Graphic Journey Blog

Sir Paul Smith

Fashion designer Sir Paul Smith RDI shares with Mike Dempsey RDI his story of leaving school at age fifteen, the accident that curtailed his hopes of being a racing cyclist to global recognition for his sartorial creations and much more in this revealing interview.
Listen HERE

The cover designer's dread: "We have some notes".

Below:  Dec. 9, 2022 New York Times
NYT journalist, Matt Dorfman in the accompanying piece on 'The NYT Best Book Covers 2022' said:

" Most often, any personal stylistic expressions in their work are swallowed up in service to the multiple masters — editors, marketing directors, sales teams — who sign off on a book’s cover. There is also the matter of adhering to any one publisher’s dos and don’ts, which can inform mandates about typography, color palettes and production flourishes like embossing or metallic inks. For people employed in a theoretically creative pursuit, designers’ talents are often defined by how effortlessly they can make themselves disappear to serve the book".

Cutting to the chase Dorfman means a shedload of suggestions and interference from those in the publishing industry who think they know better than the poor designer. After that onslaught, they are left to absorb all that crap and attempt to produce something of merit. I think this group of covers demonstrates that they are fighting a losing battle. How sad things have got.

Greetings

To all my readers and passers-by, have a very safe time wherever you may be.

THANK YOU

To all who have dropped by over the past twelve months. May your year ahead be happy and healthy.

David Gentleman: My Town

David Gentleman RDI. Photo by © Antonio Olmos

David Gentleman has long been a hero of mine ever since the nursery slopes of my design career. His all-round ability as illustrator, designer, engraver and writer is breathtaking. For me on discovering his work back in the 1960s, he appeared a rather aloof character being distanced from hubbub and hype of design associations like the Chartered Society of designers or D&AD. He seemed to hover above those competitive worlds.  But I noted that he had the letters RDI after his name, I had no idea what that was.

Little did I know that many years later I would finally meet David on the occasion of my becoming an RDI (Royal Designer for Industry). Since that time I have had the pleasure of knowing him, written about and recorded an interview with him (Link below). My early imaginings of his aloofness were completely unfounded. If anything he has that English shyness and modestly that resists the notion of being praised, in a wold of hubris it is a rarity these days. But for me, his work speaks loud and proud, he doesn't need to say a thing.

The jacket and binding case (below).

Last week saw the publication of his new book My Town: An Artists Life in London. It features the everyday goings-on in a town he has lived in and loved all his life. Captured with his beautiful black ink pen line overlayed with the most watery of watercolour it captures the seven decades of his 90 years on this planet. His 90th birthday coincided with the publication of the book. It's a delight.

Hear my interview with David Gentleman RDI HERE

Season's Greetings!

Eighth Grade: School's out

"You must go and see Eighth Grade, in fact, every dad with a teenaged daughter should go and see it", said my daughter. So, ever the interested and dutiful father I did.

Sitting comfortably in my local cinema, the lights dimmed and from the off, I was propelled into the world of Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher), a bright, seemingly self-assured, acne covered teenager conducting a podcast from her bedroom on one of her daily topics to help boost the confidence to those subscribing to her sparsely populated channel. But we quickly discover that behind the iPhone the truth about Kayla is a very different matter.

Her life is dominated by the blast of social media from every which way, effectively used by writer-director Bo Burnham throughout the film. As a child of the internet age, Kayla is never without her earphones plugged into all of the external pressures and influences, so important to the teenager's world. She is the only child in a single parent family, and living with her father, Mark (Josh Hamilton), who gives a beautifully nuanced performance in trying to keep a connection with his daughter but is constantly thwarted by Kayla. Mark's concern for her is palpable.

We follow Kayla in her last week of middle school and witness her attempts to fit in with the cool members of the class, where she is mostly shunned of interest or friendship. All of the embarrassment, bravado, fear, heartache and the sheer stress of being a pubescent teenage girl and one, who at heart, feels under-confident with her appearance and personality, but is desperate to be noticed as an individual, such is the cruelty of the teenage world, so perfectly captured in this funny, sad and moving film.

There is a very touching scene where Kayla says goodbye to her unhappy experience at middle school by burning her collected time capsule box, made three years earlier. She asks her dad to light a fire in the garden and in the warm night, illuminated by the flickering fire, with crickets merrily chirping, Kayla and Mark gaze at the boxed items, as the contents disintegrate. Free of internet disruption, they talk, and at last, there is a beautiful connection between them.

You could say that Eighth Grade is a pre, pre-cursor to Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017) and also has a link with Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton's Little Miss Sunshine (2006), all three have sensitively trodden similar paths.

I was very pleased I went to see Eighth Grade. My daughter was right, all dads should catch it.

Take a look at the trailer

Books, books, books: I love them

London studio where books are always close by.

I was recently ask to contribute to the always fascinating It's Nice That website.

They wanted me to share books that have a special meaning to me. You can find out what they are here.

Design and conscience.

Above a student sleep-in at Hornsey College of Art in 1968. 

 Buckminster Fuller gives a lecture during a sit-in at Hornsey College of Art in 1968.

Back in the 1960s, British student activism came to the fore. The Vietnam War, racism and more-local frustrations (like student fees and representation) rose above the parapet. There were sit-ins, sleep-ins, lock-ins and all manner of demonstrations throughout the ’60s. One far quieter protest came in 1964 from a group of graphic designers, photographers and students, headed by Ken Garland. They put their names to a manifesto entitled ‘First Things First’. It rallied against the consumerist culture. They were frankly appalled by many of their industry colleagues chasing and pandering to the commercial pound. This group of manifesto-waving comrades were more about using their creative skills to better society, rather than damage it. Here is that original manifesto:

In 2000, 36 years on from ‘First Things First’, the cause was taken up again by the Canadian magazine Adbusters; after spotting an article in Eye magazine, they decided to reprint the ‘First Things First’ manifesto. This culminated in the manifesto being updated for the 21st century and another group, once again wanting the creative community to adhere to similar principles, got out their pens and signed it.

They were Jonathan Barnbrook, Nick Bell, Andrew Blauvelt, Hans Bockting, Irma Boom, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Max Bruinsma, Siân Cook, Linda van Deursen, Chris Dixon, William Drenttel, Gert Dumbar, Simon Esterson, Vince Frost, Ken Garland, Milton Glaser, Jessica Helfand, Steven Heller, Andrew Howard, Tibor Kalman Jeffery Keedy, Zuzana Licko, Ellen Lupton, Katherine McCoy, Armand Mevis, J. Abbott Miller, Rick Poynor, Lucienne Roberts, Erik Spiekermann, Jan van Toorn, Teal Triggs, Rudy VanderLans and Bob Wilkinson. It was then co-published by Adbusters, Emigre and the AIGA Journal in North America and by Eye and Blueprint in Britain, with further connections in the Netherlands and Form in Germany.

Now we are 17 years into the 21st century and it is clear that many of the concerns of that little 1964 band of brothers (and sisters) have been proved right in their fears of the state of Britain. We are an obese, hyperactive, commercially obsessed society. The digital age has disrupted virtually every area of our daily lives. The design community has mushroomed out of all proportion to the extent that for every designer with a moral compass in harmony with ‘First Things First’ and with the desire to benefit society, there are far more who are happy and hungry enough to use their skills to help to peddle useless crap by designing packaging to encourage children to eat and drink products overfilled with sugar, salt and fat, helping to make Britain and increasingly obese and unhealthy society. Ironically, many of the design presentations of this never-ending parade of products are featured on the Design Week website, often as exemplars of creativity, without one word of criticism.

More sinisterly, every Internet search we make is being tracked and the information sold to advertisers, which in turn will relentlessly target us to buy, buy, buy. This was far from the imaginings of Ken Garland and Co. back in 1964. It would have seemed like an unbelievable world of horrific science fiction.

I’ve often wondered how many of those original (sadly, some no longer with us) 1964 signatories, and the later 2000 group, have adhered to the promise they all signed up to, steering well clear of promoting commercial ‘striped toothpaste’, cat food, stomach powders, etc., along with all those other areas the manifesto so bitterly despised. It would seem that of all of them, Ken Garland clearly has.

If you have any views on this do drop me a comment.

Further reading on ‘First Things First’ 

The original Eye magazine story here

And the 2000 update here

Living the brand

You pay 5p per supermarket bag to freely advertise for the store.

 

I have never had an obsession with branded fashion items. By that I mean wanting to be overt about it.

A decade or so back the VW badges were constantly being stolen from cars.

 

I do have a loyalty to Volkswagen, having driven their cars for so many years. Despite their emissions tampering, I still forgive them. But then that's cars – they are always badged and do need identifying, so I can't get around the one. But I always remove any window stickers that may have been added.

 

 

 

Above some major free advertising.

 

Trainers are a whole story in themselves.

 

But when it comes to fashion, that is where it stops for me. I have never understood the mentality of people wanting to be festooned with logos all over their clothing. These days, the obsession starts young

with peer pressure at school. It's the must-have latest baseball cap, t-shirt, trainers, etc., all heavily branded. And if not fake, they are all outrageously expensive – often paid for by parents who can't really afford the price tags.

The Fred Perry tennis shirt, an early example of fashion branding from 1952.

 

 

The other was of course Levis jeans. 

 

When I was a teenager back in the 1950s, the only outwardly branded fashion item I can recall is the Fred Perry shirt, and that was pretty discreet. But subtlety has gone out the window these days – people have become moving advertisements.

 

It has been reported that David Beckham can receive up to  £13million in one year for brand advertising.

 

Any other form of advertising for a brand has to be paid for, be it print, online or a TV commercial. I think it is about time that people wised up to this exploitation of their body space. We, of course, see sports personalities and film stars advertising brands, but they not only get paid enormous sums of money but are also given free products to go with it.

 

It would be interesting to know if there has been any research carried out to gauge the influence and sales increases based on people wearing overt brands.

 

In my opinion, major brands should do one of two things regarding their branded products:

 

1. Overtly branded items should be discounted by 20%.

2. Non-branded (or minimal) versions should be sold at full price.

 

In that way, people would have a choice and would be indirectly paid to advertise products.

 

You are not only advertising your chosen team but their sponsors. How crazy it that?

 

The worse examples of free advertising are football strips. It's not just the team advertised but their sponsors too – that is real cheek!

 

Apparently, the Daunt Books bag is very popular with fashion models.

 

 

And, sneakily, high-street shops and supermarkets always have their names emblazoned on their bags and charge you for the pleasure.

 

I have been known to wear a t-shirt for a cause or a piece of non-commercial design that I like, but that is where it stops for me.