Graphic Journey Blog

Paule Constable RDI: Shine a Light

The National Theatre's internationally acclaimed production of War Horse.

Paule Constable is recognised as one of the world's leading theatrical lighting designers, with shows like 'War Horse' and 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. She has won a staggering 5 Laurence Olivier Awards for her groundbreaking work. I had the great pleasure of interviewing her for the RDInsights podcast series where Paule talks about her early life, the devastation the pandemic has inflicted on live theatre and forging a career in a male-dominated profession and much more. You can hear it HERE.

Isidro Ferrer: Spanish delight

This is Isidro Ferrer. Graphic Designer, Illustrator, sculptor, humorist, and general all-round creative wizard. I love his work. Here is just a tiny fraction of his output centring on his poster series for Centro Dramatico Nacional dating back from 2006. They are a beautiful example of pure graphic, conceptual thinking, executed in two colour line and much copied by others. They have the same simplicity as the work by the late great Pierre Medell for Bayerische Opera Staatsoper. Enjoy...

Then he switched to full colour...

To see some of Pierre Medell's work click HERE

 

RDInsights: In conversation

Listen to them all HERE

The Writer: Pen slashing

From left to right: Lara Rossi, Michael Gould and Romola Garai dissect the play. / Photographed by Manuel Harlan

An empty stage. A member of the earlier audience returns to retrieve her forgotten bag. She is about to leave when a man appears on stage. He strikes up a conversation. “Did you like the play?” he asks. There follows a spiralling diatribe from the woman, attacking the play and deconstructing the very nature of audience-pleasing theatre. She viciously dissects not only the play she has seen but also its director – it becomes apparent that it is him. What he hasn’t recalled is that he had met this feisty young feminist six years earlier. It followed a talk he had given on writing for the theatre to an eager gathering of students. He’d taken her for a drink and had tried to seduce her. Fuelled with anger at his vague memory of this, she continues to lay into him and his world of theatre and its predictable audience in their desire to have productions with a conventional beginning, middle and end, along with a pleasing resolution. The play’s writer, Ella Hickson, could have easily been taking a pop at last night Almeida’s turnout: predominantly white, of a certain age (so, I slotted in there perfectly) and all probably Waitrose shoppers.  After the fantastic cut and thrust of this opening salvo, beautifully written by Hickson and blazingly delivered by Lara Rossi to a battle-weary Samuel West, the action suddenly stops. What we thought was the play turns out to be two actors rehearsing a play, now joined on stage by writer Romola Garai and director Michael Gould in a Q&A to dissect the performance. And so starts the real play – or does it? 

Samual West and Romola Garai and their tempestuous relationship. / Photographed by Manuel Harlan

Ella Hickson’s new work, in every sense of the word, plays with the audience in a series of events both in and out of the play. We were presented with the internal struggle of the writer wanting to stay true to the purity of her idea of cajoling the audience into thinking about important issues, in order to make a difference, and not having her work sullied by external forces, be that a tempting money offer for a screen adaptation of her work or submitting to the dictatorial views of a domineering director (Michael Gould). The play also focuses on sexual politics, feminism and women’s place in the world of theatre – are they just eye candy while all the men do the important talking or mere sensual pickings for men of power? It is right on the money in the current ‘Me Too’ climate. 

In a rather poetic moment in the play Romola Garai and Lara Rossi finding more than solace in each other. / Photographed by Manuel Harlan

This four-hander is a tour de force for the actors involved, and Ella Hickson’s writing and Blanche McIntyre’s direction certainly ruffled the feathers of the Almeida audience, particularly in a scene where the two female protagonists, now settled into a lesbian relationship, bring each other to orgasm. This was accompanied by very prolonged noisy cries of pleasure. As I scanned the audience, there was a lot of nervous shuffling and coughing in the air from the grey-haired members. Was this Ella Hickson having her revenge? And it all ended unexpectedly, as I knew it would. A great piece of theatre from an almost totally female creative and production team.

National Theatre: Poster post.

I visited the South Bank recently to see National Theatre Posters from 1963 to 2017: A Graphic Design History. I had missed the private view but this was fortunate, as I had the entire gallery space to myself without the hubbub of chatter, clinking glasses and all that small talk.

An example of George Mayhew's work for the Royal Shakespeare Company 1967. 

For me, this little exhibition brought back memories of my time creating the corporate identity for English National Opera (ENO) back in the late 1980s. Laid out before me at the National Theatre (NT), I could see the trials and tribulations of creating production posters. Reading the potted history in the book accompanying the exhibition, I could identify the pitfalls that prevent a designer from producing great posters. This became even more apparent when I watched the short film featuring three individuals who have headed the NT in-house design studio over the years: the late Michael Mayhew (his father, the graphic designer George Mayhew, was a bit of a hero of mine), Charlotte Wilkinson and current creative director of the in-house studio, Ollie Winser. 

But before I give you my reaction to their thoughts and on the exhibition itself, I need to go back to the late 1980s and ENO. I was then a partner at Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell (CDT); I had met with ENO, which had been doing the usual beauty parade of design groups to select from, as they wanted a new identity. Luckily, we were chosen for the job. At the time, ENO, like the NT, had its own small in-house studio, mostly populated by young, overworked, often bullied and underpaid designers. They produced all the print requirements, including posters, season brochures, programmes and press advertisements – in fact, anything that required graphic design. Everything produced was pasted up as physical artwork, as digital studios were still in their infancy at that time.

My first port of call was to review all of the past and existing work produced by ENO’s in-house studio. The normal process under which they worked was to produce rough designs for a new production. The marketing director would then have to do the rounds of Uncle Tom Cobley and all, including ENO’s director, the individual production director, the set designer, the music director and anyone else who happened to be hanging around at the time. All of the comments would be fed back to the in-house studio, and so it would go on.

It was the most ludicrous design approval process I had encountered. It was clear to me that including the set designer, production director and music director was ridiculous. Their focus was on the production, often in a state of flux and tension with 101 issues to deal with. Looking at graphics was very low on their agenda and often involved a lot of waiting around to get any attention from them, with their often over-inflated egos. Few had any allegiance to ENO or cared or knew anything about marketing a show. They were freelancers for hire – this month at ENO and then off to the Royal Opera House or Bregenz the next. For them, all that remains after the show has ended are the reviews and the poster. So, if they could have a ‘personal’ influence on that, it would be more of their own creation and look very good on their wall at home. A crazy state of affairs.

I explained to the then Marketing Director Keith Cooper and the overall ENO Director Peter Jonas that the only way to create a new identity was to take over complete control of every aspect of the material that ENO needed to produce in order to create a unique ‘personality’. There was no way I could work under the existing approval process. Amazingly, Peter Jonas agreed to my terms. And so the in-house studio was disbanded and I with my team at Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell took over everything. The approval process now comprised just two people: Keith Cooper and Peter Jonas. There were occasional attempts to scupper the process by members of various productions, but Peter Jones, good to his word, always stepped in to stop any shenanigans.

Above the English National Opera identity, created by Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell in 1989 and some of the posters. 

While Jonas was in the driving seat at ENO, things worked like a dream. He was fiercely intelligent and not only understood but was also very enthusiastic about the graphics process and what it could do. Eventually, he was lured by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich with an offer he couldn’t refuse. I suggested to Peter that he meet up with Pierre Mendell to create the identity – he did and the result was Pierre’s wonderful graphic swansong (he died in 2008).

Pierre Mendell's wonderful, highly individual identity and poster work for the Bavarian State Opera in the mid-1990's.

A year or so after Jonas’s departure Keith Copper was poached by the Royal Opera House, they having been impressed by ENO's identity. New people arrived and through a lack of understanding, interest or intellect among the litany of ENO directors following in Jonas’s footsteps, it slowly turned into a warzone with endless battles. Moral of the story: great clients (individuals) equal great work. I always tried to seek them out.

Now back to the National Theatre exhibition.

 

 

Above an example of the great Swiss modernist, Josef Müller-Brockmann from 1960. He was a major influence on British graphic designers in the 1960's

Above, a sampling of Ken Briggs Associates' rigorous modernist approach to the National Theatre's original identity. It was featured in the 1963 D&AD Annual.

On viewing the posters on display, one can see how a loss of control seems to present itself throughout the work over the years, as I described above with the pre-CDT ENO era. At the start of the NT’s graphic life in the 1960s, we are presented with a clean, modernist Swiss approach produced by external designer Ken Briggs, echoing Josef Müller-Brockmann’s work of the mid-1950s. Briggs handled it with rigour, and it still holds true when viewing the work today. I found this early work rather beautiful when judged against most everything else on show. It was the utter simplicity that I loved.

Sadly, as Briggs progressed over the years, he diluted his own vision by bringing in ever-more-decorative imagery and varied typography – no doubt influenced by the fact that graphics were being overhauled by a new generation of young, tight-cheesecloth-shirted and crushed-velvet-flare-wearing designers. Briggs was out of his depth – what he was attempting was far better in others’ hands. Following on from Briggs, we are presented with a riot of approaches and styles from various hands with no sense of NT personality, with many looking like committee efforts (and they probably were).  Michael Mayhew continued this anything-goes approach right through Richard Eyre's and Trevor Nunn's reign.  

Above Alan Kitchin's playful typography for NT Transformations 2002. 

In 2002 Michael Mayhew commissioned letterpress printer/designer Alan Kitching, to produce a series of typographical poster for some small-scale productions under the banner ‘Transformation’. Kitchin came up with some witty playful typography. This seems to have stirred something in Mayhew. When Nicholas Hytner arrived in 2003 he was keen to have a more harmonious look and asked Mayhew to think about this. Following Hytner's wishes Mayhew introduced a cleaner look to posters and print, he chose the ubiquitous Helvetica and started to echo Kitching’s playfulness accompanied by simpler (mostly photographic) imagery, giving a more cohesive look. But this was by no means breakthrough work, and even this approach was often peppered with contradictions. Michael Mayhew was in the post for 23 years until 2009.

Helvetica became the typeface of choice for many years, with the occasional twist echoing a combination of Briggs' earlier modernist contribution and Kitchin's typographical playfulness used on the Transformation series.

Some of Michael Mayhew's typographical experiments for Nick Hytner's clearer vision for NT.

Since then, work has continued very much in Mayhew’s legacy. These days, the imagery, still mostly photographic, is more considered and with the aid of Photoshopped additives. The wider material is now tighter, with greater visibility on the web and filmed show trailers with animated type. But I still do not see an exhilarating identity that surely should be the case for our premier National Theatre  – more a case of competent corporate work, very close to that of The Old Vic, Royal Opera House and the Almadia Theatre.

Cover over the individual logotypes and there is a remarkable similarity in style and approach to the above four organisations.

Ironically it is the work that Rose Design is producing for my old client ENO that is closer to something special. In my view, the NT have a fantastic opportunity to produce trailblazing individual graphic work to match the quality of what's being put on stage. 

Three poster examples of Rose Design's recent work for ENO. It communicates an individual personality for the company.

Listening to what both Charlotte Wilkinson and Ollie Winser (past and current studio heads, respectively) said in the film accompanying the exhibition, the word ‘collaboration’ kept cropping up, along with the terms ‘brand equity’, ‘brand identity’, ‘visual identity’, ‘brand landscape’, ‘media landscape’ and ‘media purchase’. At one point, Charlotte said: “we don't use the term ‘poster’ anymore but ‘brand imagery’.” Oh, dear.

It reminded me of my final years at Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell in the early noughties, when we were expected to produce ever-increasing quantities of written justification for what we were about to do for a client. In turn, we were receiving client briefs that could have been distilled into single paragraphs instead of six incomprehensible pages. From that moment, an army of words became the norm in the design world. Gone was the universally understood term ‘corporate identity’ to become ‘brand identity’ and a plethora of Jargon along with it, spewed out like verbal diarrhoea on monthly bases, which still persists.

For me, the essence of good design is simplicity. When a director creates a production, his/her creative hand should clearly rise to the surface. I believe it is exactly the same for graphic design. As the American politician Roger Stone said: “Nobody ever built a statue to a committee.”

The exhibition ‘National Theatre Posters from 1963 to 2017: A Graphic Design History’ continues at the NT’s Wolfson Gallery until 31st March 2018.

For more on Pierre Mendell click here

A night at the theatre

An exhilarating three hours at the Almeida Theatre in London last night for Mike Bartlett’s new play Albion.

 

It was/is everything that I think theatre should be – challenging, thoughtful, confrontational, moving, satirical and relevant.

 

On entry, the audience is confronted with an enormous dappled-lit tree dominating a sparse set of mostly grass. This is the garden of the historic manor house Albion, representing a long-lost England of the past with its continuity and stability. Evocative faux Vaughan Williams music swells up as the lone figure of a First World War soldier appears on stage and sits contemplatively under the tree, looking into the distance. This cleverly transitions into the arrival of the present-day new owners of Albion. The main protagonist is Audrey Walters (Victoria Hamilton): a highly successful entrepreneur who has scaled back her work commitments in order to leave London’s rat race to live and breathe the country air and to revive Albion’s long-neglected gardens back to life. We quickly learn that there are parallels with the original owners of Albion: their young son was killed in the First World War and Audrey’s son, also a young army captain, had been killed a year before by a landmine.

 

The once-famous estate garden is to be restored in its original form as a series of ‘rooms’, the first being a red room. In Audrey’s mind, it will commemorate the death of her son and all young soldiers who have died fighting for their countries. In semi-darkness, we see a wonderful transformation of the garden blossoming into life, and, within it, the troubled relationships of the interconnecting characters are unpeeled in an astonishing tour de force of ensemble acting of the highest order.

 

The play has a visceral force as it builds. The script is full of wit, comedy and satire delivered with rapier-like sharpness, especially by Audrey in clashes with her daughter, Zara (Charlotte Hope).

 

Mike Bartlett covers the class and age divide, migration, Brexit and servitude. And when it comes to the Almeida’s own audience, mostly white, middle-aged, well-heeled, Telegraph-reading, ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’-listening and Waitrose-shopping customers, it doesn’t pull any punches. There are lots of below-the-belt lines fired during the course of the play: one of the characters comments on Audrey's successful business enterprise that it seems to centre on producing white items sold in white shops to white customers, with no black ones in sight. There was uncomfortable uproarious laughter at this before the audience had time to realise that many of them were its target.

 

 For me, the play had more than echoes of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, with the comings and goings of family and friends dismantling each other during the duration of the play. And there was a scene very reminiscent, perhaps too reminiscent, of Billie Piper’s memorable rain-sodden mud-rolling moment in the Young Vic’s wonderful Yerma.

 

Albion is a great piece of theatre and will do well.

 

 

Graphic Journey’s mini creative review of 2016

Of the many things I’ve seen and heard this year, the following, in my view, are the best, with a few of the worst that really infuriated me.

TV

The Icelandic noir crime series Trapped was one of the better crime productions, not only for its creepy storyline but also for the wonderful, relentless, snow-swept locations.

Happy Valley. Series 2 was as magnificent as the first series, with consistently outstanding writing from Sally Wainwright and wonderful performances from the entire cast, especially Sarah Lancashire.

Fleabag. An amazingly revealing and original series from writer and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It is funny, edgy and very moving. 

Going Forward. Another outstanding writer/comedian is Jo Brand, and Going Forward was funny and touching in equal measures. 

Films

Joachim Lafosse’s, L'Économie du Couple (After Love). An intense observation of a marriage breakdown performed with utter commitment by the film’s two leads Bérénice Bejo and Cédric Kahn. More

20th Century Women is set in Santa Barbara in the late ’70s and focuses on Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening), a wonderfully eccentric single mother and divorcée living in a dilapidated but charmingly eclectic house where she lets two rooms to help make ends meet in order to bring up her son as a decent human being, with much angst and hilarity on the way. Written and directed by ex-graphic designer Mike Mills, whose earlier film Beginners was a delight too. More

I, Daniel Blake is Ken Loach’s precisely targeted indictment of our welfare state. It is Loach at his very best. More

Following A Single Man, director Tom Ford follows up with Nocturnal Animals and proves that he is to be taken seriously in this nearly perfect thriller. More

Manchester by the Sea. An incredibly powerful and moving story of loss, with an Oscar-deserving performance from lead Casey Affleck. 

Ethel and Ernest. The story of Raymond Briggs’ young life. Despite it being an animated film, it pulls no punches. Humorous, beautiful, moving and tragic. Watch it

Product

Terence Woodgate's elegant  Solid - Carrara marble table lamp.

Theatre

Yerma. The Young Vic restaging of Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 tragic masterpiece ‘Yerma’, reset in 21st-century hip London society. With two standout performances from Billie Piper (in the main role as ‘Yerma’) and Brendan Cowell as her husband. More

The Almeida’s stunningly brilliant production of Uncle Vanya. Imaginatively staged and directed by Robert Icke, with a wonderful cast headed by Paul Rhys. 

Architecture

 

The Switch House Tate. One of the most inhospitable, dismal architectural experiences of 2016. Bleak and cold, with no attempt to create an uplifting experience for the visitor. More

Graphics/Branding

Two diabolical rebrands appeared on the scene. First was the hideous Addison Lee courier and car service. It could have been so good in the right hands. 

British Steel introduced a shamefully embarrassing new identity, as opposed to reintroducing David Gentleman’s perfectly thought-out original.

But there was a welcomed and brave move in accepting that an earlier logo from the 1960s still works perfectly. Sean Perkins at North resurrected the baby from the bathwater of the ill-judged Co-operative rebrand of a few years ago.

Nat West's so-called "gentle evolution" of their logo by making what was originally simple complicated. It will be hardly noticed by most but will cost many millions to implement. Such is the insulting disregard that banks have for the public's view of them.  More

This is graphic design at its very best: simple, meaningful, intelligent and witty. Created by Paula Scher at Pentagram NYC for The Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada. 

Posters

2016 saw another group of inept ‘fine art’ collection of posters, this time for the Rio Olympics. Repeating the dreadful mistake of the 2012 UK Olympics with equally dreadful posters, again headed by Tracey Emin. An insult to all serious poster designers. More

Books

A Life in Letterpress. Alan Kitching’s life work in print. A doorstopper of a book, beautifully illustrated.

Nobrow has published the graphic novel, Audubon that centres on explorer John James Audubon’s ornithological quest across America during the 19th century. Written by Fabien Grolleau and sensitively illustrated by Jérémie Royer. 

Advertising

Wales’ Christmas drink-driving campaign, by the Cardiff- based agency Bluegg, underlines the tragic loss of a loved one on Christmas Day.

Art

The Royal Academy of Arts, Abstract Expressionism exhibition was an absolute joy but rather too crowded.

Stamps

Agatha Christie: An intriguing series of six stamps designed by Jim Sutherland and Neil Webb, complete with hidden clues.

TV Commercials

The wonderfully pure Wes Anderson envisioned Christmas train trip for H&M. Watch it

Radio

Florian Zeller’s award-winning stage play The Father, translated by Christopher Hampton for BBC Radio 3. Centred on a man disappearing into the world of dementia. With a moving performance from Kenneth Cranham. 

A night of drama

As a regular theatre-goer, there are times when you experience a good play, a moving play, a funny play, a dramatic play or an utterly downright boring play. And then there are those rare occasions when you witness a truly brilliant play. I had that very pleasure last night at the Young Vic here in London.

Based on Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 tragic masterpiece Yerma, reset in 21st-century hip London society. Yerma is a devastating story centred on a successful blog writer who reveals her daily life in every detail to a growing audience. The main topic of the play is her increasing obsessional desire to have a child. Over the one hour 40 minutes (with no intermission) we witness Yerma's marriage and life spiral out of control to the depths of despair.

The audience views the actors encapsulated in a glass box, taking up the entire width of the stage, in a series of cinematic jump cuts spanning several years. Each scene appears out of total blackness punctuated with projected captions and increasingly heightened music and sound design.

The two standout performances are from Billie Piper, in the main role as Yerma and Brendan Cowell as her husband. The pair work in perfect unison in their endless, brilliantly written, verbal battles, culminating in Piper's frighteningly out of control, utterly spent human force. If you have ever witnessed a husband or a wife in this catastrophic state you will recognise the truthfulness of Piper's wonderful performance dredged up from her emotional centre. It is and astonishing piece of visceral work.

This is one play where the collaborative talents of writing, directing, stage design, lighting, music and sound, plus the astonishing performances, all come together like a perfect symphony orchestra. Catch it if you can.

 

The designer’s mind

 

My cover designed in 2000 for the RSA Journal on inventiveness 

For the past ten years, I have been running around with a microphone interviewing other designers, and by that I mean designers from many disciplines, not just my own area of graphics. 

Ever since embracing the creative world back in the 1960s, I have been fascinated by what makes the designer tick, and the myriad of answers I have received has always fascinated and often surprised me. It gave me the idea of trying to capture some of these moments on tape, so, ten years on, I have clocked up 40 full-length interviews and continue with my quest.  

You can hear a 50-minute compilation featuring moments in the lives of Nick Park, Robin Levien, Margaret Howell, Alex McDowell, Roger Law, Terence Woodgate, Betty Jackson, Michael Wolff, Chris Wise, Dinah Casson, Michael Foreman, Thomas Heatherwick, Gerald Scarfe, Georgina von Etzdorf, Kenneth Grange, Kyle Cooper, Peter Brookes, Timothy O’Brien, Nick Butler, Paul Smith and Sara Fanelli. Click bar below to listen.

Small RDInsights compilation file

You can also hear the full-length interviews with all of the above along with many more designers on the Royal Society of Art website HERE.

Pick of the bunch

 

I have seen three theatre productions in the last 6 weeks. The third of these, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, was at the Young Vic. It is the latest production by the highly inventive and talented director Katie Mitchell.

I have seen three versions of the play previously, but in Mitchell’s hands it was transformed into a beautiful, exhilarating ensemble piece with not one actor in the large cast upstaging anyone: everyone was allowed to shine. It was a truly democratic production.

The stage set consisted of a large, shabby interior room of the Ranevskaya House, reminiscent of a Tarkovsky vision of peeling decay and melancholy. Added to this was some very atmospheric lighting, enhancing the desolate mood. And there were ominous and distorted ambient sounds running through the production to emphasise the feeling of doom.  

Katie Mitchell is known for her highly complex multimedia productions, which often combine film, live action, sound design and foley work in equal measures. They make the theatrical experience far more immersive. But this production was very stripped back, concentrating on the choreography and performance of the actors, which were, at times, breath-taking. There were some wonderful painterly groupings of the cast, giving moments of great beauty.

 

The script by Simon Stephens in this adaptation was fast, sharp, often very touching and extremely funny throughout. As a devotee of cinema, I love the contrast of live theatre performance – it is a completely different experience. So, if you have never visited the theatre but have an itch to go, then this is the one to cut your teeth on. The run ends on 29 November.

More here.