Don’t you just love getting nice stuff in the mail? I recieved three original pieces today from US artist Clif Claycomb who is promoting his work through his blog I Need Money You Need Art. The concept is not unique, but the approach is – Clif has got to pay the bills somehow and wants to put his skills to use! Offer him some cash and he’ll produce something for you.
Go visit his site – and maybe buy something – go on, you know you want to!
Many thanks Clif, I’ll send you something in return!
I recently posted a few images from an old chinese calligraphy workbook I bought earlier this year. I like the asemic qualities of oriental scripts and I was curious about the physical qualities too, particularly their papers and bindings. This one is bound with fabric cloth over wood covers – very faded and well-worn, suggesting that this was an oft-used book, or just that it may have been severely neglected.
The book is a concertina format and as such, has no spine board. This appears to by typical as there is also a small tab poking out from the bottom – apparently this is so that it can be easily identified when on a shelf with other books:
There is an air of faded elegance about it that becomes more attractive as you examine it closer.
The concertina binding is not particularly strong and this book has become separated into three pieces.
As previously mentioned, the book is a sort of concertina binding – but different from what I have generally known. The basic form is a simple zig zag on a long sheet:
But this is constructed with a slight difference:
The fore edges are glued together to form a more rigid page, and discourages opening out too far.
The paper is also curious.- it appears to be a composite of backing sheets, printed sheets and a sort of paper tape holding it all down…
If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you may notice something familiar about these images. I made a composite image of the background textures for the cover of my first asemic book ‘Four Fools’ more images of which can be viewed here, and the book itself can be bought here and by clicking on the link in the left hand menu.
I bought a number of old chinese calligraphy workbooks earlier this year. I like the asemic qualities of oriental scripts and I was curious about the physical qualities too, particularly their papers and bindings. I was moving some books this evening and rediscovered these beneath a pile of others and was reminded of their minimal elegance and sparsity of ornament.
I will put together another post showing the other books too, as well as the covers and bindings later this month, but for now, just enjoy…
If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you may notice something familiar about these images. I made a composite image of the background textures for the cover of my first asemic book ‘Four Fools’ more images of which can be viewed here, and the book itself can be bought here and by clicking on the link in the left hand menu.
It has been a heck of a week for me. The start of the new term is always a bit exhausting, but this year perhaps a little more so.
I have been spending some time with my new graphics and photography students, and amidst all of the form-filling I managed to do a little creative work with them.
They were tasked with creating decorative images using the letters of the alphabet in Helvetica Bold. Some great work was produced by the students, all of which is going to be assembled into a book – I’ll post more when that’s ready. But in the meantime, here is my contribution to the book:
Normal service will be resumed shortly…
I took the kids to London earlier this year for a bit of sightseeing and happened upon the latest temple to retail worship – M&M’s World in Leicester Square. It is purely an opportunity to purchase sugar coated peanuts and chocolate at hugely over-inflated prices, but it was filled with typography of a sort. Well, one letter dominates, but you get the pricture!
But cascading down the feature stairway is this huge lighting piece – down four floors! I couldn’t miss the opportunity to capture an additional M or three though…
I went to see the Kenneth Grange exhibition at The Design Museum in London recently and thought I’d share this with you. If you don’t know about Grange, he is one of those hidden people behind all the familiar stuff we use every day.
One of the five founding partners of Pentagram, Grange has become probably the best of our less well-known designers, putting products into our lives elegantly, efficiently and with the minimum of fuss.
Perhaps the design he is known best for is the Intercity 125:
Before I begin to wax lyrical about this, or any other piece of design for that matter, let me just remind you of some of the visual landscape this design was launched into:
Britain in 1976 was not a particularly pretty or elegant place (at least not from where I remember it from anyway) so this sleek, shark-nosed train seemed to summarise the notions of the future that I had from such TV shows like Tomorrow’s World.
But Grange wasn’t just a ‘big design’ kind of guy; his designs for Pentel pens display as just much attention to detail…
I was particularly interested in his work for Kodak…
…and the quality of the sketches too – there is a real purpose and economy to all his drawings…
These speakers for Bang & Olufsen got me drooling, whilst I also dwelt upon the fact that my own watering can was a shabby utilitarian model and lacks the inspiring italic slant of these…
Heck, who of us will get the chance to redesign the London taxi?
There is a lot more in the exhibition, which is nicely displayed and well labelled, although would it kill someone to check on the hyphenation, widows and orphans? Surely they realise that this kind of thing will be a genuine frustration to many visitors to the DESIGN museum, especially the DESIGNERS who will make the effort to go to a DESIGN exhibition. I’m just saying, is all.
I’ll leave you with this; it’s a prototype bedside alarm clock that never made it. I want one of those.
Kenneth Grange: Making Britain Modern is on until 30 October. Get your skates on.
Some of you may be aware of my other blog and may already be regular visitors or even contributors. I want to publicise an open call for submissions to showcase new unpublished typefaces. This will happen each month when I will update the header in a different face, followed by a promotional post with links and information!
I’m starting this off with a great hand made face called “Silver Premium Instant Shoe Shine®” by London-based designer Trevor Mill
Go there now, and seek out your own designs…
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
and Dubliners by James Joyce
Headlong by Michael Frayn
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The English Gentleman by Douglas Sutherland
“I need words and print … I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.”
Margaret Drabble, as cited in Inside Book Publishing by Giles Clark and Angus Philips
Harlem River Blues by Justin Townes Earle
The Animal Years by Josh Ritter
Last Night on Earth by Noah and the Whale
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Dead Kennedys
The Audacity of Hype by Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
Disrupt by Foundation Bit
Machine Gun Etiquette by The Damned
Eddie, Old Bob, Dick and Gary by Tenpole Tudor
Wrong Town Wrong Planet Three Hours Late by Dawn Of The Replicants
Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Disintegration by The Cure
Goods by Citizen Fish
Worlds Apart by Subhumans
Fight Back by Strawberry Blondes
And much, much more…
