiastic teacher praising the programme. click here.
Margaret Calvert RDI OBE is best known for her groundbreaking work with Jock Kinneir on the design of Britain’s road and motorway signing system introduced in 1965. She was also Head of Graphics at the Royal College of Art in London where she encouraged the rigour to design that she believes in. Still today you'll find her in her North London studio working on her lifelong passion for letterforms. I had the great pleasure of recording this interview with Margaret in 2015 about her life and work. From the RDI sound archive.
Transport Minister Ernest Marples (centre) opening the first stretch of the M1 motorway in 1959.
Jock Kinneir overseeing the prototypes of the motorway signs.
Margaret's hand drawn version of Transport.
Margaret keeping James May in check on Top Gear
Margaret is a designer with very strong views, as James May discovered to his cost when he took Margaret for a little spin on Top Gear.
A rare Illustration piece from Margaret produced in 1963 for the opera, The Golden Warrior, Shott music publishers.
Identity for fishmongers Burkett and Rudman. The people passing by show just how startlingly modern it must have looked back in 1963.
Baggage labels for the P&O-Orient Line, 1962.
The typeface Calvert used for the Tyne and Wear Metro
Signage system for Heathrow Terminal 4, British Airport Authority, 1967.
Moscow sans
Moscow Metro pictograms
Above Margaret’s latest passion. Moscow sans being tested on prototype maps currently installed in Moscow Metro and soon to implemented along with the signage programme across all stations. See full design credit at the foot of page.
As you will hear in this interview, it was sometimes tricky to get a word in when Margaret was on a roll. And she told me that she hated being interviewed. Not a bit of it.
To hear the RDInsights interview, click here.
To see Margaret on Top Gear, click here.
To see New Transport alphabet
To see New Rail alphabet
Moscow Metro credit:
Moscow Sans. A custom font in four grades plus a set of 40+ unique pictograms created exclusively for Moscow Department of Transport. Art directed and designed by A2–TYPE, Scott Williams & Henrik Kubel with Margaret Calvert as type and pictogram consultant. Cyrillic script designed in collaboration with Ilya Ruderman. Commissioned by City ID and Moscow Department of Transport, DOT. Product design by Billings Jackson Design.
Perry King RDI
Very sad news to hear that Royal Designer Perry King RDI has died. He was a wonderful designer with great modesty. He was one half of the highly successful multidisciplinary design partnership of King/Miranda based in Milan.
The Olivetti Valentine designed Ettore Sottsass and Perry King in 1969 and was probably the most famous of Olivetti's typewriters.
I recorded and RDInsights interview with him in 2013 when he attended the RSA/RDI Summer School in Darting, Devon.
You can hear it here.
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