designers Archives - Page 8 of 19

Selective Vision

As I mentioned at the time, the two Paignton posters in the forthcoming Christies Sale got me thinking. To be precise they’ve made me wonder why these two posters keep coming up for auction when the rest of Reginald Lander’s vast and varied output doesn’t.

There’s a simple answer, which is that these particular posters are a bit reminiscent of Abram Games, and so are seen to be good and therefore get sold by Christies. Lander did some more in this vein, such as this Jersey design: these come up too, just not as often as Paignton.

Which is fair enough, but it’s a thought worth unpicking a bit further, mainly as a reminder that the market does not equal design history which in turn does not equal what was produced at the time.

Let’s start at the far end of that. Lots and lots of posters were designed in 1958 when Lander’s designs were first produced – I can find over 120 on the National Railway Museum catalogue alone. So in part the Paignton posters must keep appearing because quite a few of them were saved when they were produced (there is a chance, of course, that there are just four or five of them, endlessly doing the rounds of auctions, but I’ll discount that for now). In the case of railway posters this probably means that people bought them for themselves because they particularly liked them.

Now this may be people choosing an excellent piece of contemporary design as decoration, but may also be because, depicting such holiday sundries as a deckchair and a bucket and spade as they do, the images make rather good holiday souvenirs. Perhaps also more people went to Paignton; or it may even be that Paignton Town Council spent more than anyone else on its publicity and so printed loads more posters. Even at the moment of production there are a mindboggling set of reasons why some posters might survive in greater numbers than others.

But that’s only the beginning of it. Because then, from all of the railway posters which do survive, Christies and collectors together do a kind of negotiation about what is ‘interesting’. Interesting, in this sense, is pretty much interchangeable with ‘valuable’.

For whatever reason – perhaps, as I mentioned above a resemblance to the work of Abram Games, a perception that they are ‘good design’ or even just because people still like a cheery picture of a deckchair or a bucket and spade – these posters are now seen as having greater worth than many others. More worth, for example, than those newsagents advertising posters which I posted on here the other day (and then as a result ended up getting the one below on eBay for a tenner).

But there’s nothing definitive about these decisions; while I don’t think the Woman magazine poster is as good as the Lander, is the Paignton poster really sixty or even eighty times better? That’s what the Christies’ estimates would like you to believe, but I don’t think so. And will the relative values be the same in five or ten years time? Who knows.

But Christies are not only making relative judgements, they are also performing a kind of selection. They’d never sell our Woman poster, because it wouldn’t reach anything near their minimum lot value. So some posters are on the inside, others are excluded. Some are seen, some are unseen, and it is thus much harder for the unseen ones to be part of the argument, or indeed the history.

But even that is not the end of it. Because here I am, sifting through what’s on Christies – and elsewhere – to point at the things that I like. There’s a personal opinion in there, for certain; I mostly ignore posters like the one below, even though Christies value it at £800-1,000, over the Lander, because I don’t have anything to say about them.

And don’t even get me started on Terence Cuneo.

But that kind of selection is what happens on the surface. What I’m also doing as I wander about the internet looking for posters, is filling my mind with images, each and every one of which have a small effect on what I think, and write, about their history and design. The same is true for every single person who’s thinking about them too. But what I get to see – however hard I try – is such a tiny segment of the whole, which has been pre-selected by everything from the marketplace to 1950s holidaying habits. Such a partial view, in fact, that it’s hard not to conclude that my opinions are in the end, not really much use at all.

Clearly you can’t take a word I have to say on the subject seriously. Which is a shame, because I also wanted to tell you that the rest of Lander’s output is seriously under-rated. I did blog about this last year (please do take a look, you will enjoy him) so I will content myself by saying that he did a good line in sharp colours as well as the more tasteful stuff.

We have both of these posters (in a tatty state, so the above image is of the original artwork from NMSI instead). Plymouth does come up now and then, but I’ve never seen the Morecambe one anywhere else at all. For whatever reasons.

Although while I was double-checking that just now, I did find this. Which is now definitely on the wanted list.

Refined Lard

designers, other

Today something alarming but also brilliant, the Sainsbury’s Own Label book by Jonny Trunk.

It’s alarming because I’m now old enough for people to be digging up forgotten bits of my past and selling it as retro. In this case, supermarket packaging.

We always shopped at Sainsbury’s when I was small, so these designs do have a Proustian whiff of being six years old for me.

Lard Packaging sainsburys own label book

As for brilliance, the design speaks for itself, even if I wouldn’t fancy eating too many of the contents. But in a way, that’s a further compliment to the vision of the design. Who would feel today that a lard wrapper was worth spending good design time on? Not many people I suspect. (If you want to follow this thought further, there’s an interesting Creative Review article which compares the designs in the book to what’s on offer today, even if it does wimp out of the conclusion that most design now isn’t half as good.)

The book is also an interesting portal into a moment in design which doesn’t get spoken about as much as it ought to, particularly in terms of graphic design.

I’ve always thought of the period between about 1962 and 1967 as the brief moment when ‘proper’ modernism was finally taken on board by British designers, even if it was only an interlude between Scandewegian light wood and psychedelic curliques. This book is a reminder that while it might not have lasted for long, the takeover was total. What’s more, it wasn’t just high end manufacturers and poncey magazines embracing the style; instead it was part of the design of everyday life, just as good modernism should be.

Imagine a whole supermarket full of design of this force and ambition. It’s something I will probably never see again, and never properly appreciated when it was in front of me either.

The Sainsbury’s designs in the book start in 1962 but go all the way through to 1977, although I imagine that the most striking designs here date from the earlier period of the studio’s work (somewhere I have an early 1970s Party Dip package which is definitely more psychedelic than anything on show here). But I haven’t read the book yet, so will doubtless have more to say when it does arrive. Here’s a preview of just a few of the delights inside.

I thought I’d mention it in advance though because it is a limited edition print run. A few copies are available from the designers, Fuel, or you can wait until Amazon get their copies in. But once they’re gone, they’re gone.

While you wait for your copy to arrive, it’s also worth reading Jonny Trunk’s account of how the book came to be. I tend to believe that the most interesting ideas come out of people following their own eccentric enthusiasms rather than making a calculated decision about what other people are interested in, and this is a classic example of that happening. Well done that man.

East Wind (blustering)

designers

A while ago, I wrote about John Griffith’s fantastic drawings of shop-fronts for Motif. Which are so good that they can easily stand a bit of repetition.

Even a bit more.

They’re so wonderful that I not only wanted to find out more about him, but also wanted to see some more of his work, without much luck. Mr Crownfolio got on the case, though, and we don’t yet have anything like a biography, he has turned up these three BBC Schools booklets. This one dates from 1968, and is the most reminiscent of his Motif drawings.

This theatre and orchestra could easily have come from Motif. Here’s its other half.

Nothing inside is quite as good as that, although I do quite like this scratchy little set of musical drawings, which remind me a bit of Barbara Jones, not least in the seemingly random way they’ve been put onto the page.

He was also commissioned to produce another the next year.

I particularly like this illustration inside, which is more than good enough to be framed and hung on a wall.

East Wind (blustering) is the title of the song, along with tempo instructions.

Now I’ve said it before but it’s a point worth repeating, the illustration in these BBC booklets is not only of a fantastically high standard, but also interesting, even edgy. I can’t see children today being exposed to things of this quality as a matter of course. Yes, there are some children’s books which are interesting, risky, eye-opening. But in the general litter of ephemera which is aimed at them at school or at home, is there anything which has ambitions even one tenth as high as these booklets? If there is, I can’t think of it (and I’m not going to post a picture of the CBeebies art magazine to prove my point but trust me, it makes my eyes ache).

Does this matter? Yes I think it probably does. Because this is the third BBC booklet by John Griffiths that we’ve managed to find, dating from 1973.

I was completely taken aback when this fell out of the envelope because know that I sang from this booklet at school. In particular, I remembered the spread below as though I’d only seen it yesterday.

Now I’m not saying that it was John Griffiths’ illustrations that turned me into a design fiend (if I’m honest, I like this booklet the least of the three). But the fact that I can remember these pictures so clearly despite the passing of well over thirty years suggests that I stared at them so hard and so long that they became part of the structure of my brain. So if we are furnishing our children with things that might perhaps last a lifetime, hadn’t we better make sure that we’re giving them something good?

Art and craft

designers

A little bit of Ravilious for you on a Friday, yet another thing which I have unearthed on the bookshelves as a result of the move.

I particularly like the little electric transmission logos at the bottom.

Sadly there is no further Ravilious to be found inside, although there is a collection of wierd and wonderful things, including an iron age shield, an Eric Gill sculpture and Winchester Cathedral. The artists’ tools on the cover seem positively conservative in comparison.

Finders

designers

Amidst all the chaos of moving, a pleasant surprise, in the form of this Lewitt-Him children’s book, which was discovered squashed between two bigger poster books on the shelves.

Now I’ve blogged about their books before, and even mentioned this in passing but I had no idea we owned a copy of it at all. Not even Mr Crownfolio, who tends to be less surprised by these discoveries than I am, knew it was there. It has now been put in a safer place, because it is truly delightful.

I’m afraid I can only show you the single illustrations. There are also some great double-page spreads too, but unfortunately the long thin format doesn’t fit on the scanner, so you’ll just have to believe me on that one.

Still, as well as those there are some smaller pictures in the text which do fit. I am particularly fond of these sheep.

I used to be on the train, whizzing past that arrow. Now I think I’m more like the sheep.

There is also an entirely accurate preview of the state of things here at Crownfolio Towers right now.

The removal men arrive later today. More news when we come out the other side.

AP, again

designers, other

While everything is in flux here at Quad Royal central (I am writing this in a room already stacked with boxes and wev’e still got a week to go) I thought I would dig out a few posts from the earlier days of the blog which are worth revisiting, especially as not everyone will have seen them first time round. This one seemed like a good place to start, especially as it was Artist Partners’ own website who first alerted me to the existence of the Patrick Tilley posters.

Sometimes, writing about posters can feel like a constant harking back to a golden age of British graphic design, long since lost to the evil forces of photography, Photoshop and general bad taste. But not everything from that time has disappeared.

Like Artist Partners for example, who are not only still going but have set up a usefully informative website which covers their past as well as their present. And their past was very glorious indeed.

Founded in 1950, the agency represented some of the biggest names in illustration, graphics and photography from the fifties onward. There’s no point repeating their entire history, because they’ve done the job already. Although I was particularly interested to see that Reginald Mount was one of the founding partners. He’s a fascinating character who seems to pop up at all sorts of interesting points in the history of graphics, and I’d be interested in finding out more about him one of these days.

They’ve put together a small retro section on their website as well, with a few nice images, like these Sunday Times advertisements by Patrick Tilley.

But it’s not the website that made me want to post about them, it’s this (the cover also, incidentally, designed by Tilley), which we’ve had on the bookshelves for a while now.

Dating from, I guess, the early to mid 50s, it’s a brochure for the artists represented by AP, and a very delightful book in its own right. Here’s one of the section headings for example.

Or this one, by none other than Tom Eckersley

Oh to be sitting at at an advertising agency desk in 1954 and trying to decide who to commission. Because there is such as wealth of wonderful talent in this book. Amongst other people, Artist Partners represented Eckersley, Hans Unger, George Him, Eileen Evans, and of course Reginald Mount. And even Saul Bass. Here’s a trade advertisement for Enfield Cables.

And a rather fetching advertisement for Technicolour by George Him.

My main sadness is that it’s only partially in colour, because there are simply hundreds of pieces which I haven’t ever seen before. For every page like this

(Two Hans Ungers – one GPO, one London Transport, a Leupin and another Patrick Tilley)

there are ten like this.

I’ve managed to find the peas one in colour at least for your entertainment.

That’s more than enough for now, but I’ve still only barely scratched the surface of this wonderful book.