I want to print one of these as a postcard, but can’t decide which version I prefer? You can help me out! Please tell me which design you like better.

Also, can anyone recommend to me a good postcard printer? Preferably based in London or near enough to London that I can, if I need to, go and talk to them face-to-face to ensure I get exactly the results I am after. Bearing in mind that if you want something done well and quickly it will be expensive, or you can get something done well and cheaply but it will be slow. Since it’s not easy to get something done well and cheaply and quickly, then I’ll take the done well but cheaply option as time is not such a major factor. Thanks.

Edit to add: For the kind of thing I’m after, Moo are too expensive and the colour quality is not always as accurate as it could be. (I do love the mini cards a lot though)

What do you get when a pair of artists join forces with residents of a Pittsburgh street and Google? A Street with a view. I’m reminded of a conversation I had quite recently (I forget who with, sorry!) about persuading your neighbours to collaborate on ways to create giant messages/artworks to be seen on Google Maps. I still hope someone tries to do that — you probably need garden space or a rooftop, though.

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Looks like it’s time to get my thinking-cap on and dig through my paper and fabric scraps, so I can enter the Folksy Angels competition.

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Fun post on Credit Crunch Graphics.

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I love the sketches of wi-fi users over at cityofsound. Being the digital nomad that I am these days, I’ve probably sat in all of those positions.

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Stu sketches a few tube people.

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I’m in love with this Lory:

More pretty birds here.

William Turner would have loved the skies over the Tate Britain and Vauxhall Bridge last Friday.

I know I did.

I’ve been trying out some active social networking lately. That’s social networking where you actually leave your computer and talk out loud to people who are sitting right next to you, instead of only communicating with them via the wonders of typing and telephony. It’s a pretty radical idea, I know. Social networking on an actively face-to-face basis? What mad genius thought up that one? It’ll never catch on…

I’ve met some pretty interesting people, actually. I know it’s not so unusual to meet an eclectic mix of people via internet-based socialising, even if you meet them in the flesh before you find out about their online lives. The people I’ve met and become friends with via message-boards and mailing lists, and things like Flickr etc. have all been a pretty eclectic bunch. Even so, there’s usually something that initially unites a group like that, whether it’s photography or comics or whatever, but Tuttle Club Fridays aren’t really like that. Whilst some people do turn up because they want to plug their latest venture to others who might be able to get the word out, most people are there to take advantage of the opportunity to bounce ideas off people they might not otherwise meet, and to see where those ideas might go. And that, to me, is pretty stimulating. There’s a great sense of interest and a buzz around all the conversations I’ve heard at Tuttle, and the potential directions they can go in is really exciting to be near, even if I’m not directly involved in any of them yet. But the great thing is, sooner or later, I can get involved. So can you, if you want to. At the moment I feel like a tiny drop in a very big ocean, but there are little ripples being made all the time, and some of them are going to build up into a big wave. The chance I might be there when that big wave breaks, that’s what’s exciting.

As Sizemore puts it here:

“Like everyone else I have no clue as to where [the next interesting project or idea] is coming from, but I do know that it’s vital to keep as many routes in and out of my own echo chamber open as possible. [...] The exciting thing is none of us knows how we’ll influence each other in the next 18 months.”

That is exciting. It’s brilliant to meet so many forward-looking people. I’ve only been to Tuttle twice and I’ve already had a few conversations that have got me thinking in some new directions. I don’t think anything is going to come of it yet, but just the fact that it might is enough for me right now. It’s good just to feel a bit optimistic, for a change.

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog-front this week, but all sorts of things have been going on, hence this catch-all post:

I went to see Neil Gaiman read from The Graveyard Book at LSE, thanks to a spare ticket from Ade. It was pretty good, and I’ve decided I want my own pocket Gaiman that I could carry around so he could read me stories when I’m feeling bored or depressed. Not just his own stories, either; I have a feeling that he would be a great story-teller reading work by other people, too. Actually, I think that everyone would feel better with pocket Gaiman to carry around and tell them stories. Maybe we should clone him.

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I decided not to go to Thought Bubble up in Leeds next weekend, since it clashes with some other things I want to do in London. Instead, I’m spending Friday evening bidding farewell to Adam and Beth before they move to Tennessee, and going to see Dave McKean being interviewed by fellow artist Andrzej Klimowski at Comica on Sunday. I’m also thinking of going to see some silent movies and artists’ films accompanied by live music at the Barbican on Saturday; either the Millennial Territory Orchestra meets Laurel & Hardy, or Bill Frisell scoring Jim Woodring and Buster Keaton. Or both. If anyone else wants to come? I am sad to be missing everyone going to Thought Bubble, though. Hope it’s a good weekend!

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I stumbled upon Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Frequency and Volume at the Barbican, which was good fun, but would probably have been more effective with more people there.

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I went to the Polaroid retrospective at the AOP gallery with Paul. It was both interesting and disappointing. I was interested to see how much of the work on display looked nothing like yer basic humble medium format everyone-could-afford-one Polaroid photos that most people would be familiar with — but that was also the first disappointment. There were a lot of very interesting techniques used, but, frustratingly, absolutely no information about what those techniques were, or what type of Polaroid camera was used. Since most of these techniques are going to be lost once Polaroid film becomes completely obsolete, and since this was ostensibly a celebration of what Polaroid had to offer in its heyday, it seems such a shame not to have documented the processes to an audience that would obviously be interested. But it’s a nice little gallery, and it was good to have the opportunity to visit it in the evening, so I’ll be looking out for other shows there.

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I went to Tuttle Club a couple of times, and I signed up to Amp08, but I’ll write about that some more in its own post.

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I went to the launch of Street or Studio: A Photobook at Tate Britain. The book is pretty good (see the pictures here), but the party was a bit odd. We weren’t allowed to take drinks into the section where the book table and the projections were, and there was a room full of old masters that had been done out like a disco, with pumping music and flashing lights. It wasn’t part of the Flickr party, just a regular part of the Late at Tate event, but it was somewhat surreal and, frankly seemed pointless since no one was dancing and it was too loud and too dark to actually look at the pictures! I’m not sure who they were trying to appeal to, except that it was so full of business suits that I thought it was some kind of private corporate party. Only it wasn’t. Very weird. So we escaped to the Morpeth Arms just in time for them to have stopped serving food. It’s had a refit, with all the normal height tables and chairs replaced by those stupid high tables and towering bar stools that make you look like an undignified idiot when you try to climb onto them, and are a liability if you’re drunk. Fortunately, the furniture upstairs is at normal proportions, and the Tribute ale was tasty.

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I popped into Handmade & Bound at the awesomely kitsch and untouched St Aloysius Social Club, a place I’ve been past many times but never gone inside. I didn’t buy much from the fantastically packed stalls, though there was a lot of beautiful stuff to be had, including one woman who makes the most gorgeous pop-up books. Unfortunately, once again, most people didn’t have any kind of business card for me to to take so I could remember who they were afterwards. It was nice to see Xtina, Marc, Mark and Gav, anyway. Next time I’ll try and buy more stuff!

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I went to Tarek’s leaving drinks at The Couch, where they have no couches, and they serve disgusting Gordon’s gin when you ask for a G&T, rather than the better-tasting Bombay Sapphire that’s become the more standard basic gin of choice in most pubs and bars. But the company was great and we ended up in the New Evaristo (No.3 in Gentry Style’s top five London bars); one of those after-hours basement drinking dens that is ostensibly a members’ only place but, according to the lass who signed us all in, it seems that to become a member, all you have to do is get on well with the doorman so that he remembers you next time. Great end to a great night, anyway. (Good luck in Qatar, dude!)

Abram Games (1914-1996) may not be a household name these days, but in his time he was one of the UK’s premier graphic designers, with his imagery known and seen by thousands of people. Whether it was posters for London Transport, the emblem for the Festival of Britain, or the covers he designed for Penguin Books during his tenure as their art director, his work was at one time amongst the most prominent in the world.

Last Tuesday I went to the London Transport Museum to hear a talk on Games, given by his daughter, Naomi, in honour of the newly released book Poster Journeys. It was a fascinating and personal insight to the man, full of asides such as the fact that “he was always travelling on the tops of buses,” which was where he would often come up with the ideas for his design work, or that he was so adept at using an airbrush he would use it to sign his cheques, or that his school report described him as “lazy and untidy” and his drawing “weak.” If you look at any of his work, you can see that it is anything but lazy or untidy, being extremely concise and very neat. It was also fascinating to learn that he detested hand-lettering all of his life, because I’ve always thought his hand lettering was remarkably beautiful.

One of the things which consistently came up in reaction to his work was that it was “too modern.” It is somewhat ironic that, according to his daughter, some of his design work was still being dismissed as “too modern” even after his death in 1996. His work was often controversial, too, such as his infamous “Blonde Bombshell” poster for the ATS, which was debated in Parliament for a month during WW2. Apparently, her lips were “too red” and she was “too glamourous.” You’d think, with a war on, they’d have more important things to be concerned about.

He revelled in such controversy, though, because it meant his work was getting noticed. However, I think this was also down to an arrogance he possessed, as he was constantly making such self-important statements as, “I’m going to be the best poster designer there ever was.” To be fair, he is certainly way up there with the best of them, but let’s not forget his contemporaries E. McKnight Kauffer, Tom Purvis, and Austin Cooper — even though he was determined to be better than all of them, that in no way diminishes their own fantastic graphic design work.

Whilst I may find it hard to say definitively that he was the best poster designer there ever was, I will admit that he really did have a fantastic eye for use of space and colour on a page; almost everything he designed was immediately eye-catching and iconic. This was partly because he realised early on that when it comes to poster design, most often they are viewed fleetingly and from a distance, so they need to be bright, clear and compelling enough to catch the eye instantly. He started every design with a thumbnail, because “if posters don’t work when they’re an inch high, they won’t work.” He enjoyed such restriction because “restriction disciplined him as a designer.” He would test posters on his children and their friends; if the idea couldn’t be expressed in a way clear that was clear and concise enough for small children to understand it, he would go back to the drawing-board.

Games designed a lot of posters during the war, many of them utilising imagery of hands, which was a theme to recur throughout his career. Quite often, he would put his knowledge of photography (his father ran a photography studio) to good use, such as on this poster, where the spiral background was created using a pinhole camera to capture the interior of a gun barrel. Such innovation was key to many of his designs.

I was interested to learn that Games hated art schools, and dropped out of St Martin’s after just two terms, because he felt that art school students were too busy copying each other and losing their individual creativity. This is an argument I’ve heard levelled at art schools by several people in the last decade or so as well, so maybe some things just don’t really change. Years later, he taught at the Royal College of Arts once a week, but scared his students so much that they once told his wife, “if he came more often, we’d all leave!” Some of his students were lucky enough to be given work designing covers for Penguin Books when Games was made the artistic director there in the 1950s. They were the first colour covers that Penguin had ever had, but were not popular at the time, especially with the head of the company. They were probably “too modern.” Some of them can be seen here, and they really are rather strange compared to much of the book jacket design of the time.

I had no idea that Games had ever become involved in 3D work, but apparently he was “an obsessive inventor which made him hellish to live with,” forever tinkering with things and burning stuff in the oven. He taught himself product design and designed the Cona Rex coffee-maker, made from recycled parts of Spitfires. The coffee-maker is still in production today. He also taught himself how to make stained glass, and created a memorial windows for the Jewish Military Museum in Hendon (which I had never even heard of before).

He was taught by his grandmother that we have two eyes, two ears and one mouth, so we should always see and hear more than we talk. I like that. I also liked the advice that he gave to his students, to “remember the three Cs: Curiosity, Courage, Concentration.” I think that’s a good maxim to apply to any creative endeavour.

Thanks very much to Annie for letting me know about the talk (her report is here), and to the London Transport Museum for generously offering us freebies. Apparently, they’re planning to have more talks in this vein, so I shall be looking out for them. Maybe they’ll have some evenings dedicated to other iconic designers who were commissioned by Frank Pick (see my previous post), or even one dedicated to Frank Pick himself.

I have some posts coming up on the subject of modernist and mid-century graphic designers, inspired by a couple of books I was drooling over last week, and a talk that I went to on Tuesday. Both of these things encouraged me to dig out my copy of British Modern: Graphic Design Between The Wars, so I could immerse myself into the visual style of the time. It’s a great book, filled with a high image-to-words ratio, which is just what you want from a book on design.

Although it has a high image-to-words ratio, it’s also an interesting read, which I’d forgotten, as it’s been some years since I looked at the words as well as the pictures. Through it, I was intrigued to discover that there was one man who could claim much of the credit for the renaissance of British poster design which occurred in the mid-war period. That man was the “far-sighted” Frank Pick, who was publicity director for London Underground and the London Passenger Transport Board between 1908-1940. It was his “enlightened patronage” that created work for many of the designers who went on to become household names and win international awards by the mid-1920s (some of these designers will be the subject of future posts).

There’s a whole section in the book entirely dedicated to London Underground graphics. The introduction to the section has this to say (my emphasis):

“Modern English graphic design began underground and surged upward. Posters for the London Underground [...] evolved under the direction of Frank Pick from prosaic landscapes to stylised abstractions. Pick had a vision of a better urban environment and was determined to use his position as director of publicity to educate and raise the public’s standard of taste. [...] The Underground was, moreover, a pioneer of integrated design strategies. In addition to posters, Pick commissioned Edward Johnston to design a block-letter alphabet exclusively used for station signs and notices that exerted an influence on all modern English type design.”

Fittingly, there’s another section dedicated to typography. It describes the Johnston typeface, created in 1916 — and visually about ten years ahead of its time — as “inextricably English,” along with the typeface Eric Gill created in 1928.¹

There’s actually a whole series of Art Deco books compiled by the same people, including Deco España, Dutch Moderne and French Modern, Italian Art Deco. I’d really like to get my grubby hands on all of them! In the meantime, I’ll content myself with browsing through Maraid’s collection of Japanese matchbooks. There are some really lovely Japanese Modern designs there:

¹A couple of months ago, I was having dinner with a couple of typeface designers, and was amused when they started arguing over the merits of Johnston vs. Gill Sans, with one of them ranting about how much Eric Gill had ripped off the Johnston typeface when he designed Gill Sans. I have noticed that the latter is one of those ubiquitous typefaces in use today which tends to divide opinion, the same way that Helvetica does, at least amongst people who design for a living. Most people don’t care enough to notice the miniscule differences.