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Archived posts: February 2011

Drawing Fashion at the Design Museum

We nipped across to the Design Museum over the weekend to check out the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year show that’s just opened there. We weren’t overly impressed with the show to be honest – it’s a bit of a mish-mash of work, organised into rather arbitrary categories for the exhibition (‘Learn’, ‘Home’ etc.) rather than the actual categories in which the work has been nominated (Architecture, Product, Graphics etc.).

Fortunately, while we were we caught the Drawing Fashion show on the floor just below, and it’s just brilliant. It features a fine array of 20th and 21st century fashion illustration, most notably from Rene Gruau (above), Francois Berthoud (below top) and Mats Gustafson (below bottom). The show has been beautifully designed by the folk at Carmody Groarke, with graphic design by A Practice for Everyday Life.

The Drawing Fashion show runs until 6 March, and Designs of the Year until 7 August.

(Oh, and we also popped in to the Saul Bass poster show that’s on at Kemistry Gallery – check out Johnson Banks for their review of that.)

21 February 2011 | No Comments

Grafik magazine relaunches

Today sees the relaunch of Grafik magazine, returning after a brief holiday (issue 187 went AWOL, but you can download a pdf version), under the new management of the editorial team of Caroline Roberts and Angharad Lewis, with a new design and masthead from Michael Bojkowski, and featuring a cover created in collaboration with Heath Killen.

Grafik started life as the monthly magazine Graphics International in the early 90s. Larger than the current format, it often featured special finishes, as seen in the two issues below – the one on the left is printed on flocked paper, a velvety textured stock, with a single silver foil; the one on the right, their hundredth issue, is foil-blocked with a repeat pattern of the number 100.

In July 2003 the magazine relaunched as Grafik (issue 107), with a design by Made Thought which seemed to place the magazine’s own design ahead of the content it featured.

Seven or so years later, it’s great to see Grafik becoming a bit quieter again (though we’d still quibble with the use of an italic serif as a highlight in amongst sans serif body copy… but maybe that’s just us). A magazine will always survive on its content, and as always it’s really well researched and written. (Full disclosure here, we’re entirely biased, as our Hoxton Street Monster Supplies project is featured in the new issue. You can read the article in our Press & Books section.)

Check out Jeremy Leslie’s review over at MagCulture, or take out a subscription.

Lovely stuff.

10 February 2011 | No Comments

The Beauty of Books

Yesterday we caught up on the first episode of The Beauty of Books, the new four part BBC4 series (screening as part of their Free Your Imagination season about books).

The show focused on two books in particular, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Winchester Bible.

The Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest surviving complete New Testament, created around 350AD; and also one of the earliest surviving bound books: 800 pages of vellum, written in four equal columns of 48 lines. We learnt that it was mainly created by female scribes, using an ink created from Oak galls, which was more acidic than standard carbon inks, and therefore more resistant to rubbing off the page.
The Winchester Bible is a stunningly beautiful illuminated manuscript, created in the 12th Century, which still lives at Winchester Cathedral.

It’s a great show, we’re looking forward to the next three instalments. The next one airs on BBC4 on Monday 14 February at 8.30pm, and looks at Medieval books including the Luttrell Psalter and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

9 February 2011 | 5 Comments

Cabin oil

We picked up a few bits and bobs at the Ephemera fair on Sunday, including this shipping label from the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company, and the Cod Liver Oil label below.

Cod Liver Oil floating on wine and water, four times a day? Delicious, obviously.

You can check out more P&O ephemera at the P&O Heritage Site (though it’s playing up a bit at the time of writing). Otherwise, take a wander over to Alistair’s Ephemera set on Flickr.

8 February 2011 | 5 Comments

Thursday – Matthias Hoegg

The good folks at File Magazine just got in touch to let us know that the short film Thursday, by recent RCA graduate* Matthias Hoegg, has been nominated for the Short Animation Award at this year’s Baftas.

Each bi-annual issue of File comes in two parts – a physical broadsheet style magazine, and a full-screen online player – as they themselves say, ‘it’s a magazine to watch and read’. The ‘watch’ part of the latest issue (No. 4) is online now, and features Hoegg’s beautiful seven minute film, ‘an everyday love story set in the not so distant future [which] sees blackbirds battling with technology, automatic palm readers and power cuts’.

Check it out.

*Interestingly, both the other nominated shorts are by RCA graduates (Michael Please and David Prosser) . Monopoly much?

3 February 2011 | No Comments

Gerd Arntz – Graphic designer

Well now, this is definitely our new favourite book. We’ve just got hold of a copy of 010 Publishers book Gerd Arntz. Graphic Designer, and it’s just fantastic.

Gerd Arntz designed the symbols for social scientist Otto Neurath’s International System of Typographic Picture Education, or Isotype as it’s better known. His designs are quite beautiful – they’re unbelievably simple, with a startling economy of line, yet full of character and expression at the same time.

The 288 page book is designed by Ontwerpwerk with flourishes of wit (in one spread, an illustration of a man sitting folornly on a packing case gazes across to an empty page), and features a mix of essays about Arntz and Isotype, as well as a vast range of Arntz’s illustrations.

It also shows images of Arntz’s working methods – pencil drawings and linocut prints. A far cry from the slick impersonality of today’s vector drawing programmes. (Though we’re in no doubt that Arntz would have adored Illustrator…)

Neurath’s name is rather better known than Arntz’s, so it’s great to see him getting such rich exposure here.

You can take a virtual flip through the book here, or check out the brilliant Gerd Arntz site for much of the content too.

There’s also an Isotype exhibition on at the V&A at the moment, organised in collaboration with the University of Reading – more info on that here.

Brilliant stuff.

2 February 2011 | 1 Comment

The Ride Journal – Issue 5

The latest issue of The Ride Journal has recently hit the streets, and as always it’s a delicious combination of fine writing, gorgeous photography, and brilliant illustration, all themed around cycling of every form and style. (You can download pdfs of issues 1 and 2 if you want to get a feel for it.)

The cover is again by the good folks at I Love Dust, and it’s just fantastic. Here’s a look at all the full covers so far:

It’s great to see the magazine going from strength to strength. Oh, and the latest issue also features an article by our studio mate David Pearson about Eastern European matchbox labels featuring cycling.

Pedal out and buy one.

2 February 2011 | No Comments