Graphic Journey Blog

Mike Dempsey: My graphic journey

That’s me above, and this post is unashamedly about me and how I got into what has become a lifelong affair with graphic design – something that has never diminished but grown. Now heading towards my 80s (I still think I’m 34) and having lived through monumental changes in the creative world (from the old analogue days to the hyper technology of today and everything in-between), I am posting a recorded interview from RDInsight, a podcast series I conceived in 2006 and still going strong. I interview those who have received the accolade Royal Designer for Industry (RDI), which is a UK honour awarded by the Royal Society of Arts to exceptional designers across all disciplines for their creative contributions to society. There are over 60 interviews. But for the 60th one, the tables were turned and I became the interviewee. So at the end of 2022, I got to talk about my life and work. I’m now relieved to be back in charge of the microphone again.

To hear the recording, you’ll find the link at the foot, just click the bar, where you’ll find me recounting my own ‘graphic journey’.

But before that, here is a little of my work for clients English National Opera (ENO) and the London Chamber Orchestra (LCO) – two projects from the 1990s I dearly loved being involved with. Here is some of that work. 

MIKE DEMPSEY RDI FINAL EDIT 4:11.2022 copy

Terrence Malick: Poetry in motion

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.

 

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

The Blue Nile: Lost in the rapids.

Back in 1984, I bought The Blue Nile’s first album, A Walk Across the Rooftops, on CD from a new label started by the hi-fi manufacturer Linn Products. It was the company’s maiden release.

From the very first track, I realised that the work of this collective of highly creative individuals, Paul Buchanan, P.J. Moore and Robert Bell, was truly special and the results would endure over a long period, and they have.

It was to be ten years before The Blue Nile released their second album, Hats. To use the term ‘masterpiece’ is always difficult, but Hats is every bit The Blue Nile’s masterpiece. In the 12 years of their existence, they only released four albums. They disbanded in 2004 and went their separate ways. But their fan base is spread far and wide, and from the start The Blue Nile had a following within the music industry itself, with the likes of Bowie to Sting and Rick Lee Jones to Peter Gabriel, with the latter regularly buying 25 copies a week of A Walk Across the Rooftops to distribute to friends when it was first released.

The key to this enigmatic, highly individual group is their musicality and the major contribution of lead singer-songwriter Paul Buchanan. There is an amazingly soulful, melancholic vulnerability in his voice, from which he delivers his lyrics with utter believability, like the very best actors; it hits you deeply and emotionally and his writing is pure poetry.

For me, he is one of the finest living singer-songwriters, but to the general public he remains relatively unknown.

Unlike so many artists who just want to hit the big time and make a lot of money in the shortest time, The Blue Nile possibly had other ideas. They were perfectionists and needed time to craft their work into life and found it impossible to adhere to the demands of the commercial world. I see them in the same light as filmmakers Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick – rare people on the outside, making work that demands their total control without external pressure or interference. Spending time in close proximity with a group of intense perfectionists takes its toll, and, as one of the band put it: “If you spend a long time with folk in a submarine, there comes a time when you just have to escape from one another.”

In 1996, The Blue Nile released Peace at Last and in 2004 their final album High. Thirteen years on, there has been a groundswell brought about by social media in keeping the music of this unique collective alive, cajoling and encouraging re-releases and making obscure demos and live performances available on The Blue Nile members’ Facebook page.

Following the void created by the break-up, Paul Buchanan would often appear as a guest artist on recordings with artists from Texas to Chris Botti and Robin Danar to Up Dharma Down.

In 2012, Paul released a beautiful stripped-back solo album called Mid Air, with just a piano, a synth and his haunting voice. It is populated with moving little gems akin to Raymond Carver short stories. It is an album of quiet intensity and was well received.

Paul Buchanan deeply regrets the break-up of The Blue Nile, particularly the estrangement with P.J. Moore, and makes this known in every interview that he gives, perhaps hoping in some way that it will magically bring them all back together into the studio to create more magic. For the avid fans, and I include myself at the top of the list, we can only hope.

If you would like to know more and listen to The Blue Nile, click HERE.

Robert Bell's website

Benedetti and Marsalis: The birth of a concerto

I have always loved insights into the creation of art, be it literature, design, architecture, sculpture, film, theatre, music and the many cracks in between.

The Making of a Concerto is a fascinatingly intimate documentary by Chris Eley revealing the differences between a classically trained, virtuoso violinist, Nicola Benedetti and Wynton Marsalis the Pulitzer prize-winning freeform improvisational jazz musician.

Over many months we followed the trials and tribulations during the creation of a new violin concerto penned by Marsalis especially for Benedetti. Both are dedicated to their art with wildly different in personality, Benedetti, open, emotional and vibrant. Marsalis contained, intense and seemingly calm. There are some marvellous moments where their personalities clash. One such was when Benedetti was fretting over a deeply complex section in the score which she was expected to play in a rehearsal but hadn't had enough time to absorb it. "I just don't know it," she says. "Don't worry, just feel it, make it up," says Marsalis. "I can't do that.", Benedetti replies. Thus exposing the differences of their respective musical worlds. There are many wonderful unguarded moments during their collaboration making this documentary so intimate and fascinating.

After many months of dedicated work from Wynton and Benedetti, the concerto, a fusion of African American spiritual, Scottish folk and jazz, was premiered at the Barbican with the LSO conducted by James Gaffigan, the tension was palpable.

It received a standing ovation. At the end of the documentary, Gaffigan said a beautiful thing about the creation of a new work by a composer and its meaning to them...

"You have a child. The child is yours. But then one day that child is going out into the world and that child is going to grow."

Thank God for the BBC. You can see the programme HERE.

Things I like...

I remember back in 1968 going to see Yellow Submarine and loving Heinz Edelmann's animated illustrations. I had followed his work for many years in Twen magazine where he appeared regularly.

Here are some of the finished drawings that appeared in Twen at the time of the film's release.

And thinking about the late George Martin here is one of his most memorable arrangements for The Beatles, A Day in The Life in a recently restored studio film recording from 1967. Take a look and listen here

A Letter from Michael Wolff No.5

Designers by their very nature are highly tuned visual creatures.
 
But sometimes the tunes that travel through the ears can be just as creatively enriching as anything absorbed through the retina..
 
In his 5th letter to young Indian designers my good friend Michael Wolff shares the music that has made an important contribution to his life, creative or otherwise.
 
Dear Reader,

Are we beginning to know one another?  I hope so, even though no one’s been in touch with me by mail or email yet. This is my fifth letter to you. Maybe, because I’m in London, I seem remote to you, so, in this letter, I’ll open my heart through the medium of music. Two great art forms are particularly close to designing, One is cooking and the other is music. Both are visceral and intensely creative. So with this longer than usual letter, I want to tell you my life story through music.

I call it ‘a mockery of age’.

Since I was six, music has always been an intimate companion.

I’d hear my parents saying words like ‘foxtrot and quickstep’ and placing their precious shiny black records on their felt covered

gramophone turntable. Then they’d carefully lower a strangely shaped chromium plated arm that played a variety of scratchy and hissing music all through my childhood. There was always an argument about when to change the needle. And then, another argument, noisily in Russian, about who’d lost the tiny tin with dozens of perfect new Columbia steel needles, nestling in crisp paper inside. I lived with either the sound of argument or the sound of music. This first piece
of music always restored the household calm. For me, Victor Sylvester’s elegant dance music created anticipation of glamour and of romance to come.

Victor Sylvester

Music became my refuge. I used it to emphasize sadness and joy.

By the age of eight, hymns – sad tunes like “there is a green hill far away”, were my ‘under the bedclothes’ mantras to cry with Songs by George Formby, were my inner music for laughter and happiness.

Malene Dietrich

During World War 2, thousands of songs, from BBC radio signature tunes to military marches, filled my head. The most enduring was Lilly Marlene, sung by Marlene Dietrich. She was my introduction to erotic fantasy:

A jump of ten years through Phil Harris, Benny Goodman, Spike Jonze, Edith Piaf and literally weeks of French cinema and passionate Francophilia – which still burns steadily with me, especially in the songs of Edith Piaff and Rina Ketty.

In those days, I spent hundreds of nights with Dixieland, New Orleans jazz and blues, dancing in London’s jazz clubs, instead of persevering with Architecture at the AA – Sidney Bechet, an American from  New Orleans who lived in Paris, was my next music hero. France, America, movies, and music had crept indelibly into my world.

Adult life ran alongside my own kind of life, and my musical taste became so eclectic it gradually become impossible to explain it.

Music still continues to bring solace, exhilaration, sadness and joy.

Singers like Ruth Etting and Bessie Smith, and big band swing, held me in their thrall. The singer that reflected all of this and epitomised the huge and central role of humour in my life was the joyful and exuberant Fats Domino – complete with his 200 suits!

Fats Domino

Time to turn up the volume, especially with Fats.

Les Paul and Mary Ford

Les Paul’s guitar playing, his multi-track arrangements with Mary Ford and Count Basie’s subtle piano interweaving with his juicy and immaculate big band, were both special to me as I started to appreciate how ‘the big picture’ and infinite detail are inextricable expressions of each other and this duo continues to influence my work. These two pieces are permanently imbedded

in the ‘easy to reach’ part of my music memory.

By now, some rock’n’roll groups were far outstripping the creativity of the design world in which I worked. The Beatles in particular, light years more dazzling and important to me than any designers working in my lifetime –  except possibly Le Corbusier.

I was amazed by The Who’s opera Tommy – amazed. Not just by the subject and the story and the wonderful observation in the poetry of their lyrics, but by the orchestral power of the music. I stood next to a battery of speakers throughout a deafening live performance at the Round House and was transported to a place I can’t even begin to describe. The ‘acid’ did no harm and volume is essential. Listen

At this time I was living a family life and leading the creativity in Wolff Olins. Those who worked with me were people of extraordinary talent. Each one of them took me beyond where I was capable of going alone. I can’t remember why, but I spent many nights doing long drives of hundreds of miles listening to hours and hours and hours of American rock’n’roll on the eight track “Slot Stereo” we’d designed.

The Band

I feel such empathy with this tremendous music. Bands like Credence Clearwater and The Band had permanent space in my mind. This music is sublime It’s almost running permanently through my blood stream today. I love it!

Some songs, where the lyrics and the music are as one – like flowers and their leaves – are like a perfect thirst quenching drink on a balmy summer day. This Paul McCartney song,  Blackbird, always comes effortlessly into my mind. For me, it’s the sound of absolute equanimity.

It ripples down my spine.

Joan Sutherland

At an altogether deeper level, Mozart’s music has reached me more intimately than anyone else’s. This miraculous aria from the Marriage of Figaro has always, and will always, stop all thinking and hold me enthralled. It’s nothing to do with the opera itself or the story, but simply the purest singing of a great soprano and Mozart. 

Nothing else to say. Just close your eyes and listen.

My work life is now turbulent – from leading a company of many colleagues, many who became my greatest friends, to ‘leading’ a one man band – then back to a company of colleagues and then back to singular work again, and then again.

A roller coaster life with the great joys of an ever extending family to keep me sane and living with love. America became an unexpected fact of my life. My family extended again to embrace more ‘growing up children’ from Kansaa, more best friends and more American music, both early country music and the music of the time. The Carter Family always promps a tear.

This autobiographical account ‘of music now stops being any attempt at personal history, because all the music I’ve selected from now on, is really just music that I’ve loved for many years. A bit like my clothes, some have been around for decades. They come and go and then I start wearing them again. Bob Dylan’s poetic lyrics always connect with me. I sometimes feel, when I remember them, that at certain times they literally were my life. I seem, from time to time to have lived through some unaccountable episodes. Among them extended times at Isle of Wight festivals and ‘trips’ into adventures I don’t even remember.

Joan Baez

Most of Dylan’s music resonates naturally with some of those extraordinary interludes. Especially long, long songs like Jack of Hearts and this song were he sings about a little rooster with something on his mind.

You’ll need to buy Blood on the tracks to hear the original.

I like this cover version  - but she’s not Dylan. Meet me in the morning is Dylan so no worries. Turn up the volume.

In 1986 I met my third wife in Kansas City. She was my Kansas City Baby, living there with her son, her daughter and a three legged cat – Lucy. Her son Jordan and I often danced to this George Harrison song. 

 It wasn’t an easy time for him and this song always made us want to dance and feel warm and happy! Sometimes, in my life, music has played a defining role in the start of a relationship.

Billie Holiday

At any point in my life there are certain pieces of music that keep recurring. I know them so well, forget about them completely, and then they come back, bringing a wave of recognition and delight. Billie Holliday has always been there in that way for me. The musicians who play with her support her with such obvious affection, it reminds me of my good fortune in working with so many friends, and how often they’ve supported me and brought their strengths to compensate my weaknesses There’s always a mixture of tragic sadness and a love of love in Billie Holiday’s music. Listen to these lyrics. They’re quick, short and tell the whole story. It’s glorious music.

Maria Muldaur

Sometimes, although my family was from St Petersburg, and all my life has been an English one so far, songs like this one by Maria Muldaur make me feel as if my roots are from somewhere like Tennessee in the American South. I feel a kind of longing for it.  Strange – but it’s such sweet music. 

At one time I was flying to Kansas City to see my Kansas City Baby Marty every week. One of my daughters and two grand children live there and my very, very close friends the Barsotti’s live there too. Charlie Barsotti is my favourite New Yorker cartoonist and very special friend. His home is where I recharge my sense of humour, and where I relax most deeply. I delight in the biggest and the smallest of American stores and unbeatable BBQ. (The Nebraska furniture store is over a million square feet. USA!) Chuck Renner’s store in Kansas City is where I buy my cowboy boots.

Dear God, this is all amazing music, although I realize I haven’t brought my love of the Pink Floyd into this letter. I always think of them as designers and of course brilliant masters of song. Here’s a track which ridicules and dismisses so much about education. Although what we teach kids is improving in many countries, watch this TED talk by Ken Robinson many years ago. Few governments take any notice.

All I can say that for me, thank God school is over for ever.

Charley Parker

As far as Gods are concerned, Charley Parker is one of mine. I hated ‘bop’ until I loved it. It happened suddenly - all over in an hour. It was Dizzy Gillespie’s fault. At any point in the last forty years, whenever I need to loosen up and find a feeling of fluidity, it’s either the miracle of cranial osteopathy or listening to any Charlie Parker. This short track in particular.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I realized how valuable and wonderful tears were. I was always uncomfortable with mine, and not too happy around anyone else’s.  This timeless duet is at least as miraculous as two summer skylarks soaring and singing together.

It never fails to bring locked away tears to my eyes. It’s always been music that moves me more than any other. I hope I can take it with me when I go.

Mozart

This is another track to close your eyes to, keep calm and fly with these glorious birds.

This was completely irresistible the first time I heard it. It remains irresistible. For me this is the most extreme music. I don’t just hear it, I eat and drink and dance it. It reaches all of me, and it connects my very first experience of what music did to me when I first heard it, to my experience of music today. For me it makes a mockery of age.

It needs volume. Warn your neighbors first and then let go.

John Lennon

Before the last song in this story, so far, are three songs that not only reach my heart but are closer to my mind and the truth inside me than any other songs I’ve ever heard. Two of them are by the genius John Lennon and the third by Eric Clapton.

Eric Clapton

See what you think and feel when you listen.

This last song will probably mystify those of my friends who aren’t English.  It’s a kind of cultural poem set to music. The music behind this ‘auction of gloom’ is timeless – timeless in the sense of stretching across decades.  

Spike Milligan

There’ve always been meetings or events, which I know I’ll hate, and to which I have had to go; particularly some English meetings and events. For me this brilliant song by Spike Milligan – another great genius – both epitomizes and ridicules these stifling functions. Hopefully never again is what I always say to myself, and then, there I am – in another dreadful function with dangerously catered food, in a huge nowhere room that I never want to see again.

In the end, all there is to do is to laugh and laugh, and eat and love and appreciate friends and all the miracles in life – find something good in everything, avoid causing harm, do your best to bring what you can to the world, and love again and laugh again, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

In my next letter I might tell you the same story. This time how through many things and places I’ve seen that have inspired me all through my life so far that have made me the kind of designer I am.

Some are things to love and appreciate and some so terrible that they have to change and I am compelled to be part of that change.

The point of sharing myself with you in this way is to encourage you to celebrate yourselves so that you can flourish by being fully who you are, through how you live your life and how you create your own work.

Happy days

 

Richard Hudson: King of the jungle

This is the theatre designer Richard Hudson. He is known for his stunning opera and ballet sets. 

The Pique Dame set for the Lyric Opera of Chicago

Set for the NY Met's production of Armida

But he is more widely known as the designer of the sets and costumes for The Lion King.

Above Hudson's striking sets for The Lion King

To date, The Lion King has been seen by over 65 million people around the world.

I recently recorded an interview with Richard about his life and work. You can listen to it here.

If you are interested in production design for film or theatre there are more of my interviews available below:

Ken Adam

Alex McDowell

Stuart Craig

Timothy O'Brien

Do graphic designers read or just look?

It was 1980. I was judging the graphics section at D&AD. Amongst the other members on the jury was George Hardie. We were thumbing through some stationery when we were distracted by rather a startling range. It was both by and for the Dutch consultancy Studio Dunbar and consisted of a bizarre collection of dots, dashes, boxes, graduated rules, grids and letter spaced san serif type - a sort of mélange of isms from the previous six decades...

Studio Dumbar's stationery created in 1979.

We both acknowledged that this piece of work was going to have an effect on the British graphic scene. Sure enough, those little graphic devices used on that stationery range started to weave their way into the fabric of our industry.

At the time mainstream British graphics was dominated by a classical approach to typography, with lashings of nostalgic pastiches thrown in. One of the key exponents of this genre was John Gorham, whose work was everywhere in the 70s…

More adventurous directions were happening in the music world absorbing the influences from the Constructivist and Bauhaus periods. This was evident in the sleeve designs of  Barney Bubbles, George Hardie and Storm Thorgerson…

George Hardie's Souther Comfort album design from 1972.

The classic cover for The Dark Side of the Moon 1973 by Storm Thorgerson with George Hardie.

Generation X Day By Day album cover by Barney Bubbles 1977.

Barney Bubble's 1977 cover for The Dammed. Below his inspiration by Wassily Kandinsky from 1923

Above Joost Schmidt while at the Bauhaus 1924

They, in turn, were influencing a new breed of graphic designers that were incubating in the bustle of Manchester City during the late 70s – Ben Kelly, Malcolm Garrett and Peter Saville…

Malcolm Garrett's Buzzcocks cover of 1977

Above 3 creations by Peter Saville in 1981.  Below the original source.

Above an advertisement by Paul Schuitema c. 1927

Meanwhile, Dunbar’s work became more challenging and highly decorative, evolving into eccentric three-dimensional cut-outs and exaggerated perspective. It was embraced open-armed by designers in Britain and a crazy fusion of classicism, modernist and Dutch design appearing at a rate of knots…

Above Studio Dumbar's 1984 cover for the Dutch Post Office Year Book.

Above two theatre posters by Studio Dunbar's in 1988 during their increasing eccentricity. They won a D&AD silver award that year.

Another Dunbar piece from 1991 

And some examples of British design that followed Studio Dunbar's lead. Above pages from BA's annual report 1987

The Royal College of Art's yearly report from 1987.

Spreads from Seymour Powell's 1986 work brochure designed by Siobhan Keaney.

Vaughan Oliver's work for the Young Vic from 1994.

An album cover designed by Nick Bell in 1991.

This patchwork of borrowed styles and influences became increasingly popular around the world, especially on the American west coast.

Then in 1986, this appeared…

8vo (Octavo) the International Journal of Typography. It was the brainchild of  Mark Holt, Simon Johnston and Hamish Muir. They planned 8 issues, hence the title. Their quest was to debate and reflect only modernist design principles. None of the idealised serif, symmetrical classical forms of typography for them. Just a series of grid systems and sans type to harness their world view of design and typography, which followed the more deconstructed, an almost Swiss punk feel created by one Wolfgang Weingart…

Above 3 examples of Wolfgang Weingart's hyped-up Swiss-style from the 1970s.

I remember at the time of the first publication of 8vo there was a general buzz about this new ‘serious’ journal. It read and looked like a technical specification manual - painfully small type and a myriad of footnotes and cross-references. It was quickly viewed as the clinical antidote to the decorative style excesses of the period. Over the next few years,’ it was 8vo’s influence that was to work its way into the studios and consultancies across town. Their take of modernism was now de rigueur.

Poster designed by Cartlidge Levene 1991 picks up on 8vo's mantra.

But over the span of the 8vo’s six-year life, the typography became increasingly problematic to read. I have to admit that I bought all the issues but I never read past the first few pages.  Here are some examples of what I mean…

Interestingly the 8vo trio was very critical of what they termed, ‘over-stylized’ or ‘superficial design’ (like Neville Brody’s work for The Face) on BBC2’s The Late Show in 1990. They favoured  ‘client, user and functionality’. But they too fell into the same trap. Take this for example…

8vo number 6 1988

Does it really ‘favour the user’ or just geeky designers high on all things typographic?

What links much of the above work is its intentional exclusion of the reader. There seems to come to a point where the designer disconnects with the reader in favour of a decorative playground. It is a highly seductive visual landscape, but alienates most people other than like-minded folk, rendering the notion of communication redundant.

A surprise item of the 90s was the above D&AD silver and gold award-winning magazine, designed by Paul Elliman and Peter Miles (who now works in the United States). This crude photocopied style, with echos of the Jamie Reid's punk era, spawned some imitators for a while.

Let’s look for a moment at the work of one of the key figures in the creation of modernist design, Jan Tschichold. His work was just as eccentric and startling as Dunbar’s, but some 50 years earlier. But Tschichold turned his back on his brainchild… in favour of this approach…

Why? Well, my own view is that he wanted to rid himself of the rigid dogma that he had in part created and that the classical form had spirituality and beauty that increasingly appealed to him in his later years, as well as during his years in Switzerland. His most important work is with Penguin books in the late 1940s…

A post by Ben Terrett recently struck me, over at his noisydecentgraphics blog. It was his (plus the mum and dad test) reaction to the work this man...  

Wim Crouwel

 and one of the many typefaces designed by him. This one is 1967.

– a man celebrated in an almost evangelical way by many young British designers - at recent London exhibition. This is what he said… ‘Crouwel is a very good designer but a lot of the work, in fact, all of the work, left me very cold. It felt like design for designers. If I took my mum and dad to the exhibition I don't think they would enjoy it. Whereas they would have loved the Alan Fletcher exhibition… Crouwel's work is too cold. Too inaccessible. It needs more warmth, it needs a way in. But there is no way in. I realise Crouwel's work is modernist and part of that is inaccessibility and a coldness (like it or not, that's how it presents). But this for me raises a bigger question about graphic design. Is there any point to it if it's inaccessible? If my mum and dad can't enjoy it, is it irrelevant? ". I think Terrett makes a very valid point.

The fact is designers get bored. The idea of sticking to one typographical discipline can become tedious. Younger designers always want to displace the status quo. It is in the natural order of things.

Design can only move forward by reassessing what has gone before – questioning, deconstructing, and experimenting has, and will always, happen. Out of that new approaches emerge.

Today designers in their early 40s are hanging on to their versions of borrowed modernism. Meanwhile, the 30 something designers have re-engaged with a more literary approach to design, using classical styles and techniques from the 40s and 50s.

Above just 2 examples by David Pearson who's work pursues a more traditional 'literary' design style.

The balance and elegance of Tschichold and Gorham’s work are back and perhaps with it, designers will once again have sympathy with the words that have been written and for the readers who really want to read them. 

If you read this I would love to know. So please do leave a comment, even if it is just to say 'Yes'.

Mike

 

 

 

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