totalcontent - the blog.

word of the week – ‘score’ (skɔː).

2012-02-10T13:34:00.000Z

From Mark Farrow to Peter Saville, two designers from the same Factory. In the light of this week’s shenanigans at the FA, I though it would be worth revisting Saville’s recent redesign of the England football shirt. If you recall, the former Creative Director of the City of Manchester took the bold step of introducing some colour to the national team’s traditionally pristine white kit.

Right across the back and shoulders, there are a series of teeny stitched crosses, in red, blue and green (colours which already feature on the three lions crest), plus a blend of all three, which arrives at purple. They reference the George Cross, of course, but also gently subvert it, alluding to the fact that England is now a multi-cultural country.

Given the underlying rumpus that led to Fabio Capello’s resignation, and the current clamour for an English manager, you might think there’s a certain irony in the idealism of Saville’s design. But I’d suggest the designer fully knew the score when he conceived his idea, and in some ways, recent events have conspired to make it even more relevant. Once again, he’s managed to be subtle yet controversial, in details as devilish as ever.

By St George... I think he’s got it

Here’s how Saville explained his rationale to Creative Review at the time of the shirt’s launch:

“It’s beautiful but it’s very loaded. I was frustrated, along with many others, by the marginalisation of the cross of St George. It has acquired connotations that some of us don't associate with and I find that frustrating because there is nothing wrong with it as a symbol. [The design] is a provocation. It’s not negative, it’s not aggressive, it’s not critical and I think it feels like England 2010. This is a country of lots of different people, get on with it.”

Hear, hear.

word of the week ‘restraint’ (rɪˈstreɪnt).

2012-02-03T12:01:00.000Z

I don’t know how Mark Farrow does it. Year after year,he produces standout graphic design, sweeping young pretenders aside in hismajestic wake. If anyone wants a lesson in immaculate modernism, they shouldlook no further than ‘Format’,his latest collaboration with pop stalwarts Pet Shop Boys.

Strip off the old block... Farrow pulls another rabbit out of the hat

A collection of obscure B-sides and rarities spanning 1996to 2009, Mark has used the coloured spines of the original release formats to inform the stripy illustration on the cover. A graphic device, of course, that harks back to previous PSB releases, notably 1998’s‘Introspective’and 2008’s‘Yes’.

(By the way, there are some great song titles on ‘Format’—‘TheTruck Driver and his Mate’, ‘Sexy Northerner’, ‘We’reAll Criminals Now’,‘IDidn’tGet Where I Am Today’, and ‘Gin and Jag’.)

Like Peter Saville at Factory Records or Vaughan Oliver at4AD, a long-standing, hugely productive relationship has helped Mark develop a formidable housestyle for PSB. But it’shis perfectly judged graphic restraint and ferocious attention to detail thatalways sets the work apart. Design critic Adrian Shaughnessy believes Farrowwas “thefirst record sleeve designer to master the art of designing for CD”,a bold but justifiable claim.

I was lucky enough to get to know Mark in the 1980s, just after he’dcome down from Manchester and was working in a small studio above a shop inNeal Street, Covent Garden. At the time, he was working closely withrestauranteur/entrepreneur Oliver Peyton (still a client) on press ads forSapporo Japanese lager. It struck me that Mark’s work is like sushi – delicate, dextrous and extremely tasty.

back to black.

2012-02-02T15:59:00.000Z

After a 20 year hiatus, I’ve invested in a new needle and some cleaning fluid, and started buying vinyl again. The first thing you notice is the sky-high price — around £20 for a new album, as opposed to £9 for a CD or £7 for a download. But you forget how much richer and more satisfying the whole experience is.

The vast expanse and beauty of the sleeve; the ritual of undressing the black stuff and placing it in the turntable; the indulgence of listening to a whole side as opposed to the usual fickle flicking from song to song. You actually listen to the music rather than consume it. You give it more attention, approach it with far more generosity of spirit.

And I’m lucky that there’s a half decent Oxfam Books and Music store near me. Last week, seemingly waiting for me, were two of my favourite-ever albums — Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ and ‘Innervisions’. I’ve never owned them on vinyl before, as I didn’t have much opportunity or cash to buy records when I was at school.

Written discreetly in biro inside the gatefold of ‘Innervisions’ is a date — ‘3 March 1975’. There’s something terribly touching to know that this physical artefact meant something to someone out there, that there’s a story attached to it. It’s been very well looked after, I can tell you that much.

Have a think about that next time you download 89p’s worth of soulless music data from iTunes.

Wonderwall... what goes around comes around

word of the week – haggis (ˈhagɪs).

2012-01-27T17:05:00.000Z

It was Burns’ Night on Tuesday, so here are some musings on haggis.

South of the border we’re all a bit sceptical…we have a suspicion that these grungy-looking brown balls contain somethingvaguely intestinal. Perhaps they’re distantly related to a black pudding.

Or so we thought. In fact, haggis ignorance runsfar deeper. A 2010 survey by takeaway service Just-Eat.co.uk revealed that 18%of Brits believe haggis is a small beast which roams the Highlands. Another 15%hazard that its a type of Scottish musical instrument, while 4% plump for a HarryPotter character. Some 800 of the 1,623 people interviewed were Scottish, and14% of them had no idea what a haggis was either (oh the shame).

A flavour to savour... if you’ve got the stomach for it

In fact, the venerated haggis is a concoction of sheep’sheart, liver and lungs minced with onions, oatmeal, suet and spices, allstuffed into a sheep stomach. As the 2001 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique puts it, “Althoughits description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nuttytexture and delicious savoury flavour”.

And it is utterly Scottish — unlike a few othernational icons we could mention.

I researched and wrote the following for the 2009 Royal MailYear Book, and it appeared in a celebratory chapter on Burns (although the last sentence didn’t make the final edit):

THE REAL MCCOY?
There’s nothing moreScottish than whisky, is there? It’s called Scotch, after all. Actually, whisky was originallyinvented in China, and was distilled by 15^th-century Irish monksbefore finding its way to Scotland some 100 years later.
And get this…kilts, tartans and bagpipes may not be entirely Scottish either. There’ssome evidence that kilts originated in Ireland. Tartan cloth was unearthed inHallstatt, upper Austria, some of which date to 1200 BC, while 3000-year-old tartan-wearingmummies were found in a Chinese desert. Some historians believe the first bagpipescame from Sumaria.
Recent genetic studies show thatthe mutation for red hair may have originated in Central Asia too.

word of the week – ‘stealth’ (stɛlθ).

2012-01-20T14:24:00.000Z

It’s a strange time for luxury brands. Of course they want to be seen out and about as usual, but flaunting it too brazenly could be deemed bad taste in these straitened times. Hence the notion of ‘stealth wealth’, a phrase I came across for the first time this week working for (you guessed it) a luxury brand.

It’s the idea that you’re so utterly comfortable in your millionaire skin that you’re happy to draw a discreet veil over what you’re worth. With your mahogany tan and slightly grizzled sideburns, you dress down in pastel polo shirt, pressed chinos and artfully distressed deck shoes. You may eschew San Tropez, Costa Smeralda, and the other more flashy-trashy Euro hotspots, but you still find a way to quietly enjoy the finer things in life.

Plane sailing... may you be stealthy, weathly and wise

Oddly, the word ‘stealth’ also cropped up on BBC2’s ‘Stargazing Live’, the astronomy programme fronted by the rather unlikely double act of pop-star-turned-professor Brian Cox and physicist-turned-comedian Dara O’Briain. Cox observed that UFO sightings suddenly changed from the traditional flying-saucer shape to triangular after the US military’s introduction of the Stealth Bomber in 1997. But I was probably more intrigued by the thought that they might actually have a Pentagon employee responsible for naming. Or perhaps they draft in the Central Naming Agency (CNA)? Whatever, hat’s off... it’s brilliant.

There’s something wonderfully onomatopoeic and sneaky about the word. It’s redolent of underhandedness and skulduggery. Maybe it’s because the first five letters spell ‘steal’, and you almost seem to be telling someone to ‘shhh!’ when you say it.

Well, probably time to make a stealthy exit.

ace in the hole.

2012-01-20T09:32:00.001Z

Looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for thedesigner man in your life? Something with a bit of sauce but not too muchcheese? Never mind the bollocks, here’s the ‘SexPistol’ stretch boxer trunk from Bjorn Börg. You don’t have to mind your Ps andQs in these beauties. Just the job for well heeled-punks and anyone who’sread Simon Garfield’s‘JustMy Type’.And available until stocks last with 40% off at www.underu.com.New balls please.

word of the week – ‘railroad’ (reɪlrəʊd).

2012-01-13T22:06:00.001Z

Great news, HS2, the new £32m high-speed railway is going full-steam ahead. There’s nothing like progress, I always say. No one can ever call me a NIMBY again, because, whether I want it or not, it’s going literally right through my back yard — about 500 metres away, in fact. It’ll be great… whenever I’m dozing off, editing some turgid copy, a proud symbol of 21-st century Britain will zip past and wake me from my stupor. And regular too, every four minutes, I’ve been told. Just think of the productivity, the positive effect on the GDP.

I’ll cheer and wave when the Birmingham fat cats purr by in a flash of wheels and steel. I may even hoist my best red knickers on a stick like Jenny Agutter in the Railway Children. And I’ll do the same when London mob crash past the other way — although I have a feeling that won’t be quite so often.

A consultation paper of 55,000 people almost unanimously disagreed with everything about the new line. But what do they know? — this will make Britain great again. Though perhaps there’ll be a few less furry creatures and green bits than we used to have.

We’ve been railroaded, no question.

Train drain... not so much a white knight as a white elephant

three to watch.

2012-01-12T20:55:00.001Z

The Design Museum this week announced its longlist for ‘Designs of the Year’. Maybe their description of these awards as the ‘Oscars of the design world’ ispushing it, but the five-year old-scheme comes with enough glitter and gravitasto mean people sit up and take notice.

There are a couple of things that set ‘Designsof the Year’apart.

Firstly, you can’t enter work… you have to be chosen by apanel of experts. The names of these wise heads haven’t been revealed yet, but they are usuallydesperately starry types from different corners of the design universe (and last year, Will Self). Thenominations are, as usual, mind-blowingly diverse — from Hopkins Architects’ 2012 Olympic Velodrome, to the BBC website’s latest home page, to theDuchess of Cambridge’s McQueen wedding dress.

Next, it’s really international — buildings inHaiti, Japanese fashion, German furniture, US magazines. Last year’swinner was Samuel Wilkinson’s sculptural Plumen Lightbulb 001, dubbed ‘theworld’sfirst designer eco-bulb’. In 2009, Sheperd Fairey’s ‘Hope’ Barack Obama poster got the vote.

Finally, ‘Designs of the Year’ has its own six-month longexhibition at the Design Museum, running from 8 February to 15 July. Now that’swhat you call exposure.

So it was with some delight that I found out that three designs closeto my heart have made it on to the longlist. Here’s my totally biased opinion, and part in their success (just kidding).

1 Mark Porter’s iPad app for the Guardian.

Impeccably considered, and downloaded nearly 150,000 times in its first week of release, this sets a new standard in ‘newspaper’ apps. Mark is an old mate of mine — I worked with him many years ago on a design andadvertising magazine called Direction, where he was art director. He then wenton to greater things, most notably becoming CD of the Guardian and overseeingits redesign to Berliner format in 2005. More recently, I helped craft some words forMark Porter Associates’ website, which are going live soon.

Apps off... digging Mark Porter’s digital design

2 Why Not Associates’ Comedy Carpet in Blackpool.
A collaboration with artist Gordon Young, this beauty was five years in the making and lies in the shadow of the famous Blackpool Tower. It is an exquisitely realized, 1880-square-metre typographic compendium of jokes and catchphrases, cut from solid granite or cobalt blue concrete, arranged into over 300 slabs and then cast into concrete. Lovingly set in the style of a traditional music-hall style playbill, the ‘Comedy Carpet’ is an example of accessible graphic design at its very best. It’s already (and deservedly) picked up the Grand Prix at the prestigious Tokyo Art Directors Club. I’ve known Andy Altmann and David Ellis who founded WNA for over 20 years, and collaborate with them fairly regularly (though unfortunately not on this one).

Cutting a rug... Why Not Associates and artist Gordon Young have a laugh in Blackpool

3 Nokia Pure typeface by Dalton Maag
Nokia is my main client at the moment, so I’ve been working closely with this font for six months now. I interviewed typographer Bruno Maag about the design process for Uusi, the Nokia brand magazine, so I’m fully aware of the effort and rationale behind it. At first I thought it might be a bit safe, but now I’m starting to see little quirks and subtleties that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s definitely grown on me.

It’s a Maag world... purity of idea and execution

I wish everyone good luck on 24 April when the winners areannounced. But especially these three.

word of the week – ‘denude’ (dɪˈnjuːd).

2012-01-06T19:00:00.000Z

It’s Epiphany, 6 January. The day when all the Christmas decs are consigned to their dark cubbyholes for another year. Free from the gaudy glare of glitter and gew-gaws, rooms are stripped back once more to their bare minimalist bones. Trees, sad and sparse, wait to join the pile-up at the local tip. Cards are shuffled away. The last vestiges of the old year are laid reverentially to rest. Denuded, stark naked once more, we face forward and step gingerly, but properly, into the New Year.

Fir dues... it’s that time of year every Christmas tree dreads

pick a card...

2011-12-20T10:29:00.002Z

My Private View columns in ‘Design Week’ occasionally touched a nerve. In December 2008, I berated the laziness and impersonality of e-Christmas cards. A student of sustainable design called Harry Wilson got particularly hot under the collar accusing me of an “archaic way of thinking” in the following week's letters page. Perhaps the line “to hell with deforestation” was a step too far, but of course my tongue was firmly placed in my cheek when I wrote it.

Top trunks... this year’s retro pick, courtesy of Oxfam

It was unfortunate too that one of my then best clients sent me an e-Christmas card between the time of filing the article and publication. For some reason they went pretty quiet on me in 2009.

On twitter yesterday, fellow copywriter Nick Asbury came up with the neologism “Sanctimoanemail: (n) An email sent to say you’ve donated to charity the money you would have spent on an environmentally unsound Xmas card.” And it’s exactly that kind of public outpouring of smugness (environmental or otherwise) that really sticks in my craw.

Personally, I love the annual agony of finding the right off-the-shelf card for friends and designers, or designer-friends. Something typographic or ironic, simple or amusing that stands out in the racks of predictable festive fodder. Back in the day when I had world enough and time, I used to design and make my own. A miserable-looking Bryan Ferry in a Santa hat with the line ‘Ferry Christmas’ was an instant classic.

And it struck me as I wrote my (recycled charity) Christmas cards last week that it’s the time you devote to writing them that’s important. Two minutes or so thinking about your friends or colleagues, is two minutes of silent communion. You’re with them in spirit, remembering your shared past, the times and projects you had in common. Stained-glass stamps, coloured envelopes and stuffing cards into an overfilled post box just before the last posting date are an essential part of Christmas.

You can’t compare it to just pressing send. ’Scuse my archaic way of thinking.

a daily dose of type.

2011-11-04T23:37:00.003Z

I must admit, I’ve been sorely tempted by a MassimoVignelli Stendig calendar for some time. Designed in 1966, it’s still the most brutallybeautiful thing imaginable. You can just picture it hanging artfully on the exposed brickwork of a Shoreditch warehouse studio. But at 3 by 4 feet, you need some serious wall realestate to accommodate it. And I can’t help thinking this huge expanse of paper is less than ecofriendly, even though the makers playfully suggest you use the discarded months aswrapping paper.

Stendig alone: Massimo by name, massive by nature

The alternative is the slightly more adventurous Pentagram calendar (though it’s actually designed by alumnus Kit Hinrichs). This keeps the same format, but rings the typographic changeseach year, and will feature examples of vernacular type for 2012. It comes in twosizes, so it’s more manageable, but you can’t get hold of it in the UK, andshipping charges from the US are astronomical.

Let’s year it for Pentagram’s moveable typographic feast

For these reasons, I’ve plumped for the book-like Typodarium calendar (available on Amazon for £14.76) this year. You can keep it plonked horizontally on your desk or hang it up vertically. I’m not sure how useful it will be as a calendar, but it features a different typeface for each day of the year, along with information on the back. And you can keep the torn off pages in a handy box to peruse at your leisure. As you can probably tell, there’s ever a dull moment around here.

Every day’s a bit different with Typodarium

your mind’s made up.

2011-11-03T18:23:00.002Z

You do judge a book by its cover shock

I know, I know... I’ve been a bit remiss about posting a regular Private View column without Lynda to badger me anymore. Pressure of work and all that. But here’s a piece on US author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink’ and the effect rapid cognition might have on our appreciation of graphic design. Look out for my next Private Blog in early December.

Admittedly, I cottoned on Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink’ rather late in the day, but the instant I saw it winking at me on the charity shop bookshelf, I’d made up my mind. To be honest, I had little inkling about its subject matter and was just taking a punt on the basis of the cover and few of the good man’s articles in the New Yorker. This, and the fact that at a princely £1.10, I had little to lose.

In case you’re unfamiliar, ‘Blink’ puts the case that first impressions are often valid. Just like mine were in the charity shop. In fact, there are many cases where your initial instincts may be more worthwhile than months of painstaking research. These, the author argues, can just muddy the waters.

Gladwell pieces together various scientific studies, interviews and news stories to make his case. He speaks to top car salesmen and eminent psychologists, military strategists, archaeologists, food tasters and the police. And his findings are weirdly fascinating — he discovers that in given situations, our unconscious minds can ‘thin slice’ exactly the information we need. Instinctively, we ditch all the clutter and extraneous stuff and get straight to the nub. It’s only when we start to analyse and weigh up the pros and cons that all the muddle and uncertainty kick in.

First of all, a word about Gladwell’s writing. On the face of it, this isn’t the sexiest of subjects. You’d stomach a 1,000-word article, perhaps, but not a whole 260-page book. And yet, he manages to make you want to dig on and get to the bottom of the conundrum. His prose is easy yet detached, always insightful, occasionally funny. He never blinds you with science or over intellectualising. Like a good TV documentary, he seems to know when to remind you of salient points and previous examples.

However, I really wanted to look at Gladwell’s ‘Blink’ theory from another angle — the context of graphic design. And to suggest that we’ve made our mind up about a piece from the split second we see it.

In the case of posters or street messages, it’s likely that your first impression is your only impression, so clearly that’s true. But even when the viewer is taking in something at leisure, it’s the very first sighting that sets the tone and colours the attitude from then on. You’re more likely to start reading an unfamiliar book from a table-top display if the cover grabs you. Or persevere with a website if the look of it pleases you (particularly when your broadband’s playing up). If someone hands you a groovy business card, you’ll probably feel better inclined towards them than the person who hands you a dull one.

Instant Wim... one look at Crouwel is enough

Superficial? Well, not according to Gladwell. Our first impressions are actually quite sophisticated. They’re built from our previous experiences, and the copious mental notes we’ve taken over the years. (They can also harbour our fears and prejudices, but that’s another story). Called into action, these sparks from our past compute and react in a snap, and most of the time they’re bang on. But when we stop to ask ourselves ‘why?’, that moment of subconscious magic disappears.

In exactly the same way, our taste is learned, but becomes second nature over time. So our first response to a piece of graphics is really quite profound. Which probably accounts for my perennial experience of design awards judging… however many times you go round the houses, you always seem to end up with the same opinion you struck in the first place.

Keef is the word.

2011-10-05T17:33:00.001+01:00

More than a glimmer: a memory like an elephant

I confess to being a sucker for a rock biography — the excessand schadenfruede are irresistible. Every year I take one on summer holiday, and 2011 was no exception. Shunning the anticipatory delights of MichaelBracewell’s ‘Roxy: the Band That Invented An Era’, and Chris Salewicz’s ‘BobMarley: The Untold Story’, I was drawn the hottest new bio on the block. That’sright… Keith Richards’ ‘Life’.

At 600-plus pages, it’s a bit of a doorstop, but it certainly didn’tdisappoint. On the back cover, Keef archly informs us “Believe it or not, I haven’tforgotten any of it”, and to be fair, he’s very sharp on the early years,though fuzzier as time wears on. The book splits roughly into three: childhood,forming the band and success; the lost, drugged-out years; settling down,family life and Rolling Stones the brand.

The writing is credited to the man himself (with James Fox),and clearly there’s a lot of transcripted material in here, because you canreally hear Keef speaking. What comes across is someone who’s hugely dedicatedto what he does (at times the book gets deeply technical about guitar playing), and always wears his heart on his piratical sleeve. He’s surprisingly funny, open, self-deprecating andintelligent. And although he runs out of steam at the end (and starts dishingout recipes for bangers and mash), this is right up there with the best ingenre. Actually, you’d expect nothing less.

well connected.

2011-10-05T16:46:00.002+01:00

And another book cover. This for journalist and all-roundwit Craig Brown’s ‘One on One’, a book of unlikely meetings and connections.(Terence Stamp advises Edward Heath, Frank Lloyd Wright designs a house forMarilyn Monroe, that sort of thing). Brown calls it a daisy chain of 101 trueencounters, each 1001 words long. Sounds not unlike a 26 project.

Who’s zooming who?

The dust jacket is a lovely typographic doodle in black andorange, wrapped all around the book with different styles of arrow linkingthe various protagonists. It captures the idea of ‘six degrees of separation’ perfectly. The print appears to be letterpress (though I think it’s actually aclever simulation), so it has a lovely tactile quality and is rather beautifully done. I searched high and low butcouldn’t find a design credit. Makes a change, in my line of work, it’s usually thewriter who gets overlooked.

a proper Charlie Brown.

2011-09-28T18:27:00.000+01:00

Nothing better than a sweater

This little beauty goes to prove you don’t have to be a brilliant illustrator to come up with a brilliant book cover. You just need a strong, graphic idea. Designer William Ruoto clearly knows his Peanuts, and has come up with a neat, punchy wrapper for this recent biography of evergreen cartoonist Charles M Schulz. The homage typography is carried on inside.

papa was a rolling Stone Foundation.

2011-07-26T19:08:00.002+01:00

Stone Foundation have been plying their tight Mod/Soul sound around the Midlands for around 10 years now, building a loyal following. And they may well be about to move up to the next level, with a confirmed date at Wayne Hemingway’s Vintage Festival next week and a coveted support slot on the upcoming Specials tour.

Joe ‘Pep’ Harris: who are these guys?

But last Friday night at Cox’s Yard in Stratford was all about Joe ‘Pep’ Harris, flown in from Detroit to front the band for a mind-blowing set of soul standards and floor stompers. Stone Foundation — supporting themselves, so to speak — warmed the place up nicely, but when Joe sauntered on in his immaculate, all-white safari suit, the temperature soared.

Even at 70, there’s an extraordinary raw power to his voice. From the moment he hit the first notes of ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’ (which he’d cut with the Undisputed Truth before the Temptations), you knew you were in for a rare treat. Looking slightly constrained on a tiny stage, Joe effortlessly moved from sweet-sweet soul to deep-down funk, clearly impressing the band as much as the audience. Highlights were the dramatic ‘Smiling Faces Sometimes’ and the full-on ‘Hole in the Wall’.

The Undisputed Truth: I’ll have to wear a bit of make-up, you say?

A bit of background on the mighty Joe… after singing with The Preps and The Ohio Players in the 1960s, he moved to Motown to become the voice of the Undisputed Truth in the 1970s. This was producer/songwriter Norman Whitfield’s so-called ‘psychedelic soul’ experiment, which lasted eight years and 10 albums.

Catch him while you can, he’s a true talent.

carry on up the canal.

2011-07-21T07:42:00.000+01:00

In his first post-Design Week Private View, Jim Davies considers his relationship with Amsterdam, and how this squares with the Dutch perspective on design.

I’m always threatening to spend time in some of the great European cities — Florence, Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna. But somehow, when it comes round to it, I end up back in Amsterdam.

I’ve never actually lived in Holland, but because I’m half Dutch, I’ve visited the country virtually every year since I was born. The canals and bikes, the cobbled streets and low skyline, the cadence of the language, are both familiar and exhilarating. And of course I drool over the vernacular graphics, the street posters, local packaging and shop signage. Around every corner there’s déjà vu, I hear echoes of my childhood, remember my mother, feel a real or imagined connection with my forbears. Even in doing the most mundane things, have an almost spiritual experience.

Bridging the gap: View from our hotel window, The Toren on Prinsengracht

To me, that’s something deeper and more precious than traipsing round the most wonderful cathedral or art gallery in one of the more rarefied European capitals. And because I now know the place reasonably well, I’ve moved beyond the obvious — the Museumplein, canal boat cruises, Anne Frank etc — and have started to explore the next layer down, revelling in the quirkiness of the place, embracing its peccadillos and peculiarities, coming to understand why it is what it is.

Hello boys: The peccadillos and peculiarities of Amsterdam windows

It struck me that my evolving relationship with Amsterdam has similarities to the way the Dutch view and explain design.

Design is such a nebulous term, it can mean virtually anything we want it to. The word can be used in relation to a CD cover or an Airbus, a city signage system or a chair. Ask a hundred people to define it, and you’ll dredge up a hundred and one different answers. The extra one being from the person who couldn’t quite make his mind up.

For most non-practitioners however, design implies a surface sheen or prettification — anything from the cod-Georgian flounce Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen might dream up for one of those tiresome home décor TV shows, to the garish colourways on the latest pair of Nikes.

In Holland — perhaps to counteract this one-dimensional response — they have settled on two words for design (three if you include the English word, which is also in common usage.) The first is vormgeving, which literally means ‘to give form’, and refers to the more aesthetic side of design — making things pleasing to the eye and desirable. The other is ontwerpe, which is more about function and making things work properly — the less glamorous but essential nuts-and-bolts aspect of design.

It’s not exactly form and function, but not far off. Dutch designers who want to be taken seriously (and most do) tend to align themselves with the ontwerpe camp, even if they’re involved in primarily visual disciplines like graphics or packaging. Vormgeving tends to be looked down upon as vapid and superficial — a distantly related dumb blonde no one wants to be associated with.

Urinal or mine? Functional, down-to-earth design

This attitude is culturally typical. From the outside, the Dutch may appear to be laid back and easy going. But actually, they are quite angst-ridden and deep. They agonise over the smallest details and take themselves surprisingly seriously. Unlike the British, who tend to skirt around difficult issues like Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett at a formal dance, the Dutch are far more direct and always prepared to ask frank, probing questions. Which is probably why the more down-to-earth ontwerpe has so much more kudos than the flaky vormgeving in Holland.

As for me, I sheepishly admit to liking a bit of both… I’m only half Dutch after all.

a private view.

2011-07-08T11:05:00.003+01:00

Like many, I was first shocked and then saddened by the news that Design Week (or at least the good old paper version) ceased publishing last week. I’d literally just stepped off the plane from a wicked weekend in Amsterdam, switched my mobile back on, and there was a message from editor Lynda Relph Knight saying she wouldn’t be needing my column this month. Or evermore, for that matter.

Volume 26/Number 26 – the final issue of DW

Deborah remarked that I looked as though someone had died when I picked up the message. Wan and somewhat perturbed. And in a way, that’s the case. There’s no argument that the magazine had been an integral part of the UK design landscape for the past quarter of a century. The only weekly design publication in the world, it had seen off plenty more pretentious pretenders, including my own monthly ‘alma maga’, Direction.

My first thoughts, of course, are with Lynda, who has tirelessly steered the good ship DW for over 20 years, and been instrumental in creating a lively, coherent design community in this country. She’s also been a great friend and supporter of mine, ever since I met her at an IBM press junket in Berlin ten years ago, when I was writing about design for the Daily Telegraph.

And for the past eight years, Design Week had become a regular part of my life too, as I scratched my head to come up with a suitably catchy or contentious Private View column each month. I was just two shy of my 100th effort, which would have been a satisfying personal milestone — but overall, I just feel lucky to have had such a good run.

My 98th and – though I didn’t realise it at the time – last column (online version)

I’d always tried to keep my Private Views slightly tongue in cheek, to poke some affectionate fun at the penchants and peccadillos of designers, to use my daily contact with the species to feed various gently amusing insights and observations. Over the years, I’d publicly chewed over traffic and toilet design, colour and crowdsourcing, mergers and modernism. I hope I raised a smile and occasionally touched on some home truths.

The PV subjects that really raised the temperature of the letters’ page, however, were the ones on free pitching, the lack of women in design, and perhaps less obviously, my rant against e-Christmas cards two years ago, which prompted one outraged reader to denounce my “archaic way of thinking”.

Perhaps he was right. Digital Christmas cards, digital magazines… maybe those Scandinavian pine forests have a right to rest easy. But of course Centaur’s decision to close Design Week doesn’t have a lot to do with embracing new media or a green agenda. It’s all about the commercial imperative.

The magazine was becoming more emaciated by the week. Without feature advertising, there were fewer features. And those that did appear were crammed on to a page or a spread at best. Even within the framework of Sam Freeman’s excellent redesign, it was impossible to give the work the space it deserved, especially compared to the lush ten-pagers in Eye magazine. So the balance tipped far more towards news, opinion and comment. Which, you could argue, is more suited to the immediacy of an online publication. That’s certainly the line Centaur are taking.

Almost by second nature, this blog post is running to 580 words, the length of a Private View column. I’ve decided to keep writing them. If anyone wants to publish them, great. If not, they’ll be appearing here, on the third Thursday of each month as usual.

I’ll miss you Design Week.

pencil portrait.

2011-06-01T12:24:00.031+01:00

When I got the email asking whether I owned a trilby, the alarm bells started ringing. Shortly afterwards, another appeared enquiring after my stock of 1950s-style shirts, ties and braces. Then a third arrived demanding neck and chest measurements.

I was just after a new mug shot, but Coy! Communications doesn’t work like that.

I’d been using the same promotional photo for around eight years, and to be perfectly honest, had grown a bit ‘older and wiser’ in that time. I’d once heard Bryan Ferry on the radio admitting that he used a ten-year-old picture on one of his solo albums, and remembered thinking what a charlatan he was — albeit a devilishly stylish one. And yet here I was, a photographic hypocrite lagging only two years behind the old slave to love.

However, the final straw was when Greg Quinton of the Partners button-holed me at an awards do, and politely mentioned he was sick of the sight of my profile picture. I’m pretty sure that didn't account for the recent radio silence from his agency, but it was certainly high time for a change.

I probably should have known better, but when my friend the commercials director Mark Denton told me Coy! had a small photographic studio in their new space at Westbourne Studios, I waded right in. “Sure,” he said, “[Fellow commercials director] Sean [de Sparengo] will sort you out.”

Mark, I know only too well, is a man who has his portrait taken as regularly as most of us have hot dinners. He enjoys the glare of the spotlight and the mantle of many guises. A few years ago, he had a series of ‘ancestral’ shots taken by Malcolm Venville for his mock stately home (a basement flat in West London).

These masterpieces included Mark posing as a deranged Viking called Fireguard the Fearless, a lascivious monk, and a fey Gainsborough-esque country squire.

Then there was Mark’s turn as the incomparable Nobby Bottomshuffle, baggy-shorted Edwardian football pin-up, and face of Coffmore cigarettes, whose life of free-kicks and free fags was cut tragically short in the trenches. A collection of comical full-length poses — which make Peter Crouch look as elegant as a prima ballerina — formed the basis of a packed one-off exhibition in Soho (free booze was involved). And Nobby has now found a permanent home in the National Football Museum in Preston.

More recently, Mark has appeared sepia-toned as Il Presidente, the exotic sashed-up and fez’d-up president of the Creative Circle.

If there’s such thing as an embarrassment gene, Mark was seemingly born without one. To compensate, he has a highly developed sense of the ridiculous, and enjoys poking fun at himself. With a very large stick. So I had half an idea of what I was in for, as I made my way to West London, carrying my bubble-wrapped D&AD pencil, which I’d been instructed to bring along as a prop. But I was determined to put any sense of self-consciousness aside and enjoy the ride.

When I got to Coy! and was introduced to Sean, I quickly realised that the shot was being taken slap bang in the middle of the room, as half a dozen disinterested people got on with whatever they were getting on with. Mark handed me a book called ‘Mr Salesman’, a collection of highly stylised 1950s ‘noirish’ portraits by Jamison Handy curated by (of all people) actress Diane Keaton. We were to recreate one of the shots — a film-starrish, bryllantined chap striking a thoughtful, chin-stroking pose (below). This is OK, I thought, forgetting where I was for a moment.

I went to my dressing room (the gents) and donned a white shirt and a striped tie. Mark shook his head. “You don’t wear a tie very often,” he remarked, deftly picking out another of his own, tying a perfect half Windsor, and then handing it to me like a noose. I was instructed to get into the role of an ‘Ace Reporter’, clutching a notebook in one hand and my black pencil in the other at a suitably nerve-wrenching angle.

We started gently. Then Mark and Sean got into a rhythm. The camera clitter-clattered, and I could see image after image appearing on a screen behind through the glare of the lights.

“OK, you’re in a crowd interviewing Elizabeth Taylor, you’re delighted… yes, getting there, getting there…” Fern magically appeared with powder and brush, dusting the shine from my forehead. “Right, you’re interviewing Marilyn Monroe, and she’s just lifted her top up…”

I finally cracked. All semblance of cool or cred went out the window. My face pulled into an idiot grimace, half crazed, half in character. “That’s it! That’s it!” shouted Mark, bursting into uncontrollable laughter.

Yes, I’d been officially Coy!’d. Thanks to everyone for the experience.

rogues gallery.

2011-05-27T18:21:00.007+01:00

Just taken delivery of this utterly brilliant limited-edition poster by Rob Ball, creative director of the Partners by day, Super Illustrator Guy by night.

It features Rob’s interpretations of 50 bad-ass baddies from the movies, and comes complete with a niftily designed key, so you can tell who’s who and what film they appeared in. Each face is beautifully observed and rendered, and the printing detail is so good, you’d swear you’re looking at the real thing.

Last year, I commissioned Rob to draw the chimps for totalcontent’s typewriting monkey posters, and he tells me, this has reawakened his inner illustrator. Off to the framers tomorrow. Rob’s baddies will rub shoulders in the studio with a couple of Barnbrooks, a Peter Grundy and a Mark Denton.

You can round up some of your own villains by ordering a poster from here. But hurry, he’s only printed 50 of the blighters. Click on the image for a closer look.

dear oh dear.

2011-05-25T11:39:00.009+01:00

More years ago than I care to remember, I was between jobs and — through a friend of a friend — ended up working a few weeks on that most eminent publication ‘A Taste of Safeway’ magazine. This, I can assure you, was purely a temporary wolf-from-door measure.

The gig’s highlight was probably interviewing professional Scouser and sexpert Margi Clarke about what she had stashed in her fridge (pasta ready meals, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and a bottle of Jacob’s Crack [sic], for the record). She may have thought I was “dead posh”, but we got on pretty well, particularly after I mentioned I was a great admirer of her husband, punk artist Jamie Reid.

However, this was also around the time ‘A Taste of Safeway’ was putting its Christmas issue to bed, and I was also roped in to doing a spot of (free) modelling, playing the part of a busy dad, getting some shopping together for his family.

Imagine my stinging embarrassment a couple of months later when I was at an über-cool design agency touting for some copywriting work. Right there on one of the Vitra desks was said publication, open on the offending spread showing me laden down with seemingly half a Safeway store, a colander and a teddy bear. Hold that pose and smile please.

By way of explanation, this is part of Nick Asbury’s Creative Amnesty for Creative Review — jobs/projects you’d rather not own up to.

u-turn on Gaydon.

2011-05-22T16:59:00.020+01:00

Parp, parp. I’m the kind of person who just about knows one end of a car from the other. You certainly wouldn’t catch me waxing lyrical about alloy wheels or torque. Or watching Top Gear.

That’s why I’d given the Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon a wide berth, despite it being a mere 10-minute ride from the totalcontent studio. However, they’d recently laid on a one-off exhibition called ‘Science Fiction at the Movies’, which promised plenty of Star Wars and Dr Who relics — the kind of thing my boys are deeply into. And we had friends coming for the weekend, so it seemed an ideal opportunity to check the place out.

Parked in the middle of a former RAF base, in the middle of nowhere, the imposing circular building looks like a covert high-security government headquarters. You might expect to find all kinds of Roswell-like experiments going on in there, but actually it’s packed with over 200 significant British cars — from decidedly the humble, to land-speed record breakers and James Bond stalwarts. But it’s not at all fetishistic or petrol-heady. In fact, the place offers more of a social and cultural history, the outer perimeter representing a road travelling through time, with the earliest cars at one end, gradually making way for more contemporary fare.

For me — apart from the astonishing FAB 1, Lady Penelope’s pearly-pink wheels from the 2004 live-action Thunderbird’s movie — the great revelation was the trove of retro type and ephemera. The place was chock full of posters, ads, signage, logos and hand-rendered typography. I found myself slavishly photographing walls, grilles and odd bits of lettering, and reminding myself not to be so closed-minded in future. Particularly loved a poster for Dunhills’ Bobby Finders, glasses-cum-binoculars which promised to “spot a policeman at half a mile even if disguised as a respectable man”.

Cars, whether we like it or not, are a telling symbol of progress and popular culture. With headlights on full beam, Gaydon took us on a nostalgic and occasionally quirky tour of Britishness through the ages. I’ll be jumping into my car with a better camera for a return visit soon.

grand... Paul Thompson’s thousand words.

2011-04-01T14:18:00.017+01:00

In November last year I got a call from Ben Casey at The Chase asking if I’d help out with some posters they were putting together for the photographer Paul Thompson.

The idea was brilliantly simple. Pick a photo from Paul’s online portfolio and write 1000 words inspired by it. Anything that took my fancy. These 1000 words would then be used on promotional posters, postcards and T-shirts with a sign-off line pertaining to the old ‘picture paints a 1000 words’ chestnut. Friend and fellow writer Nick Asbury, as well as Ben and Lionel Hatch from the Chase would be writing 1000 words too.

Choosing was the hard part. Paul’s website was packed with intriguing stuff — slightly odd looking portraits of people who’s heads and bodies didn’t seem to match; eerie landscapes; curious moments captured in time. His work has a sense of the surreal, as if something’s not quite as it should be.

I eventually plumped for an image of a slightly forlorn-looking park bench. There were no people around, and it looked like a perfectly grey, hum-drum day. There was something remarkable in the ordinariness of the shot.

It struck me that this park bench must have witnessed all kinds of things, if only it could articulate them. So I gave it a slightly curmudgeonly voice and set about telling a kind of first-person day in the life, which gradually spirals out of control.

The Chase then set the words beautifully to the shape of the picture. The results not only look rather fine, but gently subvert the idea of a photographer’s mailer. They work just as a grey block of text, or if you go in and actually read the pieces, which are remarkably different from each other. It was a great brief, and I’m really chuffed to have been involved in a project like this. And I’m pleased to say the project was picked up by the Creative Review blog too.

You can read my 1000 words by clicking on the image below.

a picture of the Royal Mail Yearbook.

2011-03-25T18:00:00.016Z

We thought we’d take this opportunity to show some spreads from the 2010 Royal Mail Yearbook — ‘The Big Picture’ — which came out back in November last year. First published in 1984, the Yearbook tells the back stories of the year’s pictorial stamps, and is always impeccably printed and produced. This edition is a beautifully considered piece of editorial design by hat-trick, which uses extreme close-up photography to reveal the unexpected about subject in hand. John Ross took the striking shots which open each section.

I wrote two essays for each chapter — one an introductory overview, to provide context and colour, the other a more focused, detailed piece which expands on illuminating particulars. So for the Classic Album Covers, there was a longer piece on Peter Saville and Factory Records; for Endangered Mammals chapter, a piece on Hedgehogs; for the House of Stuart chapter, a piece on the Restoration, and so on.

The way hat-trick handled the relationship between the slip case and the front cover was particularly interesting: the slipcase cover shows a close up of an elaborate R on a painted red post box, then when you pull out the book, there’s the same R sandblasted back to the metal. It’s a subtle visual metaphor to show the reader that all will be revealed inside. The endpapers print all the words in the book in miniature, playing on the juxtaposition of scale that continues throughout the pages. You can order your very own copy — which includes all the stamps issued in 2010 — here.

flash - ahah!

2011-03-11T17:01:00.004Z

Super direct mail follow-up to White Stuff’s super-hero themed catalogue (see below). Cut to the shape of a pair of crime-bustin’, worn-over-the-tights Y-fronts, they’re promoting a forthcoming 20% off day. And if you can’t make it into your local store, you can claim your discount by entering ‘flash’ at the checkout — nice touch.

Have you noticed how the latest posts on this blog are all about old-skool pants and super-powers? Read into that what you will.

the first take.

2011-02-18T16:53:00.010Z

And here’s the album cover that started the whole jokey self-conscious craze off (see ‘heard that one before?’, a few posts down). This was originally released in 1969, so Howlin’ Wolf almost certainly gets the gong. Looking enviously at Jimi Hendrix’s success, ‘The Howlin’ Wolf Album’ was a doomed attempt by Chess Records to give Mr Wolf a psychedelic makeover. The craggy bluesman wasn’t impressed, rather colourfully describing the effort as “horse shit”. With all the negative vibe surrounding it, the record peaked at a paltry #69 in the Billboard Black Albums Chart. Thanks to Fraser Southey for alerting us to this slice of phonographic history.

is it another bird? Is it another plane?

2011-02-17T17:48:00.023Z

Zap! Voosh! Kerpow! You wait for ages, and then two come along at once. It’s quite uncanny... on the very same day, I get an email from Selfridges touting MAC's new range of ‘Wonder Woman’ cosmetics, and the White Stuff catalogue featuring a super hero dog on the front cover. Both have that familiar retro comic book styling, with the flat blocks of primary colour, exaggerated perspective, visible halftone dots, yellow headlines, and angled caps in speech bubbles. Selfridges, of course, is the real McCoy, with an official DC Comics trademark acknowledgement in the bottom right-hand corner. White Stuff is more of a jokey homage (although Superman did have a canine sidekick called Krypto).

There’s nothing new about it, of course. It’s been appropriated and recycled since 1960s pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (bottom) built his career around it, and has enjoyed countless resurrections, revivals, plunderings and parodies ever since. So the more interesting question is why have two such different brands chosen this moment in time to follow a similar route?

I don’t particularly have an answer. It’s just curious how often this happens. There’s usually something in the creative air which leads designers in the same direction at the same time, even if they’re working in completely different parts of the country. Last year the big thing was bold mono printing on grainy recycled stock, this year designers have gone more delicate and decorative. Until Super Dog came along.

Prepare to be Marvelled.

the thrill of it all.

2011-02-07T09:22:00.005Z

Ever since my younger sister warbled ‘This is Tomorrow Colin’ back in the 1970s, I’ve had a huge soft spot for Roxy Music. Glamorous, unpredictable, suave, tacky, arty, tongue in cheek... they have it all. I sported the Ferry fringe for as long as my follicles could carry it off, and for many years held the great man up as a role model and style icon.

And last night I finally got my chance to see them take to the boards at the Nottingham Arena — part of their 40th anniversary tour, their first outing in six years. They didn’t disappoint. This was a real show show, with all-action backing dancers and singers, and a nine-strong band of impeccable musicians who took it in turn to blow the audience away with impossible solos. Roxy powered through a mix classics old and new... though they went surprising easy on the laid-back middle period (Avalon/Flesh and Blood) which saw them at their most successful, though perhaps least inventive.

Savile Row-suited Bryan Ferry cut a slightly reticent figure, cooly detached from the audience, often retreating behind keyboards — perhaps some sort of attempt at being a member of the band than a front man. His voice wasn’t what it used to be, but still, a pleasing enough part of the multi-layered production, and buoyed by highly accomplished backing singers, particularly the astonishing tonsils of Sewuese Abwa. The real stars were stalwarts Andy McKay and Phil Manzanera — live, you can immediately see how McKay’s alto sax informs the distinctive Roxy sound, while Manzanera’s guitar sings out like a sizzling siren.

Plaudits too to the VJ, his kaleidoscopic backdrops interweaving graphics, animation and film clips with live close-ups of the ensemble. The mesmeric montage perfectly captured Roxy’s art-school roots, touching their key visual reference points — from Hollywood glamour, to sleek typography, neon signage, show girls, and of course, outtakes from the iconic LP covers.

Past their prime? Maybe. But I’m happy to be able to say I’ve seen the band who came 98th in Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Artists of All Time’. And I beg to differ... Roxy Music — who started breaking the rules way before punk — are still doing the Strand in my top 10.

pants for the memories.

2010-12-30T17:59:00.004Z

Among the goodies waiting for me under the Christmas tree this year were two pairs of decidedly retro underpants. Based on the original Jockey Y-front design which ruled the pre-boxer short roost, they’ve been restyled with a slightly longer leg, catering to the demands of today’s discerning trunk-wearer. One pair is a rather flashy mandarin, the other a handsome turquoise, complete with the familiar strategically placed white piping and a faithfully recreated elasticated waistband. Takes my backside back, I must say.

What struck me most though, was the accompanying label, bearing the rather braggy strapline “The original Jockey® Y-Front® brief — a true American legend”. And a photo of what can only be described the kind of dubbered old pants your granddad might wear. Heritage is one thing, but here, I think we’re hitting something of a bum note.

fancy seeing you here.

2010-12-16T19:23:00.021Z

I’m pretty sure this has never happened to me before, and it’s unlikely to happen again. I’d just treated myself to a copy of new book, entitled ‘Alphabets: A Miscellany of Letters’, and was idly flicking through its handsome pages. It’s a charming, quirky compendium of applied letterforms, arranged in themed chapters — B for ‘Bestiary’, F for ‘Found’, H for ‘Hand’, J for ‘Journey’, and so on. It features games, posters, signage, packaging, furniture… in fact, virtually anything’s considered fair game so long as it references the alphabet.

And there, staring back at me on page 56, was something that looked decidedly familiar. A poster I’d worked on with the great Derek Birdsall back in 2004. You could have knocked me down with a feather (shaped like a letter f, perhaps). Our effort was based on the letter i, and featured in a exhibition at the British Library organised by 26. Originally, it was printed on a reflective surface, so that people would see their faces in the poster as they read the text, picking up of the idea of I as shorthand for identity.

Here’s what some of the text in ‘Alphabets’ says about the poster: “Birdsall is an influential book designer who, therefore, works closely with letters in his day-to-day work. Davies, a writer, has contributed works of fiction and non-fiction to a variety of publications, and his humorous interpretation of the letter’s history is characteristic of his work. The letter is given a pompous voice and lists its many uses in language and technology, drawing attention to its strong aesthetics, which make it suited to graphic art.”

After I’d recovered from the surprise, I felt pretty pleased with myself. But on reflection I thought, shouldn’t someone have at least asked first?

‘Alphabets: A Miscellany of Letters’ is published by Black Dog. You can pick it up on Amazon for £16.96.

on fiction and Finkler.

2010-11-02T16:45:00.009Z

I’ve had a week or so to digest this year’s 26 Speech ‘The Art of Writing with Howard Jacobson’ at the British Library. It was a fantastic evening, buoyed by the news that Jacobson had won the Mann Booker Prize just a few days earlier. A lesser man might have shirked his earlier commitments, but despite having lost most of his voice through constant interviews and minimal sleep, the author turned in a sterling performance. So it wasn’t really a speech, more of a chat, but all the more intimate and revealing for it.

I’ve been a fan of Jacobson’s since the early 1980s, when his first book, the edgy campus romp ‘Coming From Behind’ was published. Since then, I’ve read most of his novels, most recently the fascinatingly disturbing ‘Act of Love’.

In person, he was disarmingly frank, tremendously funny and wonderfully insightful, coaxed and cajoled by the pitch-perfect interviewing of 26 Chairman Martin Clarkson. Jacobson jokingly suggested they might go on tour as a double act — which isn’t an entirely ridiculous idea.

So what did we learn? That even a successful, award-winning, crowd-pleasing writer is incredibly ‘thin skinned’ — sensitive to slights, criticism and perennially jealous of his peers. Jacobson’s tone wavered from self-mockery to bravura, so you were never quite sure where the joke stopped and the seriousness kicked in. He was certainly an entertaining speaker, his razor-sharp responses packed with memorable one liners on everything from God to sex, family to comedy.

On the subject of novel writing, one of the most interesting things he said was that he has no idea what’s going to happen before he starts writing, he just lets the characters evolve and develop until they find a natural path. “Bloody plot. Who did it? Who cares? Character is plot.” There’s nothing mystical about it, he claimed, but ushering them down a preordained plotline makes the writing mechanical and contrived like forcing words into a crossword grid. This makes sense, though writing free-form like this requires tremendous skill and experience.

Jacobson eschewed the description of comic novelist, though professed to writing comedy. But strictly black no sugar. “I like to find it where it shouldn’t be, where it’s either slit your wrists or laugh… My humour doesn’t tickle you, it hurts you. It’s like being forced to the ground and stabbed in the heart,” he said.

I liked what he said about character names too — that they should be curious and evocative, something Dickens always seemed to manage. “How can I possibly be interested in what happens to someone called Paul?”

Anything else? Well, plenty. But for obscurists… his younger brother was in a band that went on to become 10cc, though left before they made it. Jacobson once ran a restaurant down in Cornwall with his then wife. And he used to live on the same south London street as Ian McEwan and Angela Carter.

I was pleased that Clarkson used both the questions I’d supplied him verbatim:

Sex is always bubbling somewhere near the surface of your novels. Do you enjoying writing about sex as much as people enjoy reading about it?

You return to various themes time and time again – sex, jealousy, cuckoldry, Jewishness, embarrassment, snobbery, learning – how important is it for a novelist to have a particular set of preoccupations?

And even more pleased to win a copy of ‘The Finkler Question’ for knowing the title of Jacobson’s other Booker-shortlisted novel (‘Who’s Sorry Now’). I had it signed afterwards during a slightly embarrassed chat… the inscription reads: “To Jim… who’s sorry now? Not me.”

a Vintage occasion.

2010-08-23T12:40:00.014+01:00

A quick word about last week’s wonderful Vintage at Goodwood, before it becomes a passing footnote. Set in spectacular grounds on the South Downs, Wayne Hemingway’s first stab at curating a multi-dimensional summer festival (incorporating music, fashion, film, design and art) was hugely ambitious, but all-in-all, it really worked. For me, the only problem was there was just too much going on… I wanted to be several places at once and occasionally rued my choices.

My musical highlights were: Noisettes (who really know how to put on a show); I’ve never been convinced about The Feeling, but they managed to win me over (their four Squeeze songs with Glen Tilbrook were note perfect); Craig Charles spinning tunes and Noel McKoy singing his heart out on the Soul Stage; and it was great to catch Heaven 17 doing a special remix of Temptation. Shame to have missed the Damned and the Pole Cats, but you can’t have everything.

Deborah insists on putting a word in for the Puppini Sisters – her pick of the festival.

But it was all the other stuff that really made the difference.

Like the choice of food and drink from the organic farmer’s market, to the 50s style American diner, to the Routemaster bus dispensing Pimms. There aren’t many festivals where you can get a cup of Earl Grey from a Fortnum & Mason pop-up shop.

Wayne promised that even the toilets would be an experience, but I wouldn’t go quite that far. They were certainly a step up from the usual stinky hellholes, but there was no uniformed lackey to pass you a towel or Molton Brown hand cream.

You could have just spent the day people watching… there were Hippies, Mods, Skins and plenty of Rockabilly types. But also folk dressed as Rear Admirals, tweedy country gents, Land Girls, usherettes – all eras and styles got a look in. And if you didn’t have the gear, you could always visit one of the 60-odd vintage stalls for inspiration.

Everyone made Vintage something special. There was a real sense of camaraderie and being part of something. You ended up chatting to to all sorts of people from different walks of life – the vibe was incredibly welcoming and friendly.

Thanks in particular to Paul the affable barber from Brighton who gave me the best haircut I’ve had in years, and my youngest his first quiff and DA. And to the very thin American man in the cowboy hat who showed us round Mick Jones’ curious collection of ephemera on a Peter Blake-decorated double-decker bus.

Can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year...

heard that one before?

2010-08-08T15:42:00.019+01:00

Picked up this CD by the Black Keys the other week, and the rather self-conscious cover art seemed curiously familiar. That’s probably because the much fêted record sleeve design company Hipgnosis had come up with the idea some 30 years earlier. It was said to have been rejected by regular clients Pink Floyd, but XTC (remember them?) were more than happy with the crumbs from the table for their second album ‘Go’ (released October 1978).

While the Black Keys’ effort has a certain laconic charm – I particularly like the deadpan line on the back cover “These are the names of the songs on this album/These are the guys in the band” – XTC’s takes the idea much further in the copy, the voice becoming increasingly involved, and almost getting into an argument with itself.

“This writing is trying to pull you in, much like an eye-catching picture. It is designed to get you to READ IT. This is called luring the VICTIM, and you are the VICTIM. But if you had a free mind you should STOP READING NOW! Because all we are attempting to do is trying to get you to read on. Yet this is a DOUBLE BIND because if you indeed stop you’ll be doing what we tell you, and if you read on you’ll be doing what we wanted all along.”

Anticipating post-modernism, it debunks the whole notion of the record sleeve as a sales tool, the music industry, and capitalism in a deliciously tongue-in-cheek way. When you consider that the Bee Gees’ ‘Saturday Night Fever’, Springsteen’s ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ and the eponymous ‘Dire Straits’ were the big sellers back then, you realise quite how far ahead of its time Hipgnosis’ design idea was. And actually, it happens to fit perfectly with XTC’s witty, English, self-deprecating style. They were a super-talented band who never quite fulfilled their potential, mainly because of front man Andy Partridge’s paralysing stage fright.

Which brings me neatly on to Hard Fi’s ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’, designed by London graphics house Intro, whose output is generally far more original. Another self-referential piece, once again this pokes fun at the consumerist machine, though this time in a more brutally Modernist typographic style. Actually, it bears a striking resemblance to Intro’s own monograph ‘Display Copy Only’, with its pared-down, black on yellow colour scheme.

What does all this tell us? That there’s nothing new under the sun. That plagiarism abounds. That some ideas are worth revisiting (with a twist). That talent borrows, genius steals. Perhaps a bit of each. Certainly appropriation is routine in the design industry, as the amusing Dopplegänger Design blog so eloquently proves. Click through for several revealing hours of spot the difference.

brilliant orange – a World Cup prayer.

2010-06-28T09:38:00.003+01:00

Arjen Robben, who Van de Vaart in Heaven

Oranje be thy name.

Heitinga come, and Nigel De Jong,

On Dirk and Giovanni build the eleven.

Give us this Allefay our Boulahrouz,

And Sneijder’s stupendous passes,

As Stekelenburg halts those who try pass against us.

And lead van Bommel not into temper tantrums;

But deliver us from egos.

For thine is Elia, Van Persie and Huntelaar,

Total football forever.

Amstel.

(With apologies to Nick Asbury)

words and music.

2010-06-12T17:17:00.001+01:00

In the slippery world of tone of voice – like so many other places – context is all. Set the word ‘hello’ in 72pt Helvetica Extra Bold followed by an exclamation mark, and you’ll create a completely different takeout from the very same greeting peeping out in 9pt Baskerville. Design frames the words, creates the mood around them, and defines the universe they inhabit.

Designer Mark Denton’s ‘C**t’ poster for calligrapher Alison Carmichael (right) is a case in point. The lettering is so daintily beautiful, the baby-pink background so feminine, that the most offensive word in the language instantly loses its shock value. In the simple payoff ‘Words look much nicer when they’re hand lettered’, the audience is let in on the joke, we laugh at our squeamishness.

Similarly, cover versions of songs can completely subvert the meaning of the originals. This is most apparent in ‘easy listening’ versions of edgy rock classics like Mike Flowers’ Pops’ tongue-in-cheek cover of Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’, and Paul Anka’s take on Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. In a couple of crooned phrases, angst becomes kitsch, attitude becomes platitude.

Extending the pop music analogy sheds plenty of light on the role of tone of voice in commercial writing. Take soul, probably my favourite genre of music. When you actually analyse the lyrics of a Stevie Wonder song (or a Marvin Gaye, Four Tops or Aretha Franklin song, for that matter), they’re not much to get excited about. The words are almost inanely simple, the rhymes laboured, the sentiment clichéd. And yet, the songs still manage to be hugely powerful and moving. If they catch you at the right moment, they can make you cry, take you back to another time, make your spirits soar, or your body want to dance with joy. It’s all in the raw, visceral delivery… the grunts, groans, screams and moans are just as important as the words.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the lyrics don’t matter. It’s just that in soul music, the connection happens at a gut level, not an intellectual one. Clever, stylised words would come across as contrived and calculated. Simple words speak of the man on the street opening his heart. There’s a lesson here for design too – bold graphics paired with pithy, direct writing can be really powerful, particularly when tackling serious issues. Eschewing verbal spin and dispensing with visual frills gets you straight to the nub.

But being a writer, of course I’m also a sucker for a bit of wordplay and storytelling. While I certainly admire serious heavyweights like Bob Dylan and John Lennon, who take on big issues with a poet’s eye, I generally prefer the wry detachment of Roxy Music or Franz Ferdinand. They take the position of observers commenting on what’s going on around them, steadfastly cool and detached. Oddly, this is totally the opposite of what I love about soul music, which is all intensity and involvement.

Then there are bands like Squeeze and their New Jersey heirs Fountains of Wayne, who cleverly capture small slices of everyday life in charming three-minute cameos, told from different character perspectives. And the likes of Elvis Costello and Jarvis Cocker, prone to verbal gymnastics perhaps, but still devastating with rhyme and metaphor, summoning injustice, absurdity, pathos, and everything in between.

But for me, the true master of the sung poem is undoubtedly Stephen Patrick Morrissey. His opening lines are lessons in observation, wit and originality – you’re hooked from the very start…

I was minding my business
Lifting some lead off
The roof of the Holy Name church
(‘Vicar in a Tutu’, from The Smiths’ ‘The Queen is Dead’)

Trudging slowly over wet sand
Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen
This is the coastal town
That they forgot to close down
(‘Every Day is Like Sunday’, from ‘Viva Hate’)

Of course there are many worthy pretenders. Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy is another clever songwriter with a gift for setting a scene and skilfully unfolding a story. His latest single ‘At the Indie Disco’, is a winning comic tale of socially awkward, spiky haired adolescents looking for love on a Thursday evening. He even cites the aforementioned Moz.

We’ve got a table in the corner that is always ours
Under the poster of Morrissey with a bunch of flowers
We drink and talk about stupid stuff
Then hit the floor for Tainted Love
You know I just can’t get enough...

The way he weaves in song titles and band names into the lyrical structure is seriously impressive.

Give us some Pixies and some Roses and some Valentines
Give us some Blur, and some Cure, and some Wannadies

She makes my heart beat the same way
As at the start of Blue Monday

...and we can all relate to going home alone on the night bus, waiting for next week’s reprise. Check the graphic/typographic vibe of the vid below... and dig Neil’s dancing!

This is exactly the kind of gently observational, mildly amusing tone of voice I am trying to achieve in my commercial writing. But I’d like to think there’s some soul lurking in there as well. Huuuuuh! Get up offa that thing! Uhh!

on top of the word.

2010-05-09T18:22:00.001+01:00

I’ve got out of the habit of reading much poetry recently, but I’m having a bit of a Paul Auster phase, so this caught my eye. It was the cover typography as much as the thought that Auster no doubt has his own slant on the genre. Jenny Grigg’s lettering hints at the process of writing, yet avoids the more flowery excesses of some calligraphy. And the way she’s subtly woven the ‘A’ and ‘U’ of Paul and Auster suggest some of the structural gymnastics that the author is known for. The design, printed on nice quality craft paper, is deceptively simple, but still manages to convey an understated elegance and graphic wit. Right, better read some now... you know what they say about books and covers.

what’s in a (middle) name?

2010-04-30T09:39:00.001+01:00

I’m featured in ‘The Middle Names Project’, an intriguing blog set up by fellow writer and 26 member James Hogwood. The simple premise is this… to delve into the whys and wherefores of people’s middle names, uncovering interesting stories along the way. When you think about it, they are curious, shadowy creatures, part of our identity, yet generally not on public display. People are usually given them for a reason – in memory of a friend or relative, or carrying on a family tradition. Find out about Elvis Aaron Presley, F Scott Fitzgerald, and me – James Karel Davies – by checking James’ blog here.

memories of Malcolm.

2010-04-16T18:25:00.002+01:00

Back in 1991, I spent an afternoon with Malcolm McLaren. I was working for a design and advertising magazine, and he’d decided to try his hand at directing commercials. Naturally, we gave him the front page.

It was a curious encounter. I have to admit that I felt slightly uncomfortable, not only because of what he stood for, but because I half thought he might pull some kind of devilish prank on me. He didn’t. In fact, he was terribly charming and grown up. He wore a green tweed suit, checked country shirt and floral tie, a picture of respectability. We met at Hazlitt’s, his hotel in Soho, and took a black cab to the disused Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, where he was shooting his ad which, unlikely as it sounds, was for Cadbury’s Twirl. The last time he’d been there apparently was with Bow Wow Wow.

The spot featured a troupe of dancers taking a break for a Twirl (geddit?). The music, which was particularly important to MMc, was his own reworking of Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’, and the man himself made a cameo appearance sitting at a piano at the end.

Even then, the whole notion of McLaren moving into advertising was a bit puzzling, and looking back on the article, I’m pleased to report that I quizzed him about it at length. His rationale was that he’d always been and arch-marketeer and ads were a natural extension, he also said he found the speed of turning around a commercial exhilarating compared to the slow burn of making music or nurturing a band’s image.

For someone who’d flunked out of countless art colleges, he was remarkably erudite – constantly dropping names and asking if I’d read any of this or that author or philosopher. He seemed restless, inquisitive, easily bored, his conversation jumping around like an itchy bird on a tree.

Occasionally he’d get a glint of amusement in his eye… he was particularly taken with the typographer’s name, Len Cheeseman. “Cheeeseman, Cheese Man… I wonder if his ancestors made cheese or just ate a lot of it,” he pondered. I also distinctly remember him describing the closing shot of a vat of swirling chocolate as resembling “the very bowels of hell”, in that unmistakable whiny voice of his.

Despite my misgivings, he was extremely good company – he gave me an afternoon I’ll never forget. Not to mention the Sex Pistols.

RIP Malcolm. Rest in Punk.

something to chew on.

2010-04-14T18:48:00.001+01:00

For those of us brought up in 1970s Beirut – and there were one or two – this should bring back some memories. Chiclets were the chewing gum of choice, always right there next to the till in the small cornershop, packed to the gunnels with plump fruit, fresh spices, cigarettes and cold drinks, in an order that made sense only to the wonderfully lugubrious shopkeeper.

This is a pack of Johnnie-come lately cinnamon gum, the original classic was exactly the reverse – yellow with red trimming. The rather gothic Roman type and the Arabic script has been streamlined and modernised. The small cellophane window, which gave you a glimpse of the actual gum inside replaced by a drawing in the same position. But it’s still unmistakeably Chiclets. And to me, anyway, it’s a design classic.

keeping up with the jones.

2010-03-23T12:03:00.001Z

This CD cover design for ‘Dap Dippin’ with… Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings’ definitely falls into the category so bad it’s good. The type looks like its been done by someone who’s found some dodgy old Letraset and had to make do. They layout is all over the place, with a huge patch of black space taking up most of the front section. Sharon is slightly out of focus, and the only other member of the band in shot has been half cropped out. On the back, the black-and-white cut-out is truly awful and you can see the screen on the photograph. And, yet… the whole thing is utterly brilliant. A perfectly realized pastiche. Unfortunately, no-one owns up to it in the credits.

New Yorker Sharon Jones is a class purveyor of retro 1960s and 1970s soul – although that description doesn’t really do her justice. I caught some of her scintillating grooves on the excellent Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show on BBC 6Music, and immediately fell in love with her tonsils. But when I ordered the CD from Amazon, I had no idea I’d be in for such a fine graphic treat too.

words on Shahrnush Parsipur.

2010-03-16T15:13:00.001Z

My 50-word piece on Shahrnush Parsipur was featured on the 26:50 site today. Here’s the thinking behind it.

I came across an interview she gave to an Iranian journalist when she was in London a few years ago. Apparently she stopped off at M&S on the way and bought a red dress. She liked the idea that it was OK to wear something a bit bright and garish, that made her stand out a bit if she chose.

This seemed such a simple liberty, but nevertheless it was one that had been denied in her home country, where women are expected to stand in the shadows. So I used this idea to start my 50 words.

Finding out more about her writing, I discovered that her work is surreal, dreamlike and often myth based, verging on magic realism. I decided to contrast her colourful imagination with the black pen of the censor that tried to repress it.

Parsipur is not an overtly political writer, she doesn’t even consider herself to be a feminist. But by exploring female sexuality and class in her society, she was seen to have stepped over a line. The red dress seemed to sum up both her bravery and her creativity.

Here’s what I wrote:

In exile she can wear red,
If she chooses.

At home all is black.
Black veils;
Black lines that strike out her words;
The abysmal black terror of another cell.

But still she writes in colour;
Bright, burning colour that knows no bounds
Free to fly wherever fancy takes it.

the right to write.

2010-03-11T10:58:00.001Z

26 have had a longstanding relationship with International PEN, an admirable pressure group which supports suppressed writers all over the world. This year, we launched the 26:50 project to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of PEN’s Writers in Prison committee.

PEN had already linked 50 writers with 50 campaigning years. We took the next step by randomly pairing each of the PEN writers with a writer from 26. The brief? Write 50 words, no more, no less, inspired by the life and work of your writer.

My subject was the Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur (right), the year 1974. That’s when her first novel The Dog and the Long Winter came out, and when she first went to prison – for protesting about the torture and execution of two journalists (she was working as a TV producer at the time). She spent 59 days in jail and then fled to France, returning to Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1980. However, it was a case of ‘meet the new boss, just like the old boss’. Once back on home soil, she was immediately arrested and incarcerated for four and a half years without trial or charge.

She continued working on her third novel Women Without Men after her release, but its frank depiction of women’s sexuality didn’t go down too well... she was rearrested in 1989, and at that point decided it might be wise to quit the country for the US. She hasn’t been back since, and all her books have been banned in Iran.

My fifty words should be out any day now on 26-50.tumblr.com. If you check in now, you can read how other 26 members have responded to their writers. One effort a day is being published until 18 April.

PG tips.

2010-03-07T20:01:00.001Z

Picked these beauties up in my local Oxfam shop last weekend. The reason I couldn’t resist them was twofold... PG Wodehouse and Penguin Classics. These are 1962 reprints, by which time Penguin had ditched the strict three-part horizontal typographic layout of their original offerings and gone vertical, incorporating simple illustrations. These sketches by Geoffrey Salter are perfect – economic yet evocative, a near match for Wodehouse’s easy, mellifluous writing. I have most of the great man’s canon in some form or other, but I’m always on the look out for more of these orange and white gems.

poster rationalisation.

2010-02-21T20:11:00.001Z

I’m grappling with my sixth Royal Mail Yearbook at the moment, and it’s taking me down the usual interesting avenues – obscure places I’d never go in the course of my usual business writing. I don’t think I’m giving anything away to reveal that one of the chapters is on King George V stamps. He was a near-obsessive philatelist who amassed a priceless collection which now belongs to the Crown. There’s a great story about the king paying a record £1,450 for a rare Mauritius 2d blue in 1904. One of his secretaries remarked that he’d read about ‘some damned fool’ who’d blown a fortune on a single stamp. Without skipping a beat, George replied, ‘I am that damned fool’.

But to get to the point... George also set up the British Postal Museum and Archive, which houses some real graphic treasures. Don’t worry, I’m not just talking stamps here, but all kinds of printed ephemera, including some achingly cool posters. These gems from the 1930s were recently picked up and released by zeitgeisty London greeting card specialists Umpen Editions. And you can see why… the designer-illustrators of the era were superb – witty, stylish and attention grabbing. Pat Keeley (top – a promotional poster for the famous Auden-scripted ‘Night Mail’ film) and Tom Eckersley (below – get the bubblewrap out, quick), as well as Hans Schleger (aka Zero) and Edward McKnight Kauffer were quite brilliant, and have a retro quality that’s bang on trend.

had we but word enough and time.

2010-02-21T15:08:00.001Z

OK, I’ll come clean, numbers are not my forté. To me, they’re just confusing marks best left to bookkeepers and accountants. Actually, I’m beginning to think I suffer from a mild form of number dyslexia, often transposing digits and being perennially useless with PIN numbers and phone numbers. So Word Clock, by the ingenious digital designer Simon Heys (currently working at the Times), is a welcome antidote to the number fascism of time. It’s a rather beautiful screen saver (for Mac, PC or iPhone), which tells you the time in written out words, which change… well… every second. You can set it as a full screen of words or a rather elegant spiral, you can change the colours or the typeface. It’s wonderfully mesmerising watching time click by in words. And you can get hold of one for yourself right here.

a flash in the pancake.

2010-02-16T23:03:00.001Z

LP Hartley never spoke a truer word when he said “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” I’ve just finished my annual wielding of frying pan and pancake batter in readiness for, well, not celebrating Lent. The children insist on it. Each year I dig out this trusty little gem of a cook book – by now practically a Kings family heirloom – to mug up on the recipe. And it never disappoints. Look at that cover, truly from a bygone age, and long before Delia was even weighing up her career options. It never fails to bring a small lump to the throat remembering all the stupendous cakes we made. It was the Sixties by the way, not the Fifties, if some of you were rudely wondering. And that’s a lot of cakes. At a cover price of 1s 6d, I think we’ve safely had our money’s worth, and who knows, when the boys have grown up, they might be clamouring for the recipe on Pancake Day too.

it’s going bananas.

2010-02-12T09:50:00.002Z

Response to the totalcontent monkey mailer has been phenomenal, and we’ve not even started sending out to the list of juicy prospects we’ve put together. Through the power of twitter and facebook, the posters were picked up by the popular design blogs acejet170 and formfiftyfive, and we’ve been getting over 500 hits a day on the web site. As well as wonderfully positive comments, we've been inundated with requests for posters from far and wide, so the studio currently looks more like a Royal Mail sorting office than the usual oasis of writerly calm. A gallery has even been in touch asking if they can exhibit our monkeys. Deborah is questioning whether stuffing orange tubes is in her job description, and my tongue is protesting at all the stamp licking. We got a rubber stamp of one of Rob’s monkeys made up, which we think works pretty well on our NB:Studio designed address stickers.

more monkeys.

2010-02-02T14:36:00.001Z

And here they are... literally hot off the press. The studio smells of printers’ ink. Nice. This is one of a set of three posters. I’ll put them up on the ‘Recently section’ with a bit of a commentary as soon as humanly possible. Shakespeare, monkeys and a gag. How very totalcontent.

a chimp off the old block.

2010-02-01T18:40:00.001Z

Finally. totalcontent’s very first mailer is drying off at the printers as we speak. It was designed by the good people at Elmwood, and features illustrations of monkeys by the highly talented Rob Ball of the Partners. Of course we’ll reveal all as soon as we get our hands on them, but in the meantime, here’s one of Rob’s excellent simian creations. Hope I wasn’t too much of a pain-in-the-arse client.

a date with Airside.

2009-12-24T11:34:00.001Z

Following my moan about the dearth of decent 2010 calendars in Design Week, I was delighted to receive the latest offering from the good people at Airside. (It was a real oversight on my part not to have given these bold, bright and quirkily illustrated numbers a name check in the first place). Airside calendars are developing a serious rep in the design community, and have become highly collectable – people are still buying the 2004 model. This year’s features two weeks to view, and – though there’s plenty of graphic variety on display – the main theme is playful bold silhouettes and merged perspectives. The dates are particularly interestingly handled – crude, bitmapped type displayed in Escher-like columns, creating intriguing patterns and visual illusions. Many thanks to Nat Hunter for popping one in the post. You can get hold of a (highly recommended) copy here.

play your cards right.

2009-12-17T18:52:00.001Z

Came across this quite brilliant pack of typographic playing cards the other week. They’re the work of Jim Sutherland at hat-trick design, who I’m lucky enough to be working with on the 2010 Royal Mail Yearbook. Though they’re being used as piece of self-promotion for the consultancy, they’re actually an immaculately realized piece of personal work. The handling of the type is really witty and elegant, with negative and positive space used to act out suits, royals and numbers. Away from commercial and brand imperatives, the cards eloquently show a true love of type and pure graphics. Can’t wait to get my hands on a pack. There’s a YouTube clip here where you can see all 54 of them in action.

day tripper.

2009-12-17T18:23:00.001Z

Finding a suitable 2010 calendar has been a struggle. Usually I’m lucky enough to receive some beautiful unsolicited designer offering through the post, but as we all know, times are tough, and this year nothing has been forthcoming. After much internet trawling, and a couple of near misses, I finally settled on the Central Illustraton Agency’s ‘Ace’ calendar. This dinky little number features a new illustration a week by eminent pencil-wielders like David Hughes, Brian Grimwood, Ian Bilbey and Max Ellis. It’s printed on grey recycled paper with vegetable-based inks and is a limited edition run of 600 – so you can feel green and exclusive at the same time. Oh, and my latest Design Week column is all about the trials and tribulations of finding the perfect designery calendar. Pencil it in.

evil spell.

2009-12-02T12:47:00.001Z

Once a sub-editor, always a sub-editor. That’s how I started out in magazines and newspapers many years ago, and it’s a discipline that’s stayed with me. Between you and me, sometimes I wish it hadn’t. Even the on most compelling page of narrative, it’s become almost second nature to scour for typos – and the scary thing is – more often than not – I find them. Whodunnit? I don't know, I was too busy getting out the red pen.

Professionally, the ability to spot errors is a blessing. Personally, it’s perhaps something of a curse. But without meaning to come over all Lynne Truss, spelling mistakes really irk me. I don’t mean the odd slip of the keyboard. We all do that. But real howlers like something being ‘highly sort after’, or ‘blacks and graze’. Spectacular gaffes that leave the poor helpless spell check for dust. (both are real examples from shopping sites).

English, we all know, is a difficult beast. The written word often seems to bear little relation to the spoken one. You can see why every so often pressure groups press for spelling reform to make things simpler and more logical. But to counter that argument, it’s also an incredibly rich and vibrant language, full of light and shade, of heritage and personality. Remove its foibles and eccentricities and you remove its character. Straighten the kinks and the road is far less interesting. You can’t have it both ways.

Many of the graphic designers I work with are less than comfortable with words. Which is perhaps surprising, as they deal with them all the time. That puts the onus right back on the writer to make sure everything’s tickety-boo. You could argue that’s not really our job – we’re here to come up with verbal ideas and tell stories. But someone’s got to take responsibility, otherwise you end up with the kind of disasters you’ll find on one of my favourite sites – ‘Cake Wrecks’ (see above). It’s an issue I explore at greater length in my latest Design Week column. In the meantime, be careful how you order those letters.

a great lick.

2009-11-07T19:53:00.001Z

I don’t want to come over as some sad old stamp geek, but thanks to a long association with Royal Mail Design, I’ve learned a thing or two about this minuscule art form. Strict rules about what you can and can’t do with the look and form of a stamp are gradually being loosened in an effort to attract younger collectors, and the January 2010 stamp issue by Studio Dempsey continues to push the boundaries.

The set features classic British record sleeves, including the seminal London Calling by The Clash, Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Blur’s Parklife and Led Zeppelin II. I was among of a group of designers and music journalists to help draw up a shortlist for Royal Mail, and I’m glad to see that several of my suggestions made the cut. Mike Dempsey has cleverly played with the form of both the stamp and the sleeve, with a small crescent of record poking out of the right-hand side. Let’s hope the younger audience appreciate what this curious black stuff is.

Personally, I’ll be buying as many Clash stamps as I can get my hands on. The iconic Pennie Smith photo of Paul Simenon smashing his bass still has immense power, and the type design by Ray Lowry – a homage to an earlier Elvis album – creates the perfect frame. Along with his many other achievements – bassist, artist, coolest man on Earth – Simenon becomes one of the first recognisable living people to appear on a British stamp. Until recently, only members of the Royal Family were accorded that honour. To see all the other classic British album sleeve stamps, check the Creative Review blog. God Save the Queen.

a nib off the old pen.

2009-11-02T16:17:00.002Z

It near brings a tear to the proud, fatherly eye.

This is my 10-year-old son Lukje’s latest homework assignment, which was to design an eco-friendly vehicle. It wasn’t so much the concept and drawing as the naming and copy which caught the eye. In case you can’t make out the body text it reads:

‘You’ll be round
the rainforest in
no time with this
solar powered
two seater!’

It has a real economy, rhythm, and an engaging tone of voice. There’s even a nifty bit of alliteration in there. He’ll be troubling the pages of the D&AD Annual before you know it.

That’s my boy.

packaging you can Count on.

2009-10-31T18:10:00.001Z

Thought this would be the perfect date to share one of my all-time favourite pieces of packaging. I’ve had it quite a few years now, and picked it up at my local Budgens, so I have no idea who was responsible. It certainly makes a change from the usual flimsy string bag – and shows eloquently how tapping into a shared mythology can add character and humour, even to a humble bulb of garlic. The gradiated colour, gothic type and creative folding techniques are great. The die-cut crucifix lifts it into the realms of pure genius.

I’ve just realised the past three posts have all been a tad ghoulish. Pure co-incidence, I assure you. ’Scuse me... just off for a quick pint of the red stuff.

Happy Halloween everyone.

a window on our world.

2009-10-29T18:41:00.001Z

If you’ve visited the ‘recently’ section of this website of late, you’ll know that we’ve finally decamped to a sleek new studio directly underneath our previous space (and just a short hop and skip from our bedroom).

As it happened, we also inadvertently created our first piece of external branding for the totalcontent franchise. Look carefully at the photo on the right and see if you can guess where we’re probably beavering away as we speak. The clue’s most definitely in the colour.

bloody marvellous.

2009-09-30T10:05:00.001+01:00

Film title sequences have become a mini art form in their own right, with the incomparable Saul Bass showing the way in the 1960s and more recent exponents like Kyle Cooper breaking new boundaries with his work on Se7en. Budget constraints have meant that TV has been left lagging behind, especially in the UK, where you immediately think of the perennially wet, sloping roofs across Manchester’s Coronation Street or the stock footage of a lumbering tortoise that heralds the opening of ‘One Foot in the Grave’. But True Blood, HBO’s excellent swamp-goth vampire series, has significantly raised the bar. The sublime opening credits, by Seattle’s Digital Kitchen, create an evocative visual tableau that perfectly sets the scene for what’s to follow. Fast cuts of slo-mo snakes and bloody roadkill are skilfully juxtaposed with Pentecostal rapture, sleazy sexual encounters and ancient car wreckage. Decay, blood, religion, voodoo, and the brooding intensity the Deep South, seep through in 65 masterfully edited shots. Jace Everett’s sweetly sinister country song ‘Bad Things’ provides a fitting soundtrack. Catch it if you can – the series starts on C4 on 7 October.

True Blood Main Titles from DIGITALKITCHEN on Vimeo.

keep it simple.

2009-09-24T18:07:00.001+01:00

Although I wasn’t exactly sure what rooibos tea was when I bought this, the packaging (designed by the good people at Pearlfisher) made it irresistible. And actually, as it turns out, I really quite like the stuff. Apart from the background being a perfect shade of orange, the anthropomorphic, hand-drawn type has an arresting, child-like quality, which cleverly suggests the tea’s natural, organic provenance. The doodle-like illustrations not only convey energy and fun, but show you that you’re about as far away from a slick, processed drink as you could be. The copy wasn’t bad either, personable without trying too hard:

“Here at Kromland Farm, we’ve been cultivating rooibos since 1902. But that's nothing – South Africa’s indigenous Khoisan people have been enjoying its rich flavour and potent heath benefits for millennia”.

Unfortunately, it seems I won’t be. Sainsbury’s seem to have stopped stocking Kromland Farm.

white man in helsinki art gallery.

2009-09-18T18:29:00.002+01:00

With a couple of hours to kill in Helsinki, I wandered into the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, an intriguingly shaped glass-and-zinc building designed by the US architect Steven Holl. The exhibits were a mix of Finnish and international modern art, which were beautifully set off by the gentle, organic shapes of the rooms. Of course, you can always judge an art gallery by its gift shop, and Kiasma’s was packed with curious gems. Though I was sorely tempted to trade my Euros for various arty, esoteric books, I held back to retain my hand-luggage only status on the flight back. I did, however, pick up this card designed by a pair of English illustrators – Bob and Roberta Smith. Of course I agree entirely with the sentiment, but I’m also busy trawling through Chris Salewicz’s mighty biography of Joe Strummer, so I just had to have it.

In case you’re interested, Bob and Roberta's cards are available – along with efforts by David Shrigley, Magda Archer and Vic Reeves – at www.politecards.com.

having your cake and eating it.

2009-09-16T18:21:00.001+01:00

Last week I visited Helsinki for the first time. It was at the behest of my client Nokia, who wanted me there for an afternoon’s workshop. It can be hard to get an impression of a place in such a short space of time, especially when you are working for most of it, but Helsinki seemed at once strange and familiar, with its unusual mix of Scandinavian and quasi-Soviet architecture, and often striking juxtaposition of old and new.

What won me over to the city and its people (apart from feeling incredibly safe as I trod unfamiliar streets, even at the dead of night) was its endearing quirkiness. For example, after said workshop, Kokoro & Moi, the buzzy design company who’d hosted the workshop, invited us to a totally mad ‘cake party’, organised as part of Helsinki Design Week. Fashion, architectural and graphic designers had been challenged to create a conceptual piece (of cake). These were exhibited to a discerning crowd of designery types at a chi-chi furniture store. Among the various entrants were a cake as a giant coin, a loose self-portrait, and a chocolate offering shaped as a poo. Kokoro & Moi’s effort was a ‘build-it-yourself’ cake – plain sponge slices on which you could plaster jam, cream or hundreds and thousands with the provided plastic spades. A flouring of self-expression, you could say.

mugs of England.

2009-07-31T18:50:00.001+01:00

The latest patriotic offerings from our friends Mark Faulkner and Gill Naylor at the highly esteemed repeat repeat. The ‘Britannia’ range proudly wears its heritage on its sleeve with a variety of graphic interpretations of the phrase ‘Made in England’. With people increasingly concerned about the carbon footprint of the imported goods they buy, it’s reassuring to know that these bone-china beauties have been designed and made in this green and pleasant (if a bit wet and miserable) land.

good point.

2009-07-20T17:13:00.002+01:00

Something for all you stationery geeks out there. The new Tombow Airpress is a satisfyingly chunky little number with a crafty pressurised mechanism which allows it to write upside down, on wet or dusty paper, and in hot or cold conditions. Just about anywhere and on anything, in other words. It has a tough, spring-loaded clip that extends almost 45°, so you can attach it here, there and everywhere. It feels virtually indestructible, writes like a dream (even for someone who doesn’t usually like ballpoints), and best of all, it comes in orange.

paper bags for paperbacks.

2009-07-20T09:14:00.001+01:00

We were having a bit of a clear out (actually a lot of a clear out) yesterday, and came across this cute early 1980s branded paper bag. Deb must have carried some text books back to her halls of residence in it all those years ago. It stuck me how infinitely more eco these are than your regular bookshop plastic bags, and how much more suitable they are for books in terms of size and medium. Maybe we weren’t quite as profligate as we remember. The Penguin logos, of course look punchy, quirky and powerful – even in two colours on poor-quality paper. While I’m at it, I should probably recommend two related books: ‘Penguin by Design’, a loving visual history of the publishers by the excellent Phil Baines; and ‘Seven Hundred Penguins’, a superb compendium of Penguin covers from 1935 to recent times.

taking it to the wire.

2009-07-19T18:48:00.002+01:00

Just came across this irresistible piece of packaging in my DIY cupboard. I’ve had it for some time, but fortunately have managed to live my life without recourse to wire wool for several years. The Bauhaus-like colours and no-nonsense type are enough to hook you in, and I even love the name, ‘Trollull’, which has such a lyrical ring to it. The immaculately placed red line at the bottom cleverly references the German flag, as this is a quality German product. But best of all is the laid-back 2D figure offering to shake your hand. Reminscent of Robert Crumb’s iconic ‘Keep on trucking’ character, he instantly brings a smile to your face and the inference that he has long, wiry hair borders on graphic genius.

let it shine.

2009-07-06T12:01:00.001+01:00

Sometimes I feel as though there’s an invisible thread linking everything I write. It’s like one extremely long article reaching onwards and outwards to some wordy horizon. Seemingly disparate projects seem to piggy back each other quite naturally, and there are overlaps and connections where you wouldn’t necessarily expect them.

Work spills surprisingly over into life too, like it did recently when Deb and I made our annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam a few weeks ago. I’m not generally in the habit of visiting churches, but we had ten minutes to spare and were in the neighbourhood, so we slipped into the 17th-century Westerkerk. It boasts the tallest tower in the city and Rembrandt is said to be buried there, although no one’s actually found the great man’s grave. I’d just been researching stained glass windows for the forthcoming Royal Mail Yearbook, and writing in glowing terms about the ethereal atmosphere they create. The thing about the Westerkerk though is that there’s no stained glass at all, just these massive domed windows that let in incredible light, even on the dullest day. You’d expect this no-frills approach in a country where the ‘low church’ predominates, but it struck me that natural light is a far more powerful metaphor for God than man-made imagery, no matter how beautiful. Even as an unbeliever, I was impressed.

living dolls.

2009-05-12T20:47:00.001+01:00

It was one of those surreal moments. This afternoon, there I was standing outside Marylebone station minding my own business, when I noticed a rather portly photographer giving it some ‘exude’. I couldn’t make out what he was shooting as the subject was hidden from my eye-line in an alcove. By the time he wrapped, I’d more or less lost interest and was looking the other way, as one by one, the New York Dolls shuffled straight past me and into M&S food hall. And the thing was, they really looked like dolls… they were tiny gnarled things, who seemed like miniature caricatures of themselves. Still, it was a thrill to be inches away from the seminal proto-punk crew, and I’m sure they too will be dining on the encounter for years to come.

and the nominations are...

2009-05-02T19:38:00.001+01:00

The votes have been counted, the nominations and in-books have been revealed… so I can safely share some thoughts about judging Writing for Design without fear of vicious reprisals from the D&AD police. First of all, entries were up (though surprisingly there was not a single digital entry), and the overall standard was far superior to four years ago, the last time I donned the old horse-hair wig. We also had two quite brilliant, stand-out nominations in Nick Asbury’s Corpoetics booklet and the Christopher Doyle™ Identity Guidelines.

In Corpoetics, Nick takes boring ‘about us’ sections from web sites and mission statements and transforms them into poetry. He does this simply by changing the order of the words around, editing some and repeating others. The results are astonishing – telling, poignant, and amusing – and oddly, they often convey the spirit of the company better than the original.

Our foreman, Adrian Shaughnessy quite rightly asked the question ‘what’s the point of this, what’s it trying to say?’ To which I’d answer, it shows that there’s poetry hidden somewhere – in even the most mundane paragraph – if only you know how to find it. It’s also a wonderful calling card for Nick – without puffing out his chest and telling everyone how great he is, he’s demonstrated that he has a talent for an original idea and a great appreciation of words. Corpoetics really is one of those ‘wish I did that’ pieces.

Christopher Doyle™ Identity Guidelines is a beautifully observed, po-faced spoof of corporate guidelines. The eponymous hero of the piece is an Australian graphic designer, who stars on every page. The tone of voice is spot on, totally undercutting the language of the genre and the hackneyed notion that a brand is like a person. “This is a guide to how I should look, feel and sound as a person; a guide that should serve as an aid for myself and for those around me in ensuring my identity remains clear, consistent and correct.” My two favourite bits are a photo of Christopher packing some weight a few years ago captioned “My identity as it appeared between 2001and 2006 in Extra Bold”, and him sitting cross-legged on a chair captioned “Full Colour Seated_Casual”.

While I’m a huge fan of both these projects, my only slight niggle is that the only two nominations in the section went to self-initiated, self-promotional projects. (And there were others that made the book too like Mike Reed’s ‘And…’ and Radley Yeldar’s ‘The sad story’). You have to admire the initiative and effort involved in getting these pieces out there, but when there’s no client to answer to and no commercial imperative, such quietly subversive, lateral work is far more achievable.

pack to the future.

2009-04-24T09:56:00.001+01:00

I was judging ‘Writing for Design’ at D&AD earlier in the week (more of that later when the results are made public). As part of the entertainment laid on the night before, us judgy-types were invited along to the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising in Notting Hill. If you’re in the environs with a half hour to spare, and you’re in the mood for a whiff of nostalgia, it’s certainly worth a quick browse.

Tucked away in a corner mews, MoBPaA is home to a regiment of glass cabinets housing countless pieces of old packaging carefully arranged in date order. Being of a certain age, the 1970s and 1980s stuff had most resonance. I found it refreshingly direct, without the trills and swirls of the older stuff, or the show-off 3D rendering and glitzy metallic foils of today’s computer-fuelled graphics. The no-nonsense bright orange 70s Crunchie packaging with its punchy sans type was a particular favourite.

What was really curious, however, was seeing these everyday, disposable objects treated with such awe and reverence. We can’t deny that the Curly Wurly wrapper or Branston Pickle jar represents a small part of our heritage, but it’s only a small step away from regarding supermarkets as contemporary art galleries. That Andy Warhol was on to something.

having the last word.

2009-04-10T19:04:00.001+01:00

Yesterday in the Swedenborg Hall, Holborn, a thorny debate raged long into the night. It was the latest 26 event ‘Words and Design – The Best of Enemies’, and around 80 people showed up to hear design luminaries Malcolm Garrett, Jonathan Barnbrook and Simon Esterson discuss how the visual and the verbal joust and jostle, and how they might become better friends in the future. The questions were ably put by Patrick Burgoyne, editor of Creative Review, and there was healthy contribution from the floor.

I’d organised the do, and roped my old mates into doing it. Considering the event was rather ‘organic’, and no-one quite knew what to expect, the conversation was remarkably free flowing, touching on everything from building closer relationships, to the old advertising model, to standards in education. Catching up informally at the Old Crown afterwards was a real pleasure too. Many thanks to everyone involved.

ticking all the boxes.

2009-04-06T15:45:00.001+01:00

Big thumbs up (or should that be tick?) for big Mark Farrow’s latest collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys. Mark has been designing PSB’s sleeves for over 20 years to a consistently wonderful standard. His great talent is that he always knows when to stop. The irresistible cover artwork for ‘Yes’ reflects the pop sensibility of the new CD, and was influenced by the Gerhard Richter 4900 exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, which featured panels of brightly coloured squares. The central tick image is made up of eleven differently coloured squares, one for each track on the album.

Now the burning question is, would this have been better without the title and artist top left, or would that just have been gratuitous?

top of the crops.

2009-04-05T11:28:00.001+01:00

John Simmons, fellow board director and founder of 26, has a new book out. It’s called ‘Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a BlackBerry: How to Let Writing Release the Creativity of Your Brand’, and explores different approaches to business writing.

Basically, John has taken a piece of generic corporate writing – the ‘base text’, and rewritten it in 26 different ways, each following a particular constraint. For example, as a fairy story; without using the letter ‘e’; written in the style of Dickens; as a letter to a friend; as a six word story; as a sonnet. It’s surprising just how revealing this exercise can be.

There’s also an engaging themed web site to promote the book, where John has asked 26 of the UK’s leading commercial writers to write in the tone of voice of a fruit. I chose banana, for its obvious comic potential, and created a laid back, West Indian tone of voice. You can see my efforts, and check out the other fruity offerings here.

marking a milestone.

2009-04-05T10:58:00.001+01:00

Thursday was Podge, the annual lunch for movers and shakers of the design industry, organised by Phil Jones, the man with the fattest address book in London. But this was no ordinary Podge… the whole shebang had been put together to celebrate Lynda Relph-Knight’s 20 years at the helm of Design Week. Deep in the bowels of the Arts Club in Piccadilly, I was delighted to find myself on the top table, next to Sir John Sorrell and opposite one of my big heroes, Sir Peter Blake. And fittingly enough, the place had been decked out as a homage to Sgt Pepper, inspired by the line ‘It was twenty years ago today’.

As usual, Podge was a chance to catch up with friends old and new, to do a welcome spot of networking, and enjoy a couple of drinks in top company. For me the moment of the day was talking to Nick Bell, now visiting professor of graphic design at Royal College of Art, who reminded me of a comment I’d made in an article about him many years ago. “You said my sock drawer was probably immaculate… and the thing is, you were right.”

As a Design Week columnist, I’d been asked to write a small tribute to Lynda, which was printed on the Podge menu. Here’s what it said…

“Feisty, friendly, formidable… but enough about me. Over the past 20 years, Lynda has become part of our lives, supporting us (always), cajoling us (where necessary), telling it like it is. She’s never less than honest in her opinions, and has our best interests at heart, collectively and individually. What’s more, she’s a great friend and drinking companion. We’re all lucky to have Lynda around.”

t please.

2009-03-31T17:09:00.001+01:00

I’ve been a long-time admirer of Howies – who tongue-in-cheekily style themselves ‘Cardigan Bay’s third-biggest clothing company’. They’re right-on without being preachy or self-righteous, trying to do the right thing as far as they can by providing organic, low-impact goods. As my bulging T-shirt drawer will attest, I’ve bought plenty of stuff from them – even when I haven’t particularly needed it – just to support what they’re doing. (I’m not quite sure whether this is acceptable or not).

Howies’ copywriting is always spot on too, particularly their emails and collectable quarterly catalogue. And they use every opportunity – from labels in jeans to blogs and booklets – to spread the word. The writing is never over-chummy, but has a simple, easy-going tone of voice, which is difficult to resist. A recent wheeze is the T-shirt of the week… a limited edition by an artist or illustrator available only for seven days. Thought-provoking, smile-inducing, and seriously good-looking, they’re a regular graphic treat. This is the latest, designed by Aron Jones and Tim March, and hand printed in Howies’ customised shed in deepest West Wales.

got it covered.

2009-03-17T17:16:00.001Z

For those of us who like to judge a book by its cover, here’s a wry-yet-chirpy blog comparing and contrasting book cover design from around the world, along with suitably pithy commentary.

What’s really intriguing is the way different styles are adopted for different markets and how covers are refreshed from one edition to the next. But the real eye-opener is how your reaction is so easily manipulated, even before you’ve read a word. You can’t underestimate how a cover sets the tone for a book, or influences your frame of mind as you start delving into the writing.

Shown here, a new Faber & Faber edition of Paul Auster’s ‘New York Trilogy’ designed by the fabulously talented Jonathan Gray (who also did the ‘Common Ground’ cover for 26). And Art Spiegelman’s cover for the Penguin Deluxe Classics Edition of the same book. Get under the covers at www.thebookdesignreview.com.

that’s me in the corner.

2009-03-08T17:25:00.001Z

Sorry. Bit of a hobby horse. Really enjoyed the Design Week Awards last week – they were slick, inspiring, and it was great to catch up with friends, clients and collaborators. There was also a truly worthy Best of Show winner in the Peezy, a funky urine sample device for women (really).

As if that wasn’t enough, work by totalcontent was up among the awards again (details in the ‘recently’ section if you’re interested). Not that anyone would have known. For some reason, copywriting is barely ever credited. At awards or on the finished article. Even when it’s totally central to the success of a project. Designers, photographers, illustrators, printers, even the paper stock gets a name check. But the poor old writer? It’s a perennial frustration, and I still can’t figure out why words get so little recognition. OK, you can come out now, moan over.

as easy as A-B-C.

2009-03-01T16:54:00.001Z

I’m not too sure about Alphabeat’s music, it’s a just a bit too unashamedly ‘pop’ for me. You might remember the inane but infectiously catchy ‘Boyfriend’ from last year. Even if you don’t, when I tell you that the Danish band’s influences are Wham! and Abba, you’ll get the picture. Having said that, the cover for their debut UK CD, ‘This is Alphabeat’, is a graphic designer’s wet dream. With echoes of Peter Blake, Victorian poster type and nursery building blocks, it’s colourful, quirky and nostalgic. Which begs two questions. Firstly, would you buy a CD on the strength of its cover art? And secondly, anyone out there know who designed this little beauty?

my word.

2009-02-17T18:24:00.001Z

There’s something very reassuring about subscribing to a magazine. Particularly of the non-professional variety. Every month, there’s your old friend, waiting faithfully for you in the letterbox. My read of choice is ‘The Word’ magazine, a copiously awarded effort from music publishing stalwarts Mark Ellen and David Hepworth. Word has held the coveted ‘Music Magazine of the Year’ mantle for the past two years, but it’s far more than that… covering everything from books, comedy and movies, to quirky quandaries like which actor gave the most convincing portrayal of Hitler on celluloid. The ‘best and worst’ section is always achingly funny, the interviews and opinion pieces refreshingly lacking in puffery. Word may not be the best-designed magazine in the world, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s wonderfully written, witty and fizzing with character (even the publisher’s letter that comes in the plastic bag). Oh, and you get a cracking free CD of staff-picked tunes too.

spotify the difference.

2009-02-13T19:37:00.001Z

OK, I’ll come clean. I have a bit of a CD habit. Well, a lot of a CD habit. I visit a music store in Leamington called Head (formerly Fopp) most weekends. The prices range from £2 for old stuff to £10 for chart stuff, which means temptation is never far away. But this may be about to change. Yesterday I read a piece in the Guardian about Spotify, a new online music delivery system which is completely free. You don’t get to ‘own’ the music, but you can just play what you want whenever you want. Which is as good as in my book. The Guardian called Spotify ‘a potentially life-changing experience’, and having played around with it for a day, I can see why. You can listen by genre, make playlists, search, shuffle, skip… anything you can do with iTunes except download. But best of all you can be adventurous – check out stuff you’d never normally listen to because you don’t have to pay a penny for it. Is there a catch? Well a very small one. Every 25 minutes you have to listen to a 30-second ad – but I can live with that. (And if you really can’t you can pay £9.99 a month for an ad-free service). I can see my laptop is going to be hooked up to my stereo system any day now and I won’t have to worry about drowning in a sea of CDs.

blown away.

2009-02-09T19:12:00.002Z

We went to see the Blow Monkeys at Cox’s Yard, a small upstairs room above a pub in Stratford-upon-Avon last night. After an 18-year hiatus, all four original members are back together for a tour of small-venue gigs up and down the country to plug their new CD, ‘The Devil’s Tavern’. It was snowing and several degrees below zero, but there couldn’t have been more than 75 people in there. Deb last saw them in 1988 at the Roundhouse in London, playing to around 1,000. At Cox’s Yard, we were an arm’s length away. The once-chiselled Dr Robert had piled on quite a few pounds, and there was a suspicious degree of hat wearing among his fellow band members. But once they started playing, all sense of the poignancy of lost youth faded away. A tight four piece – each holding their own – they blasted through a set of old and new songs, with a surprisingly full style that stands up against the lush arrangements of their earlier studio offerings. Robert’s guitar work was a revelation, his tonsils have stood the test of time, and the BM’s soul-tinged pop still hits the spot. Yes, I’m still digging their scene – wouldn’t have missed it.

Gordon Bennett.

2009-02-04T11:50:00.002Z

It’s been a bit of an Alan Bennett fest this week. I finally got round to watching ‘The History Boys’ on DVD and loved it, particularly the hilarious French lesson scene and the classic movie skits on ‘Now Voyager’ and ‘Brief Encounter’. I also polished off the short but very sweet ‘The Uncommon Reader’ and found the whole conceit of the Queen as a newly converted bookworm (despite staunch and virtually universal opposition by family, staff and even government), rather appealing. The sly digs at the unnamed Prime Minister about weapons of mass destruction lent this slim volume a bit of political edge, until it ends abruptly and entirely unexpectedly, with Her Maj dropping her own WMD to the gathered great and the good.

hello, is it me you’re looking for?

2009-02-03T19:42:00.001Z

A couple of months ago, I bought the most exquisite set of cordless home phones I’ve ever owned. I’d seen the Colombo Two (named after the Italian designer Joe, not the Seventies mac-wearing detective) in a design magazine, and coveted them them for weeks. I waited patiently for their release, and made a special trip to Selfridges – the only place in the UK you could buy them. The space-age retro curves, the way they fitted in your hand, the dinky blue LED interface, the sleek buttons, even the disco-ish typeface used for the numbers were all spot on. What’s more, these beauties were orange, and as you can tell from this web site, that always does the trick for me. They were just perfect. Except they weren’t. When you made a call, there was always a loud hum in the background, like the amplified strangling of a bumble-bee. For weeks I persisted, in the vain hope that things would get better, and strenuously defended my babies when Deborah dared suggest there was something wrong with them. Finally, I threw in the towel. I went to Robert Dyas and bought a cheap set of black, no-nonsense BT phones. You wouldn’t call them objects of desire, but they work perfectly. The word ‘what?’ is a stranger to me once more, and my clients have stopped insisting we communicate by email. Please get in touch if you’re interested in taking some barely used designer handsets off my hands, and you don’t mind the score Form 10, Function 1.

let us spray.

2009-02-01T15:52:00.001Z

It’s great that books like this can still get published. ‘Overspray’ is an overview of the golden age of airbrush art. Focusing on four exponents in the epicentre of the genre in Seventies California, it paints a glistening picture of the environment that spawned this trashy yet technically demanding form of illustration. Even if you’re not a fan of airbrush, many of the images on these pages will be surprisingly familiar – from Levi’s ads, to Rolling Stones covers, to movie posters, to Playboy illustrations. The subject matter is wonderfully garish, super-shiny, super-suggestive, super-real. Everything seems to glint and drip – a world of high-camp high-gloss, where kinkiness and sci-fi surrealism rub shoulders. Better still, ‘Overspray’ isn’t simply eye candy – it makes a sterling attempt to contextualise and analyse the work on show, examining the influences, motives and techniques of its foremost practitioners. Oh, and I probably should declare an interest at this point. It was written and put together by my old buddy Norman Hathaway – but don’t let that put you off. You can get your hands on a copy of ‘Overspray: Riding High with the Kings of California Airbrush Art’ on Amazon.

gone but not forgotten.

2009-01-25T11:08:00.001Z

I was taken aback to hear that Sheffield’s finest, the Designers Republic, closed for business last week. I interviewed tDR’s voluble founder Ian Anderson several times, and wrote articles on their work for the Sunday Times Magazine, Ray Gun and Print. For a good while, they were right up there on my list of favourite design companies, so I’ve always taken a close interest in what tDR – and various super-talented alumni – got up to. Ten years ago in their pomp, their contrary attitude, irreverent wit and ‘more-is-more’ signature style set them apart and spawned a distinctive aesthetic that had soon permeated the mainstream. And that was the problem. What was once original and edgy became a diluted parody of itself. tDR, unsurprisingly, wanted to cash in, and tied their fortunes to large, ill-fitting corporate clients. Somewhere they lost sight of what made them great. Ian Anderson says they’ll be back. Let’s hope so, and that they recapture the uncompromising spirit of their early years.

today’s the day.

2009-01-23T12:46:00.001Z

I’ve just received a rather beautiful hardback diary in the post. A little late in the day, I grant you, but I’m sure it will be put to good use. The diary is a showcase for the printing prowess of Kingsbury Press in Doncaster, and they’ve really gone to town with foil blocking, perforations, cuts, embossing, graduated colour – though not in a showy, look-at-me kind of way. There’s a handy guide to print and production at the front, and a page-per-day diary that’s just perfect for daily jottings. Not bad at all for a freebie. Hats off to Leeds-based Thompson Brand Partners for the design, and of course all those hard-working printers at Kingsbury.

snap.

2009-01-18T21:27:00.001Z

It’s one of those moments that makes you think, but you’d rather not dwell on it for too long. At around 8pm last night, as the winds gusted, a mighty 40-foot branch came crashing down from the 300-year-old cedar in our front garden. It made a sound like Armageddon, but miraculously missed the house and the car, and just slightly damaged the front gates. And of course, if anyone had been walking under it, as we do several times a day, they’d be stone dead. There may be more light in some of the rooms in the front of the house now, but for me it’s like Big Ben without a minute hand, or a seven-tentacled octopus. Looking out of the bedroom window first in the morning will – literally – never be the same again.

specially for you.

2009-01-16T14:32:00.001Z

The Specials are 30. I caught a slightly surreal local news item on telly last night which showed two original members of the band sheepishly unveiling a commemorative plaque in Coventry city centre. It struck me how fresh, politicised and spiky their music was – and still is. ‘Ghost Town’ perfectly summed up the bleakness of the Thatcher years, and given how the High Street is so rapidly vanishing at the moment, the song seems spookily relevant once more. The Specials’ graphic expression was compelling too, the simple black-and-white line drawings, the trilbied skanking man, and the reversed out type, created a simple yet instantly recognisable look. They’re back together (sans Jerry Dammers) for a tour, which kicks off 22 April. Catch them if you can.

under the Christmas tree.

2008-12-29T16:48:00.001Z

Books, as usual, featured prominently in my clutch of goodies from Santa. Top of the pile were ‘Reasons to be Cheerful – The life and work of Barney Bubbles’; the Penguin reissue of ‘Design as Art’, by Bruno Munari; Dorling Kindersley’s ‘Art – the Definitive Visual Guide’ (a real door-stopper); and finally, a little indulgence – ‘The Clash’ by The Clash, 384 pages of archive photographs and insights into one of the mightiest bands of all time. Expect some reviews in the ‘well read’ section once these beauties have been fully digested.

just another day.

2008-12-24T16:18:00.001Z

Calendars are tricky. Make the wrong choice, and you’re lumbered for the next 12 months. Often I’m lucky enough to receive a fine offering from one of my designery friends, but this year no such generosity was forthcoming. Which meant venturing into the ‘real world’ of big-breasted women, dog breeds, and soap stars to see if I could find something that remotely fitted the bill. On www.calendarclub.com, I was mildly diverted by one featuring 12 Mexican wrestlers photographed by Malcolm Venville; tempted for a moment by a another featuring 12 reclining nudes painted by old masters including Ingres and Modigliani. But I finally settled for a collection of US fruit crate labels from the 1920s, which seemed suitably graphic and obscure.

It turned up with a sticker on it which read “We apologise that February 29th appears on your 2009 calendar. This error does not affect the rest of the calendar. All other dates are correct”. No mention of this on the web site and no discount. You’d think for a company that specialises in selling calendars, the one they’d get right are the dates. If ever there was a case of form before function, this is it.

mug shots.

2008-12-05T11:59:00.001Z

All this writing doesn’t half work up a thirst. It’s important to hydrate the brain at regular intervals, but that essential quaff of herbal tea needs to be presented in an appropriately stylish container. My two favourites at the moment are the Pantone™ 021 C orange mug, and this fairground type-inspired chubby fellow designed by my friend Mark Faulkner at Repeat Repeat. Will report back if there are any developments.

do it yourself.

2008-12-05T09:43:00.001Z

I’m always a sucker for a bit of ‘vernacular’ type. That is, street lettering that’s been hand-rendered by someone with little training, but a lot of enthusiasm. So this CD cover from Californian funksters Tower of Power immediately struck a chord. I’m still not sure how much of it has been ‘staged’ and is therefore an elaborate double bluff, but even so, this really is a case of so bad it’s good. (And I just love “T-bone 75c. With meat $5”).

breaking up.

2008-12-04T23:13:00.001Z

Books, even of the humble paperback variety, are precious to me. I keep every book I’ve read in case I want to revisit it at any point. They are like diary entries, reminders of particular places and moments in time. For a few days, you have an intense, personal relationship with a book – something that’s worth cherishing. So it really hacks me off when a book that falls apart during the first reading – like ‘Bit of a Blur’ by Alex James did when I was halfway through it on holiday. A black mark then to publishers Abacus for such shoddy binding. Detracting from what was otherwise a truly enjoyable, and surprisingly eloquent romp through the 1990s rock ’n’ roll landscape.