All Things Considered

Harrington & Squires

I spent another couple of inspirational days in Tufnell Park last week at Harrington & Squires - the small private press run by graphic designers Vicky Fullick and Chrissie Charlton.

Named after Bob Harrington and Horace Squires - two tutors at Hornsey College of Art in the 1960s - the workshop measures just  288 picas (1.2m wide), and it’s amazing the use that’s been made of the aptly named Corridor.

Splitting their time between commissioned work, regular workshops and their own publishing projects, the work hanging from every vertical surface is inspirational.

I’d visited before and had spent the last few months putting together a basic printing set up, built around an 8” x 5” Adana. Having dabbled with this over the last couple of months there were some ‘holes’ in my knowledge which needed filling. On this visit I managed to produce a new fabric care card for our mail order purchases, and spent a blissful couple of hours printing away - almost in some sort of letterpress induced trance - overlooking a busy Fortress Road.

If you want to find out more about Harrington & Squires it’s worth tracking down a copy of April 2008’s World of Interiors magazines.

Modern British Posters

Last week I finally made it to this excellent exhibition of British posters from the middle part of the 20th century.

The exhibition features work by Edward Wadsworth, Paul Nash, Edward Bawden, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Abram Games and Tom Eckersley amongst others - all from the private collection of Paul and Karen Rennie.

Paul had previously introduced me to many of the artists and designers whose work is exhibited - and the show acts as the perfect introduction to the genre, as Paul Rennie explains:

"The evolution of British graphic design, from 1920, onwards has usually been presented as a footnote to developments in Europe. These posters show a graphic language of range and sophistication emerging in Britain and able to communicate beyond the established rhetoric of advertising and sales."

The exhibition runs until the 17th of May at the Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins, Southampton Row, WC1. You can also view this slideshow of the work being exhibited. Highly recommended.

Detour: Moleskine Exhibitions

I wish my selection of battered and half used Moleskine books were just a tiny bit as exciting at the ones featured at Detour, an exhibition of thirty three personal Moleskine notebooks of artists, writers, designers and illustrators of international acclaim. Sadly mine are just filled with shopping lists and to-do's that slowly get done.

Over the past two years, Detour has been held in London and New York, and this years exhibition is taking place, right now in Paris at Printemps Design Boutique at the Centre Pompidou, until 19th May. The exhibition will move on next to Berlin and in 2009 it will be in Venice, Istanbul, etc...

There is also MyDetour, where notebook submissions are open to anyone . The chosen books are displayed on-line and off-line in Paris. You can view pages from notebooks on Flickr, or you can look at videos of Detour artists notebooks via YouTube. It's quite addictive - and very inspiring.

If you feel motivated to get illustrating, we sell a variety of Moleskine's at St. Jude's Gallery.

Pop-Up-Brilliance

Over the past four years, I've got quite use to pop-up books, but sadly most of the ones we own are now destructed-pop-up-less books. 

There is one pop-up book which I am very keen to buy but not keen for my girls to re-create in there own hands-on origami style, and this is the brilliantly constructed ABC3D book by French illustrator and designer Marion Bataille. 

This engaging hard back book shows each letter of the alphabet in pop-up form, with some letters changing into others as you turn the page or tip the book. Typographic fans, designers and children will love this book. See the clip below to get the full demo.

ABC3d is available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk, due for release in October.

I'm not one for great organisational skills, but wouldn't this book solve Christmas presents for everyone?

Linda Florence

Earlier this month I spent a day re-learning how to screen-print at London Printworks Trust. Whilst I was there, London based textile designer Linda Florence, was in the process of printing realms and realms of striking wallpaper for a client in York.

Linda's style combines layers of bold colours, patterns, graphic illustrations and unusual surfaces such as the interactive paper where you scratch off a silver layer like a scratch card.

Another great and unusual design is her striking white patterned floor named the 'Sugar Dance' which was exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in January. The floor consisted of icing sugar laid out using stencils, then danced upon by professionl ballroom dances where the dancers created there own patterns in the dust as they moved about the space.

There is a video of Linda laying the floor at the V&A on YouTube. Click here to see it.

Letterpress

I'm spending the best part of this Easter weekend clearing out the shed that was designated as my letterpress workshop some months ago. In that time it seems to turned into a dumping ground for all sorts of rubbish.

So, I though it was time to do something about it. I've been collecting type for some time now and have two small presses - an Adana and a simple proofing press. There's still much to do but I can't wait to get started. I'll aim to keep a record of progress here.

It's been great to work with Phil Abel at Hand and Eye for our own St. Jude's stationery and vouchers - though it'll be some before we have to dispense of his services.

Doing a quick search on YouTube I came across this great mini-documentary which serves as a great overview of the craft. That said, I would definitely disagree with the closing comment that letterpress is 'going to die'. If anything, it seems to be flourishing - a visit to New York's Greenwich Village Letterpress would convince you of this.

Knockando Woolmill - The Movie

It's been great working with Hugh Jones at the Knockando Woolmill who produces our woollen throws.

The Mill is mainland Scotland's last surviving small district spinning and weaving mill and was a finalist in the BBC's Restoration series in 2004.

It's an exciting time for Knockando Woolmill Trust as they are hoping to secure funding for a £3 million restoration project. Find our more about the Trust

This short film gives a great overview of the Mill as it stands and the plans for the future.

If you're not seeing a movie above, you can view direct at YouTube.

Illustrations

I tried to find a translation  online, for the Polish words Pan Tu Nie Stal. Returned, were two quite different meanings; 'Mr. Herein Not Steel' and 'You has not stood here'. It seems that the online translation tools are not exactly in agreement on this one.

Pan Tu Nie Stal a Polish design blog, covers a variety of excellent images and illustrations taken from food labels and packaging, transport tickets, stickers and various books during the communist era in Poland.

If you like these bold, simplistic illustrations as much as I do, you may also appreciate this collection of images of children's books at Bloesem Weekend Read. Author Irene, has a fantastic sense of style and puts together an excellent blog, full of work from inspiring independent designers from around the globe.

I have been enjoying reading Bloesem since Irene began the blog a year ago, and I have now started viewing her new blog bkids - full of enviable items for little ones.

Plywood

As a material, the versatility of plywood is hard to beat. It can be bent to form strong, aesthetically pleasing objects from the old skool school chair to a classic Eames creation or a canteen tray to a skate board.

Invented in the 1850’s plywood consists of layers of veneer sandwiched together, each layer’s wood grain runs opposite to the next making it very strong and stable. The 1850’s heralded its commercial birth as a material suitable for furniture applications when a German emigre to the US, John Henry Belter, developed a heat process to bend the plywood in three dimensions. Further improvements to this technique came with research by the aviation industry during World War 1.

Plywood became a cheap and accessible material for 20th century designers such as Alvar Aalto and later Charles and Ray Eames. After falling out of favour in the 60’s and 70’s, due in part to the popularity of plastic, it wasn't until the late eighties before designers started to appreciate this material once more.

Weapons of Mass Communication

'Weapons of Mass Communication: War Posters' is the title of an exhibition that's just opened at the Imperial War Museum in London.

I'm hoping to make it along in the next couple of weeks and will aim to add another post with some comments then.

The exhibition will explore the nature of propaganda from the First World War to the present day - its poster (which I saw on the Tube yesterday) is a variation of the publicity material that David Gentleman designed for the Stop The War Coalition (pictured here).