Graphic Journey Blog

Japan: Please help

Save the Children have launched an appeal to help the many displaced families made homeless in Japan's heartbreaking disaster. Please help them in their work by donating whatever you can afford. For the link to their appeal site click HERE.

Japan: On the edge of devastation

I am so saddened and overwhelmed by the events in Japan that I find it difficult to think about the seemingly frivolous world of graphic design. Instead I offer you a beautifully written and presented piece by BBC4 Today’s presenter James Naughtie on the aftermath of this human tragdy. It demonstrates the power of words at its very best... Click here.

Japan

With great sorrow to all those in Japan.

Lest we forget

During this last week of remembrance I stumbled on this…

A book jacket that I designed back in 1971. This, and the many references on radio and television devoted to Britain’s many wars have got me thinking about man’s inhumanity to man and the waste of war.

I was born towards the end of the WW2 during an air raid. Apparently as I cried out to take my first breath sirens echoed the all clear. My childhood was spent in the remnants of post was Britain; bomb scared, rationed, traumatised and fog ridden, all played out in black and white. At my grandmother’s I would amuse myself for hours with a box of assorted shrapnel collected from bombsites…

Photo © Dave Caplan

My first job in 1959 was at a small engineering firm that sat amidst the ruins of London Wall. War was still indelibly printed on the cityscape - it was impossible to forget what had happened to our country…

London Wall Photo © The Museum of London

But as London finally rose up from the ashes in the 1960s everything changed and memories faded. A new generation was born possessing optimism for the future. The Prime minster of the day, Harold McMillan told us that we had “never had it so good”. There was a healthy anti war feeling in the country with the many CND anti nuclear marches. But what comes around goes around. In 1984 Margaret Thatcher mobilized our troops to fight the Falklands war in an historic show of jingoistic patriotism…

Our smiling boys and girls were cheered off just as they had been in 1914 and 1936, amidst much ticker tape and flag waving, to smash the enemy. Throughout this month and the many months and years before, soldiers are routinely returned home. Not in the way they were expecting, but in a coffin draped in a union jack, to sleep forever. It is impossible not to be moved; no matter what position you take on war. 18 year olds die, often without really knowing why. When one hears of the atrocity recorded in Afghanistan and Iraq to innocent men, women and children, it is impossible to believe that we live in the 21^st century. We have learned nothing. Only this week the former President of the United States, George Bush told the world that water boarding was not torture because his lawyer had said so. And this is supposed to be the most advanced nation in world? What hope do we have?

© Brian Harris Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Back in 1978 I visited the war graves of the Somme with some enthusiastic friends. We camped at Railway Hollow, now known as the Sheffield City Battalion Park.

Our little group with me on the right and my original partner Ken Carroll left. Photo © Duncan Sturrock

On the morning of 1^st July we set off – just as the Accrington Pals and Barnsley Pals had done in 1916 – into the blinding morning sun as skylarks sang overhead. The only difference was that we walked over soft green grass. For them it was heaps of mud and debris and a horrific blizzard of bullets and shells. 60,000 casualties were recorded on that fateful July day.  

Battle of the Somme 1916

Visiting the war graves it is one of the most moving experiences I have had. You need to do it to understand what I mean.

In 1998 I once again found myself in the same location. I had commissioned the Great War photographer Don McCullin to take a photograph for a stamp, which formed part of the 48 Millennium set that I was working at the time for Royal Mail. I was in France scouting locations for Don, with this result…

Don McCullin's tribute to the fallen 1999 © Royal Mail

Artists through the ages have visually recorded their take on war, often powerful and moving, from vast canvases to monumental sculptures. For me one of the most sensitive evocations in recent times is the work produced by the multi talented Turner Prize winner, Steve McQueen. After spending time as an official war artist in Iraq he return home to produced Queen and Country a beautifully crafted wooden cabinet with a series of vertically sliding panels, each containing a sheet of stamps featuring portraits of the British service men and women who sacrificed their lives in Iraq between 2003 and 2009.

I could not help making a connection between those sliding panels and the soulless mortuary draws in the field hospitals of war zone.

We live is an age where pilotless drones can be controlled via a joystick while viewing a TV screen from the comfort of an air condition room in Nevada. It is akin to the ultimate electronic war game but where real people are clinically eliminated 7,000 miles away. No guilt, no shame it’s all a game.

I leave you with a stamp designed by Hat Trick. It is a perfect and beautiful example of what graphic design is at its best – intelligent thinking, superbly crafted.

 

Digitally deranged

I wrote this post in May 20I0. Things have only got worse.

I come from the analogue generation. Television used to be broadcast in 405 lines. Recorded music pressed out on vinyl. Typing was done on a red Olivetti portable and my Olympus OM1 used 35mm role film and of course, the artwork for my design creations were produced in mechanical form using little more than some board a surgical scalpel and some rather smelly Cow Gum. 

The digital age changed all that. But only for some. Many of my contemporaries positively bristle with pride at the fact that they don’t get within 3 meters of a Macintosh. In fact, many can hardly work out the functions on a mobile phone let alone the TV remote. Not me, I positively enjoy embracing the new, even though at times it can be a trial. But I have slowly come to realise that I am digitally addicted. We’ve had, shopping, alcohol, drugs, betting, food, and sex addiction. Now we have new temptations - Internet dating, email, Wikipedia, iTunes, Facebook, Google, Skype, eBay, Twitter, gaming, and blogging (Okay I know), etc to become addicted to.

Apparently, the average time a person spends at the computer each day is 6 to 8 hours. So the worst case scenario is almost 3000 hours or 121 days per year. Imagine sitting in front of your Mac for 3 months 24. 7. And designers, because of the nature of their work, spend even more time looking at that seductive screen. Isn’t it a bit crazy? A report published by the Mental Health Foundation highlighted concerns that technology is being used as a replacement for genuine human interaction. Nearly a third of young people questioned for the report said they spent too much time communicating with friends and families online when they should see them in person. This is very sad.

Do you think you might be addicted? 

Here’s a simple test. Can you walk past your Mac without checking your email? Likewise can resist those little alerts from your iPhone or Blackberry? Do you text message when having lunch or supper with friends or even in bed? The number of times I have seen people

texting while crossing the road completely oblivious to the dangers. Do you get regular headaches or dry eyes? Do you have any time or space away from your digital gismos? To find out more I have added a link to an addiction test at the foot of this post.

When I got back to my house in Dorset last month I discovered that my Internet was down. It stayed that way for eleven days. For the first couple of days, I had major withdrawal symptoms. But on the third day, all was tranquil and I started to do all those things that I used to do pre Internet. I had more time on my hands to do stuff. One moment I was in the garage cutting up wood and being very macho. The next on my knees planting lavender and being aware that summer was revealing itself all around me - something you miss when glued to that screen. I sorted out old clothes and odds and ends to give to the local charity shop. I reorganised my cupboards. Spoke to friends on the telephone. Read. And also took quite a lot of pleasure from just looking at the sky. It was all good. And I realised what I had been missing, what the digital age had robbed me of. So now I am trying to digitally ration myself in favour of a more analogue way of the world. You should give it a try sometime if only to discover that you are digitally addicted. Oh yes, my internet finally got fixed, after a bevvy of engineers, trucks, and a lot of head scratching. It turned out to be squirrels; they’d gnawed their way through the wires on the telegraph pole. Now that’s what I call analogue.

Think you're addicted? Check HERE

And just as you thought it was safe to go back into the water, along comes this man (alas no longer) with yet another temptation...

 

I want one!