Hasta La Ideas

Despite a painful wrestle with the back end of the then brand spanking new CR website and blog with my Some Nice Publications post back in May – I thought I’d do another round up of nice publications…

If you read the original post, you will have seen images of issue one of Nobrow magazine. Now the Nobrow Small Press has completed its very first screenprinted edition, The Bento Bestiary, which features illustration by Ben Newman and words by Scott James Donaldson. The book, hand screenprinted in three colours in a strictly limited edition of 100, recounts “the habits and whims of a ghastly group of ghosts and ghouls from ancient Japanese legend,” according to the blurb about it on the Nobrow website. Here are some pics:

Actually, I was in the Nobrow studio when the final black colour was going on the pages – CR subscribers can have a look at the footage (in two parts) I took while I was visiting by clicking through to the CR TV section on the site

Floor To Wall: Plastic People Flyers 1988-2003 is a fairly self-explanatory title. This little book collects and celebrates the artwork created by designer Ali Augur for London club Plastic People over a five year period – with a foreword by DJ writer and producer Charlie Dark. Many of Augur’s flyers for various nights held at the were collectible because he introduced illustrative themes – such as his hand drawn images of famous London tower blocks and which appeared on flyers for Balance – or the patterned flyers for the same night that, were inspired by the upholstery found on the seating on the different London Underground train lines.

Augur self published the book using Blurb and it’s great to see this collection of disposable print ephemera celebrated like this.

This has the appearance of a brochure but actually, The Master builder: Talking with Ken Briggs is a celebratory look at the posters created by designer Ken Briggs for The National Theatre from the mid sixties through to the early seventies. As well as showing a selection of Briggs’ posters and programmes from, the booklet features an interview with the designer conducted by Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge earlier this year.

The accompanying letter that came with the booklet explains that The Master Builder “is the first publication by Occasional Papers, a new, London-based publisher specialising in low-budget, content high books on graphic design and contemporary art.”

Forthcoming titles from this new publishing venture include The Form of the Book book, an A5, 96 page volume which will feature transcripts of a one-day symposium on book design held at St Bride Library with contributions by Richard Hollis, James Goggin, Mevis & van Deursen and more.

I’d never heard of Wooooo until last week when Wooooo issue 6 landed on my desk. It’s a magazine but in a book format stuffed full of  interviews with a host of different young go-getting cool types, such as model Agyness Deyn, photographers Jaimie Warren and Philip Lorca Dicorcia, editor Christopher Bollen and comedian Zach Galifianakis – to name a few. Really like the use of yellow ink as well as the black throughout.

Ah, a music release nestling here in a Nice Publications post… Hopefully we’ll see more and more of this kind of thing as record labels look to furnish music fans with lovingly conceived and produced packages for their offerings… 

This particular release is Mika’s Songs For Sorrow EP released on Casablanca Records which comes in the form of a hardback book with song lyrics and pages of illustration which bring to life the lyrics of each song – created by a host of artists and illustrators that include Peter Blake, Da Wack, David McKee, Jim Woodring, Richard Hogg, Huck Scarry and Sophie Blackall to name just a few… The actual CD is housed in a sleeve tipped on to the inside back cover.

Mika is credited with the concept and art direction of the package with design and layout credited to Alex Hutchinson. Additional design and layout: Richard Hogg and DaWack.